Suspicion of Vengeance (33 page)

While she took a shower, Anthony hung up his coat and tie and fixed a drink, a scotch on the rocks. Gail's cousin would soon arrive with the crime scene photographs. She had called to say she had something to show them. Anthony intended to let the women talk while he put his feet up for a while.

The Atlantic was the color of lead. Clouds were moving in from the north, and the beach was deserted. Anthony had just settled into a chair on the patio when the doorbell rang.

"Cono."

It was Jackie Bryce with the box of photographs. He offered a drink. She said she would take a beer. She sat at the counter that separated kitchen and dining area, running shoes on the rung of the high chair. Her sleeveless white top and blue shorts revealed her arms and legs, with their sleek, hard muscles.

Anthony could not decide, even upon this third meeting, what he thought of her. The girl had a tough, cool, almost masculine demeanor that Anthony couldn't easily respond to. She was a cop; he was predisposed not to like them.

Jackie seemed to regard him with the same uneasy appraisal.

He gave her a smile. "Gail should be out in a few minutes." The box sat on the end of the counter where she had dropped it. A few raindrops dotted the cardboard lid. From politeness he inquired, "Well. Did you find anything interesting?"

"There's a few I looked at twice." She pulled the box closer and took out an envelope, withdrawing several color enlargements. She laid one on the counter. "This shows the supposed entry point, the sliding glass door. Those rock fragments on the carpet were taken into evidence. But the reason they zeroed in on the back door was that it was off the track. That's what drew their attention. They found scratch marks outside, see? Here on the aluminum frame." She showed him another photograph, a blowup. "It's not that unusual to have scratches. Anytime you lose your keys, you can get in that way, if you don't have a safety bolt, and they didn't."

"And what is this supposed to mean?"

"I don't know. I'm just saying, how are we sure it was a break-in?"

Anthony drank his scotch. "Because the door was off the track. I believe that some assumptions can be made."

Jackie gave him another photograph. "This is a close-up of the clock showing the hands at 10:23 a.m."

The clock cord vanished off the right side of the frame, presumably toward Amber Dodson's neck, but the face of the clock was clearly visible, with smudges of dried blood across the plastic.

"Your point is that the police assumed she died around 10:23," Anthony said. "They were skeptical at first, but setting that aside for the moment, if you are suggesting, and I think you may be, that Gary Dodson set the hands ahead and opened the back door on his way to work to simulate a break-in, there is a problem. Amber died between ten and two. My forensic pathologist could find nothing wrong with the ME's estimate."

"I know," Jackie said. "Gail told me." She rummaged in the box again. "Here's a shot of the body. Notice the panties. They were pulled down postmortem, see how the smears go? She wasn't raped. What if, and I'm just playing with the facts here, what if the killer was trying to make the police think it was a sexually motivated attack that happened between ten and ten-thirty?"

"I can buy that," Anthony said. "Theoretically. What is this next one?"

Jackie held up a wide shot of the bedroom. "Tell me what you see."

"I've seen this one," he said. "The state introduced it into evidence. There's the bed, which is knocked aside. Night table turned over. Lamp on the floor. Book. Framed print on the wall. Curtains. Awning windows. Chair."

"Are the curtains open or closed?"

"Open."

"What about the windows?"

He leaned closer. The aluminum frames tilted outward. "Open."

Jackie put the photograph on the counter facing him. "Lacey Mayfield told Gail that she went around to the side of the house about nine-thirty and knocked on the window to see if Amber was awake. She couldn't see in because the curtains were closed. The windows had to be closed too. If they had been open, she wouldn't have knocked. So the windows were closed when Lacey got there."

Anthony grabbed for a logical answer. "The police opened them later."

"No, the police report says that Kemp asked Gary about the windows. He said they usually slept with the windows open at night, and they were open when he got home."

"All right, but what do you conclude from this?" Anthony did not like to be led along in a blindfold.

"Nothing. It's just interesting," she said.

"One could say, I imagine, that Amber got up, closed the windows to keep the room quiet, and went back to bed. Her sister came and knocked on the glass. When Gary called at ten o'clock and woke Amber up, she opened the windows."

Jackie nodded. "That makes sense." She put the beer bottle to her mouth and tipped it back.

Anthony poured himself a little more scotch. "Theories are useful if they lead somewhere. I don't see where this one is going."

"Maybe nowhere, but Gail got me to thinking, that day at the ranch when she was talking about Amber's sister. The ME said Amber died between ten and two. Lacey gave aerobics classes from ten until four, but she was gone about forty minutes for lunch. The studio was only a mile from Palm City. I checked."

"You suspect Lacey Mayfield?"

"Look at these pictures of the baby's crib.
Two
bottles, see? One's full, one's half empty. It's probably nothing. I asked a friend at work, and she said that she does that sometimes. Her baby was a big boy, and he'd get hungry, so if she wanted to sleep, she'd fix him two bottles."

Anthony circled his hand for her to go on. "And?"

"Lacey was the baby's aunt. If she killed Amber, she wouldn't want the baby to get hungry before Gary got home." Jackie kept her eyes on him as she took another swallow of beer. She said, "It's just a thought."

"One that we have no time to pursue," he said.

"What I was trying to do," Jackie said, "was to find other scenarios. Gail said she needed some alternative theories to argue in court."

"Do you know, Jackie, you're constructing a good case against Gary? He faked a break-in, adjusted the clock, and put two bottles in the crib because he wouldn't be home until late that afternoon." Anthony lifted his hands, palms spread. "I could have had Kenny Clark acquitted, proposing such a theory to the jury, if I could have made them ignore the medical examiner. But at the moment we need proof, not theories, and the proof lies with the Mendoza deed, Whit McGrath, and Rusty Beck. Or so I thought."

Jackie looked at him coolly. "It's a good idea to keep your mind open."

Twenty-five years old. How fortunate to be that age, to be a police officer, to know so much. Taking another deep swallow of scotch, Anthony became aware that a telephone had been ringing for some moments.

Jackie glanced at her bag. "Is that your phone? It's not mine."

It was Gail's. She had left it in her purse on the table in the dining area. Anthony took it out and cheeked the caller-ID.

He flipped the phone open. "Yes?"

A male voice said, "Hey, this is Whit McGrath. I met Ms. Connor last Saturday I guess you must be Anthony Quintana. Do I have that right?"

He set his glass down on the table. "That's correct. Ms. Connor is unavailable at the moment. Why do you want to talk to her?"

"Listen, I owe you folks an apology. I mean it. I got a little stressed at the party, and then a friend of mine who lives out that way called and said he saw some people trespassing near Pines Road, and I said, well, ask them to leave. Then he called me back later and told me who they were—you and Ms. Connor. I should've let it go, and if he inconvenienced you in any way, I'm sorry."

Qué mentiroso.
Anthony said, "Thank you for the apology. I should send you a bill for my jacket, which Rusty Beck ran over in his truck and ruined."

Silence. McGrath wondering how they knew the name.

Jackie, who had initially pretended not to be listening, had turned around on her chair. She slid off it and walked toward him.

McGrath's voice said, "Absolutely I'll pay for it, absolutely. Hey, listen, how about you and Gail coming over to my place tonight? The wife is having some people in, but that's her thing, and I could use an excuse to duck out. We should talk."

Gail came out of the bedroom in jeans and a T-shirt, and Anthony held up a hand to keep her quiet.

"I confess to you, Mr. McGrath"—Anthony pointed to the phone—"that I am curious what it is you want to discuss." Gail's eyes widened.

"Call me Whit. What I would like very much, with all humility, is to ask a favor of you and Ms. Connor relative to that case you're working on. Come on over, say six, six-thirty, we'll have some drinks. It's not far, a little ways down on Jupiter Island. How about it?"

"I'll get back to you after I talk to Ms. Connor. But first I have a question."

"Okay."

"How do you know we are here and not in Miami?"

"How? Ms. Connor's secretary said she was in Stuart."

"Ah. Of course."

Ending the call, Anthony wondered if he had missed spotting the black pickup truck behind them today. He had left his pistol in the glove compartment of his car and thought he would probably go down and get it.

The women were staring at him.

Gail said, "Anthony, what is going
on
?”

He repeated his conversation with Whit McGrath.

For a long moment the only sound was the faraway breaking of waves on the beach below them.

"There's no reason for both of us to go," Anthony finally said. "You have to work on the affidavit for Kenny Clark tonight. I'll go see what he wants—"

"You're not going without me," Gail said. "Whit McGrath isn't going to
do
anything. Not at his house, with his wife and all those people around." Gail looked at Jackie. "You know him. What do you think?"

Jackie stood with her hands in the back pockets of her shorts. "I don't think it's dangerous."

Gail looked back at Anthony, waiting for him to speak. She wasn't waiting for his approval. He picked up his scotch. "I want Hector to go with us. He went to Indiantown today, looking for friends of the Mendozas, but I can have him back here within an hour."

"If Hector is there too, McGrath might not talk to us."

"Hector's being there won't make any difference. We'll go, we'll listen. McGrath wants a favor, but I doubt it's anything we would be willing to give him. He called you, so you take the lead. I suggest we tell him nothing. We don't mention the Mendoza deed, and we don't reveal our suspicions that Rusty Beck killed Amber Dodson."

Frowning, Gail shook her head. "I don't know. It's just so useless to go there and say nothing. What do we gain from it?"

"If you know what he wants," Jackie said, "it would help with your strategy."

"Exactly," Anthony said.

"No," said Gail. "That's not enough." She was breathing quickly again, and color flooded across her pale cheeks. With short, jerky steps, she began to pace. She whirled toward them again. "I'm not going to go over there and do nothing while Whit McGrath toys with us. The man is evil. He thinks he's in control, but he needs to be shoved off balance. Kenny Ray Clark is going to
die
unless we start pushing somebody,
hard.
Why should we hide what we know? Why? There's nothing to lose. Why don't we threaten to turn Whit McGrath in for the murder of the Mendozas? He forged the deed, and now they've disappeared. Do any of us really believe that they're still alive? Or that McGrath wasn't involved in their deaths? Even if the police do no more than investigate, the publicity could ruin him."

"Gail, we can't provoke him for the satisfaction of doing it." For support, Anthony looked at Jackie.

A shadow passed over Jackie's brown eyes, and her face seemed less young than it had five minutes ago. She said, "You should do it. Push him."

CHAPTER 21

Thursday night, March 22

It was past six o'clock when they left the apartment, crossing the bridges to the mainland. Heavy clouds dimmed what little light remained. The bridge to Jupiter Island was several miles farther south.

Gail could hear Hector's voice. He sat directly behind her in the backseat, able to look at Anthony. It was Anthony to whom he spoke. Gail knew she had no status with Hector Mesa.

He had spent the past two days around Indiantown, a one-stoplight town near the canal dredged from Lake Okeechobee, where Spanish was heard as often as English, and migrants lived in shacks without screens on the windows. Hector said he had dressed the part: mismatched old clothes and cheap, dusty sneakers. A harmless little gray-haired Chicano.

He had found a Guatemalan woman named Maria who had known Celestina Mendoza.

"Maria worked at a Mexican market in Indiantown. Celestina used to go there to shop and to buy money orders to send home. Maria says the Mendozas came to Florida about 1985, after a few years in Texas. First they lived in a camp in Belle Glade, and then they came to Martin County to pick oranges during the season. There was the husband, Ignacio, and Celestina, and their son, Jose, and Celestina's father, Ramon. The boy, Jose, was a teenager but...
idiota.
What is that?"

Anthony said, "You mean mentally disabled?"

"Yes. They had another son, but he was murdered by the paramilitary in Guatemala, so they came to the U.S. They worked for the old American man you told me about, and he gave them the property, as you know. Celestina told Maria that a man came to the house and wanted to buy their property, but Ignacio said no. They had moved too many times already, and no more. The man came back and said if they didn't sell, there would be trouble."

"Who was the man?"

"She doesn't know. Maria didn't see Celestina for a long time. She didn't notice at first because they weren't close friends, but then she thought they must have sold the property and moved somewhere else. She told me the name of Ignacio's brother and the town where Celestina sent the money orders, San Cristobal. I have a friend in Guatemala, and he went to see what he could find out. The brother, Felipe, is dead, but his wife says that after July 1988 the money orders stopped. Ignacio had no telephone, so Felipe wrote letters. Nothing. He was going to come look for them, but he died before he could get a visa and save the money for the trip."