Sunday Morning Going Up

"Listen!" she snapped, "I am this close to resigning your case. Don't you ever lie to me again about anything. I cannot represent you effectively if you do."

"Gina, I'm sorry," I said humbly. "I didn't intentionally lie to you. I was embarrassed about the wife-swapping thing, and didn't want to hurt Felicia's reputation -- or Mia's either, for that matter. And I honestly didn't know about Felicia upping her insurance at work to a million dollars. Please, you've got to believe me."

She stared at the road for a while in silence. "Alright," she said finally, "I believe you. But don't keep things like that from me any more." Then she gave a little smile. "Besides, the fact that you and your wife wanted to play games hardly makes you a killer. I'm still convinced that this was all a terrible accident."

By then we'd reached the resort and she pulled into the parking lot to let me out. "I know you need to get back to Orlando. I'll take care of things here and if there are any developments I'll contact you right away."

After I'd checked out of the resort and begun driving back towards Orlando, my thoughts turned to the sad days ahead. The first responsibility I'd have to face was the memorial service, and I knew how difficult that would be for me.

Two days later I was at my office when the phone rang. It was José. "Have you seen the Sentinel?" he asked. When I told him I hadn't, he said, "Well, you'd better have a look at the local section. But I warn you: you're not going to like what you see. It looks like somebody did a hatchet job on you!"

I thanked José for the "heads up" and went to check the online edition. When I clicked on Local Breaking News, the first headline I saw was "Orlando Man Named a Person of Interest in Wife's Death". The story not only contained the details of the explosion but went on to touchon many of the details the Sheriff had covered in our meeting. The reporter had liberally used terms like "unexplained absence," "possible motive" and "sex games." I was outraged.

In fury I called Gina, and when I reached her I lit into her. "The Sheriff must have given all this to newspaper to put pressure on me. How can he do something like that?" I demanded. "Besides, the story is filled with innuendo and speculation. It reads like something out of the National Enquirer, not a respectable newspaper."

"For that matter" I went on, "if the Sheriff thinks the explosion wasn't an accident, why isn't Don Cavendish under suspicion? He had more to gain that I did."

"Forget about Cavendish," Gina told me. "He isn't a suspect. The Sheriff told me he has an airtight alibi with six witnesses. He was on a long conference call the whole time," Gina explained, "and the other people on the call all told the Sheriff that Don participated throughout."

I wasn't satisfied. "That doesn't mean anything. Cavendish could have been on a cellphone – he could have been anywhere."

Gina sighed. "Except he wasn't, Andy. The building where he took the call has security cameras in the hallways. The recordings showed Don entering the building before the call began and not leaving until after the time it ended. And before you ask, the windows in the building are fixed."

When she heard my grunt of frustration, Gina went on. "Andy, I absolutely believe that this was a terrible accident. I think the Sheriff is poking around because he's trying to do a thorough job, or maybe he's just watched too many detective shows on tv. Whatever the case, I'm sure this whole thing will be closed soon and you'll be completely exonerated."

"Maybe," I growled, "but in the meantime I'm being made to look like a wife-killer."

There was nothing further in the news the next few days, but now I really dreaded the thought of going to the memorial service. Not only would I have to deal with my pain and loss, but now there were all these rumors and suspicions. I wanted to hide, but that would only make me look worse. Besides, I told myself, I owed it to Felicia.

The service was as bad as I had feared. The priest's homily held little consolation for me, and the eulogies were excruciating. When it came my turn, I broke down halfway through the words I'd prepared and had to cut it short. As I was trying to recount some of our happier times together, I choked up, and all I could say was, "I miss you, Felicia," before leaving the pulpit.

Although there had been a good turn-out for the service, I noticed that far fewer people came through the reception line afterwards. Instead many people clumped in little knots, talking quietly among themselves. I could only imagine what they were saying.

At one point, I saw Felicia's family standing to one side. Her father gave me a dark stare, and I wished there were something I could say to reassure him that I hadn't harmed his beloved daughter. Then her mother came darting over and gave me a quick hug. "We know you loved her, Andrés. Once all this blows over, you must come and see us." That made me feel a little better, but I wondered how long it would be until "all this blows over."

The only other thing I particularly remember about the service was the fact that my whole fútbol team turned out, which really meant a lot to me. The last of the group to come through the line was Domingo, our striker. He was small but quick as summer lightning. He came up and threw his arms around me. "Hey, Andrés, hang in there, hombre. We all know you didn't do nothing." He smiled widely. "You're a damned Boy Scout – in all the games we've played you never even got a red card!"

I couldn't help but grin as I thanked him. I only wished the others there had the same confidence in me.

The week after the memorial service I was working in my office when Gina Ellerby walked in the door. "Gina, what are you doing here?" I asked in surprise.

"I had some information for you and things have been pretty slow at work for me, so I thought I'd come down to see you in person, if you're not too busy."

"No, no, not at all," I said. "I'm glad you're here, I just didn't want to inconvenience you. What have you found out?"

She told me she'd gone to the Sheriff and demanded to know how the reporter had gotten the news about the Sheriff's investigation. "I asked him if he'd taken a second job with the Sentinel," she said, but he denied any involvement. "But he did admit that he'd made a recording of the interview, and that somebody else could have listened to it," she said.

I thought about the two deputies and decided that one of them was the likely culprit. I didn't like it, but there wasn't much I could do. The cat was out of the bag, and all I could hope was that my name would be cleared as soon as possible.

But when Gina showed up at my office again a week later, my hopes for a quick vindication were soon dashed. "The Sheriff let me know they'd found some new evidence," she told me, and the expression on her face made it clear that it wasn't favorable.

"The jerry cans from the Chris-craft washed up on shore," she told me. "They had your fingerprints all over them."

I shook my head in irritation. "Of course they did. That doesn't mean anything," I told her. "When Don and I were loading up the boat to go fishing on Friday, I carried the extra fuel on board for him. Of course my fingerprints would be all over those cans."

She nodded. "I believe you, Andy. It's just that it doesn't look good. If I were a prosecutor going before a jury, I'd tell them that there are three requirements to prove the commission of a crime: motive, means and opportunity. Felicia's life insurance provides an obvious motive, your prints on those cans imply you had the means, and the fact that you have no alibi for those six hours on the day it happened suggests an opportunity."

"But I've already explained what happened in all three of those circumstances," I protested.

"I know," she replied, "and that's probably why they haven't pressed charges. But I've read cases where a jury convicted on evidence that was not much more solid than that."

I looked at her in worry and frustration. "This is turning into a nightmare! What will it take to convince people I had nothing to do with this?"

She thought for a minute. "The weakest link in the case is the question of your whereabouts during the day on Sunday. The resort manager told me that the Sheriff's people interviewed everyone on staff to see if anyone had spotted you during that time. But they came up empty."

"Because I was asleep in my room!" I shouted. "But nobody knows that. I'm stuck with having to prove a negative."

Gina began to pace around the room. "There must be some way to prove that you never left the room." After a pause, she asked, "Aren't all the doors in the resort operated by a cardkey? Wouldn't the resort have a record every time someone entered the room?"

"No," I said, "cardkeys don't work that way. Each door lock is a self-contained unit programmed to respond to a specific code on the card. The code is valid only for that door and only for the length of the guest's stay. But the locks aren't connected to anything; in fact, to change the codes on a lock you have to insert a special device into it."

Then I gulped as an idea hit me. "But I recently read an article that described some new systems which actually communicate with a central computer, so the hotel has a record of all the comings and goings. The Paradiso is a brand new, top-of-the-line resort. I wonder if it's possible it has a system like that?"

It was a faint hope but it was all I had so I grabbed the phone and called the resort. The manager remembered my name, and when I explained my query, he began to understand why I was so excited. "The Paradiso is state-of-the-art in every aspect" he told me, "including our cardkey system."

"Why didn't you say something before?" I demanded.

"Truthfully, I've never worked at a hotel that had a system like that before. And with the preview and the formal opening we've been so busy that I haven't even thought about it. But presumably it's in operation -- let me go check."

In a few minutes he came back on the line. "You may be in luck, Mr. Salazar. The system is working and we do have data going back to the preview weekend on the server."

"Please guard those records with your life!" I implored him. "We'll be up to see them as quickly as we can get up there!"

Gina and I each drove our cars up to Crystal River as fast as we could. If any Florida State Police had been in the area, I'm sure we would have been arrested. Luckily they must have all been out protecting the tourists, so we both arrived without incident.

When we burst into the resort, the manager was waiting for us. He led us back to the area where the computer system was located and pulled out a stack of print-outs that he'd made for us. Gina and I stared at them in confusion; neither of us could make heads or tails out of what we were seeing.

"Each page represents a different date," the manager told us. "Here," he went on, pointing at a column heading, "are all the times. The room numbers are on the horizontal axis. The code in the table indicates the status: either open or closed and whether or not the cardkey was used."

Gina looked at him in confusion. "How can a door be opened without a cardkey?"

"When it's opened from the inside," he explained.

He turned over several pages and pointed to a series of lines. "Here is the record for the room Mr. Salazar had for our preview weekend. You can see all the comings and goings for each day. And here," he said, turning another page, "is the record for that Sunday. As you can see, the door was opened without a cardkey shortly before 8:30 a.m., presumably when you and your wife went down to breakfast."

I shot a glance over at Gina; I didn't want her to enlighten the manager about Don Cavendish being in the room at that time.

"Here," he went on, "you can see that the door was opened by the cardkey at 9:57 a.m. You were probably returning from breakfast at that time. About 30 minutes later, the door opened without the cardkey, probably when your wife left the room. After that, you can see that the door was not opened again until 3:56 p.m."

I turned to Gina. "But that really doesn't help us," I said. "I could have left the room with Felicia at 10:30."

But Gina was dancing around in excitement. "But if you had left then, how could you have gotten back in the room when the bellman found you there at 4:00? Don't you see? You had to be in the room the whole time. This proves you were telling the truth about your whereabouts on Sunday!"

My eyes widened, and I hugged her. "You're a genius, Gina!" I said. Then I turned to the manager. "May we have these?" I asked, and he told me he'd printed them out just for us.

With the printout in hand, we rushed to the Sheriff's office in Inverness. Sheriff McGee was just leaving when we pulled into the parking area. Gina opened her car door and ran over, waving the print-out in her hand. "Sheriff, Sheriff," she yelled, "we have the proof!" He got out of his car and she spread the papers out on the hood. Eagerly she explained what they were and what they showed.

The Sheriff looked at the print-outs suspiciously, but he seemed to follow what we were trying to explain about the resort's cardkey system. Gina pressed hard: "This proves that Andy was in his room the whole time. There's no way he could have left without leaving a record. Don't you see, this proves the explosion was just a terrible accident, nothing more."

The Sheriff peered at the printout for a few minutes, then gathered up the pages and tucked them into his car. "I'll have to look at these more closely, and I'll want to talk to the resort manager too." He got into the driver's seat and turned on the ignition. Then he rolled down the window. "If this holds up," he said grudgingly, "you've done well, little girl." This time, Gina was so pleased that she didn't even react.

As the Sheriff drove off, she spun around and embraced me. "I think we've done it!" she said. I hugged her back. "You're a genius, Gina," I repeated. "This calls for a celebration. Let me take you out to dinner -- you name the place."

Gina took us to the Macleod House bistro, a 100-year-old home in Inverness that had been converted into a restaurant. We had a leisurely meal out on the deck under the awning, and as we ate I took the opportunity to get to know more about Gina. I found out that she'd gone to a second-rate law school here in Florida. If she'd earned any honors such as Law Review or Moot Court, she didn't mention them. She'd passed the Bar (on her second attempt, she admitted) but had had no luck landing a position with a law firm. But she didn't give up easily, as I'd already discovered, so she hung out her shingle and went into practice on her own.

She told me it had been a real struggle to make it for the first year or so. But someone must have given her a good recommendation because she began to pick up all the legal work connected with the development of the new resort outside Crystal River. I was, she sheepishly admitted, her first criminal case.

Her personal life was equally unremarkable. There was a boyfriend, apparently, but she hadn't seen him in quite a while and didn't want to talk about him. In the meantime, it was clear that she didn't have a lot of disposable income so she didn't get out much. She hadn't made that many friends in Citrus County, so she led a pretty solitary life.

As I listened, I concluded that she wasn't the sharpest attorney I'd ever met. In addition, I felt her girlish looks and little-girl voice were serious handicaps, making it just that much more difficult for potential clients to take her seriously. But she was eager, honest and determined, all virtues I admired. More importantly, it looked like her persistence had helped uncover the evidence that would get me out of Sheriff McGee's crosshairs. And, I had to admit, she was really cute and perky, even if she did look more like a college freshman than a practicing attorney. I liked her and felt sorry for her at the same time.

After dinner, I told her I had to start back to Orlando, but she begged me to follow her over to her place for a cup of coffee. "It'll help keep you awake for the drive back," she said, and I yielded because I really felt indebted to her.

When we got back to her place, she wanted to give me a quick tour which wound up in her bedroom. I half expected to see posters of boy bands on her walls -- there weren't, thank goodness -- but she did have a teddy bear on her bed.

As I turned to walk back back to the living room, she caught my hand and stopped me. "Andy," she said very solemnly, "I want you to fire me."

I was shocked. "Why, Gina? I don't understand."

She gave me a shy smile. "Because if you don't, it would be a breach of legal ethics for me to do this." With that she pulled me to her, stood up on tiptoe and kissed me passionately on the lips.

I hadn't been with a woman since Mia Cavendish, and Gina was definitely desirable, but I made myself stop and push her away slightly. "Gina, are you sure? What about your boyfriend? What about . . ." But she put her fingers to my mouth to stop me.

"It's okay," she said breathlessly. "I really want this."

Then she was back in my arms again, and I stopped resisting. She reached over to flick off the light switch, then pulled me to the bed and began frantically undressing me. When she saw that I was trying to help, she hastily began stripping off her own clothes, tossing items in all directions. Then we were on the bed, urgently kissing and exploring each other. When my fingers reached the juncture of her thighs, I was startled to discover just how aroused she really was. Of course, my erection probably told her the same thing about me.

Neither one of us needed any foreplay; instead, she pulled me on top of her and began groping to fit me into her hot moist pussy as quickly as possible. She was very tight, but I was still able to slide in up to the hilt without difficulty. The sensation was exquisite. I paused a moment to make sure she was comfortable, but her motions made it clear just how desperate she was for me to start.

I began to thrust in and out, and each inward thrust brought a whimpering "Oh!" out of her. I wondered at first if I might be hurting her, but she grabbed my buttocks and tried to pull me even deeper and faster into her. Soon I forgot about everything but my own excitement and began to pound into her without restraint. She responded wildly, eager for everything I could give her.

Her "Oh's" got louder and louder, and suddenly she squealed like a child at the top of her lungs, just as I grunted and reached my own peak. Then I collapsed on her and rolled onto my side, clutching her to me, stroking her back.

When our breathing had returned to normal, a sudden worry crossed my mind. "Gina, I'm so sorry," I whispered. "I didn't even think to ask you about protection."

"It's okay," she replied. "I'm on the pill, and since neither one of us has been with anyone for a long time, I expect we're safe that way too." Then she kissed me and closed her eyes. After a minute or two, I closed mine as well, and was soon asleep.

Sometime later I felt her shift in my arms, and when I looked over I saw her looking at me shyly. She put her lips to my ear. "Do you think we could do that again?"

I ran my hand over her pert breasts and down to her hips. "Yes," I said with a smile, "I think we can."

She kissed me and then said in her little girl's voice, "But this time, please be slow and gentle with me. I think I'm going to be sore in the morning."

I tried to do just that, but before we were finished she was humping herself against me wildly, desperate to fill the need that had clearly built up in her after so long a drought.