Spiral

years. ”Find out, Lieutenant. Find out.”

    After Justo and I went through the back door, there were only a few cars remaining by the garage, and the red Porsche wasn’t one of them.
    I said, ”Cassandra Helides shouldn’t be driving after what she drank at dinner.”
    ”I am afraid the Skipper has long ago given up any hope of affecting her decisions.”
    We reached my Olds, and I could see Pepe walking toward us from the security gazebo.
    ”Justo,” I said. ”A difficult question?”
    He read my face, and then held up his hand in a stop-sign gesture. Pepe turned and began walking back toward the gate.
    I leaned against the driver’s door of the Achieva. ”What happens when the Colonel dies?”
    ”Financially, you mean?”
    ”Start there.”
    Justo hesitated. ”I did not prepare the estate plan for him, but I have read it at his request. Why do you ask, John?”
    ”I’m trying to think of any reason for Veronica Held behaving the way she did in front of her grandfather at that party when everyone’s told me she had a knack—and a willingness—to push the right buttons to get what she wanted from people.”
    ”You think perhaps she did it to... please someone else?”
    ”Or maybe that somebody else told her it would work on the Colonel.”
    A shake of the head this time. ”I do not see how.”
    ”Work the wrong way, maybe.”
    Now a slow nod. ”To upset the Skipper.”
    ”Maybe even push him over the edge, healthwise but apparently naturally.”
    ”Dios mio, John. You think someone used Veronica in an attempt to kill her grandfather?”
    ”And when it didn’t happen right then...”
    ”... Veronica would have to be silenced before she could tell the Skipper whose idea that song was.”
    We both let it lay there a minute.
    Finally Justo said, ”The estate plan, though detailed, is really quite simple in structure. But first you must know that Cassandra signed an antenuptial agreement. Upon divorce, separation, etc., she receives a lump-sum payment of only half a million dollars.”
    ”Only.”
    Justo nearly smiled. ”From her perspective, today that would work out to less than thirty thousand dollars for each year of marriage.”
    ”During most of which the Colonel was hale and hearty.”
    ”That is correct, John.”
    ”But if he died before a separation or divorce?”
    ”Then the antenuptial agreement yields to the estate plan, and Cassandra receives one-half of the estate.”
    ”Amounting to...?”
    "...seven million, give or take.”
    God. ”And the rest of it?”
    ”Another million to various charities, three in trust to care for David in perpetuity, and the remaining three in trust for Veronica.”
    ”With a provision for his granddaughter predeceasing him?”
    Another nod, slower than the first. ”Her three million to Spi Held, though again in trust, so he could not squander the inheritance.”
    I turned it over. ”There a reason you didn’t tell me that last part before?”
    ”John, you only just now asked—”
    ”I mean without my asking you.”
    Justo stiffened, then his shoulders sagged in a relenting way. ”My client’s wishes.”
    ”Go on.”
    ”He did not want to believe that the reformed Prodigal Son could have wanted his own daughter dead.”
    ”And so the Skipper told you not to say anything about a three-million-dollar motive for the girl’s father?”
    ”But that is where you are wrong, John. Spi Held wanted nothing more than to see his band be a success again, and he knew Veronica functioned as the linchpin of that hope. Not just the hope of money, either. A hope more strongly, I think, of the ego, to be on top of his music’s heap once again.”
    ”Dreams of fame and fortune trump a motive for fortune only.”
    ”Exactly.”
    ”Justo?”
    ”Yes.”
    ”Have you heard Spiral play lately?”
    Another stiffening at the shoulders, but a slow shake of the head, too.

    I got to O’Hara’s on Las Olas by 9:45 p.m. As I went through the front door, an African-American bouncer at least six-seven and two-sixty greeted me warmly. Rabid applause was just dying around the red-bricked room, which looked like a cozier version of the Hollywood operation Mitch Eisen and I had visited the night before. On the small stage, a compact guy about thirty with curly, Prince Valiant-length hair was shaking out a soprano sax the color of mercury, a much taller and broader guy around the same age nodding thanks to the nearly S.R.O. house while he turned the little