Burn

36

Willa opened her apartment door on its chain and stared out at Carver with a reddened eye that was little more than a puffy slit in her pinched features.

“Mr. Carver,” she said. “You were the one who was knocking.” As if he didn’t know and had asked.

“For the past five minutes,” Carver said. He’d heard movement in the apartment even before he’d knocked the first time. He thought Willa might need a while to work up nerve before coming to the door.

She didn’t move or say anything.

“Can I come in?” Carver asked. “I need to talk with you.”

The eye suddenly opened wider, as if her mind had drifted and she’d abruptly realized where she was and what was going on.

The door closed and its chain lock rattled, a sound that must be a daily accompaniment to Willa Krull’s life. Then it opened wide.

The scent of gin wafted out into the hall. Willa was wearing a pink rayon robe that made a pass at looking like silk, and pink, fuzzy slippers over a pink nightgown. All that pink only made her puffy eyes appear pinker. Her thin brown hair was uncombed, wildly mussed on one side as if she’d been plucking at it. As Carver made his way past her into the apartment the gin fumes became stronger and he saw a half-empty bottle standing on the floor beside the sofa.

“I didn’t get much sleep last night,” Willa said. She sniffled. “I feel like death warmed over.”

“You look fine,” Carver lied. He moved a Target Shooter magazine out of the way and sat down where she’d know it would be impossible for him to see the gin bottle.

She sat across from him in a spindly wooden chair that looked like something built by Puritans for discomfort. With an ashamed, crooked smile, she raised her thin arms then let them fall back to her lap. “I’d offer you some coffee, but I don’t have any made.”

“Marla Cloy’s disappeared,” Carver said. “She claims Joel Brant tried to run her down with his car.”

Willa didn’t seem surprised. “I don’t know where Marla is.”

“What about Brant?”

She stared at Carver with ferretlike, hostile eyes. “Why should I have any idea where he is? I never laid eyes on the man. All I know about him is what Marla told me. And believe me, that’s enough.”

“You didn’t ask why Marla dropped out of sight.”

“I assume it’s because she’s afraid of Brant-and with good reason.” She stood up suddenly, as if her chair had grown hot. “I don’t understand this. You’re acting like Marla’s some kind of criminal. Didn’t you say Brant tried to run over her?”

“No. That’s what she says.”

“Then it’s the truth.” She remained standing, staring down at him. Her arms and hands were very still at her sides, but the tips of her fingers were vibrating.

Carver gave the closed bedroom door a lingering look. He’d seen it work in Murder, She Wrote. “Are you sure you don’t know where to find Marla?”

Her eyes didn’t follow his glance. “Positive.” She made an obvious effort to relax, breathing in deeply and smoothing her uncooperative hair with the flat of her hand. “You don’t think I’m hiding her here, do you?”

“It’s possible. She’s your friend.”

“My friend,” Willa repeated. She stared down at her fuzzy pink slippers. Then she sat back down, raised both hands to her face, and began to sob.

Carver gripped his cane and stood up. He went over to her and touched his fingertips to her quaking shoulder. She sucked in her breath and drew back away from him. Her sobbing racked her thin body. He was afraid she might drop from the chair onto the threadbare oriental rug and curl into the fetal position. Her despair was genuine and profound. Pity for her swelled in him and lumped in his throat.

He moved away from her, out in front of her, where if she opened her eyes and peeked between her fingers she could see him. But she didn’t peek, didn’t change position.

“You going to be OK?” he asked when her sobbing had subsided to the point where she might be able to answer.

“I think so,” she said, her voice muted, her face still buried in her hands. She expelled air between her hands in a long hiss. “It’s just that I’m worried about Marla. And I told you, I didn’t get much sleep last night.”

He laid his card on the sofa arm. “If you hear from her, will you call me?”

She didn’t answer.

“It’s the best thing for Marla,” Carver said.

She began to cry again, her head bowed and her shoulders heaving with increasing violence, her gaunt body riding her out-of-control sobs. Carver glanced at the Russian handgun mounted in its case on the wall and wondered if he should leave her alone.

Then he decided he was being alarmist. The woman lived with the pain and sorrow of being a rape victim and she hadn’t shot herself. It was unlikely she was in any danger now. He knew he could do nothing for her except perhaps leave. And there was the crucifix, mounted on the wall next to the gun. Her religion would sustain her.

“Call me if Marla contacts you,” Carver said. “Please,” he added, and went to the door.

He thought Willa nodded assent, but he couldn’t be sure. She began sobbing louder, still completely out of control, as he stepped into the hall and closed the door behind him.

Willa had been one possible lead in discovering Marla’s whereabouts. Marla’s parents were another.

It was 11:00 when Carver turned the Olds into Sleepy Hollow Mobile Home Park and drove down Crane to L Street.

The Cloys’ car was parked in the driveway beside their clean white mobile home. The black kettle-style barbecue smoker and webbed aluminum chairs on the lawn at the end of the driveway hadn’t moved. Even the beer can still rested in the coiled metal holder stuck in the hard ground next to one of the chairs. Sleepy Hollow was the kind of place where a barbecue might break out at any moment.

Sybil Cloy answered Carver’s knock and smiled out at him. “Do come in out of the heat, Mr. Carver.”

Her gray-streaked black hair was combed back off her forehead today, emphasizing her strong bone structure. She was wearing dark slacks and a red stretch shirt, black sandals something like Beth’s white ones, with the soles treaded like tires. She had a trim, surprisingly good figure for a woman approaching sixty.

Carver climbed the steel steps and moved past her into the trailer’s oak-paneled interior. It was cool inside. The scent of fresh-perked coffee was sharp and strong. From the kitchen came the relentless watery chugging of a dishwasher on wash or rinse. Now and then glass and utensils dinged together in the churning water with a high, bell-like tone.

Wallace Cloy walked in from the kitchen, holding a mug of coffee in his right hand.

“Mr. Carver again,” Sybil said, as if Wallace might have difficulty identifying Carver.

“Finish your puzzle?” Carver asked. The kitchen table, which Wallace had littered with jigsaw puzzle pieces the last time Carver was there, was visible from where he stood and was bare.

“I never complete those puzzles,” Wallace said. “I work on them until I get fed up, then say the hell with it and put everything back in the box. You can’t do that with most things in life, but you sure as shit can with a jigsaw puzzle.”

Carver felt a twinge of envy. “That’s a healthy attitude.”

The Cloys were both standing watching him, waiting patiently for him to get to the point.

“Your daughter reported that Joel Brant-the man I told you about last time I was here-tried to run her down with his car.”

“She OK?” Wallace asked.

“Yes, she wasn’t injured. She reported the incident to the police, then she went into hiding.”

“Into hiding where?” Sybil asked. Wallace glared at her for asking what he obviously considered to be a stupid question.

“That’s what I came here to ask you,” Carver said. “Marla left a note saying she was leaving town. Do you have any idea where she might have gone?”

“If she’s hiding,” Wallace said, “why should we tell you where she might be?”

“For her own good. Brant’s on the run from the police, maybe searching for Marla. She might need protection.”

“Orlando,” Sybil blurted out. “She used to live in Orlando, you know. She has friends there.”

“Do you know anyone she might have gone to for help? Someone who’d give her a place to stay for a while?”

“No. We never talked much about her life in Orlando. Never talked much about anything the last few years.” Now it was Sybil’s turn to glare at her husband.

Carver decided to take a chance. “Mrs. Cloy, are you, uh, aware of your daughter’s alternative lifestyle?”

Several seconds passed.

“Alternative lifestyle?” she echoed.

“Get out!” Wallace growled the words.

“It’s a question that might be important,” Carver said.

“Get out before I throw this hot coffee on you.” Wallace took a threatening step toward Carver.

“Stop it!” Sybil yelled.

“Stop it hell!” Wallace took another step and drew back his arm, holding the mug level. Carver could see steam rising from it.

Carver set his cane on the plush blue carpet and backed away. Wallace stood motionless, glowering at him from beneath his hedgelike eyebrows. A vein on the side of his neck was protruding and pulsing out his rage like a primitive dark code.

As Carver made his way outside, Wallace advanced on him, the coffee mug held at his side now. “There was nothing wrong with the way Marla was raised! You understand that?”

Carver said nothing as he worked his way down the steel steps, then limped out into the front yard.

Wallace stopped and stood in the doorway, leaning from the waist so only his stocky upper body was outside. “It don’t matter about Sybil’s sister anyway! We raised Marla right!” He tossed the hot coffee in Carver’s direction but down into the ground, where it sloshed onto the grass and steamed even in the heat. Sybil’s arm snaked around Wallace’s waist and gently pulled him back, easing him all the way inside the trailer. The white aluminum door slammed shut.

Carver walked down the driveway to where his car was parked at the curb.

He was about to open the door and get in when he looked up and saw Sybil coming toward him. She strode swiftly but gracefully, her handsome face creased with concern. “Mr. Carver!”

He braced with his forearm on the car’s top and stood waiting. She came to the passenger’s side of the car and stood staring across the expanse of the canvas top at him, as if it were a negotiating table that would give ideas and insults time to cool as they crossed.

“Please don’t think too harshly of Wallace,” she said. “He’s sensitive about that subject. Just its mention makes him angry. A man his age, and he’s from a small town in the Midwest. I guess you’d have to say he has a simplistic and bigoted view of people with different sex preferences. Alternative lifestyles, as you called them.”

“I understand,” Carver told her.

“My sister Grace lives in New York and is active in the gay and lesbian rights movement. That never has set well with Wallace.”

“So that’s what he meant when he said your sister didn’t matter. Does he think she might have somehow influenced Marla?”

“Oh, no. Grace and Marla hardly know one another. What Wallace meant was that even if those scientific studies suggesting sexual orientation might be inherited are correct, it doesn’t reflect on us-on him, really-because Marla was adopted. I told you, he’s touchy on the subject.”

“Does Marla know she was adopted?”

“Yes. We told her before she graduated high school. She was surprised, but she seemed to get over it. The truth is, she never had what you’d call a happy childhood. She was so unsettled all the time. And there was always trouble with Wallace, something between them.”

Sybil paused, catching herself. Whatever had been between Wallace and Marla, she didn’t want to discuss it.

Carver said, “Mrs. Cloy, are you afraid of Wallace?”

“No,” she said defensively. “Not as long as we live life his way. If we do that, everything is all right.”

“Is that why you have little contact with Marla, because Wallace doesn’t want you to see her?”

She held her hands out and examined the backs of them, as if looking for new liver spots or wrinkles. “Wallace can be a violent man, Mr. Carver.”

“Was he violent with Marla?”

“Marla had boyfriends in high school,” Sybil said, as if Carver hadn’t asked the question. “Dates with boys, anyway. Then the business with other girls started, and we-Marla and Wallace, actually-had a terrible falling out.” Sybil looked back at the pristine white trailer like an infidel trying to recall paradise, then at Carver. “I’d like to think someday Wallace will come to his senses and love her like a daughter.”

Carver smiled. “I’d like to think that, too.” But he didn’t believe it would ever happen.

Sybil returned his smile and straightened up to stand away from the car.

She remained standing motionless as he slid behind the steering wheel and drove away.

Near the main entrance to Sleepy Hollow he pulled the Olds to the curb and sat in the heat with the engine idling. He went over in his mind the newspaper accounts of Portia’s fatal accident. Then he got out Marla’s photograph and stared at it, along with the copy of Portia’s newspaper photo.

What he suspected was possible, he decided, as he slipped the gearshift lever into drive and accelerated out onto the highway.

He wasn’t sure what it might mean, but it was possible.