"The communists! Here in Miami the FBI arrested ten spies of the regime, but there are more, many more. Where is my grandson?"
"He's ... having a breakfast meeting at the mayor's house." Gail glanced at the nurse, who lifted a shoulder in a shrug.
"Yes, I remember." Pedrosa smiled at her. "Que linda eres. Mi nieta. May I call you my granddaughter? You are very pretty there on the balcón."
He took another step backward and stumbled. Gail gasped. He tottered and stretched out his arm for balance, catching himself on his cane. Leaning on it, he slowly bent over to retrieve his straw hat.
"You really should sit in your chair."
"To hell with the chair. The bricks are loose." He turned around. "Manolo!" He yelled at him to forget about the bush, come fix the walkway immediately. The gardener dropped the clippers and came to see about the bricks.
Pedrosa fanned his face with the hat. "¿Dónde está Anthony? Ah! He's in a meeting with the mayor." He smiled apologetically at Gail and dropped his hat back onto his head. "Forgive me for deserting you. I have much work to do." He went to stand over Manolo to supervise the adjustment of the offending brick.
Gail wondered if she should find Nena or Aunt Graciela and tell them that Ernesto was not himself today. But the nurse was on hand, and the old man occasionally took these mental detours. In any event, the women were busy decorating the house with red, white, and blue banners and balloons before the rest of the family arrived.
She heard her telephone ring and went back inside to pick it up from the dresser. The male voice on the other end said, "Ms. Connor? This is Michael Novick. I thought I'd find you in today. I hope I'm not disturbing you."
"No, please. It's all right. Is there a problem?"
"Could you drop by the station early Monday? There are a couple of things I wanted to discuss with you."
"About Charlie Jenkins? What is it?"
"A couple of things I noticed. I can't talk now. I was just on my way out."
"Don't tell me that, then make me wait till Monday," she said. "Karen is coming back tomorrow. Should I leave her with her grandparents?"
"Are you busy right now?" he asked.
"No."
"Do you have time to meet me for coffee?"
On the western edge of Coral Gables, where green and shady streets became a sunburned collection of strip shopping centers and small stucco houses, there was a drugstore from the fifties that still had a counter with rotating stools covered in red vinyl. The radio was tuned to the oldies station, and the wall was decorated with an airbrushed painting of a gleaming '57 Chevy coupe. Elvis portraits were prominent.
Gail got there first and ordered iced tea. Detective Novick arrived ten minutes later in shorts, sneakers, and a T-shirt with a leaping swordfish on the front. She didn't recognize him until he unclipped his sunglasses from his regular frames and walked toward the booth where she was sitting. He wasn't wearing a gun, but his short haircut said cop. He sat across from her. The waitress came over with a coffeepot, and he ordered breakfast.
When she was gone, Gail said, "I'm grateful for your time."
"No problem. I live down the street."
Over his coffee Novick recounted the evidence so far, then said, "We didn't find anything at the scene to suggest that Charlie Jenkins did not commit suicide, let me say that right away. However, any unwitnessed, violent death is open to interpretation; otherwise defense lawyers would be out of a job. Like the Simpson case. You start poking at the small inconsistencies, you start wondering, even though common sense tells you what the answer is. With your case the answer is, Jenkins was behind the harassment and he shot himself. If you make a list of all the evidence that he did do it, and put it on this side"—Novick held his hands like a balance scale, letting his left hand sink to the table— "and you put issues you can't resolve on the other, then the evidence far outweighs the anomalies."
"I know the evidence," Gail said. "What are the anomalies?"
"First—and this isn't in any kind of order—there are the questions that you asked on the phone. Do his actions at the scene match his harassment of you? Second, the sexual connotations. Sex was obvious in the way he died, but absent in the calls, the vandalism, and particularly in what he did with the photos of Karen."
"You brought that up before," Gail said. "When I saw the photos, you asked if I saw anything sexual in them, and I didn't."
"The medical examiner found no semen on your daughter's underwear, but it could be that Jenkins was unable to climax, or that he wasn't even trying to. There are reasonable explanations, just as there could be a reason he mailed you the head of the cat. You could devise a theory how he found the name and address of your fiancé’s law partner and how he knew the name of your deceased sister. But then there's the florist. My partner called last week, wanting to know who placed the order for the roses that were delivered to your office. The manager finally called back yesterday. They can't find any record of flowers being sent to you at that address, and no record of anyone named Renee placing an order."
Gail frowned. "Does that mean they can't find it or that there wasn't one?"
"Well, there could be several explanations." Novick sipped his coffee. "Their record keeping is bad. Someone stole one of their envelopes. Or Jenkins had the flowers sent to his address under another name."
Gail was shaking her head. "They were delivered to me."
"Did you see who brought them?"
"No, but my receptionist did."
"Maybe she can describe the man she saw."
"If it had been Charlie Jenkins," Gail said, "she would have recognized him."
"Here's a theory: It was a friend of Jenkins, doing him a favor."
"Well, it's a theory."
The waitress appeared. Novick took his arms off the table to make room for the plate. "Here you go, hon, two sunny side up with hash browns and bacon. Miss, are you sure you don't want anything?"
"No, I'm fine, thanks. Maybe some more tea."
Novick reached for the salt and pepper. "I have a question on another subject, if you don't mind." Gail asked him what it was. "It's about Wendell Sweet."
"Are you handling that now?"
"We stay up on each other's cases when possible, and this one interests me because his wife is your client." He tapped pepper onto the eggs. Gail averted her face from the glistening yolks staring back at her.
"What do you want to know?" she asked.
"Ricardo Molina's name came up at Mrs. Sweet's house. Garcia, who is the lead detective on the case, told me that Mr. Quintana mentioned that name as a possible suspect. Do you recall that?"
"No, I might have been in the kitchen with Jamie at the time."
With his fork Novick dragged a piece of toast through the eggs. Gail's stomach lurched, and she concentrated on the little boomerang shapes in the laminate on the tabletop. Novick said, "We don't think Molina's organization did it. This wasn't Molina's kind of transaction. He deals in multiple hundreds of kilos, not a few sold out the back of a car in a gym bag. We don't know who did it. In fact, we can't link Wendell Sweet to any dopers. He wasn't even on our radar screen."
"Someone made it look like a drug deal," Gail said.
"It's been suggested." Novick forked some hash browns. "The day you were at the station looking at the color copies, you asked me about Wendell Sweet. Then you asked about Hector Mesa. Last week you asked me about Ricardo Molina." Novick gazed across the table at her through his glasses. Gail said, "And?"
"And you might want to tell me if there's a connection here we could have overlooked."
"If there is, I don't know about it."
He had an odd way of looking at a person, Gail thought. He didn't blink, but he didn't stare either. His brown eyes were neither accusatory nor suspicious. They were patient.
"Detective Garcia says that Mr. Quintana came over to Mrs. Sweet's house after a phone call from Harry Lasko, who had spent the night at the house—"
"They aren't intimate," Gail sa
id. "Jamie and Harry are close friends."
"Friends, then. And Mr. Quintana is, I believe, an associate of Hector Mesa—"
"No. Mesa is an associate, or employee, or friend, of Ernesto Pedrosa, Anthony's grandfather."
That brought a slight nod. "I think I heard that Mesa is employed by Mr. Quintana's law firm."
Gail reluctantly said, "This is true. He's a courier. What is the point?"
"There isn't one. I just have these names—Lasko, Quintana, Sweet, Mesa, Molina—and I stack them up and turn them around one way or the other, seeing what fits."
"The other night you said not much of anything fits."
"But sometimes they do. Garcia went to talk to Hector Mesa, but he's out of the country. His wife said he left Monday, but the neighbor says Hector was around on Tuesday. Wendell Sweet was killed Tuesday night."
"Why are you telling me this?"
"Why? Because I thought you were the kind of person who's intrigued by anomalies."
"Oh, I am." Gail looked back at him. "Did you invite me for coffee so I could ask you about Charlie Jenkins, or so you could ask me about Wendell Sweet?"
He smiled. "It could have been both."
"You don't really expect me to speculate on anything having to do with my fiance, do you? Or his clients? Or people he knows?"
"I suppose not. That's all right. There's nothing wrong with loyalty."
She realized that Detective Novick assumed she was protecting someone. "I'm not sure I like the way you put that," she said.
He spread his hands, a mute apology.
Gail said, "So. Do I bring Karen back tomorrow or not?"
As before, he took his time answering. "If she were my daughter ... I probably would. But this time I'd be careful with my keys."
The musicians from Jamaica, three men in bright pink shirts, were setting their steel drums on stands under the palm-frond hut. Gail had driven under a banner at the entrance to the parking lot announcing that they would play for the festivities at the Old Island Club. The restaurant was not open yet, but one of the cooks was loading charcoal into the split-barrel barbecue grill in the side yard.
Gail saw Dave carrying one end of a long wooden picnic table. He and the waiter on the other end maneuvered it into the shade of a coconut palm. Dave dusted his hands and nodded at Gail.
She said, "I'm here to collect the other half of my beer."
Dave sent the waiter for one Red Stripe and two mugs. He and Gail sat down at an umbrella table on the deck. A parade of sailboats and motor yachts moved out of the marina, and sunlight glittered like broken glass.
"This ought to be some party," she said.
"See that barbecue grill? And the beer kegs? Totally illegal. No city permit." Dave laughed. "What the hell. One final blow-out for the staff. They deserve it. They've worked hard for me. But . . . it's over. Next week I'm handing the keys to the bank." His smile faded as he looked at Gail, who sat on the bench beside him. "The deal with Marriott is dead."
"I didn't have much hope for it," she said.
"Their lawyer told me yesterday. I don't know how I'm going to pay you back."
"Don't worry about it for now. I'm all right." Gail folded her sunglasses and set them on the table. "Do you have any idea what happened?"
"Nope. They were hot for the idea a week ago, and all of a sudden they backed off. Barlow admitted he can't get a clear answer. I thought of suing them, but I have no money for a lawyer, and like you said, there's all that fine print in the contract."
"Do they want the eighty thousand back that they gave you?"
Laughing, Dave made a gesture of defiance—fist up, other palm on his bicep. "Good luck, guys. Stand in line."
The waiter brought the beer, and Dave poured half into Gail's mug, the rest into his. "Cheers." Behind them the Jamaicans started to play around on the steel drums—bell-like music chiming in scraps of melody, pattering like rain.
"I'll stick around till about four, then split for Del-ray Beach. My manager can handle the party tonight. I ought to be here, but to be honest with you, I don't have the heart."
Gail said, "Let me tell you about the conversation I just had with Michael Novick. I talked to him because I had to know if we should bring Karen home yet. Some of the things he had said on Wednesday night bothered me. Today I don't feel much better about it."
She told Dave what they had discussed—the evidence and the oddities. He listened without comment, but a skeptical frown appeared. He finished his beer.
"I don't know what to do, Dave. I'm nervous about this."
"Sure, anybody would be if they'd seen what you saw—walking into Karen's room, that pervert lying there with his brains blown out. Novick is making too much out of this. No, I say Karen's coming home. I wouldn't bring her back if I thought she was in danger, I swear to God. She wants to come home, and I want the time with her." He added, "I'm leaving Miami."
"You are? Where are you going?"
"I have a job on St. John, managing a restaurant at a resort in Cruz Bay. It pays pretty well. A friend of a friend called me about it. I don't know the guy, but he heard about me and they needed someone, and there it is."
"St. John. That's so far away."
"I have nothing here, Gail. My credit is shot to hell. Down there I get a place to stay. I don't need a car. It's a decent life, no stress, no traffic, no hassles. The drawback is, I won't see Karen as much. And that's hard. That is very hard. We had these big plans, Karen and me, going around to see all the Island Clubs. She was so excited. I heard her bragging about it to the kids in the building. I don't know what the hell to say to her."
"When are you leaving?"
"In a couple of weeks. When the rent on my apartment runs out. Say, you wouldn't like a good deal on a big-screen TV, would you?"
Sensing someone's presence, Gail looked around.
The dark-haired waitress with the short shorts— Vicki—was pretending Gail wasn't there. "Dave? The liquor distributor needs to talk to you about the order for the party."
"Tell Pete to handle it."
"He's not here yet."
"Then you do it." Dave held out his arm. "I grant you my authority and permission to sign my name to whatever order for however much he will give us. Go for it."
Vicki's eyes shifted to the restaurant, then back at Dave. "Okay."
"And bring us a couple more beers. Gail? You want one?"
"Why not?"
"Now all we need is the steel drum version of 'Nearer My God to Thee.' " He gave Vicki the empty bottle of Red Stripe. "Go see if they know that tune."
"Oh, come on." With a roll of her eyes, Vicki left.
"Does she know you're leaving?"
"No one does yet. I guess I don't want to believe it myself. I wish you and Karen were going with me. Why don't we do that? Let's all run away to St. John." He took her hand and held it to his cheek. "You know, Gail, we came close. We almost made it, didn't we?" His face emptied, and he looked out toward the bay. He seemed to struggle for words, then said, "I've got a lot of nerve to ask you this. I'd like to bring Karen down there for a week before school starts, but I don't have enough right now for the airline ticket. You think you could lend me the money? I could pay you back. I mean, three or four hundred bucks is not impossible." His eyes closed. "I'm so sorry, Gail. So damned sorry."
The party at the Pedrosa house started around three o'clock and would proceed at seven to the Biltmore Hotel, everyone bringing lawn chairs, blankets, and coolers, to sit on the grass and listen to the military band, after which they would enjoy the fireworks display put on by the city. Then home again for more food and a live salsa band. Elena told Gail, as they stood in line for hamburgers, that every year the decorations were more elaborate and the house more crowded. Rows of American and Cuban flags waved from stanchions in the driveway. Every politician in the county dropped in. Family and friends clogged the hallways and poured onto the grounds. There was a carousel for the little ones and a magic act at four
in the living room. Folding chairs had been put in rows, and every one was filled.
Around five o'clock Gail went upstairs to find something for her headache. She lay down on the bed, but teenagers below her window had a boom box playing Spanish rap music. Ernesto had spent most of the afternoon napping, so by default Anthony had been playing host. Gail had not seen much of him, except for the times he had introduced her to this person or that. Mi novia. Encantada. Where are you going on your honeymoon? The lake district of Italy, a cottage on a mountain. How romantic.
The air conditioning drifted out onto the terrace, keeping it less torrid than the rest of the yard. People ate at picnic tables with checkered cloths, and the caterers cleaned up behind them. Somebody set off a firecracker, frightening the babies. A radio was tuned to old Spanish ballads, and another played hip-hop.
Wandering back downstairs, Gail spotted Ernesto Pedrosa in his wheelchair across the yard by the goldfish pond. He and some of the younger children were tossing bits of food into the water. He had changed his straw hat for an exquisite white Panama, and an American flag had been stuck at a jaunty angle in the ribbon around the crown.
Gail stood beside his chair. "Are you enjoying the party?"
"I always enjoy parties."
He held out a crust to a toddler, a little girl in a bright red dress. The girl grabbed for the bread, but Pedrosa pulled it away. She shrieked and stamped her feet up and down. He relented and let her have the bread, then chuckled when she ate it instead of throwing it to the fish.
Gail sat on the low, ferny wall of the pond. When the bread ran out, Pedrosa held his hands open to show the children there was nothing left. "Más. Buscan más." They ran off to find more. Gail stood up and grasped the handles of his chair.
"Where are we going?"
"For a little walk." She wheeled him along the brick walkway. People smiled and said hello, and he lifted his hand like a monarch in a carriage. She stopped around the corner of the guest house and sat down on a shady bench beside him.
"I heard a story about Hector Mesa—his devotion to this family. Your son, Tomás, was captured in the invasion at Playa Girón. When they questioned him, all he would say was viva Cuba libre. One of the Cuban soldiers cut out his tongue and beat him to death. Many years later Hector Mesa brought you that same soldier's tongue in a box. Is this true?"
Suspicion of Betrayal Page 31