Burn

24

“I wanted to talk to you,” Brant said in an angry voice. “The police were just here to see me.”

“Where’s here?” Carver asked.

“Brant Estates. The subdivision I’m building. I was turning from the subdivision main drive onto the highway, on my way to see you, when you called.”

“I heard that-”

“Wait!” Brant interrupted. “Cellular phones can be eavesdropped on by anyone with a scanner. It sounds paranoid, but the way things have been going lately …”

“Do you want to come the rest of the way to my office and talk?”

Brant said that he did, then hung up.

Fifteen minutes later Brant entered the office looking more worried than mad. He was again handsome in his chinos and sport jacket, his white shirt and paisley tie, a boyish operator on the way up. But there were faint circles beneath his innocent blue eyes, and a weariness showed on him like a thin layer of dust.

“She accused me again, Carver,” he said, not bothering to sit down. It was “Carver” again, not “Fred.”

Carver leaned far back in his swivel chair until he was on the very edge of teetering, keeping his balance with his fingertips on the desk. “I know. I’ve talked to the police.”

“She said I threatened her in the lot of a McDonald’s restaurant, a place I’ve never even been to. That I leered at her and pretended I was shooting her with my finger.” Brant’s expression suggested a bug had just flown into his mouth. “Hell, I’m not sure I even know how to leer. The police came to Brant Estates and talked to me where my employees and the subcontractors could see what was happening. Some of the buyers, too.” He brushed back his wavy dark hair with his hand in a quick, nervous gesture. “This is no damned good for my reputation, Carver, or for business. In my case, they’re one and the same.”

“How did the police treat you?”

“Like a criminal. As if I’d already killed Marla Cloy, who I admit I’m feeling more and more like killing,”

“But they didn’t take you in.”

“Only because they can’t come up with a witness at Mc shy;Donald’s who saw either me or Marla Cloy there. Which is easy for me to understand, having been somewhere else at the time of the supposed attack.”

“Where were you?” Carver asked.

“Eating lunch at Belle’s Cafeteria in downtown Del Moray.”

Carver knew the place, a large and impersonal restaurant without any sort of table service. It did a booming lunch business; it was doubtful anyone would recall Brant as one of hundreds in a cafeteria line. “Were you alone?” he asked.

“Of course,” Brant said. “If I hadn’t been alone, she wouldn’t have accused me. She knows nobody there will remember me. And she knows nobody at McDonald’s will be able to swear that neither of us wasn’t there! She must be watching me, following me, making sure I can’t supply an alibi for the times she accuses me. And I tell you, it’s convincing the police I’m really stalking her.” He dragged a pack of Camels from his pocket. “I gotta light up. You mind?”

“Go ahead.” Carver watched him go through the ritual of flame to tobacco to smoke to a measure of calm that was bought with addiction.

Brant held the smoldering cigarette up and stared at it as if it had saved his life.

“Do you own a gun?” Carver asked, taking his hands away from the desk and dropping forward in his chair.

“The police asked me that. The answer is no. But I’m considering getting one.”

“Wouldn’t be wise.”

“Maybe not. But who knows what Marla Cloy has in mind? She might be setting me up so she can kill me and make it look like self-defense. If one of us has to die, Carver, it’s going to be her!”

More talk of guns and killing. Only talk, Carver hoped. “You’re getting into dangerous territory, thinking like that.”

“No, no-I’m goddamned in dangerous territory already, because I was pushed there.” He drew on the cigarette again; a lifeline burning like a fuse.

Convincing, Carver thought. If Brant was actually stalking Marla Cloy, he was doing a great job of enlisting Carver as a witness to his innocence and persecution. A victim of an evil woman’s wiles, unable to stem the tide of political correctness and approaching catastrophe. Usually it was the woman pinned helpless by official apathy while the crushing sphere of unfair destiny rolled toward her. But it was possible to put a reverse spin on the thing: What do you mean, no one would help her? No one would help me!

“The police gave me a stern warning. They’re within an inch of arresting me. Charging me with violating the restraining order. What do you think I should do, Carver?”

Carver smiled. “Hire a private investigator.”

Brant stared at him for a long time, then released a long breath and slumped down in the chair by the desk. He killed his half-smoked cigarette in the sea-shell ashtray on the desk corner.

“Yeah, I’m sorry,” he said resignedly, staring at the floor. “I guess there are limits to what can be done when a crazy woman is out to get somebody.”

“There are limits to what the crazy woman can do, too,” Carver said. “She can’t manufacture witnesses any easier than you can.”

“But she can establish a record of circumstantial evidence. There’s no way for me to establish a record of not harassing her.”

Carver said, “Gloria Bream.”

Brant looked at him, frowning. “What? How do you know about Gloria?”

“The information turned up when I was asking questions. You and this Gloria Bream are supposed to be close. I suggest you make it a point to spend a lot of time with her. When you’re with someone else and can prove it, you can’t be harassing Marla Cloy.”

Brant stared at the floor again. He had his hands cupped over his knees and was squeezing hard. “My wife hasn’t been dead long enough, Carver.”

“I understand, but maybe you shouldn’t be alone at night.”

A helpless, shadowy smile crossed Brant’s face. “I’m not alone, in a way. It’s true I’m involved with Gloria, but I can’t get Portia out of my thoughts. I wake up sometimes at night thinking she’s lying beside me. Knowing it.” He stared at Carver in a kind of beseeching agony. “I mean, I can hear her breathing there in the dark.”

“Ghosts,” Carver said. “We all have ghosts. Sometimes in a crowd I think I hear my son calling me. For an instant the fact of his death isn’t real, and I turn around and expect to see him. Then I remember, and it falls on me like a wall.”

“I’m sorry,” Brant said. “How long has he been dead?”

“Almost five years.”

Brant shook his head slowly from side to side. “And it hasn’t stopped for you yet.”

“Maybe it never will,” Carver said. “I’ve learned to accommodate it.”

Brant released his grip on his kneecaps and stood up. “I suppose that’s the best we can hope for.”

“Think about Gloria Bream. About my advice.”

“Sure.” Brant moved toward the door. “Incidentally,” he said, “I checked and I’m sure Marla Cloy never wrote anything about Brant Development.”

“I’ve checked way beyond that,” Carver said, “and I haven’t found any connection at all between you and Marla.”

“Because there isn’t any.”

“I’ll keep searching.”

“Sure,” Brant said again. “I can tell that about you, but I’m getting more and more afraid it isn’t going to help.” He bowed his head and closed his eyes for a few seconds, almost as if offering up a silent prayer, appealing to a power infinitely higher than Carver. Then he went out, leaving behind him a haze of smoke in the sunlight near the ceiling, and the acrid smell of the snuffed-out cigarette.

Carver stared for a long time at the closed door. Right now Brant seemed innocent. And even if he was the real stalker, he’d stay away from Marla for a while after the McDonald’s incident,

Carver decided to take up the watch on Marla again, beginning that evening. In the meantime, he wanted to see Beth. Wanted very much to see her. He understood why at times they lay desperately locked together so far into the night.

It wasn’t always love and lust.

Each of them had ghosts to hold at bay.