Suspicion of Malice (6 page)

Her mother looked at her. "You're not over him, are you?"

Gail laughed. "Over him. Well, maybe not. I think
of him and want to throw things. Mother, I'm help
ing Angie because I like her, not because of some repressed desire to keep in contact with her father. Can't I want to help someone? Lawyers do that occa
sionally. This kid is being hassled by the police. Dancers don't make much money, and for him, a lawyer would cost a fortune. There. My good deed for the day. If it gets complicated, I'll give it to
Charlene."

Irene was silent for a moment, then said, "Are you
still planning to have her drive you to the doctor's tomorrow?"

This conversation was about to head in a bad direction. Gail kept her tone light. "It's convenient if
she takes me. And then . . . well, I'll probably spend
the night at her house. I'll call you." She "stood up
and kissed her mother's cheek." 'Night, Mom."

"I could go with you and bring you home."

"No, it's fine. Charlene and I are such pals." She
started to move away, but Irene held firmly onto
her arm.

"I'm going to say this again, though you don't
want to hear it. Talk to Anthony. It would be differ
ent if he knew."

Gail shook her head. "Good night, Mother."

"You're only
assuming
what would happen."

"I
know.
Forget it." Gail laughed. "He doesn't want to see me again, talk to me, hear from me, and I feel
exactly the same way. I've made my decision, and
I'd be very grateful if we could just drop it. You said
you understood."

"I don't. I don't understand at all."

"No, because you were raised Catholic in the fifties.
It's a different world now. Women have choices."

"We always did! This is selfish and cowardly." Irene started to cry. "I could take care of the baby while you work. I could help."

"For God's sake. There isn't a
baby."

Irene yanked a tissue out of the holder. "Well, it's not some goddamn blob, it's your
child.
It's my
grandchild, and it may be the last one—"

"Oh,
don't!
That's not fair!" Gail pressed her hands
to her forehead, then let them drop. "I've got to go
to bed." At the door she turned around. "Are you
going to keep crying? You won't make me feel guilty.
Mother, would you please stop that?"

Irene lay down and turned her face to the wall.
"Go on. Do what your conscience tells you. I have
nothing more to say."

Gail cried out, "How can you presume to judge
me? How? You've never worked for a living. You
didn't have to worry about a place to live that was yours, or whether Renee or I would have clothes to
wear or a decent school to go to." Gail flung her arm
out, encompassing the house and all that was in it.
"You had a great marriage. Daddy loved you till the day he died. He took care of us. He never called you
a whore and told you to get out of his sight." Her
throat ached. "Don't you think I hate this? I hate
every minute of it, but it's my decision, it's my life,
and I'm doing the best I can!"

The room fell silent. Then her mother said, "I
know you are, Gail. Go to bed. I'll see you in the
morning. Love you."

Gail stared at nothing, then nodded. "Love you
too."

In her room she ripped the cellophane off an aroma
therapy candle. The label said serenity. She lit it and
shook out the match. Next she pressed a button on
her portable stereo. A drawer slid out, and she
dropped in a CD. Native American flute music.

Then she turned off the lamp by the sofa bed and
settled herself in with a cold glass of chardonnay. They had ended it on the Fourth of July, an appro
priate day for fireworks. She had been about six
weeks pregnant at that point, but her powers of de
nial were in excellent shape. Then she noticed a ten
derness in her breasts. She locked herself in the
bathroom with an at-home pregnancy test, hoping
that her symptoms were due to something less dras
tic, like cancer.

In the flickering candlelight, with notes from a
wooden flute echoing off the red rock walls of a can
yon somewhere, Gail leaned against her pillows and
sipped the wine. Not good for women in her state,
despite the fact that before such things were known,
her own mother had downed pitchers of martinis
through two pregnancies. But it didn't matter what
she drank at this point.

How had this happened? They'd been careful. Her
doctor had shrugged. "It happens."

Once the shock had faded, she'd considered telling Anthony. Of course she had thought of it. She had
pondered the range of outcomes. If a letter had
reached him, although his partner had instructions
not to accept any letters or phone calls from Ms. Con
nor, would he deny it was his child? He was capable
of believing that. Would he send a check to ease
his conscience?

She had wondered, briefly, and usually in her
dreams, if he would want to see her. If he would try
to talk
her out of it. Not even that would change
the essential fact: This was her problem, not his. The outcome would have been exactly the same. Tomor
row would be the same.

Her eyes fell on the small black velvet box on the
end table. She had put it there earlier tonight intending to make a decision on what to do about it.
The box contained a pair of earrings—three-carat aquamarines surrounded by diamonds. Anthony had bought them to go with her wedding dress, a silvery blue Louis Feraud gown that he'd also paid for. Gail
had canceled the order for the dress, and she had
tried to leave the earrings at Anthony's office, but Anthony was gone, and no one would take them. So
she'd brought them home. Seeing Angela tonight, Gail had considered giving them to her, but they
seemed too sophisticated for a girl of seventeen.

Save them, then. Insurance for hard times.

Gail set down her wine and picked up the box,
holding it on her upraised knees. She pressed the
gold catch, and the lid slowly came up. Even in the dimness of her room the earrings sparkled like sunlight on the ocean.

Lindisima,
he had said, when she'd put them on.
They're beautiful, like your eyes. Like the water off Vara
dero Beach. I'll take you there one day.

Chapter 4

With another splash of scotch over ice, Anthony
Quintana returned to his chair. Soft leather
sighed as he sank into it and crossed his sock feet
on the ottoman.

The chair gave him a view all the way to the door.
At any moment he expected to hear the jingle of
keys, then his daughter's footsteps in the tiled hall. She was late. The ballet should have ended—ac
cording to Angela—around ten o'clock. With a few minutes to say good night to her friends, then twenty minutes home, she should have arrived an hour ago.

Eyeing his portable telephone on the coffee table, Anthony considered trying again to reach her. He
wondered if she had deliberately turned her phone
off. Perhaps she had only forgotten. He trusted Angela, but anything could happen. A prowler in a dark
parking lot. Drunks on the road.

He took a sip of scotch, then returned to the notes on his lap. Late this afternoon a courier had made a delivery from Nate Harris. The envelope contained, among other things, a letter about progress so far in the investigation of the Cresswell murder. Nate had asked one of the prosecutors in major crimes, a man
he had known for years, to find out, discreetly of course, what was going on with the case—not an
unusual request by a friend of the victim's parents, who happened also to be a judge of the criminal
court.

Oh, Nate! To take such a risk! Even so, Anthony was glad for the information. It would tell him where the police were headed. Did they have any viable
suspects? The moment an arrest was made, Nate's problems would be over.

On Sunday, Anthony had been forced to think of what Nate could do that wasn't illegal, unethical, or
suicidal. Of course Nate should tell the police that
he'd been at the party, even if it wrecked his chances for the federal bench—but only
if
he had anything
material to add to the investigation. Anthony had
asked him three questions. Do you know who killed Roger Cresswell? Do you know anyone at the party
who might have? Do you know anything about it?
The answer to each having been no, Anthony advised
him to go home and keep his mouth shut.

As for Jack Pascoe, Nate was to thank him for try
ing to help, but advise him to see his lawyer. Jack was to tell the lawyer exactly what he had done. If
the lawyer told Jack to go to the police to amend his statement, so be it.

Would Jack see a lawyer? Anthony doubted it. He thought he could deflect possible charges of impropriety, but Nate's chances of getting to federal court would be DOA if anyone found out where he'd been that night. This was unlikely, unless one of the other guests remembered him, this quiet, gray-haired man who had sat in the shadows, hardly speaking to anyone, watching the goings-on with bemused, scholarly
detachment. Nate was out of danger, at least for
the present.

Shuffling through the papers, Anthony found a rough sketch of the property, a large lot near Old Cutler Road, south of the city. High wood fence on
three sides, fifty yards of seawall. Anyone could easily have gained access by walking through a gate in
the wood fence that bordered on a vacant lot used
for overflow parking. The victim's Porsche had been found a block away. Had the killer followed Cresswell in? Or waited for him to return? Small landscap
ing lights illuminated the path.

The
pop
of a .22 would not have been heard over the music. Gunpowder on Cresswel's shirt indicated
that the killer had fired at close range. Two bullets
to the chest, then a third at an angle in his upper
arm. One in his back. Blood on the path showed that
Cresswell had run several yards before collapsing.
The killer had stood over him, still firing. Cresswell had lifted his hands instinctively to ward off further damage. A fifth bullet went through his right wrist. Cresswell had been dead by then, or dying. The killer had put six and seven through his left eye. The bul
lets had spun around in the cranial cavity, ripping apart his brain and cracking the bone. The ground
had been drenched with blood. Before leaving, the killer had pulled the plug on the lights, discouraging
guests from wandering through and finding the
body.

Wallet gone, watch gone—a Rolex worth over six
thousand dollars. No shoe imprints on the walkway.
Rain had obliterated the footprints in the dirt area just outside the fence, along with the tire treads of
the cars that had parked there.

Tossing the papers to the coffee table, Anthony finished his scotch and stood up. Where was Angela? His imagination was alive with dark possibilities. He listened intently for the purr of a VW Beetle. He had
wanted to buy her something heavier, but Angela
had been entranced by the idea of putting a fresh
flower each morning in the little vase on the dash
board.

He got up and poured the last of the scotch into
his glass. He dialed Angela from the phone in the
kitchen. No answer. It was difficult, living with a teenager. Five years ago his ex-wife had taken Angela and Luis back north. He had missed them terri
bly, his children, but not for one moment their
mother. He'd been a student at Columbia Law, en
during the frigid loneliness of icy streets and early
darkness, when they'd met at a salsa club. Rosa had
been lively and pretty, and at twenty-four he had not
looked beyond that.

In the living room he put Jack Pascoe's guest list
on the coffee table, sat on the ottoman, and read over
it. He had told Nate not to speak to anyone about
the case, but here was a list, courtesy of Jack Pascoe, scrawled on lined paper, a long column of names.
Anthony assumed that the police would do back
ground checks on each of them, looking for a crimi
nal past. They would ask them to account for their
whereabouts that night. The exact time of death
could not be determined, but it had to be sometime
after ten o'clock. Roger had arrived at Pascoe's party around 9:30, stayed about ten minutes, and had come back. The police had found in Roger's car a receipt from Walgreen's Liquors, stamped 10:03 p.m., and a fifth of Johnny Walker Black with several ounces missing. They had also found $1,000 in cash and a
withdrawal receipt for $2,500. The balance had prob
ably been in the wallet.