The Elevator

CHAPTER 4

Gina fastens the clasp of the manila envelope, then stiffens at the sound of movement in the house. Is one of the children awake? Not likely this early on a Saturday morning, but Matthew might have decided to get up and turn on the Weather Channel. Of all the children, he alone seems to realize the danger Felix poses. The girls have grown inured to the threat of hurricanes; Samantha actually complained when she heard the malls would be closed today.

Gina tiptoes to her bedroom door, opens it a crack and listens. No sound comes from the upstairs bedrooms, so she must have heard the wind moving over the attic vents. She steps out and looks through the wide living-room windows, guaranteed to withstand hurricane-force winds. The curling fronds of the palms around the pool are swaying toward the sunrise, which means the wind is coming from the unsettled west.

Dangerous weather may be on its way, but she has plenty of time. The sky is cloudy, but not sagging; the wind is brisk, but not yet dangerous.

She inhales a deep breath to bolster her courage. She can proceed with her plan. She’ll freshen her makeup, pull on casual slacks and a light sweater. She needs to look like a devoted wife running upstairs to lend her husband a helping hand.

Few people, if any, will be in the building this morning. The first-floor deli, bank and florist are certain to be closed. She’ll speak to anyone she meets and make it clear that while Sonny may be workaholic enough to risk his neck, she’s not going to stick around. Maybe on the way out she should ask the security guard if the Pierpoint restaurant will open at all, implying that Sonny might need an afternoon snack.

She should be home before the kids wake up. Even if the wind rouses them, they’ll get breakfast and settle in front of the TV. A couple of hours could pass before they notice she’s gone.

Her family may not be perfect, but they are predictable. Sonny may not have come home last night, but the hurricane will force him to the office this morning, where he’ll be scurrying like a squirrel before an oncoming Mack truck. At the last possible moment, he’ll either run home or go to that woman’s place.

He has no right to that choice.

Gina slides the P.I.’s report under her mattress, then pauses before the dresser to run a brush through her hair. She can’t look unkempt or nervous today; she’s a dutiful wife on a mission of mercy.

She presses two fingers to her right temple as a baby migraine drums a faint rhythm on a nerve. Wait…what about the private investigator? If the police call him in, he’ll tell them that Gina knew about Sonny’s adultery.

Well…fine. She could say she’s suspected that Sonny had other women through the years. That he’s always been a scamp, and she hired the investigator to get hard proof of her husband’s infidelity so she could beg Sonny to stay for the sake of their children.

Knowledge might be a key to motive, but it’s not proof of murder. To find her guilty, they’ll have to send crime-scene investigators, the coroner and detectives.

Hard to do when a hurricane has paralyzed a city’s law-enforcement infrastructure.

She steps into her walk-in closet and selects a yellow sweater and black slacks from the cedar shelves. As she changes her clothing, grainy images rise on a surge of memory. During the news coverage of Hurricane Katrina, she couldn’t help thinking that a person could disappear without a trace in the midst of such confusion.

Bodies washed up everywhere in the aftermath of that storm. For weeks, police and rescue workers found corpses in attics, under debris, in swimming pools and ditches. The levees of New Orleans hemmed in the dead of that city, but there are no levees in Tampa. The rains will fall, the tides will surge and the water will retreat, taking many of the dead along with it. Those who aren’t washed out to sea will quickly and quietly decompose where they fell, adding yet another layer of stress to an overburdened police department.

Gina checks her reflection in the full-length mirror, then pulls her trench coat from a hanger. She will need its deep pockets.

Before leaving the bedroom, she walks to Sonny’s nightstand. The small gun waits inside the drawer, a Rohrbaugh R9 her husband insisted on buying “to protect the family.”

Exactly what she intends to do with it.

She shrugs her way into the trench coat, drops the weapon into one of the pockets, then pulls her keys from her purse. Her shoulder feels empty without her handbag, but today she will travel without it. If she’s stopped at an intersection, she doesn’t want to be able to produce identification or a wallet. A policeman is likely to forget a flustered face, but he might remember the name on a driver’s license.

She looks in the mirror and practices her lines: “I’m here only for a minute. I have to run upstairs.”

A guileless face smiles back at her.

In the great room, she listens to the rising wind and swats at an insistent gnat of worry. Downtown Tampa may be at Felix’s mercy, but the suburbs are braced for the worst. This three-year-old house meets the tough new building codes and Sonny has stocked the garage with water, batteries, flashlights and packaged snack foods.

Before leaving, she tiptoes up the thickly carpeted stairs to check on her children. Matthew’s door is ajar; she gives it a gentle push and sees him sprawled over his bed, arms and legs akimbo. A handsome auburn-haired nineteen-year-old with amazing potential, according to his high school counselor, Matthew represents the best of her and Sonny. He has taken a year off to work and gather what he calls “life experience.” While Gina admires his practicality, she suspects he’s postponed college because he knows his leaving will break his mother’s heart.

Seventeen-year-old Mandi has fallen asleep with her television still flickering in the corner. While one of the Three Stooges snorts and wheezes into the depths of an enormous handkerchief, Mandi snores like a lumberjack, her head back and mouth open. In the room next door, Samantha, Gina’s youngest, is curled under a puffy pink comforter, her head sharing the pillow with a bedraggled stuffed animal.

Gina lingers in the doorway and smiles at her baby. Samantha would die if she knew Gina was seeing her like this; at fifteen, she pretends to be past caring for the sentimental treasures of her childhood. Gina knows better, though. A mother always knows.

She closes Samantha’s door and blows a kiss toward each of her sleeping offspring. If she’s delayed, Matthew will watch out for his younger sisters until she returns home.

After the initial shock, her kids will be fine. She and the children only have to weather this one storm.

Michelle checks her reflection in the mirror, wipes a smudge of gloss from the edge of her lower lip and hopes Parker will look up from his paperwork long enough to appreciate her efforts to look nice on a blustery Saturday morning. The man has a tendency to be testy when under pressure, and he definitely didn’t get much sleep last night.

But he has a surprise for her. If all goes well, his surprise and her decision will complement each other.

She leaves the bathroom and moves through the living room, picking up drink glasses and napkins left behind on the coffee table. After setting the dishes in the kitchen sink, she returns to the living room and stops to press the power switch on the television remote. Several channels of kids’ cartoons flash in a blur until she finds a weather map. The fresh-faced newscaster holds a rain-coated toy poodle on one arm while he points to what looks like a frosted doughnut spinning toward Florida’s central west coast.

“Pressed by a descending cold front, Felix is taking a more northwesterly track than initially predicted,” the weathercaster says. “The hurricane is now expected to come ashore near Madeira Beach in less than twelve hours. If you haven’t evacuated and you live on the water, forget about leaving the county. The interstates are congested and you don’t want to be trapped on the highway. Instead, get to a shelter right away.”

Michelle glances at the clock on the wall—the storm won’t arrive until day’s end, but the winds could become dangerous long before Felix makes landfall. Then again, the hurricane could veer north or south and barely ripple the air, making fools of the people who have spent the last week slapping plywood on their windows and loading their pantry with toaster pastries. Over the years she’s done that herself, stockpiling bottled water she eventually uses to mist the ferns on her front porch.

But at this moment she has something more important to think about. Whether or not Felix reaches Tampa Bay, Parker will soon finish up at the office and head home to be with his kids. If she’s going to talk to him alone, she has to leave now. She could wait, but she doesn’t want to lose her nerve….

The television camera shifts to a reporter standing in front of a pile of rubble. “Bob Ruffalo here,” he says, squinting into a spotlight, “in Puerto Juarez on the Yucatán Peninsula. Twenty-six hours ago Hurricane Felix blew through this place with winds of one hundred forty miles per hour. What you see behind me was once a thriving village—now the village has all but disappeared beneath a mountain of debris. Forty-four people are dead, scores of men, women and children are missing—”

Michelle clicks off the power and drops the remote onto the sofa. She moves toward the door, but the image of the ruined village lingers on the back of her retinas. When she tries to imagine what sort of diamond Parker may have picked out, the only picture her mind supplies is that of a big-eyed Mexican girl in a torn and muddy dress—

She stops at the door and rakes her hand through her hair. Okay, she’ll admit it. This may not be the most appropriate day for personal ultimatums, but what can she do about hurricane victims in Mexico?

“Get a grip, Tilson,” she says, her voice echoing in the empty foyer. “The Yucatán is in a different country. Rural villages like that don’t even have building codes, but we do and they’re tough. You need to be tough, too.”

Maybe Lauren is right and Felix won’t come here…but if it does, she’ll be ready.

Michelle walks to the large front window that overlooks Tampa Bay, tests the lock with her thumb, and is reassured to find the frame sealed tight. The accordion shutters wait at the right and left, ready for her to secure them. Nothing short of a Learjet, the installer assured her, could blast through those shutters when they are locked and loaded.

In an hour, two at the most, she’ll be back, ready to button up the condo and ride out the storm…unless Parker convinces her he is finally ready to get serious about their future. If so, she’ll come home only long enough to close the shutters and pack a bag.

Elated by her renewed determination, she pulls her keys from her purse, opens her front door and strides toward the elevator.

She’s thirty-three years old and she wants a family. If Parker doesn’t want to join her, then she’ll find someone else, but she will not be kept dangling.

If all goes well, she will spend this night with Parker’s children by her side and his ring on her finger.

And she will not have yellow mums at her wedding.

8:00 a.m.

CHAPTER 5

As the wind fires sharp pellets of rain at his windshield, Eddie Vaughn turns up the volume on his radio. On the seat beside him, Sadie, his golden retriever, shifts her weight and gives him a beseeching look.

“Almost home, girl.” He slows to ease the pickup across a stream gushing through an intersection, then tears his gaze from the pavement to grin at the dog. “You ready to settle in and watch some TV? If the power goes out, I figured we could play a few rounds of Go Fish or do a crossword.”

Sadie makes a rhrrrumph sound deep in her throat, then lowers her chin to the top of the seatback and stares out the truck’s rear window.

Eddie forces himself to whistle a bar of “Singing in the Rain,” then gives up the effort. The dog is worried, and no amount of grinning or whistling is going to relieve her anxiety. He’s heard that animals can sense impending natural disasters—whether or not the rumor is true, Sadie has been antsy for the last couple of days.

Felix has been swirling around in the Caribbean for almost a week, but only in the last twelve hours has the storm drawn a bead on Tampa Bay.

When the cell phone on the seat buzzes, Eddie turns down the volume on the radio, then scoops up the phone with his free hand. “’Lo?”

“Hey, doll.” Charlene’s voice, crusty from chain-smoking, fills his ear. “Are they all squared away up there at Freedom Home?”

“You can scratch that one off your list, ma’am. Those folks aren’t going to be using the elevators anytime soon. The nurses have moved all the residents into the common room—the poor people who didn’t have anyone to pick them up, anyway.”

“Thanks for running up there, Eddie. I hated to call you out so early.”

“No big deal. I can go power ’em up after the storm passes, if you want.”

She croaks out a laugh as another phone rings in the background. “You must have gotten a look at my friend’s daughter. Did you meet Emily? She’d be the blonde, the one that looks like Pamela Anderson.”

Eddie brakes for a stop sign. “Yeah, I saw her. Pretty package. Nothing inside.”

“You’re too picky, Ed. Here I go out of my way to hook you up with a girl—”

“Give it a rest, Charlene, I’m doin’ fine.”

“But you’re too nice a guy to be livin’ all alone—”

“I’d rather live alone than try to talk to a woman who’s as shallow as a pie pan.” He catches a quick breath. “Don’t you have to answer that phone?”

Thankfully, the question derails the dispatcher’s train of thought. “Yeah, I’d better. Well, doll, you take care. Batten down the hatches and all that. Check in when you can.”

“You take care, too, Charlene. I’ll talk to you when it’s all over.”

He disconnects the call and tosses the phone back onto the seat. Sadie lowers her head to sniff at it as Eddie slants into the left lane, where the water isn’t as deep.

“Almost home, girl.”

Charlene’s well-intentioned meddling has turned his thoughts toward Alabama…and Heather. His memories of her are hazy now, blurred by time and the receding fog of pain.

Yet thoughts of Alabama still tighten his throat.

He turns up the volume on the radio. No music yet; the newscaster remains focused on the threatening weather: “Experts are saying Felix could wreak the kind of damage Charley did to Punta Gorda three years ago. The tidal surge could rise as high as twenty-two feet, enough to flood the downtown area, Tampa International Airport and MacDill Air Force Base.”

“Good thing we don’t live in Tampa, huh, Sades?”

Eddie clucks his tongue as he turns into his subdivision and peers through the pouring rain. His neighborhood seems deserted, which means people have either heeded the evacuation warnings or hunkered down inside their homes. Sheets of plywood or corrugated aluminum cover most of the windows and the seven dwarfs have disappeared from Mrs. Jackson’s flower bed. Jack Tomlinson has parked his wife’s minivan on the open lawn, away from the heavy oak tree that shades the south side of their house. Though the Tomlinson family’s garage is crowded with old newspapers, paint cans, sports equipment and tools (several of them on loan from Eddie), apparently Jack has found room for his Corvette.

“I’d like to repeat,” the radio announcer says, “that the governor has ordered the mandatory evacuation of ten coastal counties, warning that those who say behind face certain injury or death. If you’re not in a shelter and you live on the beach, you need to evacuate immediately to protect your own life.”

Eddie’s house, located on high ground in unincorporated Pinellas County, is part of a thirty-year-old subdivision built when contractors cared more for utility than aesthetics. The rainwater is draining properly on his street, a road lined by three-bedroom, two-bath structures of concrete block. Like its neighbors, his house isn’t fancy, but it has a fenced yard for Sadie, a small pool and a half-dozen shade trees to protect it from the sweltering summer sun.

Eddie hopes those leafy canopies survive the approaching hurricane. Last year even the storms that merely swiped at Pinellas County toppled hundreds of trees, which damaged cars and homes as they fell. Not even a house of concrete block can withstand a direct hit from a sprawling two-hundred-year-old live oak.

“Officials estimate that 487,000 people in Hillsborough County alone have had to seek shelter,” the newscaster continues, “and over 550,000 have filled shelters in Pinellas County. They’re fortunate—the Florida Highway Patrol has halted access to the interstate system, and those who haven’t made it across Pinellas County’s two bridges and single causeway are out of luck. Wherever you are, I hope you’re safely tucked away and not on the road.”

“You and me both, bud,” Eddie says, turning into his driveway. He pulls the pickup under the carport, then steps out of the truck. He doesn’t have to call Sadie—she leaps out behind him, a graceful golden blur on a beeline for the back door.

He laughs as he looks for his house key. “Ready to go inside, are you? Me, too. Let’s eat while we still have power to the microwave.”

Sadie scratches at the threshold, then sits back and waits for Eddie to slip the key into the lock. After opening the door, he takes one last look around before following the dog into the house. The garbage cans have been hauled into the utility room, the bird feeders tucked into a sheltered corner of the carport. He has covered his windows with plywood, turned the glass-topped patio table upside down on a mat of old towels and tossed his aluminum lawn chairs into the pool. He and Sadie have bottled water, a battery-powered radio, canned foods, a manual can opener, a stash of cash and a full gas can—enough supplies to get them through a couple of weeks, if necessary.

Satisfied with his preparations, he steps into the utility room and locks the door, securing the dead bolt, as well. The dead bolt would stop a human intruder, but he’s not sure it will hold against a category-four wind.

A year ago, when he left Alabama to escape an emotional storm, he never dreamed he’d be exchanging one kind of disaster for another. All things considered, though, the literal storms are easier to handle.

“God, help us,” he murmurs, one hand on the doorknob. Then he turns and whistles for the dog.

Because a man on the radio keeps insisting the police have blocked the downtown exits off I-275, Gina avoids the interstate and drives toward Sonny’s office along a less-traveled route. Several ominous clouds have swept in from the bay by the time she reaches the edge of the downtown district; a gray curtain of rain hangs beneath them, obscuring her view of the river.

On her approach to the Platt Street Bridge, she spots a policeman sitting in his cruiser. The brim of his hat shifts toward the rearview mirror, so he’s seen her.