Cold Case Squad (10 page)

She cocked her head expectantly.

Nazario leaned forward, watching her intently. "It's been suggested
that Charles Terrell's death was no accident."

"Suicide? I don't believe—" She blinked, her narrowing green eyes
suddenly shrewd. "The insurance company is behind this, isn't it?
Because they paid double indemnity for accidental death and wouldn't
have to pay at all for suicide. Isn't there a statute of limitations?
Can they just come back after all these years?"

"Probably not. But there is no statute of limitations on
first-degree murder," Burch said. "We're trying to determine if his
death might have been homicide."

"Homicide?" She looked confused. "That's not possible."

"Why not?"

"Or maybe…" Her expression morphed into something sly. "His
ex-wife," she said triumphantly. "April murdered him! She's the type.
Definitely! She hated him for leaving. You should have heard her when
she found out about us. Charles kept promising to tell her, but never
did. She had to face it, sooner or later, so I left him a message on
their home answering machine about our plans for a night out. I knew
she'd hear it. She showed up and made a scene. What a bitch! She's
definitely the type." Natasha nodded, her expression certain. "Didn't
want the divorce, but wanted child support big time."

"What would she have to gain?" Nazario asked.

"Everything!" Natasha said, eyes wide with surprise that he'd even
asked. "Revenge. Payback. The oldest motives in the world. If Charles
was murdered, that woman did it."

She sprang up, pacing back and forth. "It was all such a shock. I
realized when it happened that the only way to survive is to look out
for number one. You can't count on anything, or anybody, in this world,
and nothing beats money in the bank."

She wheeled and stopped, struck by a new idea, in front of a
romantic painting of a young and luminous Romeo and Juliet embracing in
a garden.

"Has she remarried?" Natasha demanded.

"I don't believe so," Burch said.

"Too bad, because if she killed Charles and has any assets, I could
sue her, couldn't I? A wrongful death action?" Dead serious now, she
had even stopped sneaking peeks at the stock quotes.

"That's something you'd have to discuss with your lawyer," Burch
said.

Natasha didn't recall any other enemies or threats to Terrell, she
said. There had been a small problem with the weight-reduction clinics.
"An unfortunate incident. They went bankrupt to avoid a lawsuit. A
woman on the program died suddenly. No proof the pills or the diet
caused it. But there were children. The husband sued. You know how
people are," Natasha said, "always after the fast buck."

Burch almost spit up his coffee. Was the woman familiar with the
word
irony
?

She could not recall anything suspicious on the day Charles died,
but took Burch's business card and said she'd call if she did.

"One more thing," Nazario said, as they stepped out the door. "The
champagne you and Charles drank that last night. You said that was
unusual for him. What did he usually drink?"

"Nothing. Charles rarely drank. The man was practically a
teetotaler. He was a physical fitness freak. He might join everyone in
a wedding toast or on New Year's Eve, but other than that, he never
drank."

"Due to a health problem?"

"No. His personality. He was a control freak. He always had to be in
full control of his faculties."

Still in the doorway, they watched a chauffeured limo roll sedately
up the driveway.

"Here comes my husband now." Natasha smiled.

The uniformed driver opened the door for the lone occupant, a
white-haired gentleman who ambled up the front walk, using a cane.

The bridegroom was home from his doctor's appointment.

Milo Ross glanced up and waved. Then he disappeared into the garage,
where an elevator apparently whisked him upstairs. Moments later he
emerged from a side hall.

"Hello, sweetheart." She lifted her face for a kiss, which he
dutifully planted on her cheek.

She introduced him to the detectives. The happy couple stood arm in
arm in the doorway and watched them drive off.

The landscape truck was gone.

Nelson pounded the steering wheel in frustration as the big green
truck bounced over the narrow bridge to his next job at Brickell Point.
Those men were police. Were they checking up on Natasha for her rich
old husband?

Was she in danger? She had not seemed upset or afraid. She had faced
them, eyes flashing, bold and defiant. What
brío
, what fire
and spirit in that woman. Although he did not understand the words she
whispered, crooned, and sometimes cried out when they made love, he
knew their meaning. He had never heard such words, but he knew they
meant that they would be together. Love is a universal language.

He felt hurt at how abruptly he had been dismissed. When the old man
died, they would be together.
Para siempre
. Forever. Perhaps
sooner, if his plans worked out.

When trimming the hibiscus hedges at the Douglas Gardens Home for
the Aged, he had first seen the physical therapists in their smocks and
spotless white shoes caring for patients, leading them through their
exercise and rehabilitation. The grateful patients fought through pain
and weakness to please their therapists. A noble occupation. Something
about it fascinated him. He knew now, more than ever, that he must
pursue it. For a woman like Natasha, a man needed a profession with
respect, one where he did not drive a truck that smelled of fertilizer
and pesticide, where he did not always have dirt beneath his
fingernails. She didn't seem to mind that, in fact she seemed to revel
in it, but he knew if he had a more respectable profession she would
look up to him. He had to work on his English. He had to do everything
in his power to impress her. He imagined himself at the dinner table
with her someday in that grand house on the water.

There were problems, of course. His wife, Lourdes, and the children,
in their small apartment in Little Havana. He wished now that he had
not paid the smuggler all that money to bring them to Miami from Cuba.
It had taken all of his savings and more, and his business was still
small, but growing. But how was he to know that this rich and beautiful
gringa
would fall in love with him? The ways of true love are
unpredictable and never easy.

He was surprised at first that Natasha had stopped paying the
monthly bills for his landscaping and lawn maintenance after they began
having sex. But he understood it would not seem right to accept money
from her now that they were lovers. And she had promised to recommend
his work to wealthy friends. This new job, he believed, was entirely
due to her recommendation. It proved she loved him and wanted him to
succeed so they could be together. He might not have much money now
but, he thought, I am a millionaire of love.

He arrived at the nearly finished forty-story luxury condominium
apartment building, a towering shaft in a lush green park for which he
was responsible. The posh two-story penthouses in the sky had sweeping
spiral staircases, lofty rotundas, and private terraces that he would
fashion into exotic tropical gardens. The San Souci Towers was nearly
finished. Owners would move in within ninety days. The terrace gardens,
with baby orchids and passion flowers in bloom, were to be ready for
their arrival. He walked through the unfinished marble lobby, still
thick with dust. Tarps and blue protective plastic shrouded the
installations for the front desk, security, the valet staff and
concierge. Heavy brown paper crisscrossed the lobby in paths, to
protect the marble floors from the feet of the construction workers.

Nelson activated the high-speed elevator that whisked him to
penthouse four. Security was so sophisticated that each resident would
be issued a remote, a sensor programmed to open the elevator doors at
their floor only. Without the remote the elevators would descend
nonstop to the lobby. But going up, no door would open on any floor
without the proper signal. Nelson had his own remote now, programmed to
grant him access to the entire building for his work.

When the owners moved in, the remote had to be returned and all the
codes and signals changed. Nelson was
amazed
that people
lived like this. His own protection, his security, was the rusting .45
caliber automatic in his glove compartment. But someday he, too, would
live like this, he and the beautiful Natasha. He had never had a woman
like her before. She was all he thought about now, her silky skin, her
bright green eyes, her elegance and passion. He wished he could pay the
smugglers to spirit his wife and children back to Cuba, but he knew
they would refuse to go. They liked Miami, its designer jeans, its
television, and its supermarkets. Perhaps he could go to the man in
Hialeah to see how much it would cost to smuggle his family back to the
island, by force if necessary.

The smuggler was crossing the Florida Straits anyway, his boat empty
until his return trip. Why not?

For every problem, he told himself, there is a solution. Nothing
must stand in the way of true love.

The kayak skittered into the water like an eight-foot alligator
splashing off a canal bank. K.C. Riley adjusted her life jacket, swung
gracefully down the dockside ladder, and settled into the one-seater.
She felt more comfortable on the water than anywhere else in this
restless and mercurial city. Water welcomed her and soothed her soul.
She had always been drawn to it. Even more so now. The ancient bay
gleamed and glittered as though lit from within. She used to think she
could see the future by gazing into its shadows, swirls, and
reflections. Now all she saw was the past.

She paddled, inhaling deeply, swaying from side to side. Her
favorite hours on the water were predusk and dawn. This late weekday
summer afternoon meant fewer tourists, personal watercraft, and go-fast
boats.

She let the rhythm of her movements block out the concerns and
clutter of the job. Unruly cops, imminent budget cuts, and threats to
her unit's very existence all paled beside the chief reason she'd fled
the office.

Kathleen Constance Riley was accustomed to tragedy and sudden death
in all its forms. She watched autopsies, had supervised the rape squad,
and stood shoulder to shoulder with other cops on the front lines at
riots and disasters. Trouble was her business, human sorrow part of the
job. Her
emotions had never betrayed her. Until now.

Even when she knew a victim personally, she took command, knew the
immediate priorities. Saw what needed to be done and did it, wrapped in
her own professional cloak of invincibility. That was her mission, her
salvation. A woman on the job must reveal no weakness. No one had ever
seen her cry.

But the graphic photos of a dead stranger had shaken her to the
core. In her mind's eye, those charred remains had morphed into someone
else, another life extinguished in a fiery burst of light. She took a
deep breath. Out here she felt Kendall McDonald's presence more than
anywhere.

Mirror-bright water reflected mountains of startlingly pink
cumulonimbus clouds adrift across a golden horizon. She glided across
the crystal-clear bay, propelled by gentle currents. Small fish darted
in the shallow water, just a few feet deep. Her moving shadow
interrupted a small brown nurse shark stalking its prey through swaying
sea grass. The long, lethal tail of a startled stingray whipped the
surface as the creature wheeled and fled at incredible speed.

Riley paddled a familiar route, alert for yachts, power boats, and
Jet Skiers. She and McDonald had kayaked here often, murmuring to each
other, laughing and joking, their voices carrying across the water.

They'd always skirt the shoreline in water too shallow for bigger
boats so the reckless speed freaks would run aground before running
over them. Sandy scars left by propellers were all too visible in the
sea grass and coral.

She carried a small air horn in the mesh pocket of her life jacket
to warn off power boaters who came too close.

She cleared the island's east end, slightly out of breath and giddy
with anticipation. There it was, their favorite landmark. Inexplicable
tears stung her eyes. Towering against endless sky, it was a house
never lived in, yet alive with ghosts. Their whispers swirled in the
southeast breeze off the sea.

She had picnicked at the foot of Cape Florida's lighthouse as a
child. She and Kendall McDonald had chased each other up and down its
narrow staircase as youngsters. He'd painted their initials high on its
brick exterior as a teenager. The letters remained intertwined there
for years, until the lighthouse was cleaned up, the graffiti erased.

Tequesta Indians fished and hunted along the same sandy stretch
thousands of years ago. The campfires of ancient tribesmen still
flickered in her imagination. Juan Ponce de Leon explored this very
beach during his sixteenth-century quest for the Fountain of Youth.

The infamous Black Caesar camped there later, followed by more
pirates—"salvage" wreckers who torched huge bonfires to lure rich
Spanish merchant ships onto the reefs, where they were swarmed, looted,
and sunk.

Much later came the Secret Service, political entourages, and
antiwar protesters. Riley and McDonald were still children when
President Richard Nixon made Key Biscayne the site of his winter White
House.

The President schemed with his aides, advisers, and banker buddy
Bebe Rebozo on the same beach, pacing in the long-vanished footsteps of
ancient Indians, explorers, pirates, thieves, and wreckers. All of them
were gone now.

So was McDonald.