Gaby knew her “Grace Kelly look” was, at the moment, a sweat-shiny face surrounded by long blond hair that had been exposed for too long to the furnacelike breeze sweeping across Biscayne Bay. “Please, Crissette, I’m working! Now,” she said, looking around, “how do I find the chairwoman of this event?”
“He heads up the family import business,” the other woman persisted, “races a whole stable of power cruisers, wears great clothes—”
“I’ve got enough problems,” Gaby interrupted her, “trying to learn this newspaper job without gorgeous hunks with”—she looked for the coppery men in sunglasses and pastel suits—”sinister friends.”
“Hey, he likes it when you stand up,” Crissette said, unperturbed. “You’ve got a sexy figure, Gabrielle. You just don’t show it off in those clothes.”
The man by the lily pond was standing perfectly still. Without looking in his direction Gaby could feel the impact of his darkly glittering look. She gathered up her purse and stuck her notebook under her elbow, feeling irritated. “Just tell me where you think I can find the chairwoman.”
“Try the main house. I think half this crowd’s gone up to the ladies’ room. Who are you supposed to be looking for?”
Gaby tried not to look in the direction of the lily pond as Crissette began taking the man’s picture again. “Alicia Fernandez y Altamurez,” she said, consulting a scrap of paper. “At least that’s what it says on the press release.”
The main house was nestled in a setting of sculpted lawns and palm trees, a multimillion dollar example of the new-old art deco style that was being publicized as Miami’s own historic look. Smooth white concrete walls and plate glass shone through the tropical greenery, surrounded by an untouched jungle of native palmetto. A decade ago, when Gaby was still in high school, all that had been down this way south of Miami were mangrove swamps and a few mullet fishermen.
A path led through royal and queen palms and flowering oleanders, ending at an asphalt parking lot. Two women in dark-colored silk dresses, wearing almost identical Givenchy toques with fancy nose veils, strolled around a turn of the white shell driveway. A uniformed chauffeur, who had been sitting in a black stretch Mercedes limousine reading a newspaper, immediately discarded the paper, jumped out, and opened the door for them.
Gaby stared at the slender, beautifully dressed women with as much curiosity as they stared back at her. Their large dark eyes, enormous in their heavily made-up, expressionless faces, looked over her rumpled linen jacket, khaki skirt, and low-heeled sandals with the avid, baffled intensity wealthy Latin women reserved for what they regarded as Anglos’ astonishingly ugly clothes.
Gaby was aware Coral Gables was now full of wealthy Latins, some of them multimillionaires, but she hadn’t forgotten the poverty-stricken Cuban exiles of her childhood. Then, one of Havana’s leading neurosurgeons had a job mowing the lawns at the Miami Beach Country Club. A university professor drove a Hialeah taxicab. And the convent-bred society women, once queens of sugar plantations and palatial town houses in Havana, worked as cleaning women or dressmakers. Times had certainly changed. Looking at the elegant women Gaby knew their diamonds were real by the shooting sparks of fire in the bright sunlight. So, apparently, was the heavy string of matched pearls the younger woman was wearing.
She gave them a tentative smile. “I’m looking for Mrs. Fernandez y Altamurez. Could you tell me if this is the way to the main house?”
One woman said something to the other in Spanish, then with a shrug stepped into the huge black limousine. The second woman followed her. The chauffeur slid into the front seat and started the engine.
Gaby realized she’d used the wrong language. “Donde está el enfrente de la casa?”
She was fluent in Italian, but her high school Spanish was not great. It was apparently understandable, though, for a hand, decorated with heavy gold rings set with rubies and emeralds, came out of the limousine’s back window and pointed. That way.
Before she could acknowledge the help—if it was help—the Mercedes slowly drove forward and disappeared under the trees.
Alicia Fernandez y Altamurez, the chairwoman of the Hispanic Cultural Society’s fashion show, was waiting in a long line of women outside one of the downstairs bathrooms. Gaby interviewed her on the spot as the queue inched forward to the accompaniment of toilets flushing. The hallway where they stood was enclosed on one side by a white stucco art deco cloister. The sun-drenched cactus garden featured a stainless steel abstract sculpture that had recently been photographed for Architectural Digest.
Alicia Fernandez was a member of Miami’s longtime pre-Castro Cuban community. The Fernandez family were sixth-generation Floridians. Mrs. Fernandez y Altamurez spoke English with a southern accent, had graduated from Smith College cum laude, and thought she knew Gaby.
“Which Collier are you, dear?” she asked interestedly. “The Miami Shores Colliers or the William Colliers of old Pine View Avenue? A Collier girl went to Ransom Country Day School with my daughter Susan. Was that you?”
“Palm Island,” Gaby murmured. She didn’t miss the quick, perceptive flicker in Mrs. Fernandez’s eyes. Most of Old Miami remembered the extravagant, high-living Palm Island Colliers very well. “I did go to Ransom Country Day School, but only as far as the fifth grade.” If Alicia Fernandez really knew her family, she also knew that would have been about the time Paul Collier had lost most of his money.
To cut short any further conversation about her family, Gaby pushed on with her interview questions. Alicia Fernandez graciously agreed that the crowd was big, that everyone seemed to love the clothes from Neiman-Marcus, and that the Coral Gables Hispanic Cultural Society had made a lot of money. She did not comment on the model’s falling into the lily pond, and Gaby didn’t bring it up.
“Darling, you are Paul Collier’s daughter, Gabrielle, aren’t you?” the other woman asked. “I remember your grandfather’s beautiful house. They used to have such magnificent parties there. I read about them all the time in the papers.” There was something in Mrs. Fernandez’s voice that said she wanted to be reassured that things were better for the Palm Island Colliers than she’d heard. “Haven’t you been traveling in Europe?”
Gaby didn’t look up from her legal pad. My father is dead, and Mother is a drunk, some perverse inner voice answered, as nearly all of Old Miami well knows. The money is gone and the house is falling down. That’s why I’m back.
Aloud Gaby only said, “I was working in Florence, doing art research for a professor who was writing a book. It was a job I got my junior year at college.”
“Ah, Italy.” Mrs. Fernandez smiled her disarming smile. “I went to Venice and Rome on my honeymoon.” She gave Gaby an impulsive pat on her arm. “You’re such a pretty girl, Gabrielle. Did you leave a few heartbroken Italians behind?”
Gaby knew it was her own fault she froze up when people remembered her family. “Italian men are looking for rich American women,” she said stiffly, “not poor ones.”
Alicia Fernandez looked momentarily disconcerted. Then she covered it by saying, “Working for a professor, it sounds wonderful! And to be in Italy ... I’m afraid Miami’s going to be so different for you.” She paused. “Life here has changed so, Gabrielle, it’s difficult to explain. People have always come to Miami to act a little crazy and have a good time. After all, it’s a resort town. But now, I swear, it’s surreal! Life in Miami is like one of those music videos kids watch on television.” She lowered her voice. “Did you see what happened today?”
So Crissette wasn’t the only one who’d spotted the model’s real trouble, Gaby thought, feeling uneasy. “I’ve got to be going, Mrs. Fernandez. I hope you’ll excuse me. This is only my third week at the Times-Journal and I’m still learning my job.”
The other woman held her arm. “Darling, I did know your mother and father, a long time ago. I’m sure you went to school with my daughter. Susan goes with such a nice young crowd in Miami. If we can be of any help...”
“Thank you, that’s very kind of you.” Gaby only wanted to get away. “I’ll let you know,” she promised, and fled.
Gaby reminded herself as she walked down the side path through the palm trees that meeting people who remembered her family was going to happen all the time now that she was back. It was one of the hazards of trying to live down the past. Also, dissipated fortunes were nothing new in Miami; it was her own attitude she had to work on. Especially if she was going to keep the Times-Journal job she needed so desperately. She went over the questions she’d asked Alicia Fernandez, worrying whether there was enough interest to make the story the features editor wanted.
She was still agonizing over the interview when she gradually came to a stop in a clump of mangroves at the edge of Biscayne Bay. “Oh damn.” She sighed, rubbing her perspiring upper lip with the back of her hand. She had no idea where she was.
She could still hear salsa music and the noise of the crowd, but somehow the sandy path had turned into black Florida mud. She rested an arm against a fishtail palm and scraped the sole of one sandal against the other, trying to get rid of it.
There were people, Gaby knew, who regarded the opportunity to live and work in glamorous sun-drenched Miami, the city one saw and thrilled to in travel posters and on television, as a lifetime dream come true. In fact, her coworkers in Florence had said as much when she left.
The trouble was, Gaby was the last person on earth to appreciate what was glamorous or exciting. She’d always known she would have been much happier somewhere else—anywhere else. Running away to Europe without even finishing college had been one kind of solution.
Slowly, she picked her way back through the woods in the direction of the voices and music, pushing mangrove limbs and trailing vines out of the way. After a few minutes she came out onto slightly higher ground. She knew she had to reach the end eventually. After all, how long could anybody be lost on an estate in Coral Gables?
She found herself at the edge of a small clearing where the yellow sunlight filtered through the canopy of palm leaves. She wouldn’t have expected to find anything back there in the garden’s overgrown, untended wilderness, so she was shocked to see some fifty feet away, illuminated in a stray shaft of tropical sunlight, a tall man in a white suit standing with his right arm extended. In front of him, down on one knee, a figure in a beige-and-pink suit and mirror sunglasses pressed his lips to the back of the other man’s hand. The figures were poised in the bright Florida sun in the attitudes of one doing homage to the aristocratic “patron” for some favor.
Or closing a deal.
Gaby stepped quickly back among the mangroves.
It was impossible not to recognize the man in the magnificent white suit—that dark, curling hair, the hard-boned features, that air of hair-trigger energy. It was the same man who had dragged the model out of the pool. James Santo Marin.
The damp mold under her feet gave soundlessly as Gaby moved back another step.
She’d only seen the kneeling man’s back, but she knew the flashy pastel jacket. One of Crissette’s sinister Colombians.
Gaby felt as though she couldn’t breathe. It was stupid to be virtually paralyzed by irrational fright, when actually nothing had happened. Still, she turned and lurched away from the clearing into the woods, stumbling over the snakelike roots of the mangroves. An unseen vine caught her across the neck and she jerked up short.
What was she running from, anyway? she wondered frantically. Two men in the woods? Who hadn’t even seen her?
She found she couldn’t stop. She crashed through a tangled growth of flame vines and ruby red ixora. Then her feet slipped on something. She skidded, stopped, her nerves screaming, and looked down.
For a moment Gaby stared at the ground. She told herself she didn’t believe what she saw there.
Crissette was waiting at the press table, her cameras packed into her bag. “What happened to you?” she asked when Gaby appeared. “Jeez, Gabrielle, you’re all muddy! Where have you been?”
Gaby could only shiver. “I got lost.”
The words were totally inadequate, and she almost giggled as she leaned against the table. If she weren’t so breathless and shaken it would be funny. She’d gotten lost, but that wasn’t the half of it!
The Latin band was still going strong. With bongos clicking, trumpets blaring, it was playing a popular Dominican merengue. The members and guests of the Hispanic Cultural Society stood in chattering groups, making the most of the long pause before the fashion show resumed. Down the grassy slopes of the back terraces of the Santo Marin gardens, beyond the fringe of royal palms at the edge of Biscayne Bay, the magnificent yacht still rode at anchor. Reflected in the turquoise water and with the mirrored towers of downtown Miami behind it, it looked like a full-color photograph from a travel magazine.
It was all so reassuring, so different from what she’d blundered into in the mangrove jungle, that for a moment Gaby doubted her senses. “Crissette,” she managed to say, “you won’t believe this, but I think I just saw a drug deal being closed.” She wanted desperately to sit down for a moment and catch her breath, but they were on deadline. They were probably already due back at the newspaper. “Over there.” She nodded in the direction of the mangroves.
Crissette picked up her camera bag and slung it over her shoulder. Her designer jeans were wet, as were her elegant gold sandals. She was not in a receptive mood. “I think the sun’s getting to you, Gabrielle,” she snapped, “because you’re seeing things. Maybe you ought to start wearing a hat.”
“Not only that.” Gaby felt like an idiot, wanting to laugh because the whole thing was so incredible. She’d really been scared out of her wits. “You won’t believe this, but while I was back there I stepped into a puddle of blood that looked like somebody had just been murdered!”
Chapter 2
The old Collier house, built by Gaby’s grandfather with the fortune he’d amassed on the New York Stock Exchange, was typical of the 1920’s Florida real estate boom that had so altered the face of the state.
Palm Island, off the causeway that linked the island of Miami Beach with the city of Miami, was developed for wealthy residents like Bertram Collier, who wanted a unique man-made environment in Biscayne Bay since nature hadn’t supplied one. Earth and rubble were dumped in the bay to form Palm Island, then planted with avenues of royal palms, hibiscus, and flaming bougainvillea, and tall hedges of oleanders that guaranteed its residents’ privacy. Palm Island architecture was rigidly zoned. Most homes were built in an approved, grandiose style known locally as “Spanish hacienda.” Pink and beige stucco turrets, walled gardens, a lavish use of balconies, and long driveways curving through palm-filled vistas made Palm Island a tropical delight. But in the 1950’s all of that changed.
Although Miami had thrived in the forties, a decade later a crackdown on Miami’s illegal gambling sent tourists, along with the famous Rat Pack, the mob, Hollywood stars, and café society on to more exciting places like Las Vegas and Monte. Carlo. Palm Island, like the rest of Miami, entered the long twilight of the sixties and seventies. Many of the beautiful old Spanish haciendas on Palm Island’s Royal Palm Way were vacant and for sale, their owners having either died or migrated to trendy condominiums north of Bal Harbour. The little island became shabby, like the rest of the city.
The Collier house had needed repairs badly when Gaby left for Italy. It was even more dilapidated when she returned. Although most of the old mansions on the island were being remodeled and resold at fabulous prices, the Colliers’ three-story—including a Moorish tower—Spanish hacienda stood decaying on two acres of overgrown tropical garden, surrounded by a high stucco wall that hid it almost completely from passersby.
Gaby hadn’t remembered how sweltering the old house could be in August and September. The upstairs bedrooms had been designed with windows facing the bay to catch any breeze at night, and were fairly comfortable. But the only place downstairs that ever offered any coolne
ss, especially for dinner, was the sun porch with its old-fashioned louvered glass panels that opened onto the back lawn, the boat dock, and the open waters of Biscayne Bay.
At nine o’clock, the bay lay black and mirror-smooth in the breathless dark, even though a blot of lightning-racked clouds rose over North Miami. There was an occasional pregnant roll of thunder, but the storm was too far away to stir even the faintest breeze.
Jeannette Collier lifted the old chrome cocktail shaker by her plate, refilled her martini glass, and took an unsteady sip. “I just can’t force myself to eat,” she complained, “when it’s hot like this. I swear, if I put anything in my stomach now it will only make me sick.”
Gaby looked down at the salad and spaghetti she’d hurriedly put together when Dodd Brickell had called to say he’d be there for dinner. She had to admit spaghetti with mushroom sauce out of a jar wasn’t one of her better efforts.
“You don’t have to force yourself to eat, Mother,” she said with more patience than she felt.
Jeannette sighed gustily. “God, it’s certainly not like old times, is it?” The complaint was familiar. So was her gesture of pushing her plate away with distaste. She was wearing an old purple muumuu stained with makeup. Her gray-blond hair was uncombed, held back by Mexican tortoise shell mantilla combs, a souvenir from a long-ago trip to Acapulco. “Dodd, darling,” she said to the man opposite her, “remember the parties we used to have right out here? Do you remember how we used to have hundreds and hundreds of guests? And everybody used to go out to dance on the back lawn?”
Gaby handed Dodd the silver bread basket. “Dodd doesn’t remember, Mother.” Silently, she thanked heaven that Dodd Brickell was an old family friend. They didn’t have to keep up the pretense that it was the heat that affected her mother’s appetite, rather than Jeannette’s day-long consumption of booze. “All your parties were back in the fifties,” Gaby reminded her, “and Dodd and I weren’t even born then.”
Miami Midnight Page 2