Kiss

5

But the caller wasn’t Desoto; it was Alice Hargrove, a real-estate agent from Quill, trying to get in touch with Edwina. Carver had met Alice a few times, the first a long time ago when he’d pretended to be a customer so he could talk to her about Edwina’s former lover Willis Davis. Willis was dead now, which was a condition he deserved.

Carver told Alice she’d just missed Edwina, made some polite and inane small talk, and hung up. He hated small talk.

A few hours later, he was dozing on the sofa with his shoes off when the phone brought him quickly awake. In his stocking feet, without his cane, he balanced himself with a palm on the sofa arm and lunged the few feet to where the ringing phone sat on an end table. Half asleep, he’d momentarily forgotten he was crippled.

This time the caller was Desoto. Carver could hear Latin music pulsing softly from the portable radio the lieutenant kept on the windowsill behind his desk. A sad guitar backing a woman’s melodic lament. Love was full of drama on Desoto’s station.

“Nurse Rule is Nora Rule,” Desoto said. He told Carver her address in Del Moray. “She’s been working at Sunhaven three years. Before that she worked at a medical clinic in Miami.”

“Wait a minute,” Carver said. “Not-”

“Not the same clinic where Dr. Pauly practiced,” Desoto interrupted. He began to read directly, apparently from his computer printout. Cop voice, cop talk. “Single female Caucasian, brown and blue, thirty-seven, five-feet-six, a hundred fifty pounds, born Camden, New Jersey. Father and mother deceased since she was twelve. They died in an auto accident.”

“How can you know so much about her?” Carver asked.

“Told you, amigo, computers.”

“Computers shit,” Carver said.

“Okay, so she was in the military. They got records on her. The army. She was a sergeant. That’s where she learned nursing. Got out in ’seventy-six and furthered her education, got a job, wound up with a better job at Sunhaven. The American way, to be upwardly mobile.”

“What about the others?” Carver asked.

“Ah, there we weren’t so lucky, my friend. Kearny Williams seems to be what he says he is: a retired over-the-road trucker from New Orleans. Ask me, everything about Kearny sets right. Nothing more pertinent on the doctors Pauly or Macklin. And nothing at all on Birdie Reeves.”

Carver wasn’t surprised about Birdie. The check did reveal she’d never been arrested. Someone that young, if they hadn’t been in the military or been fingerprinted by the law or worked for the government, had nothing on them in the data banks that fed law-agency computers.

“Got any idea what her real first name is?” Desoto asked. “Surely can’t be Birdie.”

“Wouldn’t think so,” Carver said. “I’ll find out.”

Desoto read in his police lieutenant’s monotone the addresses of the principal staff at Sunhaven. Then he said, “What now?”

“I’m going back to Sunhaven, but first I need a little background information. Your uncle express any fear for his life when he was at Sunhaven?”

“If he had,” Desoto said, “I’d have gotten him outta there. He did say a couple of times he thought somebody had tossed his room, gone through his things and then tried to put them back the way they’d been so he wouldn’t know.”

“Funny thing,” Carver said. “Edwina was leaving here a few hours ago and saw a car glide down the driveway, she thinks with its engine off. A big car. White.”

“Hmm. You maybe stirred the pot, amigo. Brought something to the surface.” Desoto seemed glad, but at the same time somewhat regretful that he’d brought this kind of possible trouble to Carver. Or to Edwina.

“Why you hired me,” Carver reminded him.

“Yes. You’ll keep me informed?”

“Sure. Also why you hired me.”

Desoto was quiet for a moment. Carver could hear the sounds that empty houses make: the breezy, rushing hum of the air-conditioning unit, the higher-pitched drone of the refrigerator. Now and then a low groan, creak, or snap. The noises made by materials heating and expanding beneath the malicious Florida sun.

Then Desoto said, “There’s something you don’t know, my friend. Something I should have told you.”

Carver waited, not liking the icy sensation on the back of his neck. Friends were more dangerous than enemies. They came with obligations and they knew the chinks in your armor.

“There’s another reason I wanted you to handle this,” Desoto said. “If you didn’t, it’d all be up to Lieutenant William McGregor.”

Carver felt his stomach roll over. McGregor was a Fort Lauderdale police officer who’d been in on the investigation of the murder of Carver’s son last year. He had this idea he’d saved Carver’s life and solved the case, and parlayed that into a lot of publicity that resulted in his being hailed for heroism and then promoted. Those had been his goals all along. Justice wasn’t of much interest to McGregor.

“I thought McGregor was a captain,” Carver said. “In Fort Lauderdale.”

“So he was,” Desoto said. “But things do change. A few months ago there was some question about the fidelity of a Fort Lauderdale politico’s wife. An older woman, but not without beauty.”

“She was seeing McGregor?” Carver asked. He couldn’t imagine the towering, homely McGregor as a lothario, stealing someone’s wife. Not unless the woman liked her men vulgar and unscrupulous. But then, some women did.

“She was paying McGregor to keep quiet about her affair with her brother-in-law,” Desoto explained. “Then one day she broke down and confessed everything to her husband, who was in a position to force McGregor’s resignation from the Fort Lauderdale department. The only thing McGregor could do was accept a position in a smaller department at reduced rank. The Del Moray department.”

“Why the hell would anyone hire him?” Carver asked.

“He’s an acquaintance of your fair city’s mayor,” Desoto said. “And my guess would be the mayor doesn’t have any choice. You know McGregor; kinda guy collects secrets and turns them into currency of one kind or another. Listen, I was afraid if I told anyone but you what I thought, what Uncle Sam had told me, there mighta been an investigation by the Del Moray law, with McGregor having a hand in it. I wouldn’t want that. I don’t like McGregor.”

“Only folks who like poisonous snakes like McGregor,” Carver said.

“Ah, then you understand.”

“Yeah, but I’m not crazy about it. Sooner or later I’ll have to deal with McGregor. Once he finds out you and I are in this-two cops, and not his best buddies at that-he’ll get curious.”

“You can deal with him; you have before.”

“I’ll keep him out of it as long as possible,” Carver said. “Do my nosing around quietly.”

“I’ll let you get to your work, then, amigo, and I’d better get busy with mine. Crime’s picking up here.”

Carver said good-bye and hung up, leaving Desoto to his Latin rhythm and his busy day. Orlando was a rapidly expanding city with growing pains, and the police department was hard-pressed to keep up. It had been that way even when Carver was on the force. Always more crime than time.

He put on his shoes, then limped into the bathroom and rinsed away the sleep-sour taste in his mouth with some kind of blue, minty liquid Edwina had bought. He squinted at himself in the mirror. A dusty swirl of sunlight streaming in through the window highlighted his graying stubble and made it evident he hadn’t shaved closely enough that morning. So what? Scruffy guys were in style. They were everywhere, like dressed-up bums, and women couldn’t get enough of them. He raked his fringe of hair back with his fingers and told himself he was ready to do business. Told himself twice, so he believed it.

But as he stepped outside, the heat sapped him of much of his resolve. For a moment he thought it would be nice to go back in the house and stretch out again on the couch and breathe cool air. Then he gripped his cane with a sweat-slippery hand and reminded himself that the weather forecast called for rain sometime this afternoon. That would cool things off for a while, before it became steam. There was a price that went with beaches and palm trees, and it could be calculated in Fahrenheit.

He made his way across the wide driveway to where the Olds squatted half in sun and half in shadow.

The big engine fired right up and clattered loudly for a moment before the heat-thinned oil built pressure. Carver wristed perspiration from his forehead and jammed the shift lever into Drive.

He knew how to tail suspects, but his police training hadn’t included spotting someone following him. When he jockeyed the Olds in a sharp, rocking left turn out of the driveway, he gave no more than a glance at his rearview mirror.

It was Satchel Paige who’d suggested people not look back because something might be gaining on them.

That kind of advice could cause trouble.