Suspicion of Innocence (49 page)

Gail asked, "What time is it?"

He checked his watch. "Six-twenty."

"How much daylight do we have, an hour?"

"Less." He cupped his hands around his cigarette to light it.

Gunfire crackled from the south, as it had occasionally during the afternoon. Target shooters, aiming at bottles and cans. Gail remembered the last family picnic at the ranch. They had sat around the table and heard bursts of automatic weapons fire. Good citizens, bearing arms. Or middle-aged Cubans, dreaming of going home again.

"I'm beginning to feel sorry I made you do this," Gail said.

Ben blew out a stream of smoke. His white hair was stringy, sticking to his forehead.

She said, "It all seemed to fit together at the time."

Cigarette between his teeth, he put his gloves back on. "Okay. Let's finish here. Then we'll do that area by the slough, and that's it."

Gail picked up her shovel and dragged it to a spot about ten yards away, where there was a gentle rise in the ground. She put her foot on the blade and wiggled it between loose rocks. A hole eighteen inches deep would be enough. Edith had told her what to look for.

To fill the silence she spoke her thoughts out loud. "Carlos Pedrosa and Jimmy Panther were the least likely pair to be working together. They'd never have gotten together without Renee. She was the common denominator." Gail tossed a shovelful of dirt aside, then bent to snap off a root. "My theory about Renee is, she was fragmented. Different people filled different needs for her."

Ben pulled something oblong out of the hole he had dug, looked at it, pitched it away. A brown bottle. It clanked on a rock.

Gail said, "Jimmy Panther was her spiritual guide. Carlos was dark sexuality. From Dave she got innocent romance. Valentine's Day cards and flowers."

Ben said, "Is that what happened to you two? Renee turned his head?"

"No. It wasn't Renee's fault. If Dave and I were still married, it was only force of habit. But as I told Ray Hammell, there was nothing physical between them."

The knees of her jeans already crusted with muck, Gail got down to look into the hole. Nothing but roots and rocks. With a little groan she stood up, looking around for another place to dig.

Ben was scraping back a layer of dried, brittle palm fronds. "And what was I? Her patsy?"

"Her protector," Gail said. "She might have gone to prison without you."

"Big mistake, covering up what she did." Ben grunted as he lifted a shovelful of rocks. "Should have made her say it was Carlos who put her on the boat. Made some kind of exchange with the prosecution."

"I don't think he knew she went on that trip."

"Of course he knew. It was his deal."

"It wasn't his boat," Gail said. "Ray Hammell's office found out who it belonged to. Nelson Restrepo, a client of Anthony Quintana's."

"Quintana was involved in that?"

"No. He wasn't. He explained to me how it happened." Gail paused, wishing she hadn't said this much. "Renee knew how to get access to the boat, because she and Anthony had taken a trip on it together."

"Renee and Quintana?" Ben looked puzzled for a second, then laughed, stepping on the blade of his shovel. "Christ. Doing both of them. That must have been cozy."

"Ben, come on. It wasn't like that. Her affair with Anthony was over by then."

"And how do you know so much about him?"

Gail hesitated, trying to think of how to word it.

He gave a half smile. "Don't tell me. You and Quintana."

She felt her face growing hot, knew he could see it.

"And still married to Dave."

"Don't. I mean it, Ben. I'm not discussing this."

He levered the handle, ripping out a root. ' 'As long as we're playing what if— What if Quintana was the one who planned the drug run? He borrowed the boat from his client, Restrepo. Say he needed a young white American girl to act as a shield. Like hiding cocaine in a baby's diaper. But uh-oh. They got busted."

Gail stood still, holding her shovel. "No. It was Carlos's idea."

"You're sure of that."

"Yes."

Ben went on. "Say Renee can't let go of Quintana. He's a slick-looking guy, plenty of money, smart. But for Quintana she's a major headache. She's unstable. She might let it slip what kind of business he does on the side. He fakes her suicide. Then when it begins to appear that Carlos killed Renee, Quintana gets rid of him, too, so he can't deny it."

Gail was shaking her head. "Renee didn't cause problems for Anthony after their affair was over. She was still in love with him, but she accepted it."

"Who told you that, your boyfriend?" Ben waited, his eyebrows raised. "Honey, I told you. Back when he was giving you legal advice, I said, Gail, don't get involved. Didn't I say that?"

"This is none of your business, Ben."

He went back to work. "You know best. What is it with you girls and the Cubanos, anyway? I didn't think you'd get led around by your—" he made a vague gesture toward her crotch "—like your sister did."

She stared at him.

After a few seconds he let his shovel fall, then threw his gloves down after it, one then the other. "Oh, lord, Gail. I'm tired. Is that any excuse? Maybe we've been out here too long. I didn't mean to compare you to Renee."

"She wasn't a slut either."

He smiled, making an effort, deep creases in his cheeks. "What do you say we sink a couple more holes, then call it quits? I'll take you and Irene out to dinner."

"No. I want to leave now," she said. "There's no point to this."

He snapped his Zippo open, shut, open, then lit another cigarette. "You get me out here sweating all afternoon and then tell me there's no point."

Two gunshots cracked into the still evening air, echoing among the trees.

Ben said, "That was pretty close."

Gail shrugged. "Somebody shooting at a road sign on Krome Avenue."

"Wrong direction."

"Why don't we just go?"

He listened for a few more seconds, then went back for his gloves and shovel. "Not yet. You dragged me here, we're going to finish. I'm not doing this again. We'll get this one other area, then go."

She exhaled. "Fine."

They walked fifty yards or so, making their way through the scrubby underbrush. Already the light was fading. Gail heard the whine of mosquitoes in her ears, swatted at them. She watched Ben walk, a tall, solid man, the plaid shirt sticking to his back, the shotgun slung over his shoulder, barrel extending past his head. His neck was creased with deep wrinkles. She smelled cigarette smoke and sweat.

He glanced around, laughing. "You keeping up, little girl?"

It had always been like this. Gail turning sullen, Ben teasing her for it, making her chum with anger. Renee had known how to play him to get what she wanted. Acting like a ninny, chewing on her thumb, looking at him sideways, giggling. When he got mad, her mouth would tremble and tears would well up in those incredibly blue eyes and spill down her cheeks. Gail had never mastered that little trick. But now she remembered despising Renee for it. Or despising Renee for succeeding at it.

At the point where the ground seemed to rise again, they stopped. The slope ran twenty yards or more on either side.

Gail dropped the book bag, put her gloves on again.

Ben tossed his cigarette away and kicked aside the thick covering of leaves and ferns. He said, "We find anything, I'm going to buy me a couple thousand acres of forest up the state."

He was in a good humor again, she noticed.

He laughed. "I bet Irene will try to make me donate it all to the museum."

Gail shoved a fallen branch out of the way with her foot and began to dig. "I doubt you could buy much land with a few pots and clay masks. Assuming they're even here."

"Hell, I'm not talking about a bunch of trinkets. I mean a big wooden chest of Spanish treasure. Gold bars. Pearl necklaces. Emeralds and diamonds."

"Right." Gail stamped on the shovel.

"Yo-ho, and up she rises." Laughing, Ben held up a gray, pitted jawbone. "Elsie the Cow," he said, then sent it spinning into the brush. He walked a few paces and started another hole. "My granddaddy—your great-grand—told me he'd pay the Indians to come out here and salt this ground."

"Salt the ground?" Gail wiped her forehead on her sleeve.

"Way back. Turn of the century." Ben's words punctuated his efforts with the shovel. "They'd bury beads, arrowheads. Couple inches down. Cheap stuff. Grand-daddy would bring tourists in a wagon. Sell tickets. He had this half-Chinese, half-negro guy that would dress up like a Miccosukee. Patchwork jacket, turban with an egret feather."

"The same upstanding Benjamin Strickland whose immortal, life-size photograph appears in the historical museum?' '

"The same."

And the same, Gail remembered, who had looked on while Renee and Carlos Pedrosa were making the streetcar rock. Renee had said she always wanted to do it in front of Benjamin Strickland. But now Gail didn't think she had meant the man in the photograph. She had probably meant Ben. Flesh and blood and resentment.

Ben said, "Kind of funny there might have been real artifacts buried here all along, and I'm the last to know it. Your sister didn't see fit to tell me. I'd have given her what she wanted of them. She'd rather go behind my back."

"I think she was trying to be independent."

"Nice word for sneaky," Ben said. "For stealing from your family. She's no better than Carlos Pedrosa. Two of a kind." He glanced at Gail. "What's the matter?" When she didn't answer, he set his shovel against a tree trunk. "Lord have mercy." He puffed out a breath, then tried a smile. "You got any more water in that bag of yours? My canteen's dry."

She bent over, took hers out. When she stood up, Ben put his hand on her shoulder. She shied away.

He took off the cap. "We never got along, you and me. I tried. I'm still trying."

"It's not your fault," she mumbled. Her head was beginning to pulse from the heat.

He finished off the water, the muscles in his throat working, sweat making shiny lines down his neck. She took the empty bottle from him, put it back in her bag.
 

When she turned around he said, "You're still mad at me for what I said about Renee, aren't you? I guess I shouldn't have disturbed these romantic notions you're getting about your sister." He picked up his shovel. "Girl was sick. You don't want to see it. She had some very serious problems."

"What are you talking about?"

"You know what I'm talking about," he said.

"Because she touched you the night of Irene's party?" Gail went to stand beside him. "Is that it?" Ben slid the shovel point into the ground, twisted it back, threw the dirt to one side. Gail said, "She was drunk. Or maybe she was making a joke and you took it wrong."

"A joke?" He glanced at her. "You weren't out there with us. Don't tell me what it was like."

"You said you dragged her out there to yell at her—"

"I didn't yell at her."

"Talk to her, then. Whatever. She was almost thirty years old. Maybe she didn't want to be treated like a child anymore. That's what you and Mother did, both of you."

Ben's shovel rang on the stones. "Are we going to finish here or not?"

"I remember when she broke Daddy's new radio. He wanted to spank her but you wouldn't let him. I remember how she clung to you, crying, and you told Daddy to let her be, you'd buy him another one. Don't you see? She learned that you would always take care of her. My little flower. I heard you tell her, 'Don't you worry, Ben's going to take good care of his little flower.' "

Ben swatted a mosquito off his cheek. "She's dead and you keep talking about her, talk talk talk. You're still so jealous you can't see straight."

"No." Gail's mouth was dry. "That isn't— No. Not because of that. It was—"

He gave her a long, quizzical look, then pulled off his gloves, crammed them into a back pocket. "That's it. We're done here. Pick up your stuff."

Gail didn't move. "The other night. When you came in to say good night to Karen. In Renee's old room. You kissed her. My little flower. That's what you used to call Renee." The patch of sky above the trees dimmed and Gail squeezed her eyes shut. "It wasn't right. I didn't want you to touch her."

She sucked in a breath through her nose and sat down hard on the ground, leaning over one knee to keep from passing out. Ben's lace-up boots moved closer to her. He asked her what the hell was the matter, but his words seemed to come through a long, hollow pipe.

Gail swallowed and her throat ached. "I woke up one night. It was . . . after Daddy died. I woke up and went to her room. Mother was gone, I don't know where. I wanted to go inside, but I couldn't. I heard you. I heard you . . . saying things to her. You smell so sweet. Like a flower. So pretty."

"That never happened! You don't know what you're talking about."

She laughed, more a moan. "Yes, I do know. I knew it without knowing, and I hated her for it."