Suspicion of Malice

by Barbara Parker

  Irene folded her glasses. "Why didn't Angela ask her father to handle it?"

  "Senor Quintana doesn't like Bobby. Angela doesn't want him to know they're going out."

  "Is that what you call him now? Senor Quintana?"

  "It's either that or "jerk.’ "

  Her mother carefully set her glasses in the box of stationery on her nightstand. "You know very well that Anthony's going to hear about it sooner or later."

  "She won't tell him. And if she does, so what? If it annoys Anthony that I'm helping Bobby Gonzalez, then tough bananas."

  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 helping 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 occasionally. 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 different 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 aromatherapy 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 appropriate day for fireworks. She had been about six weeks pregnant at that point, but her powers of denial were in excellent shape. Then she noticed a tenderness in her breasts. She locked herself in the bathroom with an at-home pregnancy test, hoping that her symptoms were due to something less drastic, like cancer.

  In the flickering candlelight, with notes from a wooden flute echoing off the red rock walls of a canyon 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. Connor, 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. Tomorrow 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 Varadero 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—according 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 h
e'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 trying 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 landscaping 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 bullets 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 dashboard.

  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 terribly, his children, but not for one moment their mother. He'd been a student at Columbia Law, enduring 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 background checks on each of them, looking for a criminal 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 probably been in the wallet.

  The police were looking at a young dancer with the Miami City Ballet, Robert Gonzalez. Unless there were two of them, Anthony had met him. Hi. Mr. Quintana? I'm Bobby Gonzalez. How're you doing? So ... is Angie ready? Gonzalez had sat on the edge of the sofa clearing his throat and looking around while Angela finished dressing. A springy, muscled five-eight or -nine, curly black hair, and a scar across his knuckles. This is a very nice place you have, sir. Polite, but they were all polite with a girl's father.

  What had this father learned? That Gonzalez was twenty-one, born in New York City, lived in East Harlem, moved to Miami at thirteen with his mother and four siblings. He'd never attended college. He rented an apartment with two other dancers on Lenox Avenue in Miami Beach, and he drove a faded black Nissan with the tints peeling off the windows. Anthony had not embarrassed Angela by refusing to let her go out that night, but he told her, when she returned, that it was the last time. As far as he knew, she hadn't seen Bobby Gonzalez again.

  The police had good reason to suspect him. He had worked for a few weeks at the Cresswell boat yard over the summer. The night of the party, witnesses remembered a confrontation. Cresswell poking Gonzalez in the shoulder, Gonzalez asking him if he wanted his ass kicked.

  Jack Pascoe had paid Gonzalez to help with the cleanup, but Gonzalez disappeared around midnight, sticking Pascoe with the bulk of the work. Police wanted to interview him, but he was avoiding them.

  Gonzalez had an arrest record: carrying a concealed weapon, possession of marijuana, resisting arrest with violence. As a defense attorney, Anthony knew that such charges could be bullshit. These had pleaded out to misdemeanors, but it made him nervous. "Concealed weapon" usually meant "knife."

  When his portable phone rang, he nearly tipped over his drink getting to it. "Angela?"

  But it was his sister, Alicia. She spoke in Spanish, the more intimate language of family. She hoped she wasn't calling too late. Was he in bed?

  "No, no. Espero por Angela. iQue pasa?" He told her he was waiting for Angela. Had something happened?

  "Not really. I wanted to talk to you, that's all. I was just saying good night to Grandfather. He wanted to know where you were. He asked me, 'Where's Anthony? I am dying, and he doesn't come to see me’ There were tears in his eyes! Thank God Nena was asleep in her room."

  "He isn't dying, Alicia, he's playing his little games again."

  "I told him you were still in Spain, that you would be home soon. He made me say it twice before he let go of my hand. Anthony, you have to come see him."

  At eighty-four years of age, with a wheelchair and a pacemaker, Ernesto Pedrosa still knew how to manipulate. There were a houseful of relatives, a full-time nurse, and he had begged Alicia to leave her husband and children in Texas to come home for a few weeks to help take care of him. Alicia had never refused his demands.

  Anthony sighed. "You know we argued. I don't want to talk about it."

  She laughed. "An argument? Oh, I heard about it from Aunt Fermina. You were shouting at him in his study with the door closed, then you told Nena you would never set foot in the house again. Why?"

  "Alicia, I am closer to you than to anyone in the family, but there are things that I can't discuss, not with anyone."

  "Nena told me that all this happened after you broke up with Gail. Maybe you went crazy. Is that it? You won't talk about that either. Why did you call off your engagement? Or did she? Who was it?"

  "It doesn't matter. It's over/'

  "She adored you. I could see it in her face when she looked at you. And in yours too. What happened, Anthony? Please. What is going on with you?"

  "Alicia, I have to go. Angie will be home soon, and I have work to finish."

  "Oh, Anthony. My poor brother. Your pride is going to kill you someday. I love you, but you're breaking my heart."

  When he hung up the phone, Alicia's words echoed in his ears. "Me estds rompien
do el corazon."

  Propping his forehead on his fists, Anthony closed his eyes. After a moment, he got up and paced to the glass doors that looked out at the inlet behind his house. Past the patio and the screen he could see the quiet black water, bright windows on the other side, and the silhouettes of boats tied to docks.

  The old man was at it again, using Alicia this time. For thirty years—since the day Anthony had been dragged out of Cuba against his will—Ernesto Pedrosa had tried to control him. As a boy, Anthony had felt the sting of his grandfather's belt, but he had never cried, enraging the old man even further. At twenty, he'd been thrown out of the house for reading socialist literature. In adulthood he had made his own way, asking for nothing—unlike his cousins, who had grown rich taking whatever shit the old man had handed them. It was Anthony who threw it back at him. They fought. They disagreed about everything. Cuba and the American betrayal, the food at dinner, the fall of the Soviet Union, the Miami Dolphins, the Miami Herald, the embargo, Anthony's divorce, the venality of local politicians, whether the grass needed more water.

  After each fight, they would refuse to speak to each other. Anthony would appear only for holidays and family occasions. Then his grandfather would start sending emissaries. A cousin, to invite him to dinner. Nena, to ask if he'd accompany them to midnight mass. After years of this maneuvering, the arguments had worn thin, and peace was declared. Ernesto had not become soft, but he had become old.

  He had offered Anthony everything—businesses worth hundreds of millions of dollars, a sixteen-room mansion, bank accounts not even his wife had been told about. Ernesto Pedrosa would have given him all this, but he would have kept his grip on the strings. Anthony might have cut them—Ernesto must have expected him to try—but one moment, one hideous revelation, and the game was over.