Suspicion of Malice (41 page)

"She was pregnant at fifteen?"

"Who knows? Her mother went to great lengths
to deny it."

"Protesting too much," murmured Gail. "I wonder
what happened to the baby."

Irene could only shake her head.

"Anthony will tell me not to bring it up with
Claire. He'll say it's completely irrelevant."

A little while later, Irene went inside to get ready for bed. Gail lay back on the chaise and watched the
lights of boats moving across the dark water.

She could find no rational connection between an event that may not even have happened, and Roger Cresswell's murder. Even so, the facts of Margaret
Cresswell's life and death continued to weigh on
Gail's mind. Maggie had been only thirty-three when she'd shut herself in the cottage and opened a bottle
of pills.
Forgive me. I am at peace.
Even the love of a
devoted husband hadn't been enough to save her.
What despair had made it impossible to go on? Gail wanted to know, as if by finding out, she could save her this time.

Chapter 20

Anthony had been almost certain that Gail Connor
would leave a message to cancel the meeting,
but she arrived ten minutes early. He could see her through the glass wall of the conference room. She
sat calmly, as if waiting for a trial to begin. A glance at her watch. Aligning her pen on her notebook. She
wore a pearl-gray suit, and her hair was brushed
back from her face. Her reflection shone in the pol
ished rosewood surface of the table.

Standing just outside, Anthony's own reflection
came back to him, a somber, hollow-eyed ghost. He felt older, tired, and the dark suit matched his mood. She'd left her mark on his cheek, but the bruise was not visible, except to him—a tenderness at the bone.

He had decided to have the meeting here, not in
his private office. He couldn't look at his sofa without
remembering her pale body stretched out on black
leather. Lights off, the sliding door to the atrium open, water laughing softly on the rocks. He had stood at a distance memorizing every curve and
shadow before she'd reached out a hand.
Anthony.
Come over here.
Had her body changed? Would her
breasts feel heavier, fuller? He couldn't remember
how these things progressed. That he would not
know how
this
child progressed left him close to
grief.

He shifted his folders to the other hand and
opened the door. She looked around, acknowledging his presence. Walking around the table, he said that Nate Harris would arrive at six o'clock, not five, to
allow time for discussion of other issues. Had she
been offered something to drink? She said she didn't
care for anything, thank you.

Anthony sat down across from her and placed two
folders and a leather-bound notebook on the table.
"I have good news. We have a buyer for the house, and the price is more than we had expected. It cancels the debt that you say you owe me, leaving an
additional profit of around fourteen thousand dollars, which we'll divide between us."

He gave her a copy of a contract that showed the buyers as Jose R. and Beatriz S. Gomez of Miami. Totally fictitious. He didn't know where Raul had
found the names. His old neighbors in Cuba, perhaps. "They want to close within two weeks."

At some point Anthony would tell her the truth:
He was buying the house for himself. It would be gutted, repaired, made new. A pool, maid's quarters, a play room. A good place for his children to visit— all three of them. He would not be moving to New
York.

She scanned the contract. Turned a page. "This is
excellent. I didn't expect it to work out so well."

"Nor did I." He opened the other folder, hesitated
only a moment, then said, "This is a draft of an
agreement for paternity and support." He slid a copy
across the table. "I agree to pay your medical ex
penses and all costs you may incur as custodial par
ent. In exchange, you allow me to participate fully
in the child's life. You also agree not to take the child
out of this area without my permission. There are other provisions. Life insurance on myself, medical
expenses and education for the child, and so on.
He—or she—will speak Spanish fluently. He will know his heritage. His last name will be Quintana."

"Not Pedrosa?" she retorted with a lift of her
brows.

Anthony stared back at her for several seconds, matching her chilly disdain. "'No. I have not seen my grandfather in two months. Ah. You seem surprised.
The truth is, Gail, you were right. I was becoming too much like him. The power, the money—I told
him I didn't want it. We argued. I told him to go to hell. He said the same to me. I swore on my life that I would never set foot again in that house, and I
haven't." Anthony shrugged. "So. Don't worry about your child turning into a clone or a puppet of Ernesto
Pedrosa or whatever the hell it was that you called
me."

She released a held breath. "I shouldn't have
said that."

"But you were right. You were also right that he contracted murder for me, but wrong to think I con
done what he did. However, I cannot, as you suggested, turn him over to the police—"

"I know you can't," she said. "He's too old. I won
der if he was even rational, when it happened. He
was afraid for you, I believe that. I hope you see him
again. And I don't mind if
...
if you take the baby
to see him. His great-grandfather."

Anthony felt that his head might explode. He lifted his hand from the table. Let it fall. "Perhaps. In the
meantime, why don't you review the agreement?
Take it to a lawyer if you wish. I think even Charlene
Marks would find it generous."

She lifted the end of it and ruffled through the
pages. He knew there were seventeen of them, plus a signature page. She turned the draft facedown and pushed it to one side. "I'm sorry you think this is
necessary."

Anthony's cheeks burned. He had made a misstep. This was not the reaction he had anticipated. He had
been prepared for war, a lawsuit, DNA tests—

He said, "You don't know which it is, do you?
Boy, girl?"

"Not yet."

"When is it due?"

"The middle of February."

He had more questions, but swung his chair
around and tossed his own copy of the agreement
back into its folder. He was close to losing his tem
per, and could not isolate the source of his anger. His voice betrayed none of this. "We don't have
much time before Nate gets here. I need to tell you
about Bobby Gonzalez. He called me last night. I
went to his apartment on South Beach to talk to him.
He didn't call you today, did he? I told him not to."

Gail's eyes widened. "What happened to Bobby?"

"To Bobby, nothing. He held a knife at Sean Cress
well's throat and asked him where the three hundred
dollars had come from. Sean told him." Anthony
leaned back in his chair. "Out of Roger Cresswell's
wallet, which Sean took from Roger's dead body,
which he stumbled over on his way into Jack
Pascoe's yard from the side gate at approximately
eleven-fifteen the night Roger was murdered. But
not, I think, by Sean Cresswell."

Gail stared at him. "What?"

"Last night I said to Bobby, "Have you lost your mind? You could go to prison for this.' 'No, don't worry, Mr. Quintana. Sean won't say anything. Be
sides, my friends will give me an alibi.' "

"Oh, my God. Do I want to hear this?" Elbows on the table, Gail dropped her head into her hands, fin
gers in her hair. "Go on, tell me."

Anthony could not decide whether Bobby Gonza
lez was an idiot who'd been lucky or the most bra
zenly clever young tough he'd ever met. To have set up his ambush so neatly, every contingency antici
pated. And to pull it off!

Where did you get the money?
Simple question. And
the answer had come quickly. Sean on the ground sweating, defecating in his pants. Bone-grinding fear.
Expecting to die on the pitted asphalt behind a boarded-up tire store. One answer, then another.

"What Bobby told me ties in perfectly with the
memo you faxed over about Nikki Cresswell. The times, the events. Bobby and I talked for three hours
last night, but I think I can summarize it for you.
The day Roger died, Duncan Cresswell took about a
dozen potential buyers to Bimini and back. Roger
went along, and so did Ted Stamos, who is in charge of boat construction. Sean always goes because his parents insist on it. They expect him to work for the
company someday. He has to wear a Cresswell
Yachts shirt and khaki shorts, and inevitably his
cousin Roger made jokes about him. Roger treated
Sean like one of the crew, making him bring drinks
to the customers and cleaning up after them. You see the reason for this. Sean is the only other male heir and Roger had to establish his dominance. Around seven-thirty the boat docked at the Black Point Ma
rina, where a barbecue dinner was waiting.

"Shortly after nine o'clock, as everyone was preparing to leave, Roger got a call from his wife, Nikki, on his cell phone. Your memo mentioned the call.
Roger became angry and said he was coming over
there to, quote, 'kick Jack's fucking ass.' His uncle,
Duncan, overheard this. He mentioned it to Sean. I
imagine there were some winks and nudges. I imagine also that Duncan could have told Porter or Ted Stamos. None of them, obviously, mentioned it later
to the police. This family protects its own.

"Claire arrived about nine-fifteen in the Bentley to
take Porter home. She'd had dinner with friends.
Sean didn't say where, and it doesn't matter. Sean's
father and the rest of the men left in a caravan of
cars. They were going to the Strip Mine, the very
club, in fact, that Sean's father has promised to take him to on his twenty-first birthday. Roger was sup
posed to go with the others, but he drove out of the marina parking lot in a hurry, and there were a few
more jokes about what he would do to Jack Pascoe.
As we know, Roger got to Jack's about nine-thirty and left ten minutes later. He bought some liquor at
a nearby store and came back. If he knew that Nikki had called from West Palm Beach, he also knew that
she was unlikely to arrive before ten-thirty.

"Sean went home. He was still on curfew, part of his court-ordered probation for stealing Roger's car. Sean's mother and his older sister, Patty, were watching television. Sean sat in his bedroom drinking beer
and playing video games until eleven o'clock. He
heard his mother go into her room and close the
door. She had his car keys, but he had a spare.

"It took him five minutes to drive to Jack Pascoe's house. He knew about the party from Bobby. Jack
intercepted him at the front door and told him he
couldn't come in. Bobby never saw Sean. Nor did he see Nikki, who had just arrived. Jack had sent her
upstairs. We can probably assume that Roger saw
her arrive and went around the side of the property
to come in through the gate—you remember the one.
Meanwhile, Sean got in his own car and started out
for South Beach. A few miles up Old Cutler Road he
realized he didn't have any money. He drove back
to Jack's house and parked along, the side street. He knew that Diane kept cash in the cottage. The music
from the main house was loud, and he thought he
could break a window without arousing attention.

"He came in through the gate, went around the fountain, and tripped over Roger's legs. He didn't
know who it was until he turned on his cigarette
lighter. He saw the shirt from Cresswell Yachts. He saw the Rolex. He took that and the wallet, which
contained a little over fifteen hundred dollars. He
went to a club on South Beach—the Apocalypse, I
believe. He remembers wearing the watch when he
went inside, but he isn't sure what happened to it. He thinks he gave it to the girl who crawled under
the table and unzipped his pants. He was very drunk
at this point. Bobby didn't ask what Sean did with
the wallet. Maybe he still has it, but if he isn't totally
brainless, he got rid of it."