She thought of Anthony Quintana cartwheeling down the side of the building. She couldn't decide which was worse—the patronizing insult to her abilities or his blatant attempt at manipulation.
"You want me off this case," she said.
As if she had never replied, he went on in the same superior tone. "Of course you'd be reimbursed for your time so far, which is ... I'm guessing . . . ten hours, at a rate of ... two hundred an hour? Two-fifty?"
She nearly latighed. "You're paying me to get off the case."
"No, no. Are you listening to what I'm saying? Your inexperience could hurt both our clients."
"Oh, bullshit. You want me to go away, that's what this is about."
His even white teeth were set together. "If I may, what you should be thinking about—rather than your own injured pride—is your client."
"I am, Mr. Quintana. What if Bobby is arrested? Then what? Are you going to pay for a murder defense? How much does it cost these days? A hundred and fifty grand? Two hundred?"
He was beginning to crack around the edges. "If this is handled properly, Ms. Connor, it won't get to trial. But if it did, are you up to it?"
Her temper flared. "I didn't pass the bar exam yesterday. I have been investigating, negotiating, and trying cases for eight years, and I am not going to turn him over to some hand-picked flunkie! The only thing complicating this case is you." She pressed the heels of her hands against her forehead. "I can't stand this."
Furious, she slid the door open and went back inside, Anthony behind her. She turned on him. "Do the right thing, Anthony. Bobby is innocent, and you know it. I want a statement from Nate Harris by five o'clock Monday."
Color had flooded his cheeks. "It can't be kept quiet," he said. "It would be on CNN in twenty-four hours. Nathan Harris is a good man, a man of moral strength and intellectual courage. I will not—I promise you—allow him to be sabotaged by lies and innuendo."
Gail laughed. "Well, why don't you ask this tower of moral strength about that joint he was smoking with Bobby Gonzalez?"
Anthony stared at her.
"He didn't tell you about that, did he? Bobby went down to the water to smoke a joint, and Nate showed up, so they shared it."
"Impossible." Anthony laughed in disbelief. "That's insane. Nate Harris doesn't smoke grass, and if he did, he wouldn't do it at a party with people he barely knows. It would be professional suicide."
"Ask him. If he's so honest, he'll admit it. Miami is a weird place, and politicians and judges have done even stupider things. A few tokes on a joint? That's nothing. People will believe it. And you know what else? They're going to ask what Judge Harris was doing with a young male ballet dancer."
Anthony leaned into her face. "Repeat that publicly, I'll see you sued for slander."
"I want his help! I want you to stop standing in the way."
"How would you like to see Bobby Gonzalez fired from the ballet? It could happen."
"That's a complete bluff. The ballet wouldn't do that."
"No? The Cresswells are on the board. They're major donors. If they believe that Bobby is responsible for Roger's death, he would be gone. No big deal. He's in the back row. He could be replaced tomorrow." He dusted one hand against the other. "Believe it, Ms. Connor."
Gail stared at him. The claws were out now and Bobby was caught between them. "Could you really be that vicious? Oh, of course you could. Why even ask? I put nothing past you. No underhanded, ruthless act would be too low."
He came within inches, lowering his head, the whites of his eyes showing under irises dilated to black. "Consider your own actions. You allow Nathan Harris only two disagreeable choices—either to perjure himself or to say he was smoking grass with a male dancer half his age. That is not acceptable. Take that road, and your client will suffer the consequences of your poor judgment."
Gail was nearly tall enough, in her heels, to look him squarely in the eyes. "If Nathan Harris is destroyed, blame yourself. You're turning him into a coward and a liar."
Anthony's eyes snapped with fire. "Why are you doing this? Why this . . . death grip on an inconsequential case that you don't have the skill to handle?"
"Because he's my client. Because I promised him."
"How much is he paying you? Anything?"
"None of your effing business."
"You would do it for free, wouldn't you? Because you get a chance to say to yourself, oh, goody, now I can stick it to Anthony Quintana."
"Are you that much of an egotist? If I'd known you were involved, I'd never have taken this case!"
"So leave it."
"Why don't you?"
Suddenly he swiveled away, pacing, breathing through his teeth. She heard him mutter, "Ay, esa mujer es increible."
Her head throbbed. Afraid she might faint, she sank onto one end of the sofa, cream-colored leather squeaking softly. He paced back to her, and with averted eyes she saw his trousers and his gleaming, unscuffed Italian shoes. She hoped he stepped in dog shit in the parking lot.
"Well. A standoff," he said. "Which one of us is going to pull the trigger first?"
"Leave Bobby alone. Dancing is all he has."
He paced away, then back again. "You don't want a drink? Some water? You look a little—I don't know—pale."
"I'm fine. You can bring me a glass of water. I'll drown myself in it."
"Do you want it or not?"
"I said yes!"
"All right, then."
He went to the wet bar on the wall near the dining table. A cabinet opened, then slammed. Water gurgled from a bottle. He came back with a heavy Baccarat tumbler tinkling with ice cubes, which he put on a coaster on the immense coffee table. On the table. Not in her hand. Maybe his flesh would fall off if he touched her.
Gail lifted the glass carefully and sipped while he stood watching.
His jacket was pushed back, and his hands rested on narrow hips. A better manicure than she had. No clear nail polish—no, he was too macho for that. Brown alligator belt, gold buckle. He would be wearing his twenty-dollar briefs. She tried to imagine they were pink, and failed.
"I have a suggestion about what to do," he said.
"I didn't like your last one.”
"Listen. What you want is not so difficult. You want the police to leave Bobby Gonzalez alone. If they do that, you don't go after Nate Harris."
"Must you put it that way? 'Going after' him."
He was thinking aloud. "If we could find an alternate suspect. If the police had a better case against someone else."
"Great. Just find out who shot Roger Cresswell."
"That's not necessary. We don't have to prove it."
"What if the police arrest Bobby Gonzalez before we give them an alternative?"
"No, I don't think they will, not on what they have now. It isn't enough. They'll wait for the DNA results on the bloodstained shirt. That could take eight weeks."
"But the blood wasn't from the night Roger was killed."
"You told me that, but I need the names of witnesses who can prove it. Meanwhile, we investigate everyone involved, and if we're lucky, there will be someone else for them to look at besides Bobby. We have an advantage: Nate knows the Cresswell family. He was married to Roger's sister, Margaret."
"I know."
Surprised, Anthony said, "How?"
"Small world. Charlene Marks has met Nate Harris." The tension between them had dissipated, but Gail's hands were still trembling. "And a couple of months ago Charlene talked to Roger Cresswell about a divorce. He thought his wife was cheating on him. I don't think the police know about it."
"Good. Follow up on that." Anthony went to slide shut the terrace door. "I've met Roger's parents and his uncle. Nate and I were at the Cresswells' house the morning the news came of Roger's death. I went because Porter Cresswell wanted advice from a criminal lawyer. I think he may be mentally unstable, but he knew there were problems. When he became ill early this year, he let Roger take over. Porter's broth
er, Duncan, is part owner, and Duncan's wife, Elizabeth, is in management. They didn't agree with Roger on most issues, and the operations were paralyzed with jealousy and power struggles. Porter wanted Roger to step down, but he refused. Motives already, you see?"
"You think his murder came from inside the family," Gail concluded.
"I do. Roger wasn't involved with drugs, and he didn't gamble. He'd had no arguments with his friends." Anthony smiled. "We have a good chance of success."
Gail looked at him. "I still want a written statement from Judge Harris."
"Why?"
"If you want to play private eye, fine. But if the police come after Bobby, I'll have something."
"You didn't hear what I told you," Anthony said. "A statement covering forty minutes won't help you, if Bobby can't prove where he was after midnight."
She rested her forehead on extended fingers. "This won't work."
"I have a good investigator. We could use him."
"Who's going to pay for that? Bobby can't afford it."
"I will. I can't ask Nate. It would be improper."
"But it's proper if his lawyer pays?"
"I have no choice." An edge sharpened his words. "You should be grateful and stop complaining. Giving Nate Harris's name to the police at this point would be reckless. You'd destroy him for nothing. If you do that, I will take action. Trust me."
For a long moment she returned the intensity of his unblinking stare. The pulse beat in her neck. She said, "I'll give it a week. Then we'll see. And I want to know what's going on. Everything you find out."
He made a single nod of his head. "Of course, you should be informed."
"Involved, Anthony. I will be involved."
He made an exaggerated lift of his hands. "Fine. All right. Involved."
"Thank you."
Turning his back, he muttered, "Jesucristo, me vuelve loco."
Gail set the glass back on the table. The crystal sparkled as she turned it around on the coaster. "Let's talk about logistics. How do we handle this? Where do we meet? Not your office. Or mine. Does it have to be in person?"
"You want to do it by video-conference? Then we don't have to be in the same room."
She laughed softly. "Sure. Why not?"
His steps slowed as he approached the sofa, where she sat playing with the glass. He was silent so long she looked up at him. He said, "You despise me, don't you?"
Their eyes held. Then she couldn't bear it any longer and turned her head. "As you said . . . leave the past where it is. Don't mention it. Ever. I won't either."
"Bueno. That will make it easier for us to work together."
Silence stretched out. Gail could see that his cat's-eye ring was back on Anthony's left hand. He had taken it off, waiting for a wedding band. The faintest hint of his cologne reached her consciousness, and a memory burst into her mind. How he'd smelled the first time she had pressed her mouth to his bare chest.
His hand tapped on his thigh, then reached for her empty glass. "Well, that's all we can do for now. I'll call you tomorrow."
"Morning is better." She went to retrieve her purse. "I'm taking the afternoon off to shop for Karen. She's coming home on Saturday."
"Ah. Summer vacation's over already."
"Yes. She spent most of it in the Virgin Islands with Dave."
Purse in hand, Gail looked around, hoping to see some kind of reaction to that, but there was only a rush of water from the minibar. Anthony was rinsing her glass in the sink.
He called across the room, "I'll phone you at ten o'clock. Is that convenient?"
"Fine." She went toward the door. "Good night. I'll see myself out."
She made it into the corridor, but decided not to wait for the elevator and ran for the exit stairs. Then the pain in her chest let go, and she leaned against the concrete wall and cried. A great hiccup of a sob, then another. Hot tears dropping off her chin. Fingers against her mouth, hiding the noise. Making her way down fifteen flights in her high heels because the doors didn't open from the stairwell. The echoes of her footsteps accompanied her.
In her misery Gail felt as if a knife were being plunged into her heart. Even her bones ached. You despise me, don't you? Yes. Yes, I do. Arrogant, stone-hearted son of a bitch.
Hanging on the railing with one hand, she pressed her other fist into her belly and doubled over, wanting it gone immediately, now. Out of her, gone. She cursed herself for not having kept the appointment. It would have been easy. Judge Harris hadn't called till five-thirty, and she could have kept the damned telephone in her hand at the clinic.
She had wondered, until this moment, why she'd waited so long. Why she'd felt relief every time she'd had to cancel, gloom as each new date came nearer. Moral queasiness? Fear of pain? Not really. Then why?
Because she hadn't wanted to let things slip away from her anymore, not even this. She'd wanted to salvage something from the wreck. To be able to say, even after seeing her marriage dry up and her daughter tossed back and forth between them, and watching her career turn to shit and a love affair go down in flames, that there was at least one thing in her life she could do.
No, there was an even worse reason for not having ended it. This . . . thing inside her that she still couldn't call a child was part of a man she had once loved beyond reason. He had entered her brain, her lungs, the marrow of her bones, so deeply that when he pushed her away and called himself a fool for ever loving her, she hadn't believed him, not in her soul. It was like watching someone die, the breaths still coming, slow and shallow, one tiny, flickering spark of irrational hope still remaining.
That spark had at last gone out.
On the fifteenth floor, Anthony Quintana walked onto the terrace with a glass of ice and a bottle of his client's best single-malt scotch. He had left his jacket inside and rolled up his shirt sleeves. It was too humid tonight. The air conditioning pouring through the open door helped.
He set the glass on the edge of the balcony and poured. He wondered how in hell it had all turned out this way. Gail should have accepted with grace the fact that she was in over her head. He had thought—he had known—that after one look at him, she'd have been happy to throw this case to some other lawyer.
Now what? He had to find a murderer. How had he been cornered into this? How? It had happened before, with that woman. Suddenly finding himself in a place he'd not wanted to be in, with no knowledge of how he had gotten there. Very strange.
In some way he couldn't define, she seemed different. She'd lost weight, perhaps, though she was already thin. Or had gained a few pounds. Or her hair was combed differently. She was too pale, and he had made out faint tracings of blue under the delicate skin of her neck. He had seen the flutter of a racing heartbeat.
Anthony leaned to see over the balcony, not touching it because it was wet, and he didn't want to ruin his shirt. The driveway was down there at an angle, and at long intervals a car would come out from under the portico and move slowly toward the bridge. There had been two BMWs and a Mercedes. So far no small silver Acuras. This was what Gail Connor drove now. He knew this because a month ago, just before leaving for Spain, he'd seen her in traffic on Flagler Street near the courthouse. His car had been at a cross street, and he had watched her until horns had started blaring behind him. Three days ago he had seen another silver Acura and a woman with blond hair, and his breath had caught in his throat until he realized that it wasn't Gail at all, and he'd felt stupid.
He drank his scotch and watched the driveway, but her car never appeared, or he had missed it somehow. He watched the bay for a while, but the rain had kept the boats from going out, and there was nothing to see. He remembered how the plants hanging from the edge of the roof had swung in a sudden breeze, and the light had flickered on her hair, and even in the darkness it had shimmered with gold.
Chapter 13
Gliding on pointe, arms floating outward, Angela noticed in the studio mirror that Bobby was walking toward the door. A girl from th
e office had come in. Angela made^ pirouette and stopped, a hand on her hip. With The Nutcracker on the CD player she couldn't hear what they were saying. Bobby looked around and said to keep working. He would be back in a few minutes.
As soon as he was gone, Angela ran over and peered into the corridor, then hurried toward the exit. She came out at one end of the lobby. At the far end, big photographs hung on the curved wall, and windows gave a view of the plaza. There were two figures in silhouette, Bobby in his sweat pants and baggy T-shirt, Gail Connor in pumps and a suit.
One of the doors at the main entrance opened, and Angela saw Diane Cresswell come in. They said hello to each other, then Diane looked around to see what had held Angela's attention.
"Who's that with Bobby? His lawyer? What's going on?"
"I don't know. She just showed up."
Diane knew about Bobby. He had told her everything. They had gone out a couple of years ago— which Angela didn't like to think about—and they were still friends. Diane was beautiful, with her milky-white skin and silvery blond hair. And a beautiful dancer, strong and quick. She'd never had to audition. Edward Villella had seen her in New York and had invited her to join the company.
Bobby was staring at the carpet, then up at the skylight as if Gail were lecturing him about something. Their voices were muffled. Diane said, "Do you think she'd talk to me for free, like she did for Bobby?"
"Do you need a lawyer?"
"I might."
"Gail would probably help you. What's it about?" Angela waited, but Diane said nothing more. Diane was watching Bobby and Gail come across the lobby toward the glass doors at the entrance. Gail continued outside, vanishing past the corner of the ticket window.
Bobby turned and saw the girls, and Angela could tell by the stiff way he moved that something was wrong. "Hi, Diane."
"Hi." Still looking toward the street, she said, "See you guys later, okay?" She went out the same way Gail Connor had gone, leaving them alone in the lobby.
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