Suspicion of Innocence

by Barbara Parker

  "I bet he does, Little Bit." Ben pulled a cigarette out of its pack and held up his battered Zippo lighter with one hand so Karen could see. A quick snap of his thumb and forefinger and Gail caught the scent of lighter fluid. He had showed her how to do it when she was a little girl, the flint and wheel and sudden burst of heat and color.

  A breeze came off the bay, and Irene's bow fluttered. She laughed a little and lifted her drink. "Ben, remember that time we all got kicked out of the Olympia Theater? We were in the balcony and you had a squirt gun and shot some poor man right on his bald spot."

  Karen bounced in her chair. "That's funny."

  Gail began to clear the table, stacking plates and silverware on a tray. "I never heard this story," she said.

  Irene burst into laughter, her shoulders shaking. "He was so wicked. I could tell you things."

  A smile played around the corners of Ben's mouth, but he only continued to gaze out at the bay, his elbow on the table, snapping the lid of his lighter open and shut with one hand. His wrists were thick, the hair on his arms going white.

  Out of nowhere, he said, "I'm going to sell the ranch." Irene blinked. "What?"

  He tossed the lighter onto the table. "Hell, Irene, might as well. I pay more than it's worth to feed the dogs out there and keep the fence up."

  Gail hadn't been out to Ben's property in several years, two thousand or more acres of woods and marshy grass southwest of the city. The Stricklands had owned it before there were paved roads to get to it. To call it a ranch was to stretch the truth: Back in the forties a few head of cattle had grazed during the dry season. Ben and his friends used to hunt wild boar or pheasant and even stock the land with deer and turkey from farther up the state. They had paid no attention to hunting season. The county sheriff had been a member of Ben's exclusive club.

  Gail sat down again. "When did you decide this?"

  "Been thinking about it for a while." He smoked the cigarette. "You hear traffic over on Krome Avenue, or draglines and power saws. People dump old tires and refrigerators along the access road. Used to be, you couldn't hear a thing except birds and frogs. Maybe an alligator or two by the canal." He smiled at Karen. "You know how they go? Whomp, whomp, whomp." She laughed at the guttural sound he made in his throat.

  Irene said, "Oh, Ben, this really is too bad."

  He waved the thought away. "I'll make some money off it. Some Cuban builder thinks he's stealing it from me. You know him, Gail. Or anyway, he knows who you are. Pedrosa."

  She laughed. "You're kidding. Carlos Pedrosa?"

  "He says he has a case with you."

  "Against me is more accurate. I'm suing to get a down payment back for Doug Hartwell's daughter."

  Irene got up and stacked the rest of the dishes on the tray. "You two finish talking," she said.

  Gail was still watching Ben. "How much does he want to steal it for?"

  "Not all of it. Three or four hundred acres, eight hundred per. I told him fifteen. He wants an option for now."

  Gail scooted the chair closer to the table. "What's he going to do with it? It's mostly wetlands. He'll hang himself in red tape with all the environmental regulations."

  "Then I guess you don't know the Pedrosas." Ben tapped his cigarette over the ashtray. "The old man has a few friends on the Metro Commission and the zoning board, both."

  "Who, Ernesto?" Gail leaned forward on her crossed arms, intrigued, remembering what Anthony Quintana had told her at the courthouse. Ernesto Pedrosa. Not only Carlos's grandfather, but Anthony's as well.

  "Mommy, can I go feed the fish?" Karen's heels were riiytrunically kicking the legs of the chair.

  Gail reluctantly broke away from her conversation. "Sure, honey. See if your grandma has some stale bread."

  "Plenty of it," Irene said, coming back outside with another Wild Turkey on the rocks for Ben. "We’ll make some doughballs."

  Karen ran across the lawn toward the seawall, the screen door closing behind her. The sun had set now, and the sky was losing its brilliance. A six-inch gray lizard skittered up the screen, then stopped abruptly, its red throat flap extending, retracting. It disappeared into a tangle of ferns.

  Gail turned back to Ben. "Tell me about Ernesto Pedrosa."

  Ben blew a stream of smoke upward. "He's a big deal in the Cuban community. Pedrosa has—or used to have —connections to anti-Castro terrorist groups. Back in the early seventies he avoided a federal indictment for bombing a Miami radio station because the CIA was secretly funding him. That's what I heard. He can get things done, if you know what I mean."

  "Not precisely."

  "Come on, where've you been? Latinos move up here and think they can operate on payoffs and favoritism just like they did back home."

  She laughed. "Since when hasn't Miami had political corruption? It's the local pastime."

  "And Miami's gone straight to hell, as far as I'm concerned." Ben put down his drink. "Say, you want to handle the negotiations with Carlos for me?"

  Gail was glad the topic had veered in another direction. She hated arguing with Ben. "I can't negotiate with Carlos. We're supposed to be tooth and nail on the Darden case."

  Ben squinted at her, the cigarette briefly to his lips. "That lawsuit doesn't have anything to do with the property."

  She shrugged "Maybe. I'll pass it by Larry Black." Gail knew one of the lawyers in the firm Ben had just joined could represent him. She also knew how much he valued family connections. He would give the case to her if he could, even indirectly.

  "Let me know," he said. "I'll send over what I've got so far."

  She tilted her glass and finished off the iced tea in it, now warm and diluted. "How did you connect with Carlos Pedrosa, by the way?"

  Ben got up, extending his arms, stretching the muscles in his shoulders. He glanced at his watch. "Renee introduced us. She found out he wanted to buy some property and gave him my phone number. He ran a lot of his real estate closings through that title company she worked for."

  Gail nodded. And Anthony Quintana's firm owned the title company. "You don't know the other grandson, do you? Anthony Luis Quintana? He's a criminal attorney."

  "I don't believe I do." Ben's attention shifted across the porch. "Irene!" She had reached the back door with a plastic bag of bread in her hand. Ben said, "It's nearly eight o'clock and I need to get on home. How about signing those papers for me, darlin'?"

  Irene glanced at Karen, who was doing cartwheels in the grass. "I don't know."

  "You don't know what?"

  "If I want to sign them. Let Gail do it."

  Ben looked at Gail, who could only look blankly back at him. He walked around the table. "Irene, what are you talking about?"

  She lifted the screen door latch. "I've thought about it, and I've decided. Gail can be the personal representative."

  Ben looked at Gail again, frowning this time. "FU have to prepare a whole new set of papers."

  Gail spread her hands, palms up.

  "All right," he said. "I can't file the estate yet anyhow. We don't have the death certificate. I don't know what the problem is. Some screwup."

  A screwup named Frank Britton, Gail thought. She said, "What do you want me to do?"

  He rubbed his fingers across his cheek, thinking. "I'll get the papers redone, bring them to your office. You want to take a look at what I've got so far? See if there's anything you can add."

  Ben went in and got his folder, turning on the porch light as he came out again. "Irene told me pretty much everything over the phone," he said. "I've put a summary of Renee's property on the petition for administration. We can file the inventory later." Ben pulled on the heavy zipper. "Maybe you could go by her apartment, make a list of what's there."

  Gail nodded. "Yes, I could do that."

  "Just generally. Don't get specific unless there's something of particular value." He withdrew three or four sheets of paper—legal forms, she saw—and laid them on the table. "Bring me the checkbooks and savings accoun
t records, things like that. I can fill in the total before I file these."

  Gail looked down at the petition when Ben slid it across to her. In re: Estate of Renee Michelle Connor, Deceased. Age 29. Beneficiary: Irene Strickland Connor. Real property: Unit 202, Cocobay Condominium . . . Personal property of the estate: one 1991 Toyota Celica, clothing and jewelry, various household goods, various bank accounts . . .

  Gail turned the paper over, then back again. "Her trust isn't listed. I know she couldn't have spent it all."

  "No," Ben said. "She couldn't touch it, not before she was thirty. Just like your share."

  "Then where is it? I mean, why isn't it on here?" Gail hesitated before admitting, "This shows how much I know about probate."

  "The trust passes outside the estate. It wasn't really hers until she reached thirty," Ben said. "Naturally she received the interest it paid out while she lived, but the principal goes straight to you. Don't worry. It's all there."

  Gail had to stare at him while she repeated this odd bit of information in her head, and then aloud. "Straight to me?"

  His brows knitted. "I thought you knew this."

  "Knew what?" Gail asked. "I already received my share. The other half goes to Irene. Doesn't it?"

  "You never read a copy of the trust?"

  Gail numbly shook her head. "I might have. If I did, it didn't sink in."

  "Well, that's how your granddad wanted it. If one of you girls passed away, the other would get the whole thing."

  "My God." The absurdity of it made her laugh. "Three years ago I got over two hundred thousand dollars." Ben nodded.

  Sobering, Gail sat there for a minute, watching Irene and Karen throwing doughballs into the bay. She said quietly, "Does Mother know about this?"

  "We discussed it last week." When Gail didn't reply, Ben added, "She's not resentful. She knows you and Dave are having trouble at the marina."

  Irene's words, Gail was almost certain, had been murmured in a tone of quiet martyrdom. All the money spent and lent and lost must be forgotten. That Irene had said nothing to Gail meant that she resented it a great deal. A gift like this—terrible and wonderful at the same time— could only cause problems.

  She continued to sit on the patio in the gathering dusk until Irene and Karen came back across the yard with the empty bread wrappers.

  Five

  Gail waited until Karen was asleep before she came out to the garage to speak to Dave. If there was going to be an argument, she didn't want Karen to hear it.

  Dave had said he would be stringing a couple of his tennis racquets. From the kitchen door she could see him bending over his stringing machine, a racquet clamped down tight. He poked the string through another hole and back again, the muscle flexing in his right forearm, which was noticeably bigger than the left.

  In the late seventies Dave had been second on the University of Florida tennis team, but he didn't have the drive—the desire, whatever it took—to make it on the pro circuit. After the last season, he had zipped his racquet into its cover. He hadn't so much as stepped on a court until two years ago, and then he had thrown himself back into the game like a man rediscovering his first sweetheart.

  Often when he came home his hair would be plastered to his forehead, his legs trembling. One day last August he had showed her how much he sweated: He took off his briefs in the bathroom and wrung them out over the sink. The sun had turned his hair the color of hemp. Squint lines fanned out from his eyes, which seemed to have faded to a paler blue against his tan. His weight had dropped from one-ninety to a lean, hard one-sixty-five. The time he ripped a muscle in his abdomen she asked him why he did this. He told her that on a tennis court, unlike life, there are clear lines. The ball is either in, or it is out.

  In college she had liked to watch him play, liked the power and speed. Then it had been a game. Now, if provoked, he could scream at his opponent, hitting balls directly at his head. Gail would get embarrassed for him when he lost, and he would know it, walking away from her attempts at sympathy. She didn't go to tournaments anymore unless invited.

  Gail closed the kitchen door and crossed the garage in her bare feet. She dusted off a stepladder and sat down on it, facing him. Dave glanced up. He was dressed in his work clothes—khaki pants, a white knit shirt with "Metzger Marine—Custom Outfitters" printed on the pocket. There was a little drawing of a fishing boat on stylized waves.

  He said, "So do you want to tell me what's so bad about getting two hundred thousand dollars?" He pulled the string tight and clamped it down. "It's not like we couldn't use it."

  "I know that," she said, "but this is different. Renee probably thought the money would go to Irene—if she thought about it at all."

  "Come on." Dave turned the tension knob. "Irene gets everything else, doesn't she? Renee's condo?"

  "Yes, with a huge mortgage attached. Ben and Irene and I talked before I left, and she said she didn't want a dime of the money, that her father wrote the trust the way he did for a reason, and she would abide by his wishes."

  "Good for Irene."

  "Oh, Dave, it was so phony. Granddad thought my father was a failure. Irene thinks he left the money to Renee and me rather than to her because he wanted to rub her nose in it. She sat there tonight sipping her fourth vodka and tonic, trying to look noble. She hardly spoke to me, as if I had something to do with it. As if I were glad. You know how she can frost up."

  Dave swung the stringer around, continuing the cross strings. "I'd be glad. I am glad, in fact. Two hundred thousand dollars' worth of glad."

  Gail rested her elbows on her knees. "We didn't need this to come between us. We already had Renee to argue about. Now this. I had hoped we could finally establish some kind of normal mother-daughter relationship, if that isn't too much to ask."

  Dave looked across the machine at Gail. "Don't feel so guilty about your mother. I'll bet she's got all kinds of money tucked away, with those investments your dad made. She hasn't worked in thirty years."

  "She works very hard, and you know it."

  "What, that charity stuff?" Dave wove the string in and out across the throat of the racquet. "So when is all this going to happen?" He pulled back on the tension lever and the machine creaked.

  "Ben says I need to give the bank a certified copy of the death certificate. That's another thing that happened today. I found out the police won't release the death certificate until they do another search of Renee's apartment. I'm supposed to meet them there on Friday."

  "What are they going to do that for?"

  "It's so useless. Mother asked them to. She's a wreck, more than I imagined. I don't know what she's thinking. Anyway, they'll go in and poke around. The paperwork on the trust could be done within a week or so after that."

  Dave ran the end of the string back and forth through his fingers. "Look, Gail, I'm sorry we're getting the money this way. But it happened. If Irene doesn't want to take it—I mean, what can we do? We need it worse than she does."

  Gail looked at him for a while, then said, "I thought about this on the way home. Renee owed her money. Irene ought to get that back, no matter what. I have no idea how much Renee wheedled out of her. Thousands. Tens of thousands."

  "Wheedled?"

  "Exactly. All that money she got, it wasn't a gift. Renee would say, 'Oh, Mom, I'll pay you back in a few weeks, I swear.' And in a few weeks maybe she would, maybe not. But sooner or later she'd be back for more. Where do you think she got the down payment for that condo? Not from her earnings. She could hardly hold a job."

  "Come on, Gail. The girl had problems."

  "Oh, poor Renee." Gail stood up abruptly, dusting off the seat of her pants. "That's one reason Renee came to Irene's birthday party, in case you didn't know—to borrow more money."

  "Is that why you and Renee were screaming at each other in the back bedroom?"

  "We weren't screaming," Gail said. "I told her it was time she grew up and tried to solve her own problems for a change."

>   "I'm sure she appreciated the advice." Dave undamped his tennis racquet from the machine and bounced the heel of his hand on the restrung head, not looking at her.

  Gail watched him zip the racquet into a cover, then pick up another one, sleek black graphite, its strings slashed in an X, ready to be removed. She said, "The other thing I've decided. I'll pay off our charge card debts and the second mortgage, but I don't want to put any more money into the business the way it is."

  Dave turned around. "Excuse me?"

  "I said the way it is. I've put in nearly a hundred thousand dollars already, and where is it? We're up to our necks in debt."

  "Whoa. Whoa." Dave held up his hand. "You and I talked about this already. We said we needed somebody to invest in the marina. Okay, now we can do it ourselves. Atlantic Marine has a high-lift truck they want to get rid of. We could go vertical, rent space to the smaller boats."

  "Really. How simple. What do we use for a storage shed?"

  "We build one. There's not a decent dry storage marina within two miles of there." "Dave—"

  "No, listen. I've been thinking this out—"

  "You listen." She faced him across the stringing machine. "No more. We don't need to buy a high-lift truck, we need to do better at what we've already got. The accounts receivable are a joke."

  His face was turning red. "I just love it when you play corporate lawyer with me. I beat my brains out down there, and you know all about it."

  Gail said coolly, "I'm not going to throw my money down a hole."

  "Your money."

  "Yes, it is."

  Dave rummaged through his tool tray. "As long as you're going to pay Irene back, why don't you pay me back, too? I lent Renee some money."

  There was a long silence. Then Gail said, "When?"

  "Last winter. She didn't want to ask Irene again. She sure as hell couldn't ask you."

  "How much?"

  He shrugged. "Five thousand." "Five thousand dollars?"

  "About that. I've got it written down somewhere."

  "For what?"

  Dave studied the blades of his wire cutters, then wiped them on a towel. "Stuff for her house. Furniture. Whatever."