Hot

10

It was late the next morning before Carver was able to contact Beth. She’d been at the library working on a paper for a postgraduate communications class at the University of Florida, but she told him it would be no problem to set it aside and help him in Key Montaigne. She’d leave soon as possible, she said, and should be able to drive south and join him by that evening. “You and I got a dinner date,” she told him.

He said he’d make reservations at the Key Lime Pie.

“I gotta dress up for that place?” Beth asked.

“Casual clothes are de rigueur there,” he assured her, wondering what Fern the waitress would think if Beth strolled into the Key Lime Pie on Carver’s arm, looking like a high-fashion model for Ebony.

“Bring the infrared binoculars,” he added. “Some of what we’ll be doing’s at night.”

“I’ll just bet.” He liked her tone of voice.

“Incidentally,” he added, “bring my gun, too.”

“‘Incidentally,’ huh? You step in something nasty down there, Fred?”

“I’m not sure yet. The gun’s in a brown envelope taped to the back of my top dresser drawer.”

“I know where it is, and I’ll bring it with me. You just try’n stay alive till I get there to take care of you.”

Carver said, “Bring along some extra ammunition.”

“Never leave home without it.”

After hanging up on Beth, Carver rummaged through Henry’s refrigerator and came up with the ingredients of lunch: some oat bran health bread Henry kept in there so it would stay fresh longer, extra-lean sliced turkey that smelled edible enough, some Heartline low-cholesterol cheese, a half-used jar of vitamin-enriched diet mayonnaise. Henry apparently feared slipping physically as well as mentally in his old age.

Carver built a sandwich that was probably no more than two or three calories, then washed it down with three beers from the six-pack of Budweisers in the back of the refrigerator. He reminded himself he’d better stop by the Food Emporium Supermarket in town and pick up some more beer and food. He and Beth might get tired of romping through the culinary delights of Fishback’s eateries.

Before returning to the Bing residence, he decided to give Millicent Bing a call. Shy as Chief Wicke said she was, she might be more likely to answer the phone than the doorbell.

The Bings were listed in Key Montaigne’s thin phone directory. It took ten rings, but finally Millicent picked up the receiver and uttered a tentative hello.

Carver told her who he was, then said, “Katia Marsh over at the research center assured me you’d talk with me.”

“Katia said that?”

“Just this morning.”

“Talk with you about what?” She had the wary voice of a hostile witness at her own trial.

“Henry Tiller.”

“You mean his accident?”

“If it was that.”

A pause while she thought things over. “You’re not from an insurance company, are you? Trying to trick me?”

He laughed at the absurd notion that he might be devious; maybe he’d sell her some magazine subscriptions while he was at it. “No, no, honestly, I’m just a friend of Henry’s who promised him I’d look into what happened. I can be at your place within fifteen minutes, Mrs. Bing, and I won’t take up much of your time at all. I thought I’d just stop by for a few minutes before lunch, while I was out.”

The connection was silent for so long he wondered if she’d hung up. Then: “Oh, I suppose it’ll be all right, if it’s soon as you say.”

“It will be, Mrs. Bing. Thank you.” He hung up before she could change her uncertain mind. She seemed the type who reconsidered everything, always combed her hair twice.

Less than fifteen minutes later he was standing on the shaded porch of the Bings’ house by the sea, hoping the dozen or so bees circling among the bougainvillea wouldn’t get it into their collective mind to swarm in his direction before his knock was answered. One of them made a darting, circling pass at him, like an armed reconnaissance plane.

Before the bee had a chance to return with friends, the door swung open and Carver saw that Millicent Bing was indeed the sharp-faced woman in the research center brochure. She was thin, and slightly stoop-shouldered despite the disguising oversized shoulder pads beneath her silky gray blouse. She had narrowed and suspicious blue eyes and a marvelous pale complexion. Her sharp, elongated nose and receding chin gave her the look of a pretty but nervous ferret.

“Mr. Carver?” Her voice sounded even more tentative in person than on the phone.

He smiled at her and confirmed who he was, then thanked her again for letting him take up her valuable time. That seemed to make her feel guilty, and she hastily invited him inside.

“I notice you’ve got a bee problem on the porch,” Carver told her.

“They’re like sentries,” she said. “They discourage unwelcome visitors.”

She could sure put a guest at ease.

It was almost cold in the living room. The severe modern furniture and chrome-framed, surreal-looking color photographs of sea life didn’t add one degree of warmth.

Millicent invited Carver to sit down, and he shifted his weight over his cane then lowered himself into a white vinyl chair with bleached wood arms. It was hard as cold concrete, but it enabled him to extend his bad leg out in front of him comfortably. He could get up out of the chair easily, too, which was always a consideration for a man with a cane.

Millicent perched on the edge of the low vinyl sofa as if poised for the start of a race. She would have tripped and fallen at the sound of the starter’s gun, though, because her beige skirt was wound like a shroud around her legs. Carver asked her a few perfunctory questions about Henry to put her at ease, then said, “Henry seems to think something might have been going on over at the Walter Rainer estate. I noticed there was a clear view of the grounds from the research center, and I wondered if you or your husband ever observed anything there worth mentioning.”

She looked flustered for a moment, then puzzled. “What on earth do you mean by ‘something might have been going on’?”

“Well, Henry wasn’t specific, so I thought I’d ask you and your husband.”

“Dr. Sam’s in Mexico,” she said, “buying specimens that can only be found along the coast in that area.”

“Katia Marsh told me that’s where he is,” Carver said, wondering if she called her husband “Dr. Sam” in bed. “About the Rainer estate-”

“Neither my husband nor I are nosy people, Mr. Carver,” she interrupted. She raised her pointed but almost nonexistent chin in a futile effort to look haughty. “Nor would we like anyone nosing into our business.”

“I’m not asking you to be nosy,” he assured her. “Or to gossip. Henry’s been run down and almost killed, and the car sped away. A crime’s been committed.”

She looked astounded. “And you assume it has something to do with Walter Rainer?”

“I don’t assume anything, Mrs. Bing, I’m only asking.”

“Well, the answer’s no, I’ve never observed anything unusual there, and my husband’s never mentioned to me that he has, either.”

“Are you also a research scientist?”

She seemed amused by the question. “Not I, Mr. Carver. I played the faithful faculty wife for years, until Dr. Sam got the funding to start the research center and aquarium.” She sounded oddly bitter. Must have realized it, and smiled. She had an overbite but an unexpectedly nice smile. “It’s Dr. Sam who’s the biologist, and that’s fine with me. Early in my academic endeavors, I found that science bored me.” She stood up and smoothed her skirt over her thighs. Carver was boring her, too, the gesture suggested; why didn’t he leave?

He couldn’t think of a good reason not to, and the base of his spine was beginning to ache, so he set the tip of the cane in the Berber weave carpet and stood up from the uncomfortable chair. “I’d like to ask Dr. Sam some of the same questions,” he said. “When will he be back?”

“When he gets back,” Millicent said. Her Adam’s apple bobbed in her long throat. “I mean, he doesn’t keep to a regular schedule when he goes on buying trips.” She moved toward the door. He noticed that she had almost no breasts, but an elegant lower body. “If you don’t mind, Mr. Carver, I’ve got a great deal of work to do.”

“I didn’t think you worked.”

“I do the bookkeeping for the center.”

“I see.” He limped toward the door. She was alongside him, then ahead of him, holding it open. Warm air rolled in from outside. “When your husband returns,” he said, “would you or he phone me at Henry Tiller’s cottage?”

“Certainly, but I don’t know when that’ll be.”

Carver smiled and said, “Whenever. Thanks for seeing me, Mrs. Bing.”

She didn’t answer. Her mind seemed to be far away as he stepped out onto the porch and she closed the door behind him.

A bee followed him as he limped back to the Olds. He used his cane to bat it like a baseball, and didn’t see where it went, so he hurriedly got into the car.

He was sure Millicent Bing was watching him from the window behind the bougainvillea-strewn trellis as he backed out of the driveway onto Shoreline.

She was obviously nervous about something, maybe even afraid, but it wasn’t necessarily connected with Henry Tiller or Walter Rainer. Carver cautioned himself not to see something sinister where there was no proof. Fear could become habit, then personality. As with a lot of people, Millicent Bing’s unease might be about something relatively innocent that had ingrained itself as dread, maybe even something that could be traced back to her childhood.

The Easter Bunny?