Suspicion of Malice (44 page)

A pudgy young man around twenty years of age
sat at a worktable going through papers, sorting
them, writing notes. This had to be Sean, Anthony
thought. His brown hair was short on the sides,
longer on top, and he wore a white company shirt.
No earrings in sight. He glanced over at Anthony,
holding his gaze for only a few seconds. Sullen,
bored. He returned to his work. There had been nothing in his gaze to tell Anthony that Sean Cresswell knew of his connection to Bobby Gonzalez.

Within minutes, an elevator opened, and the bru
nette who had hooked the swordfish stepped off it. Her breasts filled out her shirt, and khaki shorts came to mid-thigh. Good legs, firm and tanned. She had a two-way radio on her belt. She looked around, then
spotted Anthony, who walked over and shook her
hand.

"Hi. I'm Liz Cresswell." Her dark hair was tied
back in a scarf and heavy bangs went straight across her forehead. "I've been expecting you. Come on, I'll show you around the facility. We'll ride in my cart."

In the elevator, he said, "Who was the young man
at the table, your son?"

"Sean." She beamed. "He works here part-time while he's in college. We'd like for him to hurry up and graduate, but he takes his time. Maybe he plays
a little too much. They all do. Not like it used to be, isn't that the truth? Kids." She led Anthony through the lobby on the first floor. Big photographs of boats
decorated the walls. "Porter told me why you're
here. Is there some way I can help you?"

"Tell me about Roger."

"He was a smart man. Not easy to get along with,
but he had the right ideas." Elizabeth pushed
through the glass doors into the blazing white sun. "Roger and I had some fights about how it ought to
be done, but we usually agreed on the goal. I'm sorry he's gone. God knows what's going to become of the company now. No, I don't think he was stealing. He
didn't have to. He was making good money. He'd
have wound up as half owner someday. I question Porter's sanity."

The cart was on the walkway under a canvas aw
ning. A tag on it read, E. CRESSWELL, VP OF OPERATIONS
. Anthony laid his folded coat on the seat. He
put on his sunglasses and held onto the bar supporting the roof. The cart took off with a jerk.

"We've got ten acres here, and you can find any
thing from a plumber to an electronics engineer. All the trades are represented. It's like you're building a
house, except the damn thing has a point at one end
and a couple thousand horsepower at the other."

As the cart hummed over the asphalt, Elizabeth Cresswell pointed out the assembly building, the var
ious warehouses and shops. Her bangs blew back
from her face in the breeze. She went through the
front entrance, waving to the security guard, then
sped down a short street to the Miami River. "This
is where we put the boats in the water." There were
three shiny new craft under a shed, and she called
out to the man in the stern of one of them. "Carlos!
iComo se van los cables?"
The man shouted back in
Spanish that the cables were working now, no problem,
senora.
She waved back at him and turned the cart toward the main yard, fishtailing the back end. "We test them in the water first, then do the finish
work, and off they go."

It occurred to Anthony, as he braced one foot on
the dashboard to hold himself steady, that if Eliza
beth Cresswell had been Dub's sister, not his wife,
she would have been running this company. Perhaps she already was.

She braked the cart to a stop in the shade of an
open building with a metal roof. A hot wind came across the lot.

"See that? That's the polishing shed. See those girls
in the face masks and smocks? That's me, twenty-five years ago. I worked seven in the morning till
four in the afternoon. I had to, or I wouldn't eat. My
dad died when I was fourteen, my mother was a
drunk, and I was on my own. The other girls were Cubans, and so were the men in the shop. Cubans
made the boat industry in Miami, Mr. Quintana.
They came here and took jobs nobody else would
want. I learned Spanish and sweated right alongside them, so I know how it was. But you don't look like you came up that way. Not saying you couldn't han
dle it. I'd say you could handle anything."

Dark pencil outlined her eyes, and a reddish
brown tint lay across sharp cheekbones. There was a
scar at one corner of her upper lip. Anthony could
feel the sexuality of this woman as clearly as the heat
boiling up from the asphalt. She turned toward him and put her left foot up on the dashboard and swung
her knee. White canvas deck shoes. A tanned, muscular leg. With each slow swing of her knee, a gap
appeared between her shorts and her thigh.

"What are you doing here? And don't tell me
you're putting Porter's mind at ease, which is the
line Claire gave me."

"But it's true." Anthony smiled at her. "She's a devoted wife."

"I know something about you, Mr. Quintana. I
know from my son that your daughter is dating
Bobby Gonzalez. Angela, right? Sean says she's ador
able. So maybe you are here helping Porter find his lost marbles, but I also think that you have an inter
est in helping Bobby. I hope you do. He's a sweet
kid."

Anthony let this information settle, then said, "Do
you have any idea who wanted Roger dead?"

"I have a guess. The person who had the most to
gain was Jack Pascoe. You know Jack?"

"Claire's nephew. We've met," Anthony said. "He
was sleeping with Roger's wife. Is that what you
mean?"

Liz's mouth opened as if a laugh might come out,
but none did. "Jack didn't want Nikki. What he
really wanted was for Roger to find out. Sleeping
with Nikki was payback. You see, Roger told stories about Jack's double-dealing and put him out of business. But that's not the reason Roger's dead. I mean,
what's the fun of having someone
dead
if you want
to see him suffer? No, Jack did it for Claire's money.
Porter won't last much longer, and everything will
be hers. Millions of dollars and all those paintings.
And Jack is her only heir."

Under his shirt, Anthony could feel sweat trickle down his side. The heat was like an open oven door. "Jack won't inherit the company, will he? Porter's
snares are worth around a hundred million dollars,
and at his death they go to his brother. Your
husband."

Her exotically penciled eyes flared with compre
hension, then amusement. "Dub? He didn't kill
Roger. He wouldn't know what to do with this
company."

"But you would."

Liz's knee swung back and forth. "That's true, but
it isn't mine, Mr. Quintana, and it never will be. In
fact, Porter will probably force a sale. The company is a burden to him now, and if Porter can't control
something, he gets rid of it."

"Could that apply to his own son?"

"My God, what a thought." She made a low laugh. "Not that I didn't consider it myself. No, Porter was home with Claire on the night in question. Dub was with friends, and I was with my daughter Patty. Like I said, you should be looking at Jack. As soon as the company is sold, it turns into cash, and who inherits
Porter's money? Claire does."

A clang of metal on metal arose, adding to the
steady whining noise from the polishing shed. Another golf cart went by, vanishing into the enormous door of the assembly building. Anthony looked back at Liz Cresswell. "What do you know about Ted
Stamos?"

"He runs the glass shop. He's one of our best men.
Why? Are you saying Ted might have murdered Roger? There is no way."

"They had problems on the job, no? I was told
that Roger wanted to clean some old tools out of a workshop that Stamos's father had used, and Stamos
threatened to break his face. Is that true?"

"You were told? Meaning you won't say who told you. It doesn't matter. Everyone knows about it. Yes,
they had problems, but not to that extent. Anyway, Ted was with my husband and about twelve other men the night Roger was shot. The police checked out everyone's alibis, believe me. So. Looks like you've struck out." Her knee was swinging again. "Give me your card. You never know. I might want
a good attorney someday. We should stay in touch."

Anthony lifted his hands. "I am sorry, but I gave
my last card to your husband. I wonder if you could
show me where the production supervisors are. I'd
like to talk to them."

Still looking at him, Elizabeth Cresswell leaned
down to turn the key, and a moment later the golf
cart jerked forward. There were four supervisors on
the list that Porter had given Anthony, but only one he wanted to meet—Theodore Stamos. Liz Cress
well's lover.

The glass-enclosed offices looked down from a cat
walk thirty feet above the floor of the assembly build
ing. Hoists in the roof carried heavy parts and
equipment, and the boats were lined up end to end, two rows of them in various stages of completion. Big fans roared, moving air through the building.

Anthony grasped the railing with both hands and
leaned over. Directly under him half a dozen men in
rubber gloves were moving around inside an empty
hull, laying down sheets of fiberglass, adhering it tightly with resin guns and rollers. The guns were attached to long hoses that fed from a stainless steel
tank. Sparks flew from a welding torch in another
part of the building. A drill whined, and metal
clanged. An odd chemical smell drifted up toward
the catwalk.

"I wouldn't lean on that railing. It's loose. Guess I
better have it fixed."

Anthony glanced to his left. A man in jeans and work boots stood a few feet away. The plaid shirt reminded Anthony of a cowboy, and the man's arms
were heavy with muscle. Straight brown hair stuck
out over his forehead, and caution showed in his
eyes. He had a thin-lipped mouth bracketed by deep creases. Anthony knew the face.

He extended his hand. "I'm Anthony Quintana.
We met last weekend at the marina behind the Cress
wells' condo. They've hired me to look into company records."

"Yeah, Porter told me."

“What is that smell?”

Ted Stamos raised his head, testing the air. "Resin,
probably. I don't smell it anymore. The chemical
composition changed some years back, but used to
be, men would die of acetone. That's what killed my father. Liver cancer."

"Could we go inside your office? It's noisy out
here."

The noise receded when Stamos shut the door. The
office was jammed with file cabinets and stacked
with papers. In/out boxes. Lists, schedules. Machine
parts whose purpose eluded Anthony. He handed
Stamos his card.

"Criminal law?"

Anthony let go a small sigh. "Porter is afraid that Roger may have committed financial crimes here at
the company. Embezzlement, kickbacks. This is prob
ably untrue, but to erase the doubt is worth some
thing. You worked with Roger. Perhaps you have
an opinion."

"I only build the boats," Stamos said after a mo
ment. "How they get sold, and to who, I wouldn't
know. It's not my concern. I keep my eye on the
production costs, sure, but I don't know what goes
on over at the main office. I don't think I can help
you."

Anthony knew he would get nothing further. He
noticed on the wall behind the battered desk a
framed black-and-white snapshot of a man standing
in front of a power boat, hands on his hips. "Who
is this?"

"My father. Henry Stamos. He built that boat." The
son leaned casually against the desk with his arms
crossed.

"Yes, I recognize the boat from a photograph in the lobby. The prototype of the first production model."

"Sure is. He'd never worked fiberglass before, but look at it. He was raised in Tarpon Springs, and he'd
only built fishing boats out of wood. The man was
a genius."

Anthony agreed that it was an impressive piece of
work. He studied the small face in the photograph. The man was dead, but his tools were still in his
workshop, polished and sharpened. "I'm curious
about ownership of the company. The shares of stock
and so on. Did your father ever own any shares?"