Suspicion of Malice (53 page)

He felt a hand on his shoulder. "Are you okay?
How was it?"

"Not too bad."

"I bet." She had worn pale blue today. Her skin
was smooth and fresh, and the wind played with her
hair. She pushed it behind one ear. "What did you
say to Frank Britton?"

"As little as possible. Come on, let's sit in the car." As they walked, Anthony explained the broken railing to Gail and the unlikelihood that Ted Stamos had
fallen through it on his own.

Her mouth opened, a smile of comprehension.
"Someone pushed him. That's what you're saying.
Ted Stamos didn't kill Roger on his own, he did it
for somebody else. And this same person made sure
the wallet was in Ted Stamos's pocket first so the police would blame him for Roger's death. Bobby's in the clear."

"No. Frank still wants to know why Bobby had
cash from Roger's wallet. He says Bobby could have
been working with Stamos. I don't think Frank believes that, but he wants information. I said I'd call
him tomorrow. I hope we have a name by then. Oth
erwise, I don't have much to give him."

Anthony opened the passenger door for Gail, who
stood waiting until he had the engine going and the
air conditioning blowing cold. She got in and pulled
the door closed with a solid
thunk.
"Do we recon
sider Sean?"

"Possibly. He was here late on Friday night, and
so were his parents. They all left separately at differ
ent times. Put on your seat belt, sweetheart."

"We're only going half a block."

"Yes, but it makes me worry."

"Would you please stop being so overprotective?
And another thing. The only reason I didn't want to look at Ted Stamos's body was because I thought I
might throw up. Funny smells make me sick. It
wasn't because I was afraid to."

"Gail, please. No arguments. Put on your seat
belt."

"Fine."

He heard a satisfying metallic click and leaned
over to kiss her. "I don't want anything to happen
to you." Her mouth was sweet, and it melted under the soft pressure of his lips.

She pulled back a little, smiling. "We have some
bad habits to break, don't we?"

"No. Well, a few.
Te quiero."

"I love you too. Let's go, or they'll leave without
us."-

Chapter 27

Sorry for making a fuss over a seat belt, Gail breached out to put the back of her fingers on An
thony's cheek, a mute apology. He glanced at her,
shook his head, then turned to put a quick kiss on
her fingers.

Forgiven.

This would not be easy, reversing course. It would
require throwing aside all the resentment and fear
she had built up in two months. Everything was new
again. New and frightening.

Two days had passed since they had been together. Gail had made excuses when he asked to see her for lunch. She had cut their phone conversations short.
Please, Anthony. I need time. We both do.
Time to think,
to recover her balance. Gail had said little to her
mother, and nothing at all to Karen. Not yet. She was
too afraid that something would go wrong.

She had driven to his office today, leaving her car there, letting him drive. Still in the parking garage,
nearly deserted on a Sunday, they had fallen into a
kiss so thorough and deep it had set them afire. The
engine had been going, and cool air blew through
the vents. He had slid his hands under her dress. She had heard her own soft moans. Then the hum of the
electric seat going back, rapid breathing, and the click
of his belt buckle, coming undone. Anyone could
have walked, by. No one did.

Gail wondered if there was a way to love ratio
nally, not risking so much. How easy it had been
with Dave. Easy to love, easy to walk away. Loving
Anthony was to throw herself off the edge of a
precipice.

She blinked, roused from these thoughts, when the car nosed up to a chain-link fence at the end of the street and the engine went off. A sign on the side of
the one-story white concrete block building an
nounced Cresswell Yachts, Inc. There were already
several other cars in the parking spaces, and a secu
rity guard in the shade of a golf umbrella.

They got out and walked around the building.

This was not a marina but a working dock made
of concrete and creosoted pilings. Two Cresswell boats were in slips, ready to be taken to customers, Gail assumed. The
Lady Claire,
with its gleaming white sides and curves of dark glass, waited at the
dock. Gail guessed her length at nearly a hundred
feet, with one open aft deck and a smaller one below
it. A narrow walkway went from the stern to the
pilothouse. The captain would navigate from there
or from the open fly bridge on the top level. A line
of portholes indicated staterooms below. Engines
rumbled, and the smell of diesel exhaust hung in
the air.

Anthony stopped walking and pointed out people Gail had heard of but had never seen. Duncan Cress
well was the heavyset man standing on the aft deck
with a drink in his hand. His wife, Elizabeth, was the brunette in the green dress who had just come
out of tiie salon. Chi the flybridge at the top of the
boat, a dark haired young man sat with his sneakers propped on the helm. He tipped back a long-neck
beer.

"Is that Sean?" Gail asked.

Anthony said that it was.

For a while they silently gazed at the boat and the
people moving about, some on deck, others seen
dimly as shadows through the dark glass of the salon and pilothouse.

Anthony again asked the question that most puz
zled both of them. "If Sean took Roger's wallet, how
did it get into Ted Stamos's pocket?"

Gail shook her head. "I can't think why Sean
would give it to him. Unless Sean and Ted were friends, and Sean asked him for help."

"And then killed him?"

"Well, what if Sean had the wallet in his room and his parents found it? They took it and planted it on Ted Stamos."

"They?"

"All right, one of them. Elizabeth or Duncan."

"Stamos fell facedown, so if the wallet was
planted, it was done before, not after he fell."

"Or was pushed."

"Exactly."

"Liz did it," Gail said. "She and Ted Stamos were lovers. She used him to kill Roger, then framed him
with the wallet."

"Possible, but it's too convenient. How could she
make sure the wallet was in his pocket, then make him stand close enough to the railing so she could
push him over? It makes more sense that someone knocked him out, planted the wallet, then lifted him over the railing, which broke under his weight. That
isn't something a woman could easily do."

Gail followed Anthony's eyes to the upper deck, where Duncan Cresswell was in a conversation with another middle-aged man. They heard his booming
laugh. He slapped the other man on the back. If not Liz, then Dub. The list had dwindled to two. Gail
wondered if they had missed someone. All their as
sumptions could be wrong.

Anthony was giving her reasons to suspect Duncan Cresswell. "Roger knew that Dub was embezzling.
That's a motive for murder. We know that Ted
Stamos acted as a bodyguard when Dub took cus
tomers out to nightclubs. Let's assume that Dub paid
Ted to get rid of Roger, and Ted's own hatred of
Roger made it easy for him to accept. You remember what Bobby told us. Dub owns a .22 pistol. He could
have let Ted use it. When Ted had done his job, he
was more of a risk than an asset." Anthony looked at Gail. "What do you think?"

"Oh, let's just go ask him." Gail kept her voice low, although there was no chance anyone would
hear them. The engines on the boat were rumbling
steadily. "This is hopeless. What are we doing^ here?
I feel like an intruder."

"No, no. We're friends of Claire's. She invited us." Anthony took Gail's hand. "We're simply going to
observe. I'm counting on your intuition."

"Mine?"

"You are the one who guessed that Margaret
Cresswell was Diane's mother, no? Come on."

A set of stairs had been placed at the open gate in the side of the boat. Beyond was a door, and Claire
Cresswell appeared in it. "Hello! I was just in the salon and saw you through the window. Welcome."

Letting Gail go first, Anthony kept a firm grip on her arm. Claire waited on the narrow, teak-finished
walkway. Gold buttons and loops of braid relieved
the stark white of her linen jacket. The boat would
be taking her son's ashes to sea, but Claire had re
quested that no one wear black.

When Gail and Anthony had both stepped aboard, she drew them closer. "Have you heard the news?" Her face was flushed with excitement. "They know
who killed Roger—one of our own employees."

Before she could go on, Anthony told her that they
had stopped by the boat yard on the way and Frank Britton had given them the details.

"I still can't believe it," Claire said. "Ted has been
with us all his life! We knew his father, Henry, so
well. How could he have murdered my son after all we did for him? You see? I told you it couldn't have been one of us. Nate's all right now, isn't he? And
Bobby? They can put it all behind them. I wish I
could. I just want to go
do
this and come back, get
it over and done with." Claire leaned past them to
look up and down the dock. "I think we have everyone now. I'll go and tell Porter. He's playing captain
today, so hang onto your life vests. There's some food in the salon and plenty to drink. Look at the
boat if you wish, then come and meet everyone."

Claire went through a polished teak door, which she left open for them. Cool air drifted through it.

Gail and Anthony remained behind for a while
watching the departure. A man in a shirt with a Cress
well emblem stood at the bow to catch the rope
tossed by another man on the dock. Someone else
hauled in the lines from the stern. The engines
throbbed, and the long bow of the boat swung away
from the dock, propelled by a bow thruster. The
Lady
Claire
glided smoothly into the river, which would
carry them past the skyscrapers downtown and into
Biscayne Bay. This part of the river was lined with
freighters and marine-repair facilities. There was no
beauty to this river. Trash, tattered sea grass, and
rainbows of oil floated in the water. Rusting Haitian
or Panamanian freighters were tied along the oppo
site side of the narrow river, and dark, bare-chested
men worked on their decks.

A drawbridge went up as the
Lady Claire
approached. They had both worn cool, light clothing,
but the wind was sticky and hot, and after a few
more minutes of this, Gail suggested they go inside.
Anthony held the door, then shut it behind them.

The interior was paneled and carpeted, and frosted
glass sconces lit their way. The main salon was aft,
the pilothouse forward. "Let's see what's down
here," Anthony said. "Be careful on the stairs." They had to move aside for some people coming up, doing the same thing they were, exploring the Cresswells'
yacht. On the lower level they went through the
kitchen—the
galley,
Gail reminded Anthony. It sparkled with brushed steel and ceramic tile, and Gail
groaned with envy. Farther aft they walked out onto
a small deck with bench seats and a table affixed to the floor. The city went in reverse motion, unfolding
backward as they passed out of the river and into
the bay. The engines changed pitch, and the boat
picked up
speed. Fat
,
graying clouds were piling up
overhead, and the humidity was too much to bear.

They went forward, discovering the master state
room with its mahogany cabinetry and private bath
tiled in marble. There were three smaller rooms, then the forward stairs that led to the pilothouse, finished in teak, with more dials, lights, and screens than Gail
thought remotely necessary. She could see through
the wraparound windows that they were already
parallel with the southern tip of Key Biscayne. The
bow dipped slightly, and spray shot up on either
side. Gail steadied herself on Anthony's shoulder.