Bloodfire

3

The Beau Capri condominiums didn’t look remotely French. As Carver steered his ancient Olds convertible onto the azalea-bordered driveway of the parking lot, he saw a series of three-story buildings constructed of vertical slabs of cast concrete, with what appeared to be seashells embedded in them. The flat roofs had air-conditioning units mounted on them, surrounded by symmetrical, blunt-tipped picket fences that looked as if they ought to be on the ground and not three stories in the air. Set in the middle of the four buildings was the ubiquitous swimming pool, this one as unimaginative as the rest of the architecture. A rectangular pool with high and low diving boards, a wide concrete apron, and uncomfortable-looking nylon-webbed chairs and lounges. The whole bland creation was surrounded by a chain-link fence coated with some sort of pastel pink rubber Carver had never seen before. Voltaire would have defended to his death the residents’ right to live in Beau Capri, but he would never have moved in himself.

The drive from Del Moray to the Orlando area had taken only about an hour on sun-washed highways, and it wasn’t yet noon. Carver had driven in with the Olds’s canvas top down, letting the wind whip around him and try to mess up hair no longer on his head. A small and bitter triumph over nature.

He parked the Olds at the far end of the lot, alongside a low red Porsche. After killing the powerful V-8 engine, he listened for a moment to cooling metal ticking beneath the long hood. Most of the cars in the lot were expensive; the dented and rusty Olds looked like a wino who’d crashed a swank party.

Carver checked addresses emblazoned on the visible sides of each building and saw that the Ghostly unit would be in the extreme left building, on the third floor. As he climbed out of the Olds, heat from beneath the car wafted out and embraced his ankles. He set his cane on the sun-warmed concrete and began limping toward the sidewalk that flanked the pool’s pink fence.

There were a few kids splashing around in the pool. Also an old man with a chest thick with gray hair and gold medallions. A lean and beautifully built woman about fifty, in a scanty black bikini, stood hipshot near the fence. She had platinum blond hair, skin the color of burnt toast, and sharp white teeth, which she showed as she glanced at Carver and either grimaced or smiled-he wasn’t sure which.

“Help you?”

An elderly, gray-haired man with a huge stomach paunch was blocking Carver’s way on the sidewalk. He wore dark slacks and a white short-sleeved shirt with some sort of insignia on one shoulder. Low-key but alert security. Apparently people didn’t simply walk into Beau Capri. If it wasn’t exclusive, what was it selling?

Carver flashed his reassuring, beatific smile, in surprising contrast to the harshness of his features. “I’m looking for the Ghostlys’ condo. It’s in that end building, they said.”

“That’s right.” The old man’s faded blue eyes had narrowed. He was measuring Carver, staying affable but suspicious, in the manner of security guards. He tugged his belt up on his right hip, as if he was used to having a gun there. A former cop, maybe. “Mind if I ask the nature of your business, sir?”

“I’m not a pesky salesman,” Carver said.

The old guy said, “Didn’t figure.”

Carver drew out his wallet and showed his ID.

“Private, huh?” the guard said. “Ghostlys got some kinda trouble?”

“Maybe. Seen Mrs. Ghostly lately?”

“Not in a while. But that ain’t unusual, what with the baby and all.”

“Baby?”

He brushed aside a mosquito that had been droning around his eyes in defiance of authority. “Sure. She’s pregnant as hell. Been that way for about eight months.”

Here was something Bob Ghostly hadn’t mentioned. Carver leaned on his cane. He felt something cold slink up his spine. “We talking about the same Elizabeth Ghostly?”

“ ’Magine so. Husband name of Robert. One nice gal. Well liked around here, even though she does tend to keep to herself. Got her reasons, I expect.”

“What kinda reasons?”

“Oh, they’d be personal, I’m sure.”

“I noticed you didn’t say hubby was well liked.”

The guard seemed to consider leveling with Carver. A warm breeze ruffled his white hair, rattled the palm fronds overhead. He said, “ ’Tween you and me, hubby’s a prick. Acts like he owns this place and everyone in it.”

“Really?” Carver feigned surprise. “He told me he was hardly ever here. Said he traveled around selling medical supplies.”

“Yeah, he’s gone mosta the time, but when he’s here he expects folks to get outa his way. Beth Ghostly, now, she’ll always stop and talk to the other residents. They was cool to her at first, her being black and all, but once they got to know her they had no choice but to like her. Most everyone here’s interested in her pregnancy. Lotsa folks figure she disappeared ’cause she went into labor, maybe had the baby. Couple of people tried to ask her husband, but he just ignored them and hurried on about his business. Always in a major fuckin’ rush, that one. Important man on the run. Or so he sees himself.”

Carver considered telling the guard Bob Ghostly had hired him and that Beth was missing, but he decided not to get the residents all excited and gossiping. The main reason Ghostly had come to him instead of going to the law was to keep the investigation low-profile.

He handed the guard one of his cards. “Maybe she did have that baby. I’ll let you know. Meanwhile, will you give me a call if you see her?”

“Sure.” The guard slipped the card into his shirt pocket. “You don’t figure. . well, I shouldn’t ask this. I mean, why you’re working for the Ghostlys is none of my business, and I guess you wouldn’t tell me if I asked.”

Carver said, “That’s right. Client confidentiality.”

“I’m curious, though. There some kinda trouble between Beth and her husband?”

“No reason to think that.”

The guard smiled. He’d have thought less of Carver if he’d gotten an answer.

Sweat was trickling down Carver’s ribs and the inside of his right arm. “I’ll go on up to their unit now,” he said, “if it’s okay with you.”

“Sure,” the guard said, stepping completely off the walk and onto the thick grass to let the cripple pass. “Hope there’s no kinda trouble for Beth Ghostly, though.”

“I hope so, too,” Carver said, meaning it. He limped through glaring sunlight toward the pale, far building.

Ghostly hadn’t supplied him with a key, but that was okay. Cheap apartment locks gave easily to Carver’s honed Visa card. Only dead-bolt locks frustrated him, but most of the time they were mounted on interior doors separately, above the main knob and lock.

Carver had the door unlocked in less than a minute. He shoved it open and noticed immediately that the air was stale and motionless. Warm, too. The thermostat had been set to Off or turned up.

He planted the tip of his cane and moved inside, then stood braced on the cane in the condo’s spacious living room and glanced around.

The place was wall-to-wall glitz, but expensive glitz. Ghostly must do better than all right selling medical supplies. The carpet was lavender, the ceiling-to-floor drapes cream-colored with bright flecks that matched the carpet. The wallpaper was fuzzy, white cardboardlike stuff shot through with silver that appeared to be real metal.

The furniture was made up of leather and glass and sharp angles of stainless steel. A long, low sofa dominated the room, white leather with gleaming steel arms, crowded with a scattering of lavender throw pillows. In front of it was a steel-framed coffee table with a glass top and glassed-in sides. The glass-enclosed cubicle contained an ornate and colorful arrangement of plastic flowers and fake butterflies. The wide window’s drapes were open, admitting brilliant sunlight that made the wallpaper glitter. There were several chrome-framed oil paintings on the wall. One of them was of a bullfighter victoriously holding high the slain bull’s severed ears while an array of flowers and hats rained down on him from an admiring crowd. The bullfighter was wearing a crooked grin and looked a bit like Bob Ghostly.

Carver limped across the living room to a hall that led toward what he presumed was the bedroom, noticing there was a thin, almost imperceptible layer of dust over everything, which robbed it of truly eye-aching luster. He glanced in the bathroom and saw a maroon hot tub for two, a washbasin shaped like a flower, gold plumbing. The wallpaper in there was fuzzy, too. It had a fleur-de-lis design. Hey, French!

No wallpaper in the bedroom, but it was painted a pale rose and all the furniture was white. The bed was round with a white spread and resembled a huge mushroom that had sprung up from the carpet. Carver went to it and rested a palm on it. The wide expanse of spread undulated; a water bed. He glanced up and saw himself. A mirrored ceiling. Sure.

His cane left quarter-size depressions in the thick rose carpet as he limped toward the mirrored closet doors. He shoved the nearer door open on its rollers and saw men’s suits and sport coats. A lot of them, and of good quality. The closet was set up with those white wire shelves and drawers for maximum use of space. One shelf contained half a dozen pairs of men’s shoes, all of them black except for a pair of gray Etonic joggers with thick white soles.

Carver slid the door closed smoothly on its growling rollers, then opened the other door.

Beth’s side of the closet. Dresses, silky blouses, a pair of designer jeans on a slacks hanger. High-heeled shoes on the shelf that corresponded to her husband’s shoe shelf. Size seven and a half. Expensive brands.

Carver limped to the dresser and carefully searched through its drawers. Silk lingerie, folded slacks, one drawer containing nothing but panty hose. Bras in a middle drawer; Carver couldn’t help but notice they were size 36-D. In the top drawer was a white leather jewelry box full of what looked like genuine stuff that had to be worth a small fortune. Maybe a large fortune. Folded next to the padded box was a cheap white T-shirt with one of those yellow smiley faces on it. There was a gory bullet hole in Smiley’s forehead, from which ran a trickle of blood. Carver was glad he’d found the T-shirt; it somehow humanized Beth Ghostly. Everything else in the apartment seemed to belong to a Saks mannequin who used the place to store goodies between jobs posing in show windows.

The atmosphere in the bedroom was so stifling that Carver considered finding the thermostat and setting it so the air conditioner came on. Then he decided he wasn’t going to be here much longer. He limped back toward the living room, making not a sound on the deep carpet.

He was standing in the living room and taking a last look around when he happened to glance out the window. It looked out over the parking lot. On the curved sidewalk, near where Carver had talked with the security guard, a black woman was standing and talking with a woman in a red bathing suit. From up here the palm fronds partially blocked his view and he couldn’t tell what either woman looked like; he remembered Ghostly saying there were other black residents in Beau Capri now.

Carver moved back from the window and was about to leave the condo when he decided he might as well use the bathroom. It seemed a shame to let all that gold plumbing sit idle.

He’d just finished relieving himself, and was about to flush the toilet, when he heard a noise from the living room. Not loud, but it sounded like the door closing.

He zipped his fly and backed away from the commode.

Moving close to the door, he found an angle of vision that allowed him to see about half of the living room. The garish glass coffee table. Part of the low white sofa with its lineup of throw pillows.

He caught a flicker of shadow and pressed his body back just in time not to be seen by the woman who hurried down the hall to the bedroom, leaving in her wake a strong perfume scent that smelled like roses. She hadn’t glanced in the bathroom, and Carver had caught only a glimpse of her. He didn’t think she was Beth Ghostly. She had on a dark skirt and a blue sleeveless blouse. He thought she was probably the black woman he’d seen standing and talking on the sidewalk below the window.

As he was considering sneaking out while she was occupied in the bedroom, the smooth scraping noises of drawers opening and closing came to him. Something about the sounds suggested a certain familiarity; there was a hurried sureness about them that implied the woman was in her own bedroom. Maybe this was Elizabeth Ghostly. Photographs could deceive.

He decided to confront the woman, whoever she was, but not quite yet. He eased out into the hall, catching a glimpse of her. She had her back to him, leaning over the bed and stuffing clothes into a suitcase. Dark arms, lean waist and flared hips. Carver limped into the living room and stood against the wall by the door, partially concealed by a curio cabinet cluttered with Hummel figurines and crystal birds. A glass owl stared knowingly at him as he waited for the woman to emerge from the bedroom.

Almost five minutes had crawled past on Carver’s Seiko watch when she trudged out carrying two matching red suitcases that were obviously heavy. The scent of roses came with her. She was tall, maybe five-ten, thin-limbed but busty, and perspiring heavily from her efforts in the warm bedroom. She wasn’t Elizabeth Ghostly; her features were broader and her eyes smaller and more deeply set. She had on very red lipstick that looked wet.

She put the suitcases down, still not seeing Carver, and wiped the back of her hand across her glistening forehead. Said, “Holy Jesus!” apparently commenting to herself on the heat, and walked over to the window. A graceful walk, now that she wasn’t burdened by the suitcases. She glanced out the window in all directions, as if to make sure no one was out there waiting for her.

Then she turned around and saw Carver.

Shock hollowed her out; the vacuum caused an intake of breath that shrieked in the quiet room.

Carver limped across the spongy carpet, smiling and holding his free hand at eye level and palm out, as if about to recite the Boy Scout oath. He didn’t want the woman to have a heart attack. He actually said, “Now, don’t be alarmed.”

Fear crossed her face, widened and brightened her eyes. Then anger washed in. She seemed to encourage the anger, much preferring it to terror.

She said, “Jus’ who the fuck-” and the side of her head exploded.