Suspicion of Malice (31 page)

"How long have you lived here?" Gail asked.

Glasses clinked in a cabinet. "About two years, ex
cept for eight months I spent in New York in the
corps at the City Ballet. Edward Villella asked if I'd like to come back to Miami as a soloist, so I did. The
cottage isn't exactly convenient, but Jack lets me have
it for nothing.”

"So you studied in New York?"

"No, here in Miami. Bobby Gonzalez and I took classes together. He stayed, I left. New York is wonderful, but there are so many great dancers it usually
takes years to get out of the corps. So here I am
again."

Setting her purse on the table, Gail noticed a gold picture frame on the wall beside the front door. She had missed it on her way in, and walked back across the room to see. "Oh, this is wonderful." Against an almost overpowering backdrop of black shadow and
velvet curtains, a young dancer stood at the edge of
a stage. Her tutu was a froth of net and gleaming
pearls. The girl's small, rosy lips were parted, and her eyes were fixed on something out of view.

Gail realized that Diane was standing beside her. She looked back and forth, one face to the other. "It's
really you. And the tutu! I could reach in and touch it. Is this typical of your cousin's style?"

Diane handed Gail the glass of carrot juice. "Well,
the colors are sort of typical, but most of her paint
ings are abstract. She didn't do portraits, so this is special. That's what Jack says. He's an expert."

"And your mother wants it back. I don't blame
her."

"She doesn't even like it. She'll have a cocktail
party so she can show it off. 'Oh, yes, this was
painted by our dear, departed niece, the
famous art
ist. Isn't it just marvelous?' "

"You're her daughter. That could be another rea
son to want it."

"I wish that were true. One time, when I was a little kid, she got mad and said she'd found me in
an orange grove. They were at Disney World when she went into early labor. I think she blames me for
ruining her vacation."

Unwilling to argue, Gail said, "Tell me again how your parents acquired this. It was a gift from your uncle, Porter Cresswell?"

Diane shook her head. "Not exactly. Nate Harris gave it to Aunt Claire and Uncle Porter as a present, but then they gave it to my parents. Nate didn't want
them
to have it. He was Maggie's husband, and this
was her painting, and he bought it for Aunt Claire
and Uncle Porter."

"Wait. You say that Nate Harris gave it to them?"
Gail wondered why Anthony hadn't mentioned this.

"Yes. He bought it from Jack. Jack's an art dealer.

Nate came by here the night of the party and picked
it up.”

"You were here?"

"Not then. I was out with some friends and got
home late. Earlier that day I saw it in Jack's study,
and I said, what's this doing here? And he said Nate Harris was coming by to look at it. It wasn't in there
the next day, so I guess Nate took it with him that
night."

"Really. How did Jack get it?"

"From Roger."

Gail laughed a little. "Well . . . where did Roger get it?"

Diane looked to one side, then frowned. "I don't k
now, but Jack's had it for two or three months. It's
been hanging in his gallery."

Lightly touching the gilded wood frame, Gail said,
"How much is this worth? Just curious."

"Jack says a serious collector might pay fifty thou
sand. He was offering it for seventy-five."

"God."

"Well, Jack likes to bargain."

"Where is Jack, by the way?"

"He's home. I told him you were coming."

"And I suppose he knows I'm working for Bobby
Gonzalez."

Diane tucked a strand of platinum hair into her stretchy black headband. "You don't have to worry about Jack."

"Listen, Diane. Do me a favor and don't mention
this to anyone else. Don't mention me either. No one can know I'm working for Bobby. If your aunt and
uncle found out, or your parents— Oh, great, I'm telling you to keep secrete from your parents."

"That's easy. I hardly talk to them anyway."

With another look at the portrait, Gail let out a
breath. "Come on, let's sit down."

Diane went over to the little bistro table and lowered herself gracefully into a chair. The upswept hair made her neck seem long and fragile. The thin straps
of her pastel blue top revealed the bones of her chest.
Large eyes watched Gail approach, set down the
glass of carrot juice, and pull out the other chair.

"It's a painting of
me,"
Diane said. "Doesn't that
give me some kind of right to it?"

"Afraid not." Gail thought for a moment, then
said, "If Nate bought the painting for your aunt and
uncle, and they gave it to your parents, you had no
right to take it. But let's say for a moment that Nate hadn't paid for it. The sale wasn't final. If Nate didn't pay, and no one else along the line paid any money,
then the previous owner, Jack, could in theory recover his property."

For a minute or two Diane looked blankly across
the room. "Does that mean I could have it?"

"Well, if Jack would give it to you. And
if
—this is
all very iffy—there was never actually a sale. I could
find out, but honestly, no one ever wins in a family dispute. You should talk to your uncle. Are you on
good terms with him? Maybe he'd persuade your parents to drop the issue, since he was the one who gave them the portrait."

"Well, my fattier doesn't really care. It's mostly my
mother." Diane frowned in thought. "Uncle Porter
has never been easy to talk to. He's kind of intimidating, especially since he got sick. He'd probably just
tell me to go away and leave him alone."

"What about your aunt Claire?"

"She hates controversy,
hates
it, and she's such a mouse when it comes to Uncle Porter, you just want to scream. She might help, if I could convince her to
do it. I know she likes me. She was a dancer in her
faraway youth." Diane smiled. "That's what she
says. 'My innocent and faraway youth.' "

Gail considered, then said, "Would you like for me to talk to Claire? She went to high school with my
mother. What if I mentioned this, and said that I'd
met you, and that we had talked about the
portrait. . . ."

The pale blue eyes gazed back at her. "You could
even ask about Roger. I mean, if you wanted to."

As before, outside the ballet, Gail had the sense of things being wordlessly conveyed. This girl would
help Bobby Gonzalez as far as she could. "I could
talk to Claire next weekend on the boat."

"What boat?"

"They're taking Roger's ashes to be scattered at
sea. You hadn't heard?
^”

With a sigh, Diane nodded. "Jack told me. That's
how I found out. My mother and father didn't say anything. You see how they are? But why are you
going?"

"I'm working with Nate's lawyer. Claire invited
him, and he got me onboard."

A smile dimpled Diane's cheeks. "Angela's father."

"Things get around, don't they?" Gail said, "Will
you be with the family next weekend?"

The smile vanished. "I hadn't planned to. It would
be awfully strained, wouldn't it? Everyone pretending they're sorry he's dead. I guess that makes me sound cold, but it's the truth."

"How well did you know your cousin?"

"Hardly at all. We saw each other at holidays or family dinners. He came to the ballet a couple of times, but only because Claire insisted."

Gail said nothing for a few moments, snagged on the awkwardness of asking Diane which of her rela
tives might have had a reason to commit murder. Her uncle, who had feared his son was destroying the company? Her own parents, who had clashed
with Roger for pushing them aside? Diane's brother, Sean, had hated Roger for getting him in trouble with
the police. And there was Nikki, who would have
lost millions in company stock if her husband had divorced her.

Unable to find a thread to follow, Gail let her eyes drift across the room. Through the windows she saw the colored glass pieces slowly turning, catching the light. "Those are pretty, the pieces of glass. Did you
put them out there?"

"No, they were here already. I think Maggie did."

"Did you ever watch her working?"

"I wish I had." She sighed. "I was too young to know anything."

"Tell me about her," Gail said.

"Well . . . she was brilliant, of -course." Diane
leaned forward on crossed arms. "Jack told me a lot about her. They grew up together. He says that when
she was really small, she
knew
she was going to be an
artist. It's sort of the same with me, actually. When I
was little, I felt special, not like my brother and sister.
Maybe that's why I don't get along with them, or
with my mother. Anyway, Maggie ran away when
she was still in high school and went north to study. She lived in a cottage on Cape Cod and was really happy there, even though she was alone. Sort of like me. I was a senior in high school, and one day Jack
handed me the keys to this cottage, and he said whenever I wanted to come over here, it was mine. He let Maggie stay here too. I'm sorry now I didn't
come over to see her. He says we would have been
great friends. Isn't it sad how you always know
something too late?"

Smiling, Diane softly said, "I feel that we do con
nect on another plane. She had a good spirit. I think that when someone with a good spirit dies, and you
come into that aura, nothing bad will happen. Maybe that's why I've stayed here so long. It's like . . . she's watching over me. She sent Edward to bring me back
from New York. I believe that, truly."

They were quiet for a minute. Gail could hear the
hum of the air conditioner and the chain on one of
the ceiling fans tapping on the housing.

"I almost forgot." Diane got up and walked to the bookcase. "Jack gave me this the other day, after I
brought the portrait home. It's from a show in New York. Her last one."

Diane returned with a glossy exhibition guide from a gallery at Madison and Fifty-ninth. There was some text describing Margaret Cresswell's work, followed
by full-color reproductions of her paintings. Gail turned the pages. So much black and brown, great
swaths of it, pressing down on the more intense col
ors underneath, layer upon layer, as if pinning the heart of the thing far below the surface. Gail could see that the technique was excellent, but she felt no
emotional connection. The portrait of Diane had spo
ken to her more clearly.

"Maggie's picture is on the last page." Standing
behind her, Diane pointed, and Gail skipped ahead.

The black-and-white photograph took up the lower right-hand corner. The rest of the page contained her
biography. Schools, degrees, major collections. Gail's
attention returned to the artist. Margaret Cresswell
had looked sideways at the camera as if it were in
truding. Gail could only guess at the color of her long hair and pale eyes. Light brown and blue or
gray? Gentle eyes, with faint shadows underneath.
One brow a little higher than the other. No lipstick to define the small mouth, no blush to soften the
sharp cheekbones. A woman who hadn't cared what people thought of her looks. Not defiance—irrelevance.
Why does it matter?
A man of some maturity and intelligence—a judge, say—might have found himself in the middle of a third or fourth conversa
tion with this woman and have realized that he
didn't want her to go back north. He would have persuaded her, somehow, to stay in the very place
she had chosen to leave. Gail glanced at the date of the guide. Margaret Cresswell had been thirty-two years old. One year away from her death.

Gail said, "She killed herself. Do you know why?"

"They say it was clinical depression, which is the
same as saying nobody knows." Diane turned her head toward the far end of the room. "There was a
sofa under that window, and she took some pills and went to sleep."

"Who found her? Jack?"

"He was out of town. She left a note for her hus
band, and when he got home he read it and called
the police, and they found her. It was too late by
then."