Suspicion of Malice (30 page)

Irene was wearing lime green half-glasses she had
picked up at a gift store in Key West. A bit much
with the red hair, but Irene had once said that God never intended everything in the world to be beige. She looked over the top of the arts section. "Did you
and Dave have a nice walk?"

Gail put her notebook and pen on the patio table.
"Lovely. We caught up on Karen, and he told me he's doing well. He's happy."

"He does seem to be." She turned a page. Her eyes were fixed on Gail.

Carrying her iced tea to the pool, Gail kicked off her sandals. She went down the steps at the shallow
end till the water reached her knees. "Yes, I told him
I'm pregnant.”

The newspaper slowly sank to Irene's lap. "And?"

"And he was understanding and sympathetic. We
discussed how it might affect Karen. Dave is a friend.
I've known him all my adult life."

"You're not thinking of going back to him, are
you?"

Gail laughed. "Of course not." She swung a foot
through the water, which bubbled and curled.

"Be careful, honey. When a woman gets desperate, she grabs at whatever seems to make sense, whether
it does or not. Dave Metzger is a sweetheart, and I
love him to pieces, but that old saying about any port in a storm? It ain't so."

"Don't be so dramatic," Gail said. "You make me
sound like Little Eva crossing the ice. I talked to Dave
because I wanted his opinion about Karen. There's
bound to be gossip, and kids would say things to
her. Girls her age are so catty. I don't want her to suffer because of my mistake. I just won't allow it."

"Oh, for heaven's sake. People don't care. When I
was young, it would have been a scandal, but not
now. Where did you get such a conservative streak?"

"From you?"

"Well, you obviously misunderstood. I'm going to adore this baby when it comes, and so will Karen.
What did Dave say? I bet he agrees with me."

"Dave can afford to. He's leaving next week. Let's not get into that, please. Diane Cresswell expects me in a little while. That's what I came out here to talk
about—the Cresswells." Leaving wet footprints across
the deck, Gail went over to the patio table and picked
up her notebook.

Her mother looked at her over the top of the lime-green glasses. "You're going to have this child, Gail. Stop pretending otherwise. You'll have the baby, An
thony will find out, and you'll have to work it out with him, one way or another."

"I don't want to think about it." Gail sat down and uncapped her pen. "If I go over to Diane's,
would you mind watching out for Karen? She went
next door to see a video."

Irene rolled her eyes. "Of course I don't mind."
She took off her glasses and swung her foot. "What
are you doing, taking notes?"

"Yes, I'll have to do a memo on this. What did
you find out about Roger?"

Irene Strickland Connor, third-generation Miami, belonged to half a dozen cultural and political orga
nizations. She was petite and non-threatening, and
her incisive intelligence was hidden behind a motherly smile. People would confide in her. She might
repeat what she heard, but not to just anyone.

Irene had met Roger Cresswell only once, at a ballet gala last year that he'd probably attended to keep
his parents happy.

"He was very good-looking, but he knew it. His
wife was with him, falling out of her dress. Red hair
out to here." Irene held her hands away from her
head. "They were both smashed on champagne. This
was
not
a marriage Porter and Claire approved of, but Roger played around for years on a trust fund, so you can see what kind of woman he'd go for."

Gail looked up from her notebook. "What did you
find out about Porter's brother?"

"Duncan. Let's see. He drinks too much. He's a
big joker, and it's his wife who wears the pants. Duncan has never been the bright star of the Cresswell
brothers. In fact, nobody can figure out how he
ended up as half owner. When their father died he left the business to Porter, and Porter isn't the kind
of man to give anything away. Now, giving it to his
son,
I understand. When Porter got sick, he gave
Roger ten percent of the business. I guess that wasn't
enough for Roger."

"What do you mean?"

"He was like his father, they say. He just had to
be in control." A friend of Irene's had told her that
her
husband, who was on the board of the Coral Reef
Yacht Club with Duncan, had overheard Duncan's
wife say Roger Cresswell's ego must be compensa
tion for his pin dick.

"Mother!" Gail laughed.

"Well, I didn't say it, she did."

"Still."

Pausing to think, Irene said, "What is her name?
Liz. She's from a blue collar family—not that there's
anything wrong with that, but you'd think she'd
have risen above it. They contribute scads of money
to charity, and you see their pictures in the paper, but she doesn't get invited to the better parties."

Gail's pen flew over the page. More problems in
the household. Their son, Sean, had been in trouble
with the police. The older daughter, jealous of Diane.
Diane leaving home as soon as she could, moving to Jack Pascoe's place, and who knew what was going on there? Jack had once been a reputable art dealer,
but people said he'd been cheating his customers.
Claire denied it, lending him money for a place in
the Grove. Enraging Roger, of course. Name-calling
between Nikki and Liz in the ladies' room at the
Forge Restaurant, overheard by a friend of one of Irene's bridge partners. Hints of financial trouble at the company after Roger came in. Porter not happy.
Claire in the middle, always smiling.

As a teenager, Irene had known Claire Pascoe. "We
went to high school together at Cushman, but we
were never friends."

"Why not?" Gail took a quick sip of iced tea. "Was
she a snob?"

"No, I was younger and we were in different
crowds. Claire was into dancing, and she practiced
a good deal, so she was too busy to mix with other
kids. Even when she did, it was like she was always onstage. She smiled too much, maybe that was it.
Everything was always perfect." Irene laughed.
"Boy, did I get into trouble, but girls like Claire—
honor society, prom queen. Beautiful clothes, never
a spot on them. Her car was always so shiny. A little white Thunderbird that her parents bought her. They
were members of the Bath Club and the Riviera
Country Club, and her mother ran the debutante ball. What a bitch she was. She complained to my mother
because I didn't wear stockings at the tea party. I
think Mr. Pascoe was a deacon at the Presbyterian Church. They had the most immaculate house." Irene
gave a little shudder, then was quiet for a while,
looking out at the bay. "Maybe that explains it."

"Explains what?"

"I've lost a child too," Irene said. "I could hardly
function for months—you remember how it was
when your sister died. Claire just goes on, like closing a door, all the heartache locked behind it. She never complains, and I don't see how in hell she puts
up with Porter. He had another woman for years, and she looked the other way. She didn't want a
scandal in the family, I guess. Who
cared?
She has
her own money, she could've booted him right out.
What's she holding on to, I ask you? Can you imagine? Both children dead. I wouldn't be far behind, if
that happened to me."

Eyes on the page, Gail continued to write, aware
that she had fewer facts than inferences. Even so, she was left with a feeling of disgust for the entire Cress
well clan, except for Diane. So far, Gail had no reason
to lump her in with the rest of them. As for Claire, was she anything more than a shell? Anthony had
used the right words on the tape he had sent.
There is more malice in this family than Claire will admit, even
to herself.
A family of wealth and position, to whom
appearances meant so much. Families like that al
ways had secrets. And how odd that both Roger and
his sister had died on the same piece of property.
One murder, one suicide. One family.

Chapter 16

The five colored glass numbers of Jack Pascoe's
street address swung from an ornately twisted
metal arch over his driveway that was hidden among so many untrimmed bushes that Gail went past twice before seeing it. The gate was open, and Gail drove through.

The house could have been transported from Key
West—two stories of white clapboard, green shutters, and vines climbing up lattice trim. A garage was con
nected to the house by a portico, and under it was a
little red Honda with a Miami City Ballet bumper
sticker. It had to be Diane's. Gail couldn't tell if
Pascoe was home or not. She pulled a compact camera out of her shoulder bag and took several pictures.

As instructed, she went under the portico to the
back. She had worn shorts and a sleeveless linen shirt for the heat, but the sun blazed down with an almost physical pressure. Beyond an area of weathered pic
nic furniture and badly watered grass, a keystone
walkway vanished into the shrubbery. Toward the
far right corner of the property, dozens of palm trees
soared above dense foliage. Their fronds moved in
the wind. Roger Cresswell's body had been found
among those trees. Everything corresponded to the
hand-drawn map that Anthony had sent. Gail aimed
her camera, then turned and took more photos of
the rear of the house. Above the screened porch, the
second-floor windows would give a stunning view
of the bay.

Following the walkway another twenty yards or
so, Gail found the cottage. It too was clapboard, built
on a foundation of old coral rock, but the shutters
were bright turquoise. Colored glass rotated on fishing line, sending flecks of light dancing across the front. Orchestral music was coming through tightly closed windows.

Gail didn't notice the black dog underneath the
porch swing until he leaped out, nails scrabbling to
gain a hold. She gasped, then froze in place while
the animal stood at the top of the steps barking and growling. The music went off, and a moment later
the door opened. From behind the screen a slender
figure in blue tank top and white shorts called out, "Buddy, be quiet!"

The dog immediately shut up, wagged its tail, and padded toward the door. Diane Cresswell unlatched the screen. Her blond hair was on top of her head.
"Come in. I forgot to tell you about Buddy. He's
noisy, that's all." She reached down to pet him.
"Hey, you silly old mutt, go back to sleep."

The cottage was air conditioned, and fans turned
in the open-beam ceiling. A divider at one end
marked the kitchen, and a door led to a small bedroom. Ballet posters and photographs decorated
white-painted walls. The space seemed larger because the cottage was so sparsely furnished—tiny
table and chairs, some floor pillows, an upholstered bench for a sofa.

Gail started to walk across the floor, then noticed
the splashes of paint on the age-darkened pine.

"It's dry," Diane said. "I dance on it. Kind of neat,
huh? Maggie took the paintings and left the drips."

Most of the paint was concentrated near the front
windows, where an easel might have been placed. Rectangular shapes on the floor marked where canvases had been laid down, then taken up when they
were finished. Tilting her head this way or that as
she walked among them, Gail said, "It would be interesting to find out what she was working on. This
one—all those little splotches of red and green. You
could match it up to the painting."

"Jack says he ought to take out the floor and sell it." Diane laughed, then said, "Do you like carrot
juice?"

Gail agreed to a small glass, and Diane walked to
the refrigerator. She was barefoot. The big joint at
the ball of her foot was enlarged, and her toes were
reddened and callused.