The Perfect Fake Page 5

  The twenty-room house, designed like an Italian villa, sat on a triple lot overlooking the bay. Allison drove through the open gate, between a double row of royal palms, past the guesthouse, then the tennis court. Every stray leaf had been swept from the lawn, and two men in valet parking uniforms were setting up a kiosk under the portico. Allison noticed a catering truck from The Biscayne Grille, her stepbrother’s restaurant downtown. Nobody had told her about a party tonight.

  She swung the wheel and scooted around the truck to park under a bougainvillea arbor. She grabbed her purse and went into the kitchen, where servers in white shirts and bow ties were unwrapping trays of food and setting rows of wineglasses on the granite countertops.

  Coming up behind the housekeeper, Allison gave her a squeeze. Fernanda was a short, round woman with curly gray hair. She had been with the family for twenty years. “Hola, Fernandita.”

  With a smile, Fernanda patted her cheek. “ Niña, ¿cómo andas? We don’t see you enough.”

  “I’ve been working twenty-five hours a day. What’s going on?”

  “It’s a party for the Heart Association. Should I tell Mrs. Barlowe that you’re here?”

  “No, thanks. Is my father home yet?”

  “Not yet. Do you want a glass of wine or a soda, maybe?”

  “I’ll get it. You’re busy.” Allison made her way through the caterers to the bar, where she found a cocktail glass, then searched in the freezer among the various bottles of vodka, looking for something drinkable. “Oh, yummy.” She opened the Armadale and poured some over ice.

  She was cutting a curl of lemon when Rhonda came through the open French doors from the terrace in a jadegreen silk suit and a pair of leopard-print Manolo Blahnik pumps that Allison had seen at Neiman for five hundred dollars. Rhonda’s hair had been sculpted into a froth of blond waves. She was trailed by her Pekingese dog and a slender man in black shirt and pants, with a diamond stud in his ear and black-framed eyeglasses exactly like Allison’s. He was explaining why he liked mustard sauce instead of butter for the stone crab claws.

  Allison dropped the lemon peel into her drink. “Hello, Rhonda.”

  Rhonda noticed her, noticed the Armadale, then the crystal tumbler, as though Allison ought to be drinking Smirnoff out of a paper cup. Then the bright smile. “Allison, how nice to see you. I can’t chat just now. Your father and I are going to be busy tonight, I’m afraid.”

  “I won’t be staying long,” Allison said. “He expects me.”

  “Oh?” When Allison supplied no details, Rhonda said, “He should be home any minute. You’re welcome to wait.”

  Allison said, “Did you hear about Royce Herron?”

  “God, yes. How absolutely terrible. We’re all in shock.” Rhonda put a hand to her throat, and her gold bracelets gleamed. “They don’t have any idea who did it. That’s the latest I heard on the news, coming home.”

  “He was such a sweet guy. I liked him,” Allison said.

  “So did I. It’s just tragic. Well. I have a million things to finish. You should come back when we can spend more time.” She draped the dog over her arm and resumed the conversation with the party planner. She preferred drawn butter to mustard sauce.

  Allison took a deep swallow of her drink. She reminded herself not to let Rhonda get to her. Somewhere under that reptilian skin there had to be a heart, even a two-chambered heart.

  She told Fernanda she would be out back, and to tell Stuart, when he came home. On the covered terrace the caterers had set up two dozen round tables and chairs with red bows in the backs, like little girls’ Sunday dresses. Standing propane heaters had been placed near the periphery, just in case. As night fell, the air would be cool, but not the bone-rattling cold of Boston, where nobody dined al fresco in February.

  Allison followed the walkway around the pool, then down some steps to the dock, where the bay lapped softly against the pilings. It hadn’t been the icy gray skies of Boston that had sent her south. Allison had been lonely for the friends she’d once had, and lonely for her family, or at least the idea of family. Sliding past thirty, she had realized that she didn’t want to work eighty hours a week in a monstrous law firm. She wanted to come home.

  Stuart had offered to have his lawyer find her a job, but Allison had found one through friends, a general practice south of the city run by two women. Of course they’d known whose daughter she was, and they hoped she could bring them some business. Allison couldn’t appear in court yet, but she researched cases, interviewed witnesses, and drafted legal papers. Assuming the bar exam went well, she would be admitted to practice sometime in the summer and resume a normal life. That included reestablishing her relationship with Stuart.

  She corrected herself: “Dad.”

  She had started calling him by his first name when she was about thirteen and decided he’d become impossibly remote and dismissive. He hadn’t always been that way. When Allison was very small, Stuart traveled for the family’s export company, and each time he came back to Toronto he brought her a special gift; just one. He told stories about the places he had seen and the people he’d met—magical to the ears of a child. Then he married Rhonda and they all moved to Miami. Allison couldn’t remember her real mother, who had died before Allison could walk. Her father was all she had. That same man who used to tell her stories, and said one day he would bring her a box full of stars, couldn’t have disappeared entirely. He had to be there, even now, and Allison wanted to find him.

  She stretched out on one of the padded chaise longues, dropped her purse to the deck, and kicked off her pumps. Looking across the flat, blue plain of the bay, she could see past the causeway to the buildings downtown, everything turning a little rosy in the setting sun. She closed her eyes. Here on this gated island, lulled by the hum of boats going back to port and the faint clink of silverware from the caterers, she could almost pretend that violence and death didn’t exist. But then the image would come back: an old man lying dead in his own blood.

  Allison welcomed the burn of vodka in her throat. Today she had paid the law firm’s private investigator a hundred dollars to fax her a report on Tom Fairchild. She had been dismayed, but not completely surprised, to see the wreck Tom had made of his life: currently on probation for burglary and grand theft. Previously convicted for DUI, drunk and disorderly, battery on a police officer, trespassing, carrying a concealed weapon. Credit rating near the bottom of the scale. No house, no vehicle except for an old motorcycle.

  There had been a time, in her idiot teenage period, when she’d thought that a few minor felonies were exciting, even sexy. In the years post–Tom Fairchild, she had heard, through the grapevine of her friends, that he’d been arrested again, but reports had become further apart until nobody said his name anymore. Allison had purged him from the list of topics in which she had even the remotest interest.

  She raised her knees and held her drink on them. Her skirt slid down her thighs, but nobody was out there to catch a view of anything interesting.

  Tom Fairchild had showed her how to do tequila shots: bite into a lime, then suck the salt off her fist and toss back the José Cuervo. He’d laughed at her when she asked where the worm was. Her first nude swim in the ocean, the first time going over a hundred miles an hour on a motorcycle without a helmet, and her first time having sex had all been with Tom.

  Allison sipped the vodka. “Idiot.”

  Her father had never known any of this, of course. Or that Allison had engineered Tom’s enrollment at an art school in New York. She’d been accepted to Barnard, and in her monumental naïveté had thought that Tom would do something worthwhile with himself.

  “Sad, sad, sad.” She pulled her BlackBerry out of her purse, clicked to the organizer, and saw that tonight she would review Florida constitutional law. She clicked forward to the weekend and saw the Miami International Map Fair. She had never been to the map fair in Miami, though it always attracted some of the best dealers in the world. Friday: the cocktail rece
ption. Dinner afterward. Saturday: study. Do the fair on Sunday. Avoid The Compass Rose.

  There was a chance that she and Tom Fairchild would run into each other. Allison would look at him as if puzzled, then smile and say, “Oh, yes. Tom. How nice to see you again.”

  Ten years ago, he’d been attractive, in an unpolished way. Shaggy blond hair, jeans hanging off his hips, a tattoo around his upper arm, a smile that started slow and danced around his green eyes. He’d shown some gentleness and intelligence. But he was older now. Thirty-two. Hardened by his experiences. Allison could imagine him bulked up by weight lifting with the other inmates in the yard, tattoos on his chest and down his arms. Bitter. Wanting to even the score with the system. She had to admit: He could have done it. Could have broken into Judge Herron’s house, shot him dead, and stolen whatever maps he could grab. If Jenny Gray had told him about the maps.

  No call from Jenny Gray yet. Allison doubted there would be one. Jenny was hiding something; that was clear enough. Allison could not, however, talk to Detective Martinez about Tom without betraying a client. She was thinking of how to get around this when she heard the growl of engines and splash of water. She lowered her knees and tugged on her hem.

  A boat was edging close to the seawall, a cruiser on whose bow sat three tanned girls in swimsuits. One was putting a sweater on, and another held on to the low stainless steel railing and gawked at the house. The men were in the cockpit getting drunk. Allison recognized the captain. Her stepbrother. Laurence Gerard, thirty-three, son of a rich restaurateur in Montreal. Larry’s father had died last year, and the inheritance had finally come through. Now Larry was pretending to be a real estate mogul.

  One of the girls threw the bowline to the dock, and a mustached man in a Hawaiian shirt jumped off to wrap the rope around the cleat.

  The engines went silent, but reggae blared from the speakers. Larry opened the little gate and stepped off the stern, a husky man in a Florida Marlins cap and a blue Windbreaker. Allison knew why he wore the cap: The Rogaine wasn’t working. He went to fix the rope that the other guy had cleated wrong.

  Allison said, “Is that your new boat?”

  “Like it? I’ll take you for a ride.”

  “No, thanks. I’m busy.”

  He looked around at his friend with the mustache. The man’s cheeks, his hairy forearms, and his legs were burned tourist-pink, right down to his brown socks. “Marek, this charming young lady is my sister, Allison.”

  “Stepsister,” she said. “How do you do.”

  Larry sat on the arm of her chaise. “Let me run this by you. ‘Chez Gerard.’ What do you think?”

  “Chez Gerard? Too pretentious.”

  “For my signature restaurant at The Metropolis? Forty-ninth floor. The deal is in the works. I’m getting all the restaurants and bars, plus an apartment. Sweet.”

  “Sweet for you. How much did Stuart have to guarantee the developer?”

  “Jealousy doesn’t become you, Al,” Larry said.

  “Believe me, it isn’t jealousy.”

  The man in the Hawaiian shirt lit a cigarette, and she saw that the nail on his left thumb was missing. His wavy black hair frizzed into graying sideburns, and his nose, with its flaring nostrils, curved toward his big mustache and beard-stubbled chin. He was utterly fascinating.

  “Excuse me. What was your name again?”

  “Marek.” The cigarette bounced as he put away his pack.

  “Is that Polish?”

  “Croatian. You know where Croatia is?”

  “Yes, it’s across the Adriatic from Italy. It used to be part of Yugoslavia.”

  “Your sister is very smart girl.”

  “Stepsister,” Allison said.

  Larry said, “Marek’s last name is Vuksinic, rhymes with ‘itch.’ The root word means ‘wolf.’ Interesting, isn’t it?”

  The big man stood over Allison, grinning down at her, his moist brown eyes moving up her bare legs.

  She said, “Back off.”

  Nicotine-stained teeth appeared under his mustache. “Come with us on the boat.”

  She pivoted off the chaise, slipped into her shoes, and caught up with Larry. The music faded as they walked up the slope to the house. “Your friend gives me the creeps. Who is he?”

  “Marek works for a good customer of mine at the restaurant,” Larry said. “I’m showing him around, doing the tourist thing. I got roped into putting him up at my place, but he’ll be gone next week, praise God. Are you here for the party?”

  “No, I have to talk to my dad. Have you heard about Judge Herron?”

  “On the news. I can’t believe it. Poor old guy.”

  “Jenny Gray found his body.”

  “Who?”

  “Come on, Larry. She went over there to work this morning and found him shot to death. Have you seen her? She was supposed to call me.” When Larry shook his head, she stopped him at the edge of the terrace. “I want to ask you something. You knew Jenny Gray was working for Judge Herron on Stuart’s maps, didn’t you?”

  “I guess so.”

  “Did you tell anyone about it?”

  “Not that I remember. Why?”

  “A bunch of maps were stolen. Are you sure you didn’t mention this to anyone?”

  “I said no. What’s your problem?”

  “Frankly, Larry, you have some questionable friends.”

  As he folded his sunglasses, Allison followed him through the linen-draped tables. He said, “This might surprise you, Allison, but not everyone gives a rat’s ass about antique maps.”

  When they reached the kitchen, Larry opened the door of the wine cooler and pulled out four bottles of Cristal champagne. Fernanda hurried over and told him to put them back; they were for the party. He told her there was some Dom Pérignon in the pantry; use that. Fernanda said the Dom wasn’t chilled. With a roll of his eyes Larry said, “Just put it in the cooler, Fernanda. How hard can it be?”

  The idea of her father subsidizing this creature made Allison want to scream. She stepped far enough into the hall to watch Larry go out. She said a prayer his boat would run into a sandbar. When she turned around, she noticed a tall, thin figure in a dark suit heading for the stairs. “Dad!”

  He waited with one hand on the bannister.

  “Do you have a few minutes?” she said.

  “Yes. Come up.”

  It had shocked Allison, returning to Miami, to see how old her father had become. Shadows darkened his eyes, and gray streaked his neatly trimmed beard. He wasn’t ill; he went skiing with Rhonda several times a year. More accurate to say, Rhonda went to collect another black-diamond lapel pin, and Stuart went for the view, sitting alone in a ski lodge watching the fireplace. He had confided to Allison that he preferred solitude. He hated parties but endured them for Rhonda, who seemed to shine, the more he waned.

  “Forgive me for being late,” he said, glancing over his shoulder as they went up the stairs. He had just come from a meeting with the developer of The Metropolis. An issue with the zoning permits. Not to worry.

  Having been out of her father’s life for so long, Allison had only a vague idea what he did. The family wealth had come from his father, Frederick Barlowe, an exporter of Canadian beef and wheat based in Whitby, Ontario, a town on the rail line east of Toronto. Her uncle Nigel had died in his twenties, leaving only Stuart to inherit. Luckily Grandfather Barlowe had established a trust for Allison. It had given her the courage to leave home. And the independence to come back. She did not need her father’s money. She didn’t even want it.

  Their reflections went in and out of the gilded floorto-ceiling mirrors in the upper hall. Stuart and Rhonda had separate adjoining suites. He opened the door to his study and let Allison enter first. The decor was English hunt club—mahogany paneling, leather furniture, and oil paintings of horses. Allison expected to open the curtains and see meadows and forests instead of turquoise water and palm trees.

  He tossed his suit coat over the back of a cha
ir and went to the bar in a corner. “Would you like a drink?”

  “Please. Vodka and soda, very light. I’m cutting back.”

  His smile made long creases in his face. “Shouldn’t we all? Terrible news about Royce Herron, eh? I’d wager a dozen people from the museum phoned me today wanting to know if I’d heard.”

  “That’s what I sort of wanted to talk to you about. Your maps, the ones you loaned to Judge Herron.”

  He gave her the drink and a monogrammed napkin. “What about them?”

  “I was at his house this morning. Do you remember that exotic-looking British girl who works for Larry? Jenny Gray? Her father was Jamaican, I think. She came to some parties here as a server.”

  “Can’t say I recall.”

  “Well, she was also working part-time for Royce Herron, and she’s the one who discovered his body. I did a minor landlord-tenant case for her last month as a favor for Larry, so this morning she called me to extricate her from the Miami Police, who wanted to keep her at the scene. I had a talk with the detectives. They asked me to tell them if any maps were missing. They’re looking for a motive for murder. Dad, it’s possible—no, it’s likely— that quite a few of the maps were stolen by the person who shot him. The police want a list.”

  Stuart, in the middle of pouring Glenfiddich over ice, slowly set the bottle on the bar. “Are you saying that some of my maps were stolen?”

  “I’m not sure yet, but . . . at least two of yours were damaged. One of them was the Corelli map of the world.”

  He stared at her, then quietly said, “Damaged? In what way?”

  “Bullet holes. And when Judge Herron fell, the map was underneath him. He bled on the map. The paper is creased. Perhaps it could be restored, but ...I don’t think so.”

  “God damn it!”

  The violence of this outcry made Allison jerk, and she dropped her glass on the oriental rug. She grabbed some napkins, scooped up the ice cubes, and blotted the liquid. “Dad, I’m sorry.” As she said it, she wondered what she could be sorry for. “It’s just a map.”