Tango Key, page 11
Probably. Her mother had known about herbs, about dreams, about the mystery of all things, it seemed, so she had probably known about the esoteric significance of certain crystals as well. She simply hadn't passed on all that knowledge. Her parents had died within six months of each other—her mother from a brain embolism and her father from a broken heart. There was a moral in this, just as there was a moral about gorgeous, but she didn't want to think about it too closely because it saddened her. It reminded her that she was essentially alone in the world, that she had no blood connection to anyone. Monica had had her brother, Pete. And of course, Monica had had Murphy.
No more. Cut. End of scene.
The doorbell rang, and Aline drew the brush once more through her hair and hurried out into the living room. The hands of the clock over the bookcase stood at precisely 8:30. Good. She liked a man who was prompt. Murphy had never been on time for anything.
Kincaid was so tall he filled the doorway. He wore white slacks and a black pullover shirt, a coincidence that didn't escape either of them, and sunglasses. A Band-Aid crossed the swollen bridge of his nose. "Sunglasses?" She laughed.
"It's not funny. Really." He removed the sunglasses and she felt a surge of sympathetic pain. The bruises were dark and ugly and swept from the edge of his cheekbones to the sides of his nose. "I look like a raccoon, huh."
She started to laugh, she couldn't help herself, and then he laughed, too. It made the bruises leap and quiver across the planes of his face. "Want me to drive?" she asked as they trotted down the steps to his Saab.
"I don't wear them when I drive." He actually opened the passenger door for her. She tried to remember the last time Murphy had done that, and couldn't. She slid into the seat; the car still smelled new. It was also distressingly clean—no clutter, no bits of grass and sand stuck to the floor mats, no ashtray jammed with wrappers. She knew if she peeked into the glove compartment she would find neatly stacked maps, a notepad, a pen with a top on it. In this way, he was like Murphy.
"You like seafood?" he asked, folding his bones behind the wheel and starting the ignition.
"It's prerequisite for, living on Tango," she said.
He smiled. "Yeah, I guess it is. I hope you don't mind if we have dinner with a friend of mine."
Surprise, surprise. No romantic dinner where he plies me with drinks and tries to pick my brain. "That's fine. Who?"
"Cooper's attorney. Carlos Ortiz."
The Hibiscus Inn, site of Cooper's last supper, was one of those places for which Tango was so renowned. It was built of Florida pine and snuggled at the tip of a finger of land that jutted out into the Gulf. Kincaid apparently frequented the restaurant, because the maître d'—an attractive woman who looked like an aspiring actress—bussed him on the cheek and called him by name.
She led them to a secluded booth on the second floor, next to a wall of glass. It overlooked the Gulf, where stars seemed to be rising out of the navy blue waters like the lights of alien vessels. Kincaid didn't sit way on the other side of the booth from her, which she liked. Actually, he sat close enough so she caught the faint scent of soap from his skin. He even removed his sunglasses, and in the dim illumination of the lamp that hung over their table, the bruises at his eyes seemed the same shade as the stubbled shadow on his jaw.
"I was wondering something, Kincaid," she began after they'd ordered drinks. "You growing a beard or are you just an admirer of Sonny Crockett?"
He laughed and rubbed his jaw. "One morning about a month ago I shaved off my beard. Just for a change, you know? I'd had it for twenty years and two marriages and decided it was time. Then I decided I hated it. I felt too naked. So now I'm growing it back." He glanced at her. "My turn?"
She smiled. "We still playing this game?"
"Just till Carlos arrives."
Like he had it all figured out, she thought. "Okay, your turn."
"What kind of bets do you place with Ferret?"
"Depends on the month. How much money I have to play with. Usually no more than five hundred. Twice, I bet fifteen hundred. Once I doubled that and another time I lost the entire fifteen. How about you?"
"It varies. He likes you, you know. He feels indebted to you. Usually, it's the other way around. I was kind of curious about that."
She told him about the reading program. "How long have you known him?" she asked.
"Forever," he said.
"C'mon," she said.
"I met him twenty years ago, in my freshman year in college. At Hialeah Racetrack. He came up to me while I was standing in line to place my bet and told me if I got up to the window, he was going to have me busted for being underage, but for a small percentage, he would place my bet for me. I took one look at this guy and figured he couldn't be over nineteen, but for some reason I trusted him. So I handed him my fifty bucks and told him what I wanted to bet. He laughed. He said if I bet what he told me to bet, I'd win. He was right. I quintupled my money. We've been friends ever since."
"My turn now, right?"
He smiled. It was one of those special smiles you saw maybe half a dozen times in a year that communicated something. "Sure. Your turn."
"Did Carlos Ortiz hire you?"
"Yes.''
"Why didn't you just tell me that last night?"
"I couldn't. I had to talk it over with him first. You know anything about him?"
"Not really."
Ortiz, he explained, was a displaced Cuban whose parents had fled that island in 1959 when he was twelve years old. His father had worked in Miami as a clerk in a shoe store. And because he persevered and educated himself and worked like a dog, he eventually bought the shoe store. Now he owned a chain of fifty. Ortiz, raised on the American dream, was proof of that dream. He graduated Phi Beta Kappa from the University of Miami at the age of sixteen and had a law degree from Harvard by the time he was twenty. He could've written his own ticket into any firm on Wall Street. Instead, he moved back to Miami, where he'd handled the legal work for his father's company for five years. Then he'd settled on Tango and became the attorney for the folks in Pirate's Cove.
The odd part was that he'd done it, Kincaid said, without selling his soul.
"At least as far as I can tell, and I've known him a good long while."
"So why did he hire you?"
"I think he should tell you that. The thing you've got to understand is that Carlos doesn't trust cops. He doesn't trust other lawyers, either, but that's another story. He called me about an hour after he'd heard about Cooper's death. He was in Miami and had seen it on the late-night news, I guess. He wanted me to look into things. Then, early this afternoon, he stopped by my place and I told him about you."
"His secretary told me he hadn't gotten back yet."
"As far as she knew, he hadn't. That's how he is. I guess that's what I'm trying to explain. He's very . . . contained. Anyway, he suggested we get together."
And then Ortiz and the maître d' appeared at the booth, appeared as if the Cuban had been waiting backstage until Kincaid could set the scene. This alone would've caused her mother to peg Ortiz as a man with Leo rising. Tempered flamboyance. He likes to make an entrance. He seeks the spotlight only when it suits his purposes.
He was a small, slight man dressed in navy slacks and a pale yellow guayabera shirt. His chestnut hair was slicked back. He wore aviator glasses. He was trim and at least half a foot shorter than Kincaid, who stood and offered his hand. But Ortiz hugged him instead, hugged him in a way that only Latin men could pull off, Aline thought, then asked if he'd been in a fight.
"Sort of. It's a long story. Carlos, this is Aline Scott. The detective I mentioned."
"Encantado," he murmured, shaking Aline's hand. His grip was cool, strong.
"El placer es mio," she countered, and he smiled, nodding with what she supposed was approval.
He slid into the booth next to Kincaid. "You, my friend," he said to Kincaid, "cannot go to Chile. Pinochet is not a sane man."
"I'm not going to be staying in Santiago, Carlos," Kincaid replied, as if this explained everything. The waitress came back with Aline's Bailey's Irish Cream and Kincaid's gin and tonic. "What'll it be, Carlos?"
"My dear," he said to the waitress. "Would you happen to have Corona beer?"
"Sure. We even have it with lime."
"Ah, perfecto. That is what I would like."
She walked away and he immediately turned back to the subject of Pinochet. "He eats gringos for breakfast, Ryan."
"Not on the island of Chiloe, he doesn't."
Ortiz shrugged and rolled his eyes, which skipped to Aline. "So, Detective Scott, I suppose Ryan has explained things to you?"
"More or less."
He chuckled. "More or less. Yes, I think that is probably an apt description for my friend." He gave Kincaid a paternal pat on the back, then laced his fingers together on the tabletop. "I was Doug's attorney for six years. It's rather ludicrous, really, that he even had an attorney, since he was certainly capable of drawing up his own wills. However. . ." Another shrug. "I was grateful for the business. Until now." His pause was dramatic, and Aline seized the advantage to ask a question.
"What does Eve inherit?"
"I'm getting to that.. First, I want you to know that my gut says she didn't kill him. But the evidence . . . the logic . . . well, that is hard to ignore."
The waitress returned with his Corona, replete with a twist of lime. "The evidence of the inheritance?" Aline asked.
"This is a little complex, so please bear with me. Up until six months ago, everything in Doug's estate was to go to Eve, except for some relatively minor provisions for his son and for Lucy Meadows. Ed Waite was to inherit part of his artifact collection."
"The collection in the safe-deposit box?"
He glanced at Kincaid. "I see Ryan has not been quite as reticent as usual."
Kincaid gave a noncommittal shrug.
"But who can blame him? Yes, the collection in the safe-deposit box. Ted Cavello was to inherit the sloop and about ten, fifteen thousand, I'm not quite sure of the exact amount. Anyway . . . oh, you know about Lucy?"
"The mistress." Whose alibi checked out, she thought.
He smiled. "Of sorts. Archaeology was actually his mistress, but we will get to that in a minute. After Doug was divorced from his first wife, Lucy pressed very hard for marriage. Doug was not interested. He used to say that some women were meant for mistresses and others for wives. Lucy fell into the first category and Eve into the second. Shortly before he and Eve were married, he provided Lucy with the down payment on her travel agency—as a kind of compensation, I guess you could say—and set her up in business. Anyway, about six months ago, Eve filed for divorce."
"Because of Lucy?"
He shook his head. "No, I don't think so. I think it was because of what Doug was. Please, don't misunderstand me. We got along well enough. He was one of my best clients, and he definitely had his endearing moments. But basically he was not a very likable man. He tried to control everyone and everything in his life, including Eve. It worked for a while, and then she just . . . rebelled, I guess. Filed for divorce. She withdrew the petition within two days. I suspect she evaluated the realities—namely, a prenuptial agreement that very clearly stated she would be entitled to nothing in the estate if she divorced Doug within seven years."
"Why seven years?"
Ortiz took another sip of his Corona. "I don't know, really. Perhaps the seven-year itch." He smiled. "With Doug, one could never be entirely certain of anything."
"Except that he was a shit," Kincaid commented.
"Crudely put, amigo. But probably quite true. After Eve withdrew the divorce petition, several months passed. Then Doug changed his will so that Eve would inherit the Mercedes, which was already in her name, a sum of $15,000, her personal jewelry, and the sloop. Lucy's share was lowered to a hundred thousand, and except for a couple of perona1 things that were to go to Ted Cavello and Ed Waite, Alan inherits everything else. If he dies before the estate has gone through probate, she inherits his share and vice versa. Aline frowned. She had finished her Bailey's while Ortiz had been talking, and now she slid her fingers up and down the sweating sides of the glass. "Then that would make Alan a strong suspect."
"Except for one thing. Neither Alan nor Eve knew about the change in the will. I've spoken to them both since—today, as a matter of fact—but before Doug was killed, neither of them knew."
"Unless Doug told Alan."
"As far as I know, they hadn't spoken in more than two years."
"Because of Eve, right?"
Ortiz nodded. "You know that story?"
"I've heard one version of it, yes. That Alan found his father and Eve together."
"That's more or less the same version Doug told me. Except that according to him, she never really loved Alan."
"Which justified it in his own mind," Kincaid remarked.
"Supposedly. The other disturbing thing about all this is Doug's archaeological collection. Originally, it was supposed to go to the foundation, with Ed Waite named as trustee of the artifacts. But they must've had a falling out, because now the artifacts are supposed to go to Alan. Doug gave me an inventory sheet of the artifacts in his estate. Some—the less valuables ones—are in his safe at home. The others are in the safe-deposit box. When I got back to Tango today, I checked the artifacts in the bank against those listed on the sheet. One piece is missing. Only Doug and I had access to that box, so it's unlikely, the piece was stolen. That means either Doug removed it for some reason or it was never there to begin with. If it was removed, I want it found."
"But you didn't know this when you hired Ryan."
"No. I wanted him to look into the death, period."
"What piece is missing?"
"A frog."
La Rana.
"A frog? What kind of frog?"
"A gold frog that is probably fifteen hundred to two thousand years old. It is, according to an archaeologist friend of mine in New York, one of the most coveted artifacts in the world. In fact, for many years it has existed only in legend."
Ortiz cocked his head. "Ah, well. The value of anything—even legends—depends entirely on what someone is willing to pay for them. But if a Van Gogh can go for forty million, then who knows, eh? To be quite frank, Detective Scott, I didn't pay much attention to this inventory sheet when Doug turned it over to me. I had never even looked at the artifacts in the safe-deposit box. It's only been since this afternoon, when I realized the frog was missing, that I understood exactly what that box contained."
"Where's the frog from?" A little ole place called the Lost City?
"It dates back to the Tairona Indians, a pre-Columbian culture that existed in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta Mountains. In 1975, the largest Tairona site was discovered. La Ciudad Perdida. The Lost City."
Fortunately, the waitress arrived again to take their orders, which gave Aline a little time to decide just how much she wanted to reveal, if anything. She decided that for the moment it was prudent to keep her mouth shut.
When the woman left, Ortiz resumed his story. He explained what he knew about the city, which was basically what she'd discovered from the articles. The site, he said, was now accessible by helicopter, but not to the general public. Several groups of archaeologists, engineers, and architects were studying the ruins, and he didn't know how Doug had gotten permission to enter the area.
"My archaeologist friend in New York says the Tairona Indians were among the best gold craftsmen of the pre-Columbian cultures. When the Spanish arrived in the sixteenth century, of course, they plundered the gold and a lot of it was melted down and sent back to Spain. Supposedly, the Taironas salvaged some of the gold by burying it. In the early years before the site was officially 'discovered,' grave robbers were pretty common and some of the remaining gold was lost then."
"Including the frog?" Aline asked.
Ortiz shrugged. "No one knows. But the Colombian government has soldiers stationed up there, guarding the place now."
"Did the frog have any particular significance in their culture?"
"It was one of their deities. There's supposedly a tremendous boulder at the entrance to the Lost City which resembles a frog. According to Doug's inventory, the artifact itself is a foot high and measures eight inches at the base. The eyes are three-carat emeralds, and the frog is twenty-four-karat gold."
"Mr. Ortiz, without including the frog, how much is Doug's estate worth?"
"I initially placed the value at around six million, with property, cars, and so on. But after talking to my friend in New York, I realize I grossly understated it. Even if you discount the historic value of these artifacts, we are talking about twenty artifacts in all that are eighteen- and twenty-four-karat gold with inlaid sapphires, rubies, and emeralds."
"Just a rough estimate, Mr. Ortiz," she prodded.
"If the missing frog is included . . ." He thought a moment. "Somewhere between twenty and twenty-five million."
July 5, 7:15 P.M.
It is nearly dark in the house now. He holds tightly to her arm as he leads her into the dusty hall. He stops at the bathroom door, makes her stand with her back to it, so she's facing him. Then he removes the top of a lantern on a wall hook to Eve's right, reaches into his pocket for a wooden kitchen match, strikes it on the jamb. The sudden flare hurts her eyes.
He lights the lantern and tells her to step into the bathroom. She does. He holds up the lantern, pointing out the toilet paper on the back of the john. "I've got to take the lantern, babe. When you're finished, just say so."
She stands there as he backs out of the room, taking the light with him. The door whispers shut. The blackness closes around her, a comfort, a cool protective wave. Her chin drops to her chest, and she squeezes back tears and nearly collapses with relief. She hoists her skirt, which is still slightly damp. Her hands tremble. The insides of her wrists throb.
As she relieves herself, her body is suddenly a litany of pain, as if the pressure that has built up in her abdomen is now burgeoning to her joints, her bones. She is almost too weak to stand. She is definitely too weak to attempt an escape. She needs food, water. The point is to stay alive, to bide her time, to remain alert and watch for an opportunity—and then seize it.
