Suspicion of Deceit (37 page)

The City of Miami police chief stated in a press conference that Felix Castillo, former agent with Cuban State Security, was wanted for the murders of Seth Greer and Rebecca Dixon.

Obtained from his investigator's license, Castillo's photo appeared on television screens and on the front page of newspapers—an unsmiling, balding man with a gray Fu Manchu mustache. The flat lighting, narrowed eyes, and thick neck made him look like a thug. Sightings were reported from Key West to Atlanta. Rumors said he had gone back to Cuba. Others said he was still in the Miami area, planning his next attack.

Anthony had not wanted to talk about it, other than to tersely say, "Something is wrong. I think he was set up." Reluctantly Gail told him that on the night of Seth Greer's murder, she had left a message on Castillo's beeper that Seth was heading for WRCL. No one else knew but Rebecca and Lloyd Dixon, but they were too far away. Felix lived within a mile of the station. Plenty of time to get there. Hearing that, Anthony had become even more depressed, wondering how he could have misjudged Felix Castillo so completely.

Gail balanced her wine on her chest and inhaled. Her breasts appeared through the bubbles. Small rosy breasts. Anthony had said he liked them.
Un buchito.
A mouthful. She exhaled and sank.

After the memorial was over, she had noticed Lloyd Dixon among a group of opera friends in the lobby, one older woman sympathetically patting his arm. He stood with feet squarely planted, a big, ruddy-faced, white-haired man in a somber gray suit. He had not seemed overcome with grief, but then, he wasn't the type.

Yesterday Anthony had told her she'd been wrong about Dixon's dinner guests. He had given Rebecca's list to a private investigator, who had found nothing, not a hint, that any of them was other than what Rebecca had said they were—wealthy men with offshore business interests.

Today in the lobby Gail had asked Lloyd Dixon if she could speak to him privately for a moment. They went back into the theater and stood in the center aisle. Stagehands were clearing music stands and risers from the stage.

"Please forgive me, I know this isn't a good time," Gail said, "but I have reasons for wanting to know. You and Octavio Reyes were planning to make investments in Cuba at some point in the future. Are you still working with him on that?"

He gave her a long, appraising look before apparently concluding that it didn't matter if he told her. "I've withdrawn my participation in the group. Don't have the interest right now. As for Octavio, well, that's up to him. Why?"

After a moment, Gail shrugged and told the truth. "I like to keep up with what Octavio Reyes is doing. It affects me because it affects Anthony. I'm not sure I trust him."

A smile started on one side of Dixon's face and stayed there. "Reyes is all right, if you keep an eye on him."

Then Gail asked, "What's really going on with Felix Castillo? Do you know anything that the police aren't telling the rest of us?"

"Strange question."

She spoke quietly. "People have been used before as political scapegoats. How convenient to charge a man who used to be a Cuban spy. How solid is the case against him? Rebecca told me that you have friends who . . . How can I say this? You know people in agencies of the government that deal with foreign affairs. People who would be interested in Felix Castillo. I thought—because of Rebecca—that you might have asked about him. Maybe you know things concerning the investigation."

Dixon crossed his arms over his big chest and thrust out his chin. "Of course he's being used, but that doesn't mean he didn't do it. The police have no reason to frame Castillo."

Maybe Dixon needed Felix Castillo's guilt as much as everyone else seemed to. It tied up his wife's murder in a neat little package.

Onstage, men were throwing folding chairs onto a dolly. "Who's asking? You or Anthony Quintana?"

"I am, but Anthony has known Felix a long time. He is absolutely stunned that Felix Castillo is under suspicion."

"Stunned." The half-smile reappeared. "Twenty years ago, when Rebecca and Seth Greer and Anthony Quintana were in Nicaragua, Castillo was there, too, working for the Cubans. He and your fiancé were buddies."

"I know."

"According to my wife, Anthony Quintana could quote Karl Marx and Che Guevara. He was in Central America to fight Yankee imperialism, and he talked about giving up his U.S. citizenship and going back to Cuba. Things didn't work out down there for our happy little band of college radicals, but now your fiance goes to Cuba a few times a year—"

"Wait a minute," Gail said.

"—where he visits his father—which we can understand—and his sister, who is a top official in the Ministry of Trade, and who—I am so stunned—happens to be married to a major in the Cuban army, intelligence division. Then Felix Castillo shows up as Tom Nolan's bodyguard. Two weeks later, the opera is bombed."

Gail made an exhalation of disbelief. "Felix spent time in a Cuban prison."

"That's what they all say, to get into this country." Dixon paused to see if any of this was sinking in. Gail only stared back at him. "Well, it's just something to consider." He started to go.

She grabbed his coat sleeve. "Lloyd, wait. Rebecca told me you saw a copy of the CIA report on what happened in Los Pozos. Was there anything about Emily Davis's death? Who killed her?"

Dixon had not answered. He had turned his shoulders away, then his face, and last, his eyes, breaking contact just before he strode up the aisle and out of the auditorium.

She had surprised herself, asking that question. She had promised herself not to think about Los Pozos anymore. The only way to resolve the conflict between two versions of the story was to ask Anthony again. She didn't know how to do that without risking another blowup. Their reestablished relationship was still fragile. Gail had told herself that even if Anthony had shot Emily Davis, he'd been forced to do it. What possible good would it do to drag those bones to the surface yet another time? Felix had confessed, and Rebecca Dixon had been mistaken or lying.

Floating in the bathtub, Gail heard the front door slam in that way Karen had of doing it, then her high voice. "Mom! Mom, where are youuuuuu?" Gail called back, and the sound of clogs thumped down the hall. Then a backpack hit the floor in Karen's room. Gail had left her bathroom door open, and Karen came in wearing polyester bell-bottom pants and a tight little shirt with horizontal stripes, everything retro.

The night Gail had come home from the hospital Karen had slept with her, curled up like a kitten against her side. The next morning she wouldn't let go of her hand. And she made her promise not to leave her with the Perlmutters again.
Every time you leave me with Molly's mother, you get hurt. Don't do it again!

Karen scooped up some bubbles and made herself a beard. She announced she was going to watch Comedy Central for a while. Gail asked her to take the steaks out of the freezer. "Anthony's coming over later. Is that okay with you?"

"I guess. Are you going to stay in there all day?"

"Till I turn into an albino prune." Gail pulled her down for a kiss and got bubbles on her cheek. "The hot water is good for my back, sweetie."

Karen went out, then spun around and held onto the door frame, leaning over as if she were a ballerina, one leg extended. Her head was sideways and her hair hung straight down. "If Anthony wants to move in, it's okay with me."

Gail laughed. "Where did that come from? We were talking about finding a new house and not moving till the summer."

With a shrug, Karen vanished, and Gail picked up her wine. They were conspiring against her, those two. Subtly but thoroughly, in his understated way, Anthony Quintana had won Karen's heart, and this kid was no pushover.

Gail was beginning to think that the only sure way to harmony in a family was not to ask too many questions.

She'd had another question for Lloyd Dixon, which had remained unasked, since he had cut off the conversation so abruptly.
Lloyd, what were you and Thomas Nolan really doing in Costa Rica?

Gail's mind had spun out all sorts of scenarios. Thomas Nolan as drug dealer. Thief of pre-Columbian art. Hit man. Felix Castillo had suggested that there had been a sniper's rifle inside the suitcase, and that Dixon had taken Nolan down there to do a job.

Had the suitcase actually existed? She did not believe Tom Nolan's story that he had gone to pick it up for his former piano teacher. It was also becoming j more possible that the lady herself did not exist.

Gail had asked her secretary to find her. Yesterday, Monday, Miriam had come into Gail's office and announced she was giving up. There was no Wells in the telephone directory who had ever taught piano in 1979. Miriam held up a legal pad and flipped pages to show the phone calls she had made. Every music school and music store, every private school and college music department. The county school board, every church large enough to have a music director. Then the same routine in Fort Lauderdale and Palm Beach, in case the woman had moved north. Miriam suggested that if she had a first name, she could do a search of the Bureau of Vital Statistics for birth records, or the county records for real estate and criminal justice. If this woman had so much as a speeding ticket, Miriam could find her. But a first name would help. Or even better: "Why don't you just ask Nolan where she lives?"

After the memorial service was over, Gail spotted blond hair in a halo of video camera lights, Tom Nolan being interviewed by TV reporters. He told them that his voice was improving, and he hoped to open in
Don Giovanni
at the end of next week.

Gail stood on the periphery of the little group. A reporter noticed her and one of the cameras spun around to record her reaction to the question,
How do you feel a week after the bombing?
She gave the expected reply—
I'm feeling much better
—then looked over at Tom Nolan. "Tom, someone just asked me and I was unable to tell them. What was the first name of your old piano teacher?"

He gave her an absolutely blank, hollow-cheeked stare.

Gail said, "Miss Wells's first name. You must have told me, but I forgot."

Nolan smiled slightly. "Elvira." He pronounced it
El-vee-ra.

She said to one of the reporters, "That would be a great story. Thomas Nolan and Elvira Wells, the lady who inspired him to sing. She still lives in Miami."

The reporter asked Nolan how to get in touch with the woman.

Raising his hands, Tom Nolan shook his head and smiled, "No, she's retired now, a very private person. I won't allow her to be disturbed."

On the way home, Gail had put on
Don Giovanni,
her second go-through. The overture boomed out of the speakers, those ominous crashing chords, a foreshadowing of vengeance at the end. It had been the overture, oddly enough, that the Miami Opera orchestra had been playing as Gail entered the offices the night the bomb went off, and she could not hear it now without a shiver of premonitory fear.

After the overture came the comedic aria of the manservant, Leporello, as he waited for Giovanni to finish seducing Donna Anna. Gail had seen the cast rehearse that scene last week. In a swordfight, Giovanni killed Donna Anna's father, who had rushed to his daughter's defense.

Gail guided her car south on U.S. 1 in pre-rush afternoon traffic listening to Donna Anna's fiancé swear revenge on the culprit. After Giovanni and his servant congratulated themselves on their escape, another soprano came on, a stunningly emotional aria. Her voice quivered with rage. At a stoplight, Gail flipped through the libretto with its minuscule print to see what the woman was shrieking about.
Gli vo' cavare il cor.
She wanted to tear out Giovanni's heart. One of his spurned lovers. Then Gail remembered the name of this poor unfortunate. A noblewoman, Donna Elvira.

"Elvira," Gail had repeated aloud. "Son of a bitch."

The horns had blared behind her and she had squealed her tires taking off.

Elvira Wells didn't exist. If Miss Wells didn't exist, then her suitcase didn't exist, either. Maybe. Had Lloyd Dixon been lying about bringing it back from Costa Rica? What else had he lied about?

Gail had assumed strange goings-on between Dixon and Tom Nolan, possibly as far back as Dortmund, Germany. In her more imaginative versions, she saw Nolan and Dixon going to Costa Rica to check it out as a stepping-off point for an invasion of Cuba. Dixon was familiar with the country. It was next door to Nicaragua, where he had dropped weapons to the contras.

That theory was blown to hell now, because the businessmen at Lloyd Dixon's dinner were, after all, only businessmen.

Sipping her wine, trying to figure this out, Gail heard the murmur of voices. A child. Then the deeper voice of a man. A cabinet door closing. The grind of ice cubes from the refrigerator door.

"Drat." Gail rubbed under her eyes to clear off the mascara that she knew must have run from her eyelashes. She was wearing it extra heavy these days, filling in where her own lashes were still growing back.

She sank further into the bubbles and watched the door, through which she could see her dresser and the end of the bed. Heard footsteps on the carpet.

Anthony appeared. He leaned a shoulder against the door frame. In the soft light his image was repeated in the mirror, a slender, dark-eyed man in a tawny gold shirt. He had taken off his tie and rolled back his cuffs.

"Hi." She smiled at him across the bubbles. "You're early."

"You should have a bigger bathtub," he said. "Like the one at your house. You could come in with me."

That brought a slow smile. "If we were alone, I might try it." He set his drink on the vanity. "How was the memorial service?"

"Lovely, really. But the sideshows were tedious. Be glad you missed it." With a swoosh of water, she sat up. Lifting her hair with both hands, she said, "Do my back, and I'll tell you about Elvira, the incredible disappearing woman."

Anthony was watching the bubbles sliding slowly toward the water, leaving wet, bare skin. He glanced at the door, then closed it and turned the lock. He sat on the edge of the bathtub and picked up the sponge. "Who is Elvira?"