Chapter 6
Chapter Six
O range juice was a three-billion-dollar industry in the United States, and most of the revenue came from the sale of frozen concentrate. It was a highly regulated industry, and Wyatt’s job today was to ensure the OJ processing plant was operating within the health and safety guidelines set by the feds. Unfortunately, yesterday the manager of the plant had blocked a surprise inspection, which meant Wyatt had been called in to provide security for the inspectors as they did their job. The food inspectors wore white lab coats and carried test tubes. Wyatt wore a uniform with a gun strapped to his hip. It tended to invoke a little more cooperation.
Wyatt leaned against the side of his cruiser in the parking lot to await the food inspectors, trying not to remember that this was the exact spot where he met Jenny Summerlin two years earlier. She’d been wearing blue jeans, a white tank, and her sun-kissed hair was tied up in a high ponytail. The image was permanently branded on his brain, the epitome of wholesome, healthy sex appeal.
He folded his arms and scowled. It was time to extinguish the latent attraction that roared back to life the instant he saw her again last week. There had been no news about the identity of the skeleton found on her grove, but the medical examiner’s report was due soon.
A little two-door hybrid vehicle pulled into the parking lot, and a perky young food inspector got out.
“Hi, I’m Abbie!” she said, striding across the parking lot with her hand outstretched. She had bouncy blond hair, a bouncy step, and bouncy Mickey Mouse earrings. “Are you the security guy?”
“I’m the security guy,” he said, battling a smile at her bright enthusiasm. Abbie proceeded to tell him that she just finished her master’s degree in biology and was only two months into her first job as a food inspector.
“The manager was pretty rude yesterday,” she said. “He said they’d been inspected last month, but we’re allowed to run an inspection four times a year, even if it’s in the same quarter.”
A full inspection took parts of the factory offline and was an annoying intrusion, but Abbie was right. If the department wanted to do an inspection, they were within their rights. They waited until the other two members of the inspection team arrived, then the four of them headed toward the building.
The processing plant was in a squat building that looked like any other factory except for the three-million-gallon liquid storage silo alongside it. Their inspection followed the same route a truckload of oranges would travel after arriving at the plant. Everything started at the unloading docks, where oranges were sent to conveyor belts for grading and sorting. Then the oranges were rinsed, peels stripped, flesh pulverized, and the juice pasteurized. The juice then went into evaporator tanks to be heated until it was reduced to one-sixth its liquid state. Nothing was wasted. Peel oil was used for cleaning products, and the leftover pulp used for animal feed. All along the way the food inspectors took samples, swabbed surfaces, and measured temperatures.
The manager of the plant wasn’t happy to see them. Jed Hawkins had been working at this plant for thirty years, and answering to a pipsqueak like Abbie probably set his teeth on edge.
“We have to stop production and flush the pipelines every time she wants to take a swab,” he grumbled. “All three tanks operate under the same conditions. Why can’t she just take a sample from one line and not all three?”
“Rules are rules,” Wyatt said. He understood Jed’s aggravation, but enforcing picky health standards was the key to keeping the industry safe.
His cell phone vibrated with an incoming text message, and he took it out to read. The medical examiner had finished her investigation into the skeleton from Jenny’s grove and was ready to present her findings. Wyatt needed to report to the sheriff’s office at four o’clock this afternoon to go over the report.
Unless the skeleton related to agricultural theft or drug smuggling, this fell under the sheriff’s department, not his. He stepped away from the noise of the evaporation tanks to call his departmental secretary and get her to beg off.
“The sheriff says you need to be there,” Veronica replied. Wyatt glanced over at Abbie, who looked like she belonged in high school. Jed had calmed down, but Wyatt didn’t like leaving her and the other inspectors on their own. More importantly, he didn’t want to risk any further entanglement with Jenny or Summerlin Groves.
“Get someone else from the department to go,” he instructed his secretary.
“Nope. The sheriff specifically said you needed to be there.”
Wyatt would rather sit through a root canal than endure a debriefing about Summerlin Groves, but a disastrous love affair wouldn’t derail his professional obligations. He set off for the sheriff’s department as soon as another officer from the department arrived to watch over the inspectors. He would be professional, competent, and nobody at the debriefing would have the tiniest hint that this meeting was cracking open a gateway into the most painful episode of his life.
His footsteps echoed down the linoleum corridor in the sheriff’s department as he headed to the designated meeting room, where laughter leaked from behind the closed door. He peered through the window slit to ensure he was in the right place before twisting the door handle and stepping inside.
Almost a dozen people crowded around the conference room table. Three deputies, two people from the medical examiner’s office, an anthropology professor, and a couple of others he didn’t know. Apparently, he’d interrupted an important discussion about college football, but Tommy eventually got around to introducing him to the people he didn’t know, all of whom were faculty from the University of Central Florida located an hour away in Orlando. One was an expert in forensic medicine, and the other two were historians.
The Pierce County medical examiner was the only woman in the room. Dressed in a boxy white lab coat, she still looked remarkably feminine with a pink scarf tied around her neck. She smiled and stepped forward to shake Wyatt’s hand. “Rebecca Lowenstein,” she introduced herself. “We met a few years ago at . . .”
Her sentence trailed off to an awkward halt. Dr. Lowenstein handled the crime scene where his sister had been murdered, so their previous acquaintance hadn’t been pleasant.
“I remember,” he said. “You were a real professional that time. My family and I appreciated it.”
Dr. Lowenstein gave him a sympathetic smile before turning to connect her laptop to an overhead projector. Wyatt claimed the last remaining chair at the table, still wondering why he’d been invited to this meeting.
“We’ve got a doozy,” Dr. Lowenstein said as her first slide was projected onto the whiteboard. It was a wide-angle photograph of the skeleton’s disarticulated bones arranged on an examination table. Cleaned of dirt and debris, the skeleton looked starkly different from the mud-encrusted remains he’d last seen curled up in the tree.
“I’ll get straight to the point,” Dr. Lowenstein said. “This skeleton is a woman who was approximately fifty years old at the time of her death.”
Dr. Lowenstein reported that the woman had been Caucasian, and the condition of her pelvic bones indicated that she never bore children. She was probably fully clothed at the time she went into the tree, but aside from a few hooks, buttons, and shoe material, her clothing had completely disintegrated.
The next slide on the screen showed a closeup of the jaw and skull. “This woman’s dental work is unlike anything that we use today,” Dr. Lowenstein continued. “Her fillings and bridge work were common in the mid-twentieth century, but completely obsolete by the 1980s. Based on her dental work and the brittleness of her bones, my hunch is that this woman died in the early 1950s.”
The next slide was a closeup of some tattered leather shoes. “These are a pair of round-toed pumps with a two-inch heel. They are consistent with styles of the 1950s. The word ‘Trevolina’ is stamped on the insole of both shoes. The brand was sold only in the Soviet Union.”
She tapped the keyboard and another image came on the screen. It was a ladies’ watch with a delicate face and a filigree metal wristband. “This watch was found in the cavity of the tree,” Dr. Lowenstein said. “It’s an Alpina watch, made in Switzerland, and is also consistent with the mid-twentieth century. The clasp was fastened, so it was probably on her wrist until the body became skeletonized and pulled apart. The band is gold-plated over stainless steel. It’s not a cheap watch, but not terribly expensive, either.”
A young deputy raised his hand. “Can we assume the motive wasn’t robbery if whoever stuffed her in the tree left the watch?”
“You’re assuming it was a murder,” Dr. Lowenstein said. “I wasn’t able to find a cause of death. There was no bullet wound or trauma to the bones. She could have been strangled or suffocated or drowned, but those things don’t show up on skeletons this old.”
“So no cause of death,” Tommy stated.
“I’m afraid not,” the doctor replied. “All the clothing has disintegrated with the exception of five resin buttons and six hook-and-eye closures, probably from a brassiere.”
She clicked to another slide showing a closeup of yellow buttons and the bits of tiny, rusted metal hooks. Sad remnants of what had once been a woman left abandoned in a tree hollow.
“At this point I’m going to turn the presentation back to Sheriff Caleb Eckert,” the doctor said, stepping aside as Caleb took her place. Caleb Eckert had held the top job in the sheriff’s department for thirty years. He had the scowling expression of a bulldog as he looked at the professors from UCF.
“The next part of the discussion is being held tightly under wraps,” Caleb said. “Everything said for the rest of the meeting must remain confidential. It can’t be discussed with your students or assistants or your family . . . and especially not the press.”
Wyatt perked up, suspecting they were about to discuss the jeweled egg. It was the most baffling part of the entire case, but too crucial to hide from the investigators.
“This was the only other thing found in the cypress tree,” Caleb said as he tapped the keypad to bring up a full-color photograph of the stunning, jewel-encrusted egg. There was a collective gasp from around the table.
“This egg was found with the skeleton,” Caleb said. “We’ve had two jewelers independently examine it, and both believe it to be a genuine Fabergé egg.”
A history professor leaned forward. “Aren’t those incredibly rare? Like only a few dozen in the world?”
Caleb’s voice was matter-of-fact. “According to one of the jewelers, fifty imperial eggs were made, although many were lost after the Russian revolution. Every few decades another one turns up, but eight are still missing. The jewelers think this may be one of them. Based on sales of recent Fabergé eggs, the experts predict it would bring between 35 and 50 million dollars at auction.”
Fifty million? Wyatt gazed at the brilliant, high-resolution image of the egg. Professionally cleaned and illuminated, it was even more dazzling than when he’d seen it nestled in a dishtowel-lined cereal bowl.
The second photograph Caleb showed was a shocker. It showed the egg opened lengthwise to reveal a surprise in the interior. It contained a scarlet eagle with its wings raised and extended, its head tipped back, and a sapphire for an eye. It was reminiscent of the eagle emblazoned on the imperial Russian coat of arms. The inner shell was coated in a layer of royal blue enamel to simulate the night sky, with tiny diamonds to serve as stars.
The archaeologist gave a low whistle of admiration, and despite himself, even Wyatt was dazzled by the unexpected charm inside the egg. Did this treasure make the case more or less likely to have been a murder? No sane person would knowingly dump a body with a treasure that valuable . . . unless it had somehow been hidden on the woman? Her clothing had deteriorated. So might a cloth handbag or purse. The egg was five inches tall. It could have been overlooked if the woman was hiding it. He gazed at the photograph, trying to think of any other explanation than murder for her presence in the hollow of that tree.
The group gathered at the table batted around speculation about how she got there. Some thought she might have been an illegal art smuggler trying to sell the egg on the black market. Others speculated she might have been a high-end antiques dealer . . . but that theory was quickly dismissed. A wealthy antiques dealer would have had relatives or associates to raise an alarm about the missing egg.
“Could the woman be a descendant of the Romanovs?” one of the history professors asked. “Maybe we could get a DNA test?”
Dr. Lowenstein nodded. “Her teeth could probably yield DNA, but we’d need to find a Romanov willing to provide a reference sample. We’d also need the sheriff to fund some expensive DNA sequencing.”
“Nope,” Caleb said. “Not yet, anyway. I don’t want word of this egg getting out and stirring up the crazies and the fortune hunters until we’ve exhausted the other possibilities.”
“Have we asked one of the Summerlins if anyone in their family mysteriously dropped out of sight in the 1950s?” Dr. Lowenstein asked.
Tommy’s tone was flat. “We asked; she won’t answer.”
Wyatt shifted uneasily. The “she” was obviously Jenny, the only Summerlin left to ask. Jack left a young son who was being raised by his maternal grandparents, but there weren’t any other cousins or aunts or uncles. Suddenly, he felt the gaze of every person in the room on him.
“Wyatt,” Caleb said in an artificially bright voice. “You know Jenny Summerlin better than anyone here. Maybe you could get her to talk?”
Every officer in the Pierce County Sheriff’s Department knew of his history with the Summerlins, and it was surprising they’d even ask. “I’m not too keen on getting roped into anything to do with that orange grove,” he said tersely. “Someone should consult with the HR Department at the United Phosphate mine. They were a big employer in the mid-twentieth century, and the dead woman could have been a seasonal office worker. Or married to someone who worked at the plant.”
“But why would such a woman have a Fabergé egg?” Tommy asked.
It was a good question. Most of the people employed by United Phosphate were miners or factory workers, but there were office jobs, too. Phosphate was a billion-dollar industry, and the company used to boast about how their fertilizer made farms all over the world flourish. Growing environmental concerns and the unpopularity of strip-mining had caused the company to lower their profile, but they were still a thriving enterprise.
The sheriff agreed to ask the HR Department at the mine to search for employees who dropped off the radar in the 1950s, although it was a long shot. The quality of the woman’s watch made it unlikely she had been a migrant laborer.
“Maybe a migrant prostitute,” one of the professors tossed out.
“And someone paid her with that egg.” A younger deputy snickered, and Wyatt shot him a surly glare.
“Show a little respect, please.”
“Uh-oh, Wyatt the Weeper is on the march,” Tommy said with a nudge, while Wyatt gave a terse grimace of acknowledgment. The problem with growing up in a small town was that it was impossible to outrun his past. Things he’d said or done decades ago were still ripe for teasing.
“Wyatt the Weeper?” Dr. Lowenstein asked in bemusement.
“Never mind,” Wyatt said. “Can you show the slide with the woman’s teeth? There are only a couple of dentists in town, and they might have records.”
Dr. Lowenstein shook her head. “I’ve already asked around. No one in town has files from that far back.”
The history professor came to his aid. “It’s not too hard to do a search through ancestry databases or census records to search for immigrants from Europe who lived in this area during the years in question. I can help you out.”
The purpose of the college professors being in this meeting suddenly became clear. Historians were good at piecing old information together based on fragmentary evidence. One of the professors offered to have his class search government records looking for female immigrants from Eastern Europe or the Soviet Union to this area during the mid-twentieth century. The other historian would search police archives in the surrounding counties, looking for old missing persons reports.
The meeting broke up after thirty minutes, although Tommy asked to speak with Wyatt privately. They went upstairs to the second floor of the building, where the Department of Agriculture had offices for eight employees. Wyatt’s office was a plain room with a nice view of U.S. Route 17 out the window.
Like most government offices, it was furnished with a fake woodgrain desk, a credenza for files, and a couple of chairs. The walls were plain and the nubby beige carpet had seen better days. The only hint of personality was the cactus garden in a hand-thrown pottery dish on the windowsill.
It had been a gift from Jenny on their one-month dating anniversary. He had a brown thumb but she laughingly reported that scrubby cacti were impossible to kill, and his office needed a spark of personality.
She’d been right on both counts. The cactus garden was a painful reminder of Jenny and the world that might have been if they had eloped to Morocco. His mother’s illness kept him trapped in Amity, but the cactus garden represented an escape, wings into a different world, far away from this dead-end hometown. Each time he started carrying it to the dumpster to finally get rid of it, he ended up turning around and bringing it back.
So here it sat, a bittersweet memento of the best three months of his life. When Jenny gave it to him, could she have had any idea it would someday come to represent all his broken aspirations?
Wyatt took a seat on the other side of the desk while Tommy flipped open a file. “Caleb is driving me pretty hard on this case,” Tommy said, a hint of stress showing around his eyes. “I hate to ask again, but you’re our best shot at getting Jenny to cooperate.”
Wyatt glanced away. He’d figured this was coming, and Tommy’s voice was respectful but pleading as he continued.
“Summerlin Groves has two outbuildings that are crammed to the rafters with junk hoarded by her grandfather. The lady in the tree was probably connected to Summerlin Groves, and there might be something left on the property that will lead us to her identity. Maybe old farm records or appointment calendars. The judge says we don’t have enough evidence to get a search warrant, so we need Jenny’s permission to get onto the property. You could persuade her to let us poke around a little.”
“No.”
“Come on, Wyatt.”
Thinking about Jenny was a torment he didn’t need. They had both acted badly during the swift implosion of their relationship. He more than she, which was why everything to do with the grove remained raw with shame.
Wyatt leaned back in the chair and crossed his arms. “If you need Jenny’s help, you’ll have a better shot at getting her to cooperate than me. Sorry, Tom. I can’t help.”
He suddenly had another reason to win the race to become the next Commissioner of Agriculture: Moving to Tallahassee would get him away from Jenny Summerlin, her grove, and the danger she still represented to his heart.