The Deep Blue Alibi

not called all these years?

The Lords and the Griffins.

When she was a child and Lord-Griffin Construction Company was booming, the two families were inseparable. Nelson and Irene Lord, Harold and Phyllis Griffin. Dinners, bridge games, vacations. For Victoria, before her world collapsed, it was a time of nannies and cruises, tennis camps and Shetland ponies. Her favorite playmate was Hal, Jr. They'd played doctor when she was four and Junior was six, kissed for real when she was twelve and he was fourteen. Such innocence. Such promise. Until her father leapt off the roof of one of the Lord-Griffin condos. Then came the lawsuits, bankruptcies, Grand Jury investigations. Something about bribery and extortion in the building trades. Hal Griffin took his family to Costa Rica and laid low for several years.

Victoria and her mother lost track of them, but then Uncle Grif turned up in Singapore and Indonesia, building hotels and accumulating a fortune. Over the years, he worked his way back home, developing resorts in the Caribbean. Then, a year ago, there'd been a story in the Miami Herald when he bought Paradise Key, a small, private island in Shark Channel, just off the Gulf side of Islamorada. There was speculation in the business pages about a new Griffin project in Florida, but nothing official. Then, last week, Uncle Grif finally called. He apologized for having been out of her life all these years. Then said he'd been keeping tabs on her.

Keeping tabs. That had sounded mysterious. But it must have been true. Uncle Grif knew all about her honors at Princeton and Yale Law. He knew about her brief stint in the State Attorney's Office, and he'd heard she was in private practice. Now he had some legal work that might interest her.

Her.

Not the senior partner at some deep-carpet firm. Not Alan Dershowitz. Not Steve Solomon. But her.

Victoria Lord, attorney-at-law. Sole practitioner.

Dammit! How could she get Steve to accept that?

Now, there's a guy who really fills a hospital bed, Steve thought, getting a glimpse of Harold Griffin. Burly chest, wide shoulders, thick neck, a white bandage on his forehead, and his right arm in a sling. A still handsome, still rugged man in his mid-sixties, Griffin had pale blue eyes and bushy, sun-bleached eyebrows.

'My God, you're all grown up, Princess,' Griffin said as Victoria walked to his bedside.

'How are you feeling, Uncle Grif?'

'Nothing but a separated shoulder, a couple cuts, and a monster headache.' He looked toward Steve. 'You must be the young man Victoria mentioned.'

'Steve Solomon.' Wondering just what Victoria had said. 'Young man' made him sound like a boyfriend, which he was. But this was business, right? Hadn't Victoria told him about the firm? 'I'm Victoria's partner.'

'Partner,' Griffin repeated. 'Used to be, when you said you were someone's partner, everybody knew what you meant. Like Victoria's father and me. Borrowed money together, built condos together, covered each other's ass. These days, it might mean a couple of interior decorators playing house.' He barked a laugh and said, 'Come to think of it, they're covering each other's ass, too.'

'What happened out there, Mr. Griffin?' Steve asked.

'Call me Grif. I was bringing Stubbs down from Paradise Key to discuss the new project. Ben Stubbs from Washington. Environmental Protection Agency. Poor sucker's in the ICU right now. Never saw so much blood in my life, and I was in 'Nam.'

'What's the EPA have to do with your project?' Victoria asked.

Griffin motioned her to move closer. 'Cop still in the hall?'

'Right outside the door.'

'Did he happen to say if he was protecting me or confining me?'

'Didn't say anything, Uncle Grif.'

True, Steve thought. The deputy, a gum-chewing, jug-eared, close-shaved kid, had been too busy gaping at Victoria's tanned legs.

'Can't talk to you about Stubbs until we sweep for bugs,' Griffin whispered. 'I once bid on a shopping center in Singapore. Figured my hotel room might be bugged, so I made all my calls from the bathroom after turning on the shower. But every move I made, a competitor beat me to the punch. Turned out, there was a bug in the toilet-roll dispenser.'

In Key West, Steve thought, the only bugs in hotel bathrooms were likely to have eight legs. He couldn't envision Willis Rask, the sheriff, illegally eavesdropping in a hospital room. Same for State Attorney Richard Waddle, even if his nickname was 'Dickwad.'

'Can you just tell us what happened on the boat?' Victoria asked.

Griffin used his good arm to wave them even closer. Victoria scooted along one side of the bed, Steve the other. It was starting to look like a sleepover at Never-land Ranch. Griffin continued so softly, it was nearly impossible to hear him. 'I don't know how the hell Stubbs got that spear in his chest. And that's the truth.'

'You make any stops? Refuel, that sort of thing?' Steve asked. Thinking they needed a third party coming aboard. A mermaid with a speargun would do.

Griffin looked around, as if someone might be listening. When he didn't find anyone, he whispered: 'One quick stop. A couple miles west of Black Turtle Key, one of those no-name islands. I keep my lobster pots offshore there. Pulled up a few critters for our dinner.'

'I thought we were going to Louie's Backyard,' Victoria said.

'You ever have their lobster jambalaya, Princess?'

'Never saw it on the menu.'

' 'Course not. They make it just for me. I bring the lobster, they do the rest, from the andouille sausage to the spices.'

Speaking louder now, apparently not concerned if eavesdroppers stole his recipe.

'I think I saw our dinner crawling across the beach,' Victoria said.

'Lobsters are out of season,' Steve reminded them.

'So sue me,' Griffin shot back.

What do you make of a guy who brings his own food to the best restaurant in Key West? Probably the same thing you'd say about someone who names his boat Force Majeure. This guy lives large, fills a conference room the way he fills a hospital bed. A man used to getting his own way. So what does he do if things don't go his way?

'All those hundred-dollar bills blowing across the beach,' Steve said. 'What was that about?'

'Louie's is expensive,' Griffin said. 'I was gonna pick up the check.'

'Uh-huh.'

'Seriously, I just keep a lot of cash around.'

'How much? On the boat today.'

'Maybe a hundred thousand. More or less.'

All that cash. One man with a spear in his chest. Another with a bump on his noggin. And a mess of out-of-season lobsters. Where do you look in the law books for this one?

'See anybody on that little island where you stopped?' Steve asked.

Griffin shook his head.

'You head straight from there to Sunset Key?'

Again, Griffin lowered his voice to a parched whisper. 'At thirty-five knots. I'm up on the fly bridge, wind blowing my hair, or what's left of it. I asked Stubbs to keep me company up there, but the lazy bastard stays in the cockpit, getting a tan, drinking a Bud. Few minutes later, I look down, and he's not there. I figure maybe he's inside, sacking out or taking a leak. Little while later, I still don't see him, so I get on the intercom, but there's no answer. I get worried, think maybe he fell overboard. He'd been drinking pretty good and he's clumsy on his feet, especially on a wet deck. So I put her on auto and went down the ladder.'

He paused and gnawed his lower lip. Steve didn't have to try a hundred cases to know that what was coming next was either a careful lie or the painful truth. The trick-the damned near impossible trick- was to distinguish the two.

'Soon as I open the door to the salon, I see Stubbs,' Griffin said. 'On the floor, slumped up against a bulkhead, bleeding like a stuck pig, that spear in his chest. I run out of there, climb back up the ladder. I was gonna call the Coast Guard, head for Marathon.'

'Fishermen's Hospital.'