Burn

38

They’d made love within minutes after Carver arrived at the cottage, the Colt handgun within easy reach on his side of the bed. Though the breeze that found its way in through the screened window was warm, its whimsical movement kept the dim room comfortable.

Beth slept sprawled loosely on her back, while Carver lay awake, listening to the ocean continue its endless and ultimately victorious assault on the land. He tried to discern some primal truth in its hushed message, but failed. Something profound was always there, inches or seconds beyond reach and understanding, Carver had read somewhere that ancient philosophers believed the basic elements of all things, singly or in combination, were earth, fire, water, and air. Maybe, in a way that had little do with hard fact, they were right.

The phone by the bed trilled, and so alert was Carver to sound that he snatched it up before its first ring was completed.

He glanced over at Beth, who hadn’t moved, then whispered a hello into the receiver.

Desoto said, “Isn’t it early to be in bed?”

“How do you know I’m in bed?” Carver asked.

“Someone is, or you wouldn’t be whispering, right?”

“Not necessarily.”

“Besides, I heard bed springs squeak as you picked up the phone. I know that sound.”

“All right. I’m in bed.”

Desoto could probably guess why, at four in the afternoon, but he dropped the subject. “We were told at Red Feather Realty that Gloria Bream was on vacation, visiting her mother in Kansas City.”

“You check on that?”

“Of course. We talked to her. Then we even had the Kansas City police make sure the woman who told us on the phone she was Gloria Bream was actually there and was who she claimed to be. And her vacation and visit had been planned for a month, according to some of the other Red Feather employees. It looks like Bream’s out of the picture here.”

“Unless Kansas City is where Brant’s gone.”

“The K.C. police are onto that possibility, but they say it’s unlikely, given the situation there. They’re keeping the Bream house, and Gloria Bream, under observation in case Brant does show up, but it’s more a matter of touching all the bases than thinking in terms of a home run.”

“There’s always the possibility of a wild pitch,” Carver said.

“Ah! Another baseball analogy. Very good, amigo, but I’d already changed seasons to football.”

“Football?”

“Yes. I see your dilemma more as sudden-death overtime than extra innings.”

“Is that your way of cautioning me?”

“It is, though I don’t delude myself that it makes any difference. Still, one must try.”

“One sure doesn’t talk like a cop sometimes.”

“Like a friend, I hope.”

“Like a friend,” Carver confirmed. “And it does make a difference.”

“I’m assuming Beth’s okay.”

“She’s never been better.”

“Uh-huh.”

Carver thanked Desoto and hung up, letting the back of his head sink deep into the pillow. For more than the obvious reasons, he’d been hoping Brant had run to Gloria Bream. It would mean he hadn’t snapped entirely under the strain and frustration and been serious about his threat to kill Marla. Now Carver feared Brant was determined to thwart Marla by actually killing her, his judgment warped as he moved in a dream of vengeance. Carver knew how it was to be trapped in that dream, and how difficult it was to escape. Revenge could be as basic and powerful a craving as hunger or sex. He wondered how the ancient philosophers had regarded revenge. Fire, he decided.

Fire and then earth.

He didn’t remember falling asleep. His mind and body lurched, and suddenly he realized the room was dark. The digital numerals on the clock near the bed said it was almost ten o’clock.

Beth’s form was barely visible, but he could hear her snoring lightly. She didn’t seem to have changed position. The crash of the surf on the beach was louder, with more time between incoming waves. Though it was probably cooler outside, the breeze had died and the bedroom was warm. Carver’s nude body was perspiring, and he could feel heat emanating from Beth. The scent of their coupling was heavier in the air than when he’d fallen asleep, stirring desire in him again, but only faintly. He became aware of the pressure of his bladder and reached for his cane so he could make his way into the bathroom.

As he was standing at the commode relieving himself, he heard the phone trill again. It stopped after two rings. Beth must not have been sleeping as deeply as he’d thought.

By the time he’d returned to the bedroom, she was sitting cross-legged on his side of the bed with the reading lamp on, holding the receiver to her ear with a hunched shoulder while she wrote with a pencil on the back of a magazine she’d managed to find.

She said “Owe you” into the phone, then smiled and hung up.

She stared at the magazine in her lap for a few seconds, as if double checking her information, then looked up at Carver. “Marla and Portia Zahn,” she said.

“What?”

“That was Jeff Mehling on the phone. He’s been at his computer almost all day and worked his way back to Marla’s and Portia’s birth records. They were born within a year of each other in Winter Haven, Florida. Same mother and father. Jeff said the Zahns’ car was struck broadside by a tractor-trailer when the girls were eighteen months and seven months old. They were the only survivors. Since they had no other family, they became wards of the state and were put up for adoption.”

Then it was true.

Carver shifted weight over his cane and limped to the bed, but he didn’t sit or lie down.

“Sisters,” he said. “Jesus!”

He remembered again the alcohol level in Brant’s blood after the accident that killed Portia. Marla, for that or for whatever reason, might blame Brant for her sister’s death.

Brant was probably unaware that Portia had a sister. Maybe Portia had been unaware of Marla’s existence. Adoption agencies invariably made the effort to begin their charges’ lives anew, especially if they were infants, to sever the past from them the way the umbilical cord had been cut to detach them completely from life in the womb. Like a second birth. It might be a necessary policy, but it could later cause pain and problems.

Carver turned and moved to where his pants were folded over a chair.

“Where are you going?” Beth asked when she saw he intended getting dressed.

He sat down on the bed and quickly worked his legs into his pants, got them all the way on, then zipped them and fastened his belt. It was more of a struggle to get his socks on, but he was used to that, too.

“Fred?” Beth said.

He slipped his feet into black leather moccasins. “I’m going to see if Marla’s returned home. If she has, I plan to confront her with the evidence that she’s Portia Brant’s sister, blames Joel Brant for the accident that killed Portia, and is setting him up for a vengeance killing.”

He knew she was watching as he worked his muscular upper body into a black T-shirt, then used his fingers to smooth back the thick hair above his ears.

He went to the bed and picked up the Colt from beside the clock radio on the table. Oiled metal clucked and clacked smoothly as he jacked a round into the chamber. Then he showed Beth where the safety was located and how it worked. He knew she was familiar with firearms, but he wasn’t sure she knew about this one. “I’m leaving this with you in case Achilles Jones happens to show up.”

“I know how to use it,” she said.

He almost told her not to hesitate if she had time to shoot, then he realized there was no need. She wouldn’t hesitate, and her aim would be steady.

At least, the aim of the former, nonpregnant Beth would have been steady.

“What makes you think Marla might be home?” she asked.

“If what I suspect is true, she only pretended to leave town because that’s what a terrified woman would do. She actually wants Joel Brant to find her. On her terms and home turf.”

He made sure he had his wallet and keys, then he got a firm handhold on his cane and headed for the door.

Behind him Beth said, “None of it’s going to be that simple, Fred.”

He didn’t look back. “Why not?”

“Because it never is. You know that.”

He did know it, but not the way she did. His heart had never learned.

The night was warm and the stars were bright and seemed to float low and huge, like the diffuse globs of yellow that were stars in a Van Gogh painting. There was very little breeze now.

Finally, theory suited probability. As he gunned the Olds’s engine to follow its headlight beams to Jacaranda Lane, he thought Beth might be wrong.

Sometimes, when you pulled the right lever or pushed the right button, it was precisely that simple.

Sometimes.