The Deep Blue Alibi

and other creatures Steve couldn't name.

'The Atlantis seems submerged.' Victoria pointed beneath the building. This donut was more like a floating saucer, with a portion of the building under the surface, portholes beneath the sea.

'My idea.' Junior's smile was so wide, his dimples looked like gunshot wounds. 'Three hundred hotel rooms underwater. You can watch the fish swim by your window.'

And in fact, there were two sharks cruising past a porthole window. Thrill the folks from Omaha without getting their feet wet.

'If you look closely at the passageways connecting the buildings, you'll see the floors are transparent. Stroll from the dining room to the casino and you're walking across the world's largest aquarium.'

'Incredible,' Victoria murmured. 'The hotel is a giant glass-bottom boat.'

Junior smiled. 'I told Dad that most people will never take the snorkeling or scuba trip. So, if you're going to build a hotel above a reef, why not bring the reef into the hotel? Or damn close, anyway.'

'It's really something,' Victoria said. Awe in her voice, as if Junior had just shown her the Mona Lisa and said he painted it.

Big deal, Steve thought. The rich kid tells the architects to stick portholes in the hotel rooms. What's he want, the Nobel Prize?

'Here's where Dad surprised me,' Junior said. 'The construction costs will be astronomical, so at first he balked. A real sense of arriere-pensee.'

'I hate it when that happens,' Steve said. Thinking:

What the hell did he say: 'derriere penises'?

'That means he had doubts,' Bobby piped up. 'Uncertainty. Reservations.'

'But Dad's so smart,' Junior continued. 'He thought it over and realized that the marketing hook was the reef with underwater hotel rooms right above it. It's the sizzle of the steak. Nothing like it anywhere in the world.'

Junior rattled on for a few more minutes about the state-of-the-art desalinization plant, the solar-powered generators, the recycling plant that grinds leftover prime rib into fish food. Steve wasn't giving it his full attention. Instead, he was trying to take the measure of Junior Griffin, prep-school make-out artist turned thick-chested free diver who oozed lethal levels of testosterone from every pore.

'So, what could have been an environmental disaster will be a beacon to the world for safe construction in environmentally sensitive areas,' Junior said. 'Construction in harmony with nature.'

Jeez, he's giving a speech to the Kiwanis.

'You must be so proud,' Victoria said in a gushing tone that Steve interpreted to mean, 'You are the sexiest and most wonderful man in the universe, and if I can dump my boyfriend, I'd like to have your babies, starting nine months from today.'

Steve kept trying to size up the guy, which was hard to do objectively because he was growing so aggravated with Victoria. But it occurred to him that maybe he'd been mistaken about Junior. The guy's save-theplanet shtick seemed sincere. Of course, not having to work for a living gives you free time for wholesome hobbies. Back in college, Steve had joined the ACLU. At the time, he had few political opinions, but he figured that left-leaning coeds were easy to bag.

A stray thought began to gnaw at him, a vague notion that there was something wrong with Mr. Right. What was it?

It only took a moment. It's so obvious, Steve thought, all the while realizing that his powers of reasoning might be tainted by jealousy, envy, and fear.

The son-of-a-bitch is just too good to be true.

Which meant that he was a phony. And with any luck, a murderer, too.

Eleven

THE SECRETS PARENTS KEEP

'Do you remember the time your father took us to that hot dog place on the causeway?' Victoria asked.

'Fun Fair,' Junior said.

'You ate ten chili dogs on a dare.'

'Twelve. With onions. I got sick in the back of Dad's Bentley.'

'And do you remember what we did on your fourteenth birthday?' she prodded.

'Skinny-dipped in the Venetian pool.'

'Nope. We carved our initials on a banyan tree.'

'Right. Bayfront Park,' Junior remembered. 'A security guard chased us.'

'And we jumped over that concrete wall to hide. . '

'But it was a sea wall, and we landed in four feet of water.'

Laughter. From two out of three, anyway. Steve's expression was both aggravated and distant, as if fretting about something he could do nothing about, the sliding value of the dollar, maybe. 'Could I bring you two back from Memory Lane a second?'

'Sure thing,' Junior said.

Do we have to? Victoria thought.

'I never saw anything in the papers about Oceania,' Steve began, 'never heard anyone in the Keys talking about it.'

'Dad didn't want the gambling industry finding out what we were doing until we had the federal permits,' Junior explained. 'What do you think the lobbyists for Atlantic City and the Gulf casinos would do to stop us?'

'Bribe a congressman or two,' Victoria suggested.

'And if that didn't work?'

'Kill Stubbs and frame your father,' Steve said. 'You're saying a competitor did it.'

'Who else would have a better motive?' Junior said.

It had been fifteen minutes since Junior relocked the double doors to the Oceania room. The three adults- if you counted Steve-lay on chaise lounges on an outdoor deck overlooking the cove. A pitcher of margaritas with a platter of tortilla chips and fresh-made guacamole sat on a table in the shade of an umbrella. A man-made waterfall poured over rocks into a small pond stocked with fish and long-necked swans. Bobby was wading in the pond, trying to talk swan language to the big birds.

Junior's cell phone had rung several times, reporters calling. Following their instructions, Junior expressed his father's regret at Stubbs' demise and declined comment on everything else. Helicopters from three Miami TV stations hovered over the island like noisy mosquitoes. One buzzed so low, it stirred the cove into a white froth. The crews got their footage, then powered north again.

Now, as Steve ran through his questions, Victoria sorted out her feelings. She felt slightly decadent, reclining on a wicker chaise lounge, sinking into the cocoa-colored cushions, sipping tequila on a workday afternoon, with two hot guys. One was her lover and potential life mate and the other once seemed destined for that role. Over the years, she had wondered about Junior. What kind of man had he become?

To start with, an awesome hunkalicious man, but he seems so much more than his physicality.

A decent, smart, caring man. All that time and money he spent on worthwhile causes. And look at Oceania, something that could have been an environmental holocaust, but thanks to Junior could become an environmental showplace, a stunning blend of commerce and nature.

So, Steve, what do you think of Junior now?

Sure, Junior had enjoyed a privileged life. But he wasn't the spoiled rich kid Steve had predicted-and spitefully wanted-him to be.

Now, in the shade of an umbrella, the same cocoa print fabric as the chaise cushions, with Junior's coppery- bronzy tan accentuating his bright smile, with his sun-streaked thatch of hair, with his six-pack of abs rigid as body armor and his carved deltoids rippling with each movement of his bare arms, with his strong jaw with that devilish cleft, he was. .