Suspicion of Innocence (40 page)

Gail said, "I'm about to go to bed and Ben was just leaving."

"She's rushing me off, Irene. Gail's little way of telling me I've had too much to drink."

Irene reached up to pat his cheek. "Go on home, then. I'll take care of things here."

He took her hand. "Irene, come up to Arcadia with me. Both of you, soon as this damn trial is over. I'm buying some property up there, did I tell you? We’ll build a house, what do you say?"
 

"Ben, hush."

"I can't take Miami anymore. It's going to kill us. Look what it did to Renee. What it's doing to Gail." He gave Irene his glass. "Put a little ice in there, will you, honey?"

She poured the bourbon into the sink, then filled a cup with coffee and set it on the table. "Drink that." Ben sat down and lit a cigarette, his lighter snapping open and shut. He moaned softly and put his forehead in his palm.

Irene said, "Gail, go to bed. You look positively exhausted."

Gail held up her mug. "I was a little hungry."

"Then I'll fix you a cheese omelet. Sit. It'll just take a minute." Irene went to the refrigerator. "By the way. Jimmy Panther phoned yesterday and asked me to talk to you about that mask. I said I'd call him today. I hope he'll forgive me if I don't because I am not putting that phone to my ear one more time tonight."

"Jimmy Panther called you?"

"He's sweet on me, I think." She laughed.

Gail watched Irene crack eggs into a bowl. Precise taps. Breaking the shells open with one hand, then dropping them neatly, nested in their other halves, into the garbage disposer. Gail wanted to let go, to weep on her mother's shoulder, to feel those small, precise hands stroking her hair.

Gail said, "I want to see what Edith Newell has to say. He and Renee were working on something together. I don't know what, but she's going to help me find out."

"Renee never said anything to me."

"Well, it's just too weird to be ignored. He found her body, didn't he? How did he know where to look?"

Irene turned around from the stove. "Gail, you can't be serious."

"In my position, I take everything seriously."

Ben spoke up. "My guess is he was going to make a few more of those masks and try to pass them off as real."

Irene gave him a look over her shoulder. "He would never do that. It isn't like him. Jimmy Panther has no regard for material gain. He says the Indians live the way all people are meant to live." The whisk clicked on the sides of the bowl. "He's a true shaman, as far as I'm concerned. You listen to him talk sometime. It's a religious experience."

Ben extended his cigarette in the direction of the ashtray. The ashes fell on the table. "Jimmy Panther, AKA James Gibb, was once arrested for auto theft. Does he tell that to the visitors at the Historical Society when he's asking for donations?"

"Everybody has mistakes in his past." The eggs sizzled when she poured them into the pan.

"Irene, you are a gullible, silly woman."

"That's not very nice of you, Ben."

He held up his cup. "How about some more coffee?"

She slammed her spatula down on the stove. "You come over here and expect to be waited on. I'm busy with Gail's omelet. I think you ought to call a cab and go home."

Ben stared at her for a second, then pushed himself up. "Irene ... my dear . . . you are correct. I ought to go home. But I can drive myself four damn miles." He crushed out his cigarette. "Ladies. Good night."

Gail felt an odd rush of pity for him, aware of her abruptness earlier. She smiled at him as he passed. "Good night, Ben. Thank you."

He stopped and crooked both arms around her neck, pulled her out of her chair. His chest pressed tightly against her breasts, bare under her pajamas and cotton robe. She stiffened but didn't draw away.

He lightly kissed her lips. "Don't you worry, darlin’ Everything's going to be all right."

Gail came out of Irene's walk-in closet with an extra pillow. Irene was back on the phone. Her cousin Marian, who lived in Charleston, had just heard from Boyce in Atlanta who had spoken to Patsy in Tampa.

One finger on the light switch, Gail stopped, looking down at Irene's dresser, at the bifold frame Anthony had brought to the funeral. She picked it up, saw the two girls in the backyard swing. The other frame showed Renee standing in the stem of a boat, big smile, and behind her a harbor in some Caribbean town or other. How pretty she was. Of course Anthony would have been attracted.

Renee was wearing white shorts and a hot pink tank top. The wind lifted the brim of her straw hat. Her hair was dark blonde, not platinum. She must have stopped bleaching it at some point and Gail hadn't noticed. She studied the small hand holding down the hat. The nails were bare and clean.

"Look at you," Gail said softly. "That's why I couldn't get a fix on you. Nobody else could either. Everybody with different opinions, telling me different things. You were changing. Becoming yourself, probably. Who would that have been, I wonder?" Gail brushed her thumb over the tiny face in the photograph. "I think I would have liked you, Sis."

She started to put the photo back, then let the pillow slide to the floor and held the photo closer to the lamp. Two thin lines of light ran over Renee's collarbone, meeting at a pendant that hung between her breasts—a gold heart outlined in tiny diamonds. A present from Irene on Renee's twelfth birthday.

Gail opened the first drawer of Irene's jewelry case, then another. From the third she lifted a small plastic zipper bag with a tag on it from the medical examiner's office. Connor, Renee. It held the earrings she had worn —gold loops, four pairs in various sizes. A pearl ring for the little finger of her left hand. Bangle bracelets. But no necklace.

Gail sat down on her mother's bed and dialed her home number. Dave answered on the sixth ring.

"I was beginning to think you were back at the marina," she said.

"I didn't want to pick it up. I just watched Channel Seven news." He exhaled. "Jesus. Are you guys okay over there?' '

"More or less. Mom's handling everything. She's wonderful." Gail's eyes were stinging. "Karen's not sure if she wants to go to school tomorrow."

"Tell her to stay with Irene. She can miss the rest of the week. You probably should, too."

Feet still on the carpet, Gail let herself drop slowly backwards on the bed until she stared straight up at the ceiling, tightly gripping the phone.

"What's the matter, Gail?"

Her voice was thick, her throat too tight. "I'm tired, I guess."

He laughed, not unkindly. "It's been a shitty day, who wouldn't be?"

"Oh, Dave." She closed her eyes, silence on the phone. "What happened to us? I thought we were okay. I did. Not perfect, but we had a balance. Balance ought to be worth something."

"Gail—"

"You should have told me. You should. I never saw it coming."

"Maybe I didn't either."

She wiped the tears off her temples. "You said I never let you near me. I was cold. Is that what you really thought?"

"I don't know. I was probably mad at you at the time."

She laughed. "People usually tell the truth when they're pissed off. Haven't you ever noticed? Well, the truth is, Dave—and I'm not even pissed off at the moment—the truth is, I have had a few rather odd revelations recently. I feel like I'm dangling over a dark pit. And it's not under me, it's inside."

"Gail. Honey. You ought to go to bed."

"Yes, I'm talking too much again."

"Come on. I didn't mean it like that."

"You're a very nice man, Dave. Irene said so and I agree with her." Gail sat up and reached for a Kleenex in the box on the nightstand. "I'm sorry I didn't make you happy."

There was a long silence. Then he said, "You want to come back here tonight?"

"Do you want me to? No. It's late." She blew her nose. "I really did have a reason to call you. Seriously. A question."

"Okay."

Gail reached around behind her for the photo in the bifold frame. "Was Renee wearing her necklace the night of the party?"

"What?"

"You know. That diamond heart she always wore. Did she have it on?"
 

"Why?"
 

"Dave, please."

There was a silence. "Yes. She did."
 

"You're sure?"

"The chain got caught in my watch strap when I was helping her out of the car. Yeah, she had it on. Why do you want to know?"

"Because the coroner didn't find it on her body."

"Well, I didn't take it."

"Dave. I know that."

It took him a few seconds. "Jesus. Somebody still has her necklace. Whoever did this has her necklace."

Gail said, "Let me ask you something else. Do you remember the name of that boat you worked on?"

"What boat?"

"The boat you worked on for what's-his-name. José García."

"Come on, that was last summer."

"Don't you have any paperwork? The registration number? Anything?"

"Maybe. I'd have to look through my records. What are you thinking?"

"I don't know yet." Gail stood up, tucking the Kleenex into her pocket. "But I'm not going to sit around waiting to see what's going to happen to me."

She glanced at the photo again, the two girls in the swing. Renee laughing. Gail leaning back, arms extended, holding on.

Twenty

"Gail, we're going to take you off the front lines for the time
being. Believe me, it's better all around."

Jack Warner—late fifties, fastidiously groomed to hide it—was head of Hartwell Black's commercial litigation department. Called into his office, Gail had guessed this was what he was going to tell her.

Her picture had appeared in the paper Thursday morning, a file photo from a charity event she had gone to five years ago. Perfect hair, sparkly earrings, the director of the Florida Philharmonic standing next to her in a tux. Socialite Miami lawyer charged with murder, released on bond. She had laughed at "socialite." Then nervously waited for the explosion from the State Attorney's Office, a demand that her bail be rescinded. Nothing so far.

The firm had made a statement to the press.
Regrettable incident. Confident of Ms. Connor's innocence. An excellent attorney.
They had referred all questions to Ray Hammell.

Gail let her hands rise, then fall back into her lap. "Jack, I'm just grateful you're not booting me out the door."

He smiled, shook his head. "We wouldn't do that. But you see the problem. Clients get nervous. Having their attorney accused of a serious crime, even wrongly, they're going to start biting their nails. And you're not going to be as effective."

Unlike Larry Black, who occupied the other chair facing Warner's desk, Jack Warner could be brutally direct. She didn't mind. For the last two days the other attorneys had treated her as though she had been diagnosed with a fatal disease. Most of them had come by her office to tell her how awful this was, but nobody stayed for long. And nobody—not even Jack Warner—had asked if she was guilty. At least, not so she could hear it.

He gestured toward Larry Black. "Larry can help you decide who to farm your cases out to, until this blows over. Can you do that by Monday, Larry?"

Larry nodded. Gail knew his moods well enough to know that his composed expression was phony: he hated this. He looked at her, his embarrassment showing for a second. "We'll still need you on those files. Pleadings have to be prepared. Motions, briefs. The rest of the time—" He tried for a smile. "We've got more than enough to keep you busy, helping out in the other departments. No reduction in salary, of course."

"I appreciate that, Larry."

Her career at Hartwell Black and Robineau—as anything but an associate attorney—was over. It bothered her less than she had thought it would. Other things weighed more heavily on her mind.

Jack Warner stood up. "Gail, if you need anything, you come see me. Time off, whatever. We're going to be as supportive as we can possibly be."

With a hand on her shoulder, he walked her to the door.

By twelve-thirty, with Bob Wilcox covering her morning calendar, Gail had dictated memos on most of her files—two major litigation cases, fourteen middling lawsuits, and thirty-seven other matters in various stages of completion. Now they were stacked all over her office, each pile with a microcassette on top. Miriam had brought them sandwiches from the deli around the corner. She had said she would stay as late as Gail needed her, no problem. Then she had burst into sobs.

Gail stood in front of her desk with her microcassette recorder, flipping through pages.

“In
Merkin
v.
Bayside,
answers to interrogatories are due May 11, but I told client May 4. Push him on this, otherwise he'll forget to do them at all."