Beyond Suspicion

“We’ve got two pretty solid theories.”

Rosa started to pace, as if it helped her think. “One, the viatical investors killed Jessie. They put the body in your house to deflect guilt from them to you. Or two, Jessie feared a horrible death. She was convinced they were going to kill her. So she killed herself, but she did it in a way and in a place that, as you say, makes a statement. She wanted to create havoc in your life because you refused to help her.”

“It has to be one of those,” said Jack.

“Lucky for us, there’s a common thread to both of them: The viatical investors threatened to kill Jessie. We need to find out who’s behind that company.”

“Jessie didn’t give me much to go on. She basically just said the company itself was a front. The real money was a bunch of bad operators.”

“You know what I always say. Bad money has a stench. Follow your nose. You up for it?”

“What’s my alternative?”

“You can sit back and hope your love letter to Jancowitz does the trick.”

He shook his head, not so sure that Jancowitz would be satisfied in merely embarrassing him. He looked at Rosa and said, “I’ll take care of the letter. Then it’s time to go fishing.”

“You have any particular investigator you’d like to use?”

“The official answer to that is no.”

She gave him a knowing smile. “You know, it’s really too bad Theo is a convicted felon. I’d use him too, if he could get a license.”

“That’s the beauty of the arrangement. It keeps me from having to pay him.”

“Something tells me you’ll find a way around that.”

Jack nodded, knowing that with all the freebies Theo had given him, someday he’d owe him his car.

Rosa checked her watch. “Gotta run. If you need me, you know where to find me.”

Jack walked her from the conference room to the lobby. They stopped at the double doors. “Rosa. Thank you.”

“No problem. You’d do the same for me. But let’s hope you never have to.”

She was out the door, but Jack answered anyway, for no one’s benefit but his own. “Let’s hope.”

16

•

It was two A.M., and Jack sat alone at the kitchen table wearing the pajamas his mother-in-law had given him for Christmas. They were a grotesque paisley print, the kind of garment that might ordinarily sit in a dresser drawer until old age seized his senses. So long as he and Cindy were in Mrs. Paige’s house, however, he figured he’d be the good son-in-law and wear them.

Since “the incident,” as they’d come to call it, Cindy and Jack had been staying in her old room in her mother’s house in Pinecrest. It was a temporary arrangement until they could find an apartment. Moving back into their house would never be an option, and Jack feared that even a fast-talking realtor would have a tough time selling it. And over here, Mr. and Mrs. Buyer, is a spacious master bathroom, which the owners have quite tastefully painted a very lovely shade of red to disguise the blood splatter on the walls.

The light from under the range hood cast a faint glow across the room. Beads of condensation glistened on the glass of water before him. A seriously flawed segment of Jack’s brain was forcing him to play the half-empty/half-full guessing game, so he raised the water glass and guzzled.

There, damn it. Empty.

Jack’s letter had gone off to the state attorney’s office that afternoon. It recounted his entire conversation with Jessie the night before her death. He’d labored over the wording for several hours before enlisting Rosa’s help to massage the final draft. She was totally sold on the concept. Jack hadn’t realized how unsold he was until after he’d wasted four hours trying to fall asleep. A written acknowledgment to the state attorney that his own client had scammed him would hardly bolster his standing in the Miami legal community.

“Are you okay?”

He turned and saw Cindy standing behind him. He’d tried not to wake her when he’d crawled out of the little bed they were sharing, but he’d obviously failed.

“Can’t sleep,” he said.

“Me neither. I thought I’d check the real estate section for rentals once more.”

“Good idea.”

As she searched through the recycle bin for yesterday’s newspaper, she looked up and asked, “Are you still thinking about that letter you wrote to the state attorney?”

“How did you know?”

“Because I know you.”

He lowered his eyes. “I feel like the teacher kept me after school to write five hundred times on the blackboard, ‘bullwinkle is a dope.’”

“You’re not stupid. You’re the smartest lawyer I know.”

“I did a pretty stupid thing.”

“You had no choice. Writing that letter is the only way to focus the state attorney’s attention where it belongs-on those investors who were threatening your client.”

“I didn’t mean writing the letter was stupid. I meant letting Jessie fool me in the first place.”

She quit searching for the newspaper and lowered herself into the chair beside her husband. The look in her eye told him that he was in for a reality check. “Jessie’s doctor was one of the most respected neurologists in Miami. How could you possibly have suspected that a man of his stature would falsify a diagnosis and defraud a group of viatical investors?”

“I deal with clever thieves all the time. I let my sympathy for Jessie get in the way.”

“Of course you did. Even I felt sorry for that woman. I’m the one who told you, ‘Go ahead and take the case, I don’t care if she’s your old girlfriend.’ Remember?”

“It still blows me away.”

“Me too. Especially the doctor. The more I think about this, the crazier it seems that Dr. Marsh would jeopardize his whole career that way.”

“Money,” he said, shaking his head. “I know a few doctors who love it.”

“There has to be something more at work. Something that we don’t understand.”

He could have detailed some of Jessie’s other persuasive powers, but that didn’t seem like a smart road to travel with his wife. “Let’s not worry about him,” he said. “How are you doing?”

“Okay.”

She’d averted her eyes when answering. He turned her chin gently. “What’s wrong?”

“I got my period,” she said quietly.

Jack tried not to show disappointment. “It’s okay. We’ll keep trying.”

“We’ve been trying for eleven months now.”

“Has it really been that long?”

“Yes. And I’m still not pregnant.”

“Maybe we should try doing it without our wedding rings. That never seems to fail.”

She almost smiled, but this was clearly weighing on her. “How worried are you, honey?” he asked.

“Very.”

“Maybe it’s me,” said Jack.

“It’s not you.”

“How do you know?”

“I just know.”

He wasn’t sure how she knew, but debating it wasn’t going to cheer her up. “There are plenty of things we haven’t tried yet.”

“I know. And there’s always adoption, too. But I’m almost afraid to think about that.”

“Why?”

She paused and said, “Because of the relationship you had with your stepmother.”

“That’s totally different from adoption.”

“It’s not, at least from a bonding standpoint. You were just a newborn when your mother died. Agnes raised you from infancy.”

“The fact that my stepmother and I never bonded has nothing to do with the fact that she was not my biological mother. My father was so desperate to find me a new mother that he married a woman who turned out to be a drunk.”

She took his hand, lacing her fingers with his. “How often do you wonder about your real mother?”

“I go in spurts. Times when I’m really curious, other times when I don’t think about her at all. Fortunately, I have my abuela to tell me all about her.”

“Doesn’t that concern you, about adoption? The idea of this mysterious person becoming part of our lives?”