Suspicion of Malice (51 page)

"What are you going to do with that?"

"Nothing.
You
take care of it. Burn it. Bury it.
Throw it wherever you threw the gun. Damn you
for being so stupid. Why didn't you take it? I
told
you to. His wallet, his watch. It had to look like a
robbery. And why did you do it
there?"

"Shut up about it, all right? We've been over that
already. I did the best I could."

His feelings were hurt. Liz pressed her fingers
against her forehead, then said, "Okay. I'm just ner
vous about Sean. I'm crawling out of my skin."

Ted put everything back into the wallet and slid it
into the front pocket of his jeans. "I'll take care of this for you. Don't worry about it."

"Thanks. Be careful, will you?"

Liz knew already, but it hit her again with sick
ening force. Ted Stamos was a dunce. He had barely
graduated from high school. He knew what to do
with his hands and his body, and he made her feel
good. She had ignored everything else.
She
was the stupid one. She wondered why Porter had given him
a promotion at all. Ted didn't fit the part of execu
tive. He was gloomy and coarse. Why had Porter
done it?

Ted smiled at her. His face tended to look vacant when he smiled, as if this expression were foreign to
him. Deep creases appeared on either side of his mouth. "You are so sexy."

She smiled back, then said, "I need to talk to
you, Ted."

"I don't feel like talking." He ran his hands up her
arms. "I want you. I must be crazy to want you so
much." He pulled her shirt out of her waistband,
then in another motion her bra went over her breasts, and he buried his face between them. She bit her lip
not to shout at him to stop it. She had no time for
this. No time.

He was sucking at her, pulling her into his mouth.
Alarmed, she looked through the glass that ran on three sides of the room, from waist level up. 'Ted, not here. The security guard will be by in a while."

"I don't give a damn." He unzipped his pants and forced her hand inside.

"We can't, not now."

Her skin scraped painfully on the teeth of the zip
per. Ted backed her into the desk. "You haven't let
me touch you since Roger. Don't you think I'm
entitled?"

“Ted, stop! It's too dangerous. For God's sake, will you
think?"

He let her go, taking some time zipping back up, letting her see what she'd missed. While she readjusted her clothing, he started tossing things from his desk into an empty box. His radio, a clock, the charger for his telephone. "I ought to put this shit in my truck and keep going. Get the hell out of here, far as
I can go. Is that what you want?"

Ted Stamos needed his hand held.

"Please, Ted, don't say things like that to me." Liz felt tears scald her eyes, the result of weary frustra
tion. "Oh, darling, please don't." She put her arms
around his waist, pressing herself against him. "As
soon as it's safe, we'll be together. I'm yours, you know that, but we have to be careful. Do you love
me? You just said you want me, but do you love
me?"

His
yes
came out on a laugh. "I love you more than any man ought to."

"I have to know I can trust you completely. That
you'll do anything for me. Prove you love me, Ted.
Or are you using me to get what you want out of
this company?"

"No, mat's crazy, Elizabeth. You know how I feel."

"I need you, Ted. Now more than ever." She
brought her face close to his, whispering against his
cheek, "We're in danger of losing everything. I
couldn't stand that, after all we've been through. I want
you so much, but we have a problem. One I never
anticipated. We have to do something."

"What problem?"

"Listen to me carefully. Diane is not my daughter. It's true. Her real mother was Maggie Cresswell. She got pregnant at fifteen, and by the time Porter and
Claire found out, it was too late. They told Maggie
the baby was put up for adoption, but the truth is, Porter gave it to Dub and me. I didn't want to, but he promised Dub half the company, and Dub said
yes. Nobody knew the truth. But Diane has been ask
ing questions lately. She said, 'Why do I look like
Aunt Claire and not like you?' My heart stopped!
She's going to find out. She's Porter's only heir. Porter will be dead soon, and if she makes a claim, she'll get all his shares in the company. Fifty-one percent. She'll sell it to Broward Marine. They've made Porter an offer already! What would happen to us? Every
thing we've worked for would be gone. We have to do something about Diane."

Ted stared at her.

"We
have
to do it, Ted. There's no other way. It
can be an accident. A fall. She could slip off the sea
wall. She doesn't swim. Don't look at me like that.
She isn't my daughter! She hates me. She said so in
those very words. She calls me horrible things. Porter
made us take her. I am so afraid of what she'll do
when she finds out. And she will. Oh, she will, Ted,
and then we are lost."

As if in pain, Ted went over to the desk and sat
heavily on the edge of it. "Maggie had a baby?"

"Yes. Diane is hers."

Ted laughed. He tried to hold it back, but he ex
ploded in laughter, falling into his chair, laughing until Liz wanted to hit him. "Stop it! What is the matter with you?"

"I knew Maggie when we were teenagers. I went
over there to do some carpentry work, and we had sex in the guest room over the garage. Diane could
be my kid."

"That's impossible. She isn't yours."

"She might be. I could take a DNA test. Jesus
Christ. If she was my daughter
...
I'd have to help
her run the company, wouldn't I?" He started laugh
ing again. "I'd have more than you. Wouldn't that be a kick in the ass?"

"Shut up, Ted. She's not yours. She's Porter's."

His grin disappeared, and he stared up at her.
"Porter's? What do you mean?"

"What do you think I mean?"

"That's sick."

"I know it's true because I know Porter. I know
what he is. I thought something funny was going on when I first met him, when Maggie was only eleven.
I know because Roger told me when he was a kid
that his father liked to read bedtime stories to Maggie
with the door shut. I could see the way he looked at
her, the way he touched her. I know because my
father did the same thing to me!" Liz was unable to
repress a shudder of disgust. "She isn't like other people. She shouldn't have been born."

Ted got out of his chair. His face had flushed red. "I'm not going to murder a twenty-year-old girl. Are you crazy?"

"We have no choice. The minute Diane suspects
she's Maggie's daughter, we'll lose everything!"
Sensing the conversation spinning out of control, Liz
put her hands on Ted's shoulders. "I couldn't bear
being without you. You feel the same way about me,
don't you? Say you love me, Ted. Say it."

"Oh, Jesus." He pushed her hands away. "I'm get
ting out of here."

"Where are you going?"

"I don't know. I've got to think."

"You can't leave. Ted, I love you."

"Let go of me." He walked out the door, arm still
raised as if warding her off.

"What do you want? You can have anything."
Running onto the catwalk, Liz stopped him with
arms around his waist. She pressed her cheek against
his back. "Don't leave me, Ted. Be with me. You know I love you. I need you so much."

"What you want me to do
...
it's too much. Roger was one thing—he deserved it. But this. Oh, Jesus. You're sick. You're one sick bitch."

What happened next unfolded clearly and slowly, and Liz could see her mind processing the facts like watching a mathematical solution worked out on a
computer screen. Her body responded and all she
could do was watch it happen.

It didn't take much. A quick jerking motion toward the edge of the catwalk, hands between the shoulder
blades, a strong push.

Ted hit the railing hard at hip level, and the mo
mentum was enough to send his torso over the edge and pick up his feet. He balanced, arms flailing. Liz could have caught the fabric of his shirt. She knew
there was time, a split second or so, and her hand was poised to reach for him. And then the railing
gave way. With a loud snap the horizontal bar broke
from one post and swung from the other. Ted
dropped, and the space in front of her was empty.

There was a crashing of wood and the deeper thud of a body.

Twisted metal hung from the railing post. Moving
away from the gap, Liz steadied herself on the unbro
ken portion of the railing and peered over the edge. Ted had landed in a boat hull thirty feet below her, facedown. She scanned the assembly floor, the quiet lines of boats. The big doors at either end had been rolled shut, and the far corners of the building were
dark. The windows under the roof were pale gray,
and long fluorescent tubes in wire cages pressed their weak light into the enormous space. No one was running toward the noise. There were no footsteps, no
demands to know what had happened. The security
guard would come by, but he wouldn't be able to
see into the hull. Unless someone noticed the broken railing, Ted Stamos wouldn't be found until Monday morning, when the men came to lay in the next layer
of fiberglass.

With the toe of her sneaker Liz tipped over a box as if Ted might have stumbled over the contents.
Things slid to the floor—a stapler, a desk diary. A black-and-white photograph of his father standing in
front of a boat. Pens, pencils, a jar of paper clips.

She heard a moan and looked over the side again.
Ted's hand lifted from the boat hull. He was alive.
She turned and ran down the stairs, coming out on the ground floor.

The mold was supported by a scaffolding of lumber three feet above her head. There was a ladder allowing access for the workers, and Liz climbed it.
The hull was made of overlapping layers of fiber
glass, an inch thick at the bottom, less at the top. A long box-shaped form gave strength to the keel, and
heavy ribs supported the sides. Ted lay facedown
across one of them in the bow of the boat. His knee
had broken, and his leg was bent at an odd angle.
His face was toward her, cheek pressed against the hull. Blood oozed from his mouth and darkened his teeth. He struggled to raise his forearm, and the skin
made a sticky popping sound as it pulled free from
the resin.

"Eliz—Elizabeth. Please. Help. I can't . . . move." He hit the boat hull with his open palm. "Elizabeth!"

The men had just laid down a new layer of glass, and the resin was drying. Brownish red, sticky, glis
tening like an open wound. Within an hour or so it would be completely set. They would have to tear
Ted loose to get him out of there. The thought made fire leap across her skin.

"Help me. Help. Please."

Liz went down the ladder and sat huddled in a
ball on the concrete floor. She pressed her hands over her ears. If he would only shut up. The guard would
be along soon, and Ted would tell. He would tell
everything. His hand was beating slowly on the hull.
Thud. Thud.
She got up and ran from one place to another, looking for a bar, a rod, a two-by-four. Something heavy. They would say his head cracked
on the gunwale.

"Be quiet. Be quiet, damn you."

The moans diminished in volume as she ran far
ther down the line of boats. The carpenters had been working in one of them. She opened a tool chest and found a twenty-ounce claw hammer. She tested its
weight, her fingers tight on the rubber grip. She
thought she could reach him. If she leaned down,
she could reach him. How many blows would it
take? But it would be obvious. A hammer. And what if she dropped it? Her fingerprints—

"Somebody! Somebody, help. Please."

His voice was getting stronger, and it echoed on
the high walls.