The Queen of Miami

by Heidi Lowe

  “Not much.” Corman shrugged. He snatched up a file off his desk, flipped it open. “Coroner's report says there was some bruising on his arms and neck, which suggests there was a struggle. The water in his lungs suggests he drowned, though due to the fact that the water would have entered his lungs anyway, there's no conclusive evidence that he did in fact drown.”

  “You mean he could have been killed somewhere else and thrown into the pool?” Layke questioned. “So he could have been, say, suffocated and then dumped here to make it look like an everyday drowning?”

  Corman nodded. “Could be. Coroner puts the time of death between nine p.m. and one a.m.”

  Velazquez read from her own file. “No sign of forced entry, or a struggle anywhere in the house. The wife did say the front gate was open when she came back. That was how she knew something was wrong.”

  “What about security cameras?” Layke asked.

  Velazquez shook her head. “The guy didn't believe in them, apparently. Thought they could be used against him. Ironic, isn't it?” She snorted a laugh.

  “Did we get any fingerprints off the gate, or anything?” she asked, losing hope fast. Although she hadn't been a detective very long, she'd been a cop for nearly one third of her life, and in that time she'd come to realize that, no matter what the crime was, someone always left evidence. A clue. The trouble was finding it, or ascertaining whether or not it was a piece of evidence. That was where your smarts came in to play.

  “Gate was clean,” Corman said. “There were a couple of footprints around the pool, looked like someone had trampled in mud. We're thinking the killer came in over the fence.”

  She looked through the file, checked over the pictures of the crime scene. There was Eddie Ambrisi lying face down in his favorite pair of swimming trunks – the multicolored ones she and Velazquez had seen him in when they'd visited. If it wasn't for the bruising, there would have been no evidence of foul play at all, and even the bruising wasn't conclusive. He could have been doing anything before deciding to go for a swim.

  “I don't get it,” she said after a while. “It looks like a normal accident, well, mostly. So why do you think it was suspicious?”

  “The bruising, the open gate, and his wife's insistence that he was an excellent swimmer. Used to compete nationally when he was a kid.”

  “But even seasoned swimmers drown. Doesn't happen often, but it's not unheard of.”

  “But in his own pool?” Velazquez said skeptically. “There was nothing to suggest he suffered a heart attack, or anything like that. Don't you think that's suspicious?”

  Only when she had to admit that, yes, she did believe something shady had gone down, did she realize just how much she'd wanted it to be an accident. If it had been an accident, she wouldn't have to point fingers. If it had been an accident, she would have no reason to doubt Willa. But, alas, the creeping doubt started up again.

  “Who do you guys like for this?”

  “One guess,” Corman said.

  She swallowed. “The di Blasios?” Did she even need to ask?

  “Yup.” His shit-eating grin reappeared. “I'm thinking, Ambrisi's sore about the warehouse incident, goes after the sister and one of their men, and they go after Ambrisi.”

  “Yeah, that's my theory too,” Velazquez said. “We suspected the Italians were behind the shooting at the park, and this basically confirms it.”

  Layke nodded slowly but said nothing. It was all circumstantial, but it was the only thing that truly made sense. Away from Willa's eyes that were silently begging her to trust them, to trust her, she could finally see logic again. And boy was it blinding.

  From the moment she opened the front door and saw Dustin waiting in her living room, she knew something was wrong. An open bottle of wine stood on the coffee table in front of him, half its contents already depleted. He wasn't a big wine drinker, preferring something a little stronger (and, Layke suspected, less girly); but wine was all she had in the house.

  “Dustin, what are you doing here?” she asked, tossing her keys onto the coffee table.

  His hair had lost its usual sheen, seemed relatively untidy for someone like Dustin, who always made the effort to keep it neat. Stressful day at the office? No, it was something else.

  “Do I need an excuse to visit my fiancee?” he asked, his tone acerbic, unfriendly.

  She blinked at him, slightly taken aback by the sharp tone. “No, but–”

  “How was your trip?” His gaze was focused on his glass as he gulped down the drink. He didn't let her answer. “You did go on a trip, didn't you?”

  One of her parents must have told him, or maybe he'd called the station to find out if anyone had seen her. Either way, she hadn't been the one to tell him, and it didn't look very good for her.

  “I did, and it was fine. I just needed to get away from it all,” she answered, trying for casual.

  “Where did you go?”

  “Just out of town. Nowhere special.”

  “Miss me?” He put his glass down then reached out a hand to her. She looked at it as if there were spikes on it. “Come, sit down, get off your feet. You must be tired from work. I know you're a busy gal.”

  He was making her nervous. “It's fine, I'm good where I am.”

  “Sit down, Layke,” his voice boomed.

  She sat down as far away from him as possible, but he slid closer to her. “Did you miss me?”

  She nodded, fear mounting. “Yes.”

  “I missed you. You know what else I missed?” His finger traced a line across her chest, where her blouse was open. “This. Your body.” He started to undo the next button down.

  That was when the real panic set in.

  “Dustin, what are you doing?” she asked, pushing his hand away, only to watch it return, watch both hands fiddle with the buttons on her blouse.

  “When you commit to marry someone, it means you give yourself to them.” Before Layke knew it he was tearing at her blouse, had straddled her and was kissing her neck and face.

  “Get the hell off me. Stop it, you're hurting me!” she screamed, struggling under his weight, for the first time feeling powerless against him. She didn't know he had this kind of strength. Had the wine made him superhuman, or was it driven by anger?

  “It does not mean you keep him waiting more than seven months before you put out again!” He forced his mouth on hers, and she took her opportunity to bite his lip. He cried out in pain, and she shoved him off. If he hadn't wanted to stop, she suspected she never would have deterred him. But he stepped away, his bottom lip tinged with blood, his blond hair wild.

  “You fucking asshole!” she shouted, scrambling off the couch, distancing herself from him. It was as if she only just remembered that her gun was still holstered to her waist. She clutched onto it, her glare on him fierce.

  His eyes drifted to the gun, then he let out a bitter laugh. “You would too, wouldn't you? Your fiance tries to take what's his, you turn a gun on him. But it's a completely different story when the little di Blasio whore does it.” A cruel laugh escaped his lips when he saw the color drain from Layke's face. “You didn't think I would find out?”

  He reached for an A4 envelope from the coffee table, which Layke hadn't seen when she'd arrived, and shoved it at her. Shaking, she opened it up and removed its contents.

  “Oh my God.” As she flicked through each of the eleven pictures and then back again, she grew more horrified with every image. Snapshots of her romantic break, memories she and Willa themselves had been too afraid to capture in digital form for fear of others seeing. On the balcony when Willa first opened the door to her, greeting her with a kiss; in a quiet, isolated part of the park by the duck pond, where they'd set out to have a picnic, but had spent most of the afternoon in each other's arms, smooching; Willa leaving Layke's apartment in the middle of the night, the night she'd broken in. Their whole, sordid love affair caught on camera.

  “After I found your internet search, I paid someo
ne to follow you. Honestly, I didn't think he would find anything. I thought I was being paranoid. But you'd been acting so strangely, and I wanted to know why. Well, I got my answer.”

  “I can't believe you did this.” She felt nausea swelling in her stomach; the room began to spin around her.

  “After what you did, with this girl, you still believe you have a right to your outrage?” he spat. “How long has it been going on?”

  “I don't have to tell you anything!” she yelled back, suddenly overcome with rage. Her privacy had been violated by someone she considered to be her closest friend. She felt exposed, dirty; the cameraman might as well have been in the room snapping them while they were making love!

  “So this is the new you, the new Layke Owen? Fucking women, fucking the daughters of gangsters?”

  “Maybe it's the old me finally coming back to life. Maybe fucking women was always my destiny.” She didn't know if that were the case, but saying it to him made her feel better, because she knew that it would hurt him. “Maybe you were just a stopgap.”

  “I don't believe any of that,” he said, shaking his head vehemently. “Stopgaps don't last seven years. I think this girl, this di Blasio girl, she seduced you, made you want things you didn't want before. And you went along with it because she's new and dangerous. You craved the thrill.”

  “Stop telling me how I feel!”

  “Do your bosses know what you've been doing? I can't imagine they'd be too pleased. What about your father, huh, does he know about your depraved sexual activities?”

  “I want you to leave, right now.” She pointed a shaky finger at him, fighting back the tears that were threatening to pour out.

  “It's sick, Layke. This whole thing is sick. And you'll probably end up with a bullet in the back of your head. You know what these people are like.”

  “Get out, now!” she screamed, shoving him in the chest and not feeling him shift at all.

  “I'm going,” he said, seizing both her arms and tossing her aside. “And when it all goes to shit, because there's only one way this can end, don't you dare come crawling back to me. Just know that when she turns on you, gets her brothers to silence you, you'll be on your own. Not even your father can help you then. He knows firsthand what happens when people screw with the di Blasios. Too bad he didn't pass that knowledge and wisdom on to you.” With that he charged out of the apartment, slamming the door behind him and making the whole place shake.

  Layke crumbled to the couch in a fit of tears, letting the photos float to the floor around her. She bawled like a baby and couldn't stop herself – didn't want to stop. The worst feeling in the world was choosing a path to follow knowing it would only ever lead to destruction. She hated that Dustin was so angry with her. But more than that, she hated that he was right about everything.

  Dethroning was a long, complex endeavor that required much aforethought, much planning. Not something to be taken lightly, or to be done on a whim. As a former student of World History, and a lover of all things military, Willa knew better than most what it entailed. Only, up until now, her experience with it came from history books and war strategy guides for academia. As she sat on the wrong side of the table among her crew, her eyes were trained on her brother Trent, who had taken center stage at the head of the table. Though his place there was temporary, Willa couldn't help wondering if that would always be the case.

  “–to congratulate you all for the smooth, successful trade with the Armenians. It's been a tough road, paved with disappointment. Now we can rest assured that we've established a new, and hopefully prosperous, relationship with Bedrosian and his men.”

  The nods and moans of assent spread across the group, most of the men wearing similar prideful looks. No one could match Trent's, however. Willa had never seen him so smug, so pleased with himself. Mostly she saw him frustrated, with their father initially, and more recently with her. Sitting in the hot seat had clearly altered his outlook on life.

  “Now that Ambrisi is out of the picture, we can finally return to some normality,” he went on. Then he laughed and added, “Whatever that means around here.” Some laughed with him, as deferential acolytes are prone to do. Willa didn't laugh. “I've got a lead on a new shipment coming in at the end of the month. But in the mean time, stay focused on our legal businesses. The Feds are just looking for a reason to bust us. Let's not make it easy for them.”

  That was Willa's cue to stand up. Those were her lines. Since when was it Trent's job to decide which direction they took? But when she stood up everyone looked at her curiously, as though she had no business standing up, no business addressing them.

  Trent cocked his head to the side. “Is there something you wanted to add, Willa? I thought I pretty much covered everything.”

  That was the trouble: she had nothing else to add, and now she was standing there like a fool, fighting a battle she was destined to lose. The dethroning had officially begun. She couldn't pull rank now, not when he had come through for them where she had failed. He'd saved the day, saved their asses, by forming an alliance with the Armenians. Putting money into their pockets and ensuring they wouldn't be busted with stolen weaponry, that was the sort of move gratitude was built on. In terms of war strategy, he'd played the safest game: why fight when you could simply sit back and wait for your opponent to crumble? He hadn't had to wait long for her to show her incompetence; she'd made it easy for him.

  “We need to wrap this up,” she said, concluding that this was the most innocuous way of asserting her authority, what little she had left of it. “We need to be down at the station for questioning.”

  “Remind me again why we're doing this,” Trent said to Willa as they converged outside the Miami police department. Willa had ridden with Guy, and Trent with Noah.

  The sun blasted its rays down on them, hellbent on blinding everyone, causing them all to squint. Guy, not one to ever forget his shades, put them on, straightened out his suit, appearing as though he was about to strut down the catwalk. He looked cooler and more relaxed than his siblings, and he knew it.

  “It's better that we go to them instead of them coming to us, with a warrant,” he answered.

  “But we have nothing to hide. We didn't kill that pizza-eating piece of crap,” Trent said. “When have the di Blasios ever voluntarily spoken to the cops?”

  “When we're innocent,” Willa said impatiently. She was tired of his voice, his face, his silly little comments about the way things used to be, and his subtle insinuations about her deviating from the “done thing”. “We go in there, say we know nothing, then we leave. We can all provide alibis, can't we? Guy and I were out of town, you and Noah were together at the mansion. We just stick to that.”

  “We could have done that over the phone,” Trent said, walking ahead of them into the building.

  Willa couldn't have shared with her brothers the real reason why she'd agreed to come to the station. If she'd been given the chance she would have gone alone instead of dragging the others along. This trip was personal. She hadn't seen Layke since the day they'd said goodbye back at the motel, four days ago. She'd called a couple of times but there was no answer. She wasn't sure where they stood now. Although she didn't know how this type of thing worked, she doubted that radio silence following four days of unadulterated romance and sex was the norm.

  Layke was sitting at her desk when the four di Blasios trotted past, her eyes only focused on one of them when she peered up. Willa caught her eye and held her gaze. So that was how she looked behind her desk. Seeing her like that, staring at Willa like a deer in headlights (obviously having had no prior knowledge of the visit), brought a smile to Willa's face. She immediately thought of all the ways she could have her on that desk, with or without her coworkers watching. The whole building was brimming with interesting places she could do the good detective, and it didn't take long before her imagination got the better of her. She almost forgot what she was there for.

  They called Trent into
the interview room first, while the others waited outside.

  “I hope this doesn't take long,” Guy said, glancing at his watch. “I'm meeting with the supplier later this afternoon.”

  “So we'll reschedule if it runs over.” Willa shrugged. “Or we tell him to wait. People wait for us.” She wasn't really paying much attention. Her focus was now on Layke and her balding partner, who were approaching them.

  “Miss di Blasio, if you'd like to follow us into interview room 2,” Layke said, all business. She barely looked at Willa. No one would have guessed that they'd made love a dozen times in the past week. That they'd lain in each other's arms for hours, talking about everything from the weather to their hopes and dreams. That their love-making had been so intense, so intimate, it was as if they had become one body, one soul. But Willa understood how the game worked. If Layke ever allowed her feelings to shine through, looked at her the wrong way, everyone would see it. Not just her coworkers but Willa's brothers. There was so much at stake.

  Willa followed them into the room, took a seat without being asked. Just as before, in the hospital, Layke stood back and let her partner do the questioning. Behind him, he couldn't see her real emotions.

  “You already know why you're here, so why don't we save some time and get right to it,” Corman started. He sat down on the opposite side of the little table, slapping his notepad and pen on it.

  A self-satisfied smirk corrupted her mouth. She leaned back easily in her chair, hands behind her head. “Get right to it, huh? You're not even going to offer me a drink first? Whatever happened to foreplay, detective?” Though she said it to Corman her eyes drifted to Layke.