Suspicion of Guilt

by Barbara Parker

  "She says he's a geek. We can't talk about it civilly, so I hardly mention his name." Gail rummaged in a drawer for the aspirin Irene kept there. "She's afraid he's going to take me away from her. She's already nervous because her father doesn't call as much as he promised. Dave says he can't— there's no phone on his sailboat. He sends her postcards."

  "Well, be careful."

  Gail gave her a quizzical look. "About what?"

  "The charming Mr. Quintana. I'm afraid your biological urges are going to get the better of you."

  "My urges are firmly in check, thank you." She closed the drawer, opened another.

  "What are you looking for?"

  "I have a headache."

  Irene pointed at the brown plastic bottle on the counter, in plain sight. "What if you married him? Have you thought of that?"

  "Don't worry. We haven't mentioned the M word." Gail washed the aspirin down with a sip of Karen's juice.

  "I do worry. Betty Ott's daughter married a Venezuelan—a doctor, too—and within six months he was playing around. It's in their blood."

  "Good lord."

  "Don't believe me, then. I've read The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love. It was written by a Cuban, so that should tell you something. It's bad enough, Dave leaving. I'd hate like the dickens for you to be disappointed a second time. Although freedom has its merits. Doing what you please, and no man underfoot. See if I ever get married again." Irene licked a smear of cheddar off her thumb. She set the plates on placemats printed with sunflowers.

  "But you, darling. You're still young." She smiled up at Gail. "You can make a whole new life with someone. And I want him—whoever he is—to be right for you this time. Someone who will take good care of my girl."

  Smiling, Gail pulled out a chair. "Mother, I don't need to be taken care of."

  "Oh, you know very well what I mean." Irene went back across the kitchen, her sandals twinkling. "You better start asking some hard questions about what it is he wants from you."

  "We aren't to that point yet," Gail said.

  Irene pointed a handful of silverware at her. "A woman is always at that point." She clinked the silverware down on the table, each precisely in its proper place—salad fork, dinner fork, knife, spoon. Yellow linen napkins were already poked neatly through rings made from seashells. "What does Dr. Feldman say about Karen?"

  "Dr. Feldman isn't working out. Marilyn down the street from me takes her daughter to a woman therapist in Kendall who's supposed to be wonderful with preadolescent girls." Gail rubbed the back of her neck. "I'm going to call her. She works on maintaining their self-esteem by putting them in groups where they discuss mythic heroines and female archetypes."

  "Good night in the morning. What next?" From behind the refrigerator door Irene said, "It doesn't help that you spend so much time away from her." Only the curly top of her auburn hair showed.

  "As if I had a choice." Gail watched Irene set a ring mold of Jell-O on the table. Lime Jell-O with canned pineapple and miniature marshmallows in it. She wondered if Anthony Luis Quintana had ever eaten Jell-O salad in his life.

  Coming around to where Gail sat, Irene put her arm across Gail's shoulders. "If it's the money, I could help out."

  "Oh, Mom." Gail reached up and gave Irene a kiss. Her mother's cheek was dewy soft and smelled faintly of Chanel. "Thank you, but really, I'm fine."

  "Well, don't be too proud." Irene ducked back into the refrigerator for carrot salad, which she scooped into a china bowl. "You never ask for help when you need it most. What are you trying to prove, I'd like to know."

  Gail got up to look out the sliding glass door for Karen. The patio was growing dim now that the sun had set. Karen was sneaking up on a little gray lizard clinging to the screen. Her hand was cupped, ready to trap it. One of the older neighborhood boys had showed Karen how to tease the lizard's mouth open, how to let the lizard bite her earlobe and dangle there. It had no teeth to speak of. Karen would find two of them and make earrings. She liked to see Gail's reaction. Maybe it was lizards or other small reptiles that Karen kept in her purse. Gail wondered what the lady therapist with her female archetypes would make of that.

  She turned back to the kitchen. "Let me bounce something off you about Althea Tillett's will."

  Irene was laying out French bread on a cookie sheet. "All right."

  Gail had already decided not to tell Irene that Althea may have been murdered. No use upsetting her now. She asked, "My initial assumption was that Rudy and Monica were behind the forgery. Look at the will. It was the same as the others, except for the addition of their bequest. But why would Jessica Simms and Irving Adler risk their reputations to help them do it? Jessica and Irving didn't even like the twins. Now I wonder if Rudy and Monica were really involved."

  "Well, whether they were or not, I wouldn't know." Irene turned on the broiler and slid in the bread. "But as for why Jessica and Irving would do it? That's no mystery. They were very close to Althea. And they—like Althea—belonged to a certain group of friends in this town, going way back."

  "Old money."

  "Not just that." Irene drew in her chin disapprovingly. "Old Miami, let's say, because not everybody in the group has money. It's not a club. It's more a shared sense of values."

  "Do you belong? The Stricklands were here before paved roads."

  "Yes, many of my friends are from the old crowd," Irene said. "You could belong too, by extension—if you showed any interest, which so far you haven't."

  "Like the D.A.R."

  Irene gave her a look then turned to check the oven. "What I think is, Jessica and Irving saw that Althea had written her wills for years and years to benefit the organizations all her friends belonged to. So if they did help forge that will, it wasn't for Rudy and Monica. Oh, no. It was for Althea."

  "Or for themselves."

  "Does being a lawyer make you so suspicious? No, no. Didn't Jessica and Irving know in their hearts what she wanted? If Althie did destroy her last will, as you suspect, then what? Patrick was her only heir. Without a will, he would inherit every last dime. They must have thought, This isn't what Althie would have wanted! We have to do something."

  Gail added, "The group sticks together even after death."

  "I am certain that Jessica and Irving did it for the best of motives." Irene grabbed an oven mitt and pulled open the door, turning off the broiler. She fanned at the cookie sheet as she dropped it on the counter. "And you know what? If somebody had asked me to sign that fake will? I might have done it. Althea wouldn't have wanted Patrick to inherit everything."

  Irene put the toast into a basket and tucked a napkin around it. "Let him collect his quarter million dollars and be happy with it." She wiped her hands on a dish towel. "What else would Karen like, I wonder?"

  "That's more than enough already." Gail took a piece of toast. "What about Rudy and Monica? Are they in this group of old Miami friends?"

  "Well, by blood, but I've never seen them invited to any of the better homes."

  "Did you ever meet them?"

  "If I did, I've forgotten."

  "You may have seen them at Ransom-Everglades," Gail said. "They were two years ahead of me. I was trying to think back, and all I could remember was the time they and some other kids threw a dead raccoon into the road to see what would happen when a car ran over it."

  "Oh, stop!"

  "So much for their inborn values." Gail took another bite of toast. "Mother, have you ever heard of Sanford Ehringer?"

  Irene halved a peach and dropped the pit into the garbage under the sink. "Yes. Why do you ask?"

  "He's the personal representative of Althea's estate. How do you know about Sanford Ehringer?"

  "Well, he and my father were friends. Dad wasn't in San-ford's league financially, but they knew each other." Irene lay sections of peach in a fan on Karen's plate. "I haven't laid eyes on him in ages. He and his wife used to give lovely dinner parties around Christmas—your father and I went—but she's been dead
for twenty years. He's quite elderly now. I doubt he would even remember me."

  "I don't believe this. My mother knows Sanford Ehringer. What about the Easton Trust? Don't tell me you're a member."

  Irene looked at her blankly. "No. I've never heard of that."

  "Thank God."

  "What's this about?"

  "I'm going to be suing him as P.R. of the estate. And it's his charity, the Easton Trust, that could lose millions of dollars. His and a few other charities, including your own Opera Guild."

  "Oh, dear." Irene lifted a hand to Gail's shoulder and straightened the neckline of her dress. "I imagine Sanford won't like your trying to give all Althie's money to her nephew."

  "What's he going to do, have my mortgage called?"

  "Oh, don't be silly. He's a gentleman, not likely to do anything so petty and vindictive." She looked around, then crossed the kitchen and slid back the patio door.

  "Karen! Dinner's ready! What are you doing? Put that creature down! They eat mosquitoes, darling. They're our friends. And don't let the cat get it." She came back inside, looked at Gail. "A strange child."

  By the time Gail reached Lincoln Road Mall, walking from a lot half a block away, the streetlights were on. Seven-fifteen, but still too early to expect Anthony. She debated whether to browse in the bookstore. The doors were open, and classical music came drifting into the street, which wasn't precisely a street. It had been closed to traffic some years ago, trees planted, benches and fountains built, efforts being made at renovation. Not many people were about. An old couple with a dog. Two emaciated-looking girls in minidresses and platform clogs, hurrying to wherever they were going. No tourists that she could see. Tourists preferred Ocean Drive, packed with others like themselves, and models, crazies, kids, rich foreigners, gays, straights, street people, night people, or couples over from the mainland for the evening, everything rocking in a neon and pastel glow at the edge of the Atlantic.

  Lincoln Road hadn't yet boomed like Ocean Drive, but it was coming along. A new boutique here, a realtor's sign there. Pages of a newspaper sliding on the soft night wind. Sleek couples speaking French going into a restaurant, but in the next doorway, the stench of urine.

  Gail walked toward the middle of the next block, where the Tillett Gallery would be. Under a lawn green awning, illuminated by the lights from inside the gallery, people were sipping wine from plastic stemware and chatting happily with each other. About what? Art? Gail didn't know who in Miami collected art. Art, as opposed to decoration. Certainly not her, a joint failure of imagination, time, and money. Who were these people?

  Rudy and Monica Tillett would have plenty to sell if Gail lost the case. Their stepmother had collected real art as well as a boggling amount of kitsch. Gail remembered Irene's description of Althea's house: a small Degas on that wall, a collection of porcelain ballet shoes in a case below it, a Picasso upstairs. There a Manchu Dynasty screen, here a Remington bucking bronco with cowboy on a French Empire table, and there a canopic vase with mummified cat entrails sealed inside. Things—things—on every wall and horizontal surface.

  Enough to forge a will for, maybe. But enough to murder for? Gail had considered that. How far was it, after all, from flinging a dead animal into the path of a car to tipping someone down a flight of stairs? And the payoff was so much bigger. Millions of dollars in real estate and art, not just the fleeting thrill of bones crunching and organs rupturing on the asphalt.

  But it wasn't as easy as a push between the shoulder blades. First it required breaking someone's neck. Hauling her body to the stairs. And then the push. Not something a woman could do. But maybe Monica had been working out at Gold's Gym on South Beach, getting hard shoulders and some cut into those quadriceps. It was more likely to have been Rudy, although he had always seemed more sneaky than violent. Or they had done it together. One conjoined act of ultimate greed.

  Gail leaned against the stanchion of an awning two doors down from the gallery, wondering what on God's sweet earth she was doing here. Anthony had asked her that. Curiosity, she had said, believing it.

  She looked around for a place to wait for him, not wanting to be spotted yet by anyone she knew. Not that people she knew were part of the artsy-intellectual crowd. In the middle of the darkened street, between two trees, was a fountain, a low rectangle crusted with a mosaic of broken tiles. Water splashed in a row of arches lit from below. She walked over to it. Into the concrete edge had been stuck curlicues of buttons, a conch shell, half a radio, the head of a Barbie doll, a plastic flamingo, more bits and pieces than she could identify, all swirled together. She couldn't sit, so walked slowly back and forth, keeping an eye on the sidewalk, watching for Anthony.

  The real reason she had come—obvious to her now—was to find evidence of guilt. Guilt of forgery, if not something worse. Proof that Patrick was right. The assurance of not having to tell the partners she had made an awful mistake, so sorry. She had imagined Rudy Tillett's shark-gray eyes shifting sideways, Monica reduced to nervous twitters. Sweat on their foreheads. Denials, then the truth: Yes, we paid Alan Weissman to forge our stepmother's will!

  Just then a woman dressed in palest pink moved through the crowd to a spot beyond the awning. Her face was in shadow; blond hair curled under at her jaw. She lit a cigarette. Gail saw the flash of a gold lighter, watched it slide back into a tiny purse on a long, thin strap.

  The mood Gail was in, she wished she smoked. But not unless she could do it with the elegance of this woman. How she rested her elbow in her palm. How she tilted up her chin and brought the cigarette slowly to her lips; how she pivoted it away on a turn of her wrist.

  With a little laugh, Gail came around the fountain. She knew her. Half a dozen strides closed the distance between them.

  "Lauren Sontag!"

  The cigarette floated down to hip level. "Gail?"

  "I've meant to call you so many times." The two of them lightly, quickly pressed their cheeks together.

  Lauren drew back, looked intently at her, a hand still on Gail's shoulder. "How have you been? All right?"

  "Much better. Thanks."

  "It's awfully good to see you. I should have kept in closer touch. I'm terrible."

  "We're both terrible. How's the campaign going, by the way?"

  "Marvelously. We did a poll. So far I'm ahead."

  "Judge Sontag has a nice sound to it."

  "Oh, yes. I agree." Lauren laughed, drew on her cigarette, and exhaled to one side. "Are you wandering around South Beach by yourself?"

  "No. I'm meeting someone."

  "The same man you've been dating, or ... ?"

  "The same." Gail laughed. "Did I tell you about him?"

  "In glorious detail."

  Lauren Sontag had been divorced a couple of years ago from a stockbroker. They had one child, a teenage daughter, who lived with him. Lauren said she and her ex were still friends. That had struck Gail as more civilized than she herself could have been. Civilized or else totally numb. Gail had decided that Lauren, then nearing forty, had become too resigned to fading away. So she had insisted Lauren make an effort, call up one of the guys, even answer some ads in the personals column. Lauren had only smiled. I am finally myself. Gail didn't know what that meant. It was hard to tell with Lauren.

  Now she was tilting her head toward the gallery. Her hair was a shimmering cap of gold silk. "I came with Barry." Barry Fine was a friend of hers, around thirty, a professor of English lit. "He's engaged in deep debate with someone about the moral void of post-modernism. I told him I needed a smoke. You should find him and say hello—if you don't mind running into Rudy Tillett. Or Monica."

  "Yes. I had thought to speak to them tonight." Gail looked toward the door, then brought her eyes back to Lauren. A silence fell between them.

  Lauren finally said, "So. We seem to be on opposite sides of the issue. Your office and my law partner, at any rate."

  "I'll still vote for you." Gail smiled.

  A soft laugh. "Thanks."


  "Do you know Monica?"

  "I know her work." Lauren lifted a shoulder. "It's not to everyone's taste, but I like it. I met her when I was collecting some pieces for my house."

  Into the next silence Gail said, "Larry Black and I will be over to see Alan next week."

  "I've heard."

  Gail listened to the splash of water in the fountain. "Sorry about all this. As soon as I saw you, Althea Tillett went out of my head. I wanted us to go to lunch sometime and catch up."

  "We will." Lauren raised the cigarette to her lips, then away. Her nails were perfect and diamonds winked on her fingers. "What is going on? I know you. You wouldn't take a losing case. So what is it? You can't show that Mrs. Tillett lacked the capacity to execute a will. She was as sane as you or I. Saner."

  "Perhaps."

  "You're going to discuss it with Alan on Wednesday. Why don't you tell me now?"

  "Please don't ask me to."

  "I'm hardly a stranger."

  "Come on, don't."

  "You come on." The words had an edge.

  "Lauren—this isn't between us."

  She shook her head, spoke softly. "No. I'm sorry, Gail. Forgive me." She seemed to study the gallery, where people walked among the white-painted dividers and spotlights hung in the high, black ceiling. She said, "Despite what you told Jessica Simms about Althea's competence, you think the will was forged."

  When Gail made no answer, Lauren smiled. "Don't deny it. Rudy told me Patrick was throwing accusations around."

  "We're investigating it," Gail said.

  Lauren dropped her cigarette to the pavement, slowly pivoting the toe of her pink suede pump. "You're completely wrong about this, Gail. You're being manipulated and lied to."

  "By whom?"

  "Your client. He hates his cousins. I could tell you things."

  "Such as?"

  Lauren shook her head. 'Tales of childhood. Does anyone ever escape unharmed?"

  Gail asked, "What do you know about this?"

  "Would you call me as a witness if I told you?"

  "Lauren. My God. Whatever Alan Weissman did, it's his problem. Are you afraid you'll get splattered? You'll be safely on the bench long before the case is litigated."