Lightning

20

On the drive back to the cottage, Carver thought about his conversation with Nate Posey. Posey was still young and discovering how life could stun him and the future could dart away in unexpected directions.

Carver pitied the grieving youth. Despite the kind words of mourners and assurances of professional counselors, what had happened at the Women’s Light Clinic would always be with him, and the pain, even if eased, would remain a part of him. The past was immortal and lived with the present.

Before making a right turn off the coast highway onto the road to the cottage, he pulled the Olds onto the shoulder and braked to a halt.

He’d slowed the car deliberately and studied the area where he knew someone watching or visiting the cottage unobtrusively might park, and he’d caught a glimpse of gleaming blue metal. Almost certainly a car, not quite well enough concealed among tall brush and a copse of sugar oaks. The low rumbling of the Olds’s idling V-8 engine was probably carried away by the ocean breeze, but Carver switched off the engine anyway. He reached into the back of the car and got the Gator-lock that in crime-ridden areas he used to lock the steering wheel in place. It was tempered steel and heavier than the cane and would make a more devastating weapon up close-an ideal club. He climbed out of the car, shutting its door quietly. Gripping his cane in one hand and the rubber handle of the Gator-lock firmly in the other, he started walking through the brush toward the parked car below.

Carver was soon out of sight of the highway and whoever might be in the parked blue car. He maintained his sense of direction easily and kept moving toward the sound of the sea. Grit from the sandy soil worked into his moccasins, and once he almost fell when the tip of his cane broke through a crust of sand and plunged about six inches into a sink hole or the burrow of a small animal.

There! He saw blue metal again, slightly off to the left. He veered that way, moving slower and more quietly, and worked his way up to the edge of the stand of trees. Though he was in the shade, sweat streamed down his face and he could feel it trickle stop-and-go down his ribs. Concealed by a wild, thorny bush with tiny red blossoms, he stared at a blue Dodge parked well off the narrow road, in a spot where the driver had a clear view of the cottage and the beach.

But the driver wasn’t in the car. He was standing facing away from Carver on the other side of the vehicle, leaning back against its front fender. The first thing Carver noticed was that the man was too small to be the WASP. He was wearing gray slacks and a blue shirt. His suit coat, carefully folded inside-out so that only its gray silk lining was visible, had been laid neatly across the car’s waxed and gleaming hood. The man had bright red hair, cut short on the sides and grown bushy on top, combed neatly except for a single lock standing straight up on the left side of his head, displaced by the ocean breeze. A narrow dark strap traversed his back just below the armpit. Another strap lay at an angle across his shoulder. He was wearing a leather shoulder holster. He raised his right hand to his face now and then, as if he were eating something. From his angle, Carver couldn’t see what was in the hand.

A sudden soft rustling sound off to Carver’s left caused the redheaded man to stand up straight and turn that way. In that instant Carver saw the holstered gun and a pair of binoculars slung around his neck by a black leather strap. Carver turned his head then to see what had caused the rustling sound.

Nothing was visible. The redheaded man walked around to the back of the car, the binoculars bouncing gently against his stomach, and stood by the trunk. Carver saw now that he was carrying a brown paper sack that must have contained whatever he’d been eating.

There was the noise again. The redheaded man stiffened, placed the paper bag on the trunk, and removed the small handgun from its holster.

Carver hunched lower, watching.

Branches moved, the soft rustling resumed, and Al trotted out of the foliage.

The man smiled and tucked his handgun back into its holster.

“Hi there, boy,” he said, not loud, but Carver heard him.

Al walked over to the man, who bent down and patted the top of his head. Then the man reached for the paper sack on the trunk and drew out a sandwich. He tore off part of the sandwich and tossed it to Al, who caught it effortlessly in mid-air and scarfed it down.

This wasn’t what Carver had had in mind when he got Al. Instead of protecting Beth at the cottage, here Al was accepting food from a man who was obviously spying on Beth.

Carver looked more closely at the man, then at the blue Dodge. He began to understand. Trying not to make noise, he cautiously began backing away behind the bush, careful to avoid the thorns.

Al suddenly looked in his direction, turned toward him, hunkered down and pointed his nose and cocked a front leg.

“So you’re part pointer,” the redheaded man with binoculars said, as if delighted. “Well, I’m not hunting quail today, fella.”

Al continued to stare and point at Carver.

Carver raised a forefinger to his lips, urging the dog to be quiet, but immediately realized how stupid that was. And the motion caused him to wave the red steel Gator-lock around, which might attract attention.

The man tossed Al another bite of sandwich. As Al broke the classic pointer stance to pick it up from the ground, Carver moved back quickly.

He turned and walked as swiftly as he could toward where the Olds was parked, digging his cane in deep with each step. It wasn’t easy, moving uphill toward the highway instead of downhill toward the beach, and he feared that any second Al would begin barking and run to join him.

But apparently Al’s stomach took precedence over his pursuit instincts, and Carver made it to the Olds reasonably sure that he hadn’t been seen or heard by anyone or anything other than the dog.

Catching his breath as he sat behind the steering wheel, he caught sight of a big semi approaching in the rearview mirror. He timed starting the car with the passage of the roaring and whining truck so that it could not be heard by the redheaded man. Letting the idling engine power the car, he put it into drive and the Olds slowly rolled forward and then back up onto the highway.

Carver drove the quarter mile to the cottage road turnoff and continued on his way to join Beth as if nothing had happened and he was unaware of the man watching from cover.

He saw her right away as he parked beside her recently re-paired LeBaron near the cottage. Beth was sitting in one of the webbed aluminum chairs on the porch, her Toshiba in her lap. She was wearing red shorts and a yellow halter top, slumped over and pecking away at the computer’s keyboard. A can of Budweiser sat on the plank floor next to her chair. Her long dark legs glistened with perspiration in the bright sunlight. No wonder the guy parked off the road was using binoculars.

Carver was irritated. He slammed the car door behind him harder than he’d intended. Beth hadn’t looked up. “Where’s Al?” he asked as he limped toward the porch.

Now she raised her gaze from the computer. “I let him out to do what dogs have to do. He went to the door and stood there. Kept staring at me. You said he was trained, Fred, so I figured he knew what he wanted.”

“How do you know he’ll come back?”

“You said he was trained,” she repeated, and began working again with her computer.

Carver clomped up onto the porch and walked past her, entering the cottage. She had the air conditioner on high and it was cool in there.

He pulled Wicker’s card out of his wallet and went to the phone on the breakfast bar.

Wicker answered the phone on the second ring.

“You sound as if you’ve got a pillow over your face,” Carver said.

“Cell phone. I’m in my car. What do you want, Carver?”

“You got an agent about five foot ten, medium build, red hair, drives a late-model cheap blue Dodge, likes animals?”

Silence. Then, “Uh-huh. You spotted him?”

“He’s yours, then?”

“Must be, though I didn’t know about the animals. That’s Anderson. He’s assigned to watch Beth.”

“Without her knowledge?”

“Better that way, Carver. In case our WASP friend tries to pay her a visit. She won’t get careless if she doesn’t know she has protection.”

Carver didn’t know whether to be aggravated with Wicker for posting a watch or to be grateful. What Wicker hadn’t mentioned was that if Beth was unaware she was being guarded, she’d act normally and make more effective bait for the man who’d beaten Lapella. On the other hand, Wicker hadn’t had to assign anyone at all to protect her. Carver decided on gratitude, but he said nothing. That might only encourage Wicker to make more close-to-home moves in secret.

“Does Anderson know that you know?” Wicker asked in his muffled voice.

“No. We can leave it that way.”

“Good. And I assume you won’t tell Beth.”

“It might be better that way,” Carver said, knowing she’d resent being observed. Wicker was right: she might get careless. Might even march down to Anderson, grab him by the shirt, and demand that he leave.

“Fine. Now what’s this business about animals?”

“I’ve got a dog might have torn your man apart,” Carver said. “Luckily Anderson had some meat to throw to him.”

Wicker said something Carver couldn’t understand, fading fast, probably moving between cells or falling victim to some technological glitch beyond Carver’s grasp. He said something else, then the line went dead.

Carver hung up the phone, went around the counter to the refrigerator, and got out a cold can of Budweiser. As he popped the tab, the cottage door opened and Al came in, closely followed by Beth.

Al was licking his chops with a tongue that looked as if it belonged on a larger dog. He glanced at Carver as he followed Beth to the refrigerator. He smelled as if he’d rolled in something.

Beth reached in and pulled out a package of all-beef premium frankfurters.

“What are you doing?” Carver asked.

“I’m going to feed Al. He acts hungry, and you neglected to buy him any dog food.”

Al raised an eyebrow. Carver thought he might have winked.

“You talk with Posey?” Beth asked, using a knife to slice the plastic wrapper on the frankfurters.

“Yes. He wanted to hire me. He’s grieving hard over his fiancee’s death, needs to find out what it was all about. He told me he needs a sense of closure so he can get on with his life.”

“Sounds as if he’s been to a therapist.”

“He probably has.”

“Did you tell him the only definitive closures in life are orgasms?”

Lord, she was tough! “No. It didn’t seem the time or place.”

He watched her slice up half a dozen premium franks on the cypress cutting board, then walk over and dump them into Al’s dish. She stood holding the cutting board and knife, observing with seeming fascination as the dog greedily and noisily devoured his food with the pure and primal gluttony that only beasts possess.

Carver wondered what she was thinking.

How, in her secret heart, was she dealing with her own grief?