Suspicion of Malice (17 page)

Ted heard a noise behind him. The click of a key
in a lock. He turned around.

Elizabeth stood in the doorway. "Want some
company?"

"Sure. How'd you know I was here?"

"You weren't anywhere else."

He watched her come toward him, the movements of her body, breasts wobbling a little under her white knit shirt. It was tucked in tight at her waist, and her
hips moved like they were greased. She stopped an arm's length away, looking at him sideways, bangs level with her dark eyebrows.

Ted grinned at her. "Come on. Come over here."

She said, "I don't know. Maybe I shouldn't get
any closer."

"Yeah, you should."

She reached out and ran a finger over his cheek,
pulling away before he could catch her wrist. "Did Porter talk to you about Bobby Gonzalez? He said
he was going to.”

"Twisted my arm is more like it."

"You know how Porter is. Just humor him."

Ted turned the plane over and tested the blade on
his thumb. "How's it going to look to the men, me shading the truth like that? They hated Roger."

Elizabeth said, "They won't know what you tell
the police. How can they?"

The plane moved slowly down the edge of the workbench. A curl of wood appeared. "I could be history too, just like that kid. You know that, sugar?
They could boot my ass right out of here, fuck that
I spent my life in this company."

"Stop it. That won't happen. I promise." She
leaned against him, reaching around, rubbing the muscles in his chest.

Ted made another pass with the blade. "What do you want, Elizabeth? Just tell me. Okay?"

She put the point of her chin on his shoulder. "Just
do what Porter says."

"What if they arrest the kid?"

"At least he'll be out of Sean's life for a while."

"Out of whose life, Elizabeth? I caught you a few
times looking at him from the catwalk. Yeah, you
did, don't lie."

She gave him a play slap on the head. "Oh, shut
up, you. I'm serious. You don't know the effect he's
had on Sean. 'My homey.' 'Bro.' That's what Sean
calls him! Bobby keeps turning up at our house, no matter how often I tell him to go away. Sean's language is horrible, he's failing his classes, and I found a baggie of pot in his closet. Someday Sean will take his place in this company, but he won't make it if he
doesn't straighten up. Oh, God, Ted, I don't know
what to do."

"It's a phase. I did the same shit. Put him to work
in the glass shop. See how he likes rubber gloves and
a face mask eight hours a day."

"Porter's going to talk to him. Maybe that'll do some good. Dub is no help. I don't think he even
cares. He sits in his recliner and drinks, oblivious
to everything."

"Hey, Elizabeth?" Ted set the plane back on the bench. "I don't want to hear about your family situation. Okay?"

"Okay." She kissed him under the ear, then ran
her tongue inside.

He pulled her around between his knees. "Where have you been, pretty thing?" She undid his buckle
and tugged to release the belt. He sat up straighter so she could get to the button on his jeans. There
was a small scar at the corner of her upper lip, and
he liked to imagine he'd put it there. He felt his zip
per go. "Go lock the damn door."

"I did already."

He reached around and pulled off her scarf, and
her hair fell into his hands.

Chapter 10

At 7:45 a.m. on Thursday, as Gail was pulling out of the driveway at her mother's house, Her cell phone rang. Bobby Gonzalez told her that the police had just arrived at his apartment with a search warrant. Could she come over? Gail told him to stay out
of their way and be quiet. She would be there in fifteen minutes. "As if I know what the hell I'm
doing," Gail muttered to herself.

Bobby rented the spare room in an apartment near Lenox and Seventh, a relatively quiet area where the architectural blandness was mitigated by shade trees
and tropical plants. The small, two-story building
was not streamlined Art Deco but the flat, blocky style of the fifties. A school of gray and pink bas-relief dolphins swam across the end of it.

Gail parked illegally at the curb in a residents-only
zone and hurried along the sidewalk, passing two
patrol cars and a plain sedan with a blue light on
the dash. The men they belonged to were, she as
sumed, busy tossing her client's apartment.

A cracked concrete walkway extended at right
angles from the sidewalk, and a walk on the second floor formed a roof over the doors on the first. Four up, four down, each looking out on a narrow stretch
of grass, a hedge, and the whining air conditioners
of the adjacent building. Gail dodged around curious
neighbors. An old man with a white beard and a
yarmulke peered over the painted metal railing. Two women rattled away in Spanish. The aroma of frying
bacon came through someone's open jalousies.

At the last apartment, portable barricades and yel
low tape marked the door. Gail looked for Bobby
and found him seated on the edge of a brick planter, dressed only in a pair of jeans. Two other young men sat beside him, equally as rumpled. Bobby's friends
from the ballet company, she assumed. It was their
apartment.

Gail grabbed Bobby's elbow and pulled him out of
earshot. "Are you all right?"

"Yeah, fine. They went through my car already.
They said if I didn't give them the keys they'd break
the window. Can you go see what they're doing?"

"In a minute. Did they give you a copy of the
warrant? Let me have it." He took some folded
sheets of paper from his back pocket, and Gail looked
them over.

The warrant gave the police authority to enter
Apartment 4, 690 Lenox Avenue, Miami Beach, and to search for a weapon, instrumentality, or means by
which a felony, to wit: murder, had been
committed. . . . She scanned farther down. One gold
Rolex watch, engraved RCC; one black leather wallet
belonging to Roger C. Cresswell and contents of
same. Driver's license. Credit cards. A .22-caliber pis
tol and/or ammunition for same. Clothing, footwear,
and/or any other item of evidentiary value—

Gail flipped the page, finding an affidavit signed
by Frank Britton, Miami-Dade Homicide Bureau. An
enumeration of facts that justified a search. That Rob
ert Gonzalez had worked for Roger Cresswell. That on August 14, after Cresswell fired him from his job,
Gonzalez physically attacked him. That on August
16, the night before Cresswell's body was found, Gonzalez threatened him—

"It says you attacked Roger Cresswell. And threatened him the night he died." Gail looked at him. "Is
that true?"

"When he fired me, we got into this scrap, and I
hit him. He saw me over at Jack's and, you know,
we had some words, but it was more like he threatened me."

"You didn't tell me about that."

"Well
...
I didn't think it mattered."

Gail gave him a hard look then went back to the affidavit, reading aloud in a murmur. "Failed to produce credible alibi for period encompassing time of
death. . . . On August 22, a dark blue T-shirt was
taken from the trash discarded from Apartment
Four"—her voice rose—"and the bloodstains on the
shirt were found to have the same blood type as the
victim, B positive?" Her eyes rose from the page.

Bobby said, "That's the shirt from when I got in the fight with Roger. His nose was bleeding. I tried
to explain to the detective, but he's like, shut up, I
don't want to hear from you."

"You
admitted
it was your shirt?" When Bobby
only stared back at her, Gail said, "I told you not to
talk to the police."

"Sorry."

She let out a breath. "Stay here. I'll be back."

At the perimeter of yellow tape she spoke to the officer standing guard. "I'm Bobby Gonzalez's lawyer. If Sergeant Britton is in there, could I speak to him?" She extended her business card. After a second, he took it and leaned into the apartment. "Ser
geant? Some lady out here wants to talk to you."
Through the crack in the door Gail could see the arm
of a green sofa and an empty pizza box.

Frank Britton hadn't changed much from the last
time they'd met—gold-rimmed glasses, short brown hair, a stomach settling toward forty. He could have
passed for a high school math teacher.

"Gail Connor. My goodness, it's been a while."
They shook hands across the tape. He glanced at her
card. "Mr. Gonzalez said you might be dropping by
to join us." Britton had a deceptively friendly smile
and folksy Florida Cracker accent. "I thought you
did civil trial practice."

"Generally, yes." She smiled back at him. "Since
Bobby isn't in handcuffs in the back of a patrol car,
I assume you don't have enough evidence for an
arrest."

"Not yet, but we're working on it."

"By going through his trash?"

"Anything thrown out is considered abandoned,
Ms. Connor. Fair game."

Two Miami-Dade officers came out of the apartment, each carrying a cardboard box. The other de
tective, a younger Hispanic man, gave Britton a clipboard. "We're done in there, Frank."

Britton took a pen out of his pocket and signed it. "This is your receipt, Ms. Connor, for things we're going to take with us." He tore one copy off the form
and handed it to her. "Keep in touch."

"You bet." Walking back toward Bobby, Gail read it. Master bedroom: one .22-caliber semiautomatic Ruger pistol, one partially empty box of Remington .22-caliber bullets. Bedroom #2: Six pairs of pants, four shirts, three T-shirts, and a pair of Nike sneakers. And $300 in cash.

Gail whirled toward the street and caught up with Britton by his unmarked sedan.

"Wait a minute. What's this? You took a pistol and bullets from his roommates' bedroom. The warrant
doesn't give you the right to search their room."

Britton finished adjusting his clip-on sunglasses, then said slowly, "Well, Ms. Connor, we can search anywhere the occupants give us permission, which
they did. They were real cooperative."

She detested her own uncertainty even more than his patronizing tone. "The money, then. Why did you take money from Bobby's room? You can't possibly tie that to Roger Cresswell. And why are you taking his clothes?"

Smirking, the other detective set the boxes inside
the trunk and closed the lid.

Britton said, "The day Roger Cresswell died, he
took a little walking-around money out of his bank—
twenty-five hundred dollars in cash. We found the
withdrawal slip in his car. I want to know if those
new, sequentially numbered hundreds we took from your client's dresser might be traced to Mr. Cress
well's bank. As for the clothes, we're going to run them through some tests. If we find any blood, a
sample goes to the lab. They've already started a
DNA check on that shirt that came out of the trash. Bobby can have his clothes back if they come up
negative. The money too, if it belongs to him. And
the pistol—well, his buddies are going to need to get
a court order."

Britton came a little closer, brow furrowing, showing his concern. "You know, I'd hate to see the boy charged with first-degree murder. They had a fight.
Maybe it was self-defense. Why don't y'all come with
us, and let's talk about it?"

"I think not."

He let out a sigh and shook his head. Gail watched him go, then turned around, staring in Bobby's direc
tion. The neighbors were dispersing, and Bobby's
roommates were going back inside the apartment. And from somewhere, a dark-haired girl in a short skirt had appeared. Angela Quintana.

Gail motioned for Bobby. Angela came along too, hanging onto his hand. "Hi, Angela. Let me borrow
Bobby for a minute, may I?"

Bobby squeezed Angela's shoulders. "Be right
back, baby." His jeans hung off his hips far enough to show a muscled lower abdomen and dark, feathery hair at his belt line. "Don't worry. Gail's taking
care of everything." He kissed her quickly on the lips
and turned her toward the apartment.