case. Only, in her thoughts, she, too, was a partner at Price, Winward. When she agreed to marry Quinn she was still not certain that her feelings for him were love, but they were what she thought love was supposed to feel like.
Laura took the elevator to the lobby and treated herself to fresh-squeezed orange juice, cold cereal and coffee in the hotel restaurant. As she ate, she wondered what had happened between her and her husband. There had not been anything dramatic. No affair, Quinn did not drink like her father or suffer from depression. He was the same man she had married, but somewhere during the past seven years, the marriage had started to die.
Who was to blame? Laura thought that their problems started with Quinn's ascension to the bench. When Quinn told her that the governor had approached him about the appointment she had been stunned. Laura knew that Dick was Patrick Quinn's son. Everyone knew that. She knew that he was basically an intellectual who enjoyed the law because of its mental rigor and not because of the money and thrill of combat that drew her to its practice. What she could not understand was how anyone could achieve her dream of making partner at Price, Winward and abandon it for the bench. As an associate, she was making almost as much as an Oregon Supreme Court justice. When she made partner, their combined salaries would be more than $300,000 a year. How could Quinn throw away the prestige and financial security of his present position? Laura tried to understand her husband's motivation, but she could not accept what he wanted to do. Should she have tried harder to understand Quinn's feelings? The thought nagged at her. Had she lost respect for Quinn simply because his job paid less than hers? Was that fair?
Laura returned to her room. Her client had not called by ten-fifteen. She took out the letter in which the retainer check and first-class plane ticket had been enclosed. The letter had been Fed-Exed to the firm and there was a phone number on the letterhead. Jerome Ross, the man she had spoken to on the phone, had also signed the letter. She reached for the phone, then stopped herself. Ross would call when he was ready.
Laura walked to the window and stared out at the ocean. Since Quinn's ascension to the bench, and her promotion to partner, Laura had increased her workload. Was she working hard to establish a reputation and to prove her worth to the firm, or was she hiding in her work? One thing was certain, she and Quinn were growing apart and she had to decide what she wanted to do about it. There were two choices: seal the rift or separate.
At ten-thirty, Laura dialed the number for SeaCliff Estates. The phone rang twice. Then a recording told her that the number she had dialed was not in service. Laura redialed, assuming that she had misdialed the first time. She heard the same message again. There was a phone book in her end table. Laura could not find a listing for SeaCliff Estates or Jerome Ross, so she rang the front desk.
'This is Laura Quinn in room 517.1 have a reservation for five nights. I need to call the company that made it for me and I've misplaced the phone number. Did they give it to you when the reservation was made?'
'Let me check, Mrs. Quinn.'
A moment later, the desk clerk read her the same number that was on the letterhead.
'You're certain that there aren't any other phone numbers for the company?' Laura asked.
'That's the only one.'
'Thanks.'
'Uh, Mrs. Quinn. Did you say that the reservation was for five nights?'
'Yes. I'm supposed to fly out Sunday.'
'We only have you down for two nights. Yesterday and today.'
'There must be some mistake.'
'That's what I have here '
Laura thought for a moment. Then she asked, 'Have I received any messages?'
'Your box is clear.'
Laura hung up. She called Portland and asked for Mort Camden, another partner at Price, Winward. They talked for a few minutes, then Camden told her he would get back to her. Jerome Ross had still not contacted her when Camden called twenty minutes later.
'This is fucked, Laura. The retainer check is drawn on an account in a Miami bank that was opened a week ago, but there's only one hundred dollars in it.'
'One hundred! The damn retainer is twenty thousand.'
'I don't know what to say, but something stinks. I think you should hop on the first plane back to Portland.'
'What do you think is going on, Mort?'
'Beats me. Maybe someone is playing a joke on you.'
'It's one expensive joke. The first-class round-trip ticket and the hotel reservations cost several thousand dollars.'
'I don't know what to say.'
Laura threw her file on the floor. She was livid.
'I'm checking out. I'll see you tomorrow.'
As soon as Camden hung up, Laura angrily jabbed out the number of the airline. The phone rang. She planned to ask for a seat on the next flight from Miami to Portland, but a thought occurred to her and she hung up the phone. She had hurt Quinn when she chose a business deal over a vacation with him. It was only Wednesday morning and St. Jerome was not far from Miami.
Laura's arm dropped to her side. Quinn had given her seven good years. The hurt in his voice when she told him that she could not go to St. Jerome was proof that he still cared for her very much. If she wanted her marriage to survive, she had to act. Laura dialed the airline and asked for a seat on the next flight to St. Jerome.
Chapter 14.
Andrea was right about the difference between the resort side of St. Jerome and the other side of the island. The Bay Reef and The Palms were palaces where the wealthy, dressed in the latest fashions, dined on lobster and caviar, played golf and sunned themselves while sipping cool drinks by the pool. Puerta del Sol, the brightly colored capital city, was filled with fashionable shops and upscale restaurants. The buildings were freshly painted sunny yellow, happy blue and festive red, and the shop owners greeted everyone with a laugh and a smile. Poverty had been banished from the immaculate streets of the capital by order of Governor Alvarez. True, the taxis were dilapidated and there were some beggars who managed to evade the ever-present police patrols, but this was local color, the source of quaint Third World stories that could be told back home for the amusement of neighbors and friends.
The far side of St. Jerome was another story. The island's only paved highway was an oval that passed through Puerta del Sol, then swung around behind the hotels on the way to the airport before curving back to the resorts. Seven miles past the capital, a dirt track branched off toward the far side of the island. This road was the only open space in a jungle of towering trees whose branches interlocked to form a dense, dark green canopy that blocked out the sun and cast thick shadows over the narrow highway. The air was filled with the sweet smell of flowering plants and the wet, fetid smell of rotting vegetation. Quinn passed only a few people during the forty- minute, cross-island trip. More than once, he nervously checked his fuel gauge, having no desire to be stranded in the dense jungle.
At the suggestion of the concierge, Quinn rented a Land Rover and soon discovered why the recommendation had been made. The road was not well maintained. Quinn felt his kidneys suffer each time the Rover hit a pothole, and the billowing dust clouds kicked up by the thick tires completely obscured the scene in the rear-view mirror.
The jungle thinned, then disappeared when the road descended toward the ocean and into a civilization quite different from the one most St. Jerome tourists saw. Scattered along both sides of the road for half a mile were rusting shacks constructed from corrugated tin and a few more-substantial buildings made of concrete blocks. Some of the structures had colorful curtains strung across the doorway. None had glass windows, but some of the more solidly constructed buildings had louvered shutters. An emaciated goat was tethered to one shack and scrawny chickens wandered among many of the buildings pecking at the dusty ground.
A group of children was playing soccer with a tin can in a dirt field. They stopped when they heard the Rover and watched it drive by. An old man with nappy gray hair smiled and waved at Quinn and Quinn waved back. The old man's teeth were yellowed and decaying and there were gaping holes in his mouth where some teeth had
