Spark

8

The Warm Sands Motel, where Carver had made reservations, was just off the Orange Blossom Trail, miles from the nearest ocean. But it had an artificial white sand beach surrounding a small lake, and it was built of artificial driftwood so it looked as if someone shipwrecked and with carpenter skills had built it. Someone high on fermented mangoes.

Despite the rustic exterior, Carver’s room was what might be called castaway luxurious, with crude-looking but expensive driftwood-gray dresser, desk, and headboard, and Winslow Homer seascape prints on the walls. The room had plush gray carpet and heavy, sea-blue drapes that matched the bedspread. From his window he could see the small kidney-shape swimming pool with several tanned and weary-looking adults lounging about on webbed chairs as if the sun had drugged them. He could hear but not see children playing in the lake and in the sand that had been trucked in.

He pulled the drapes closed, then undressed and took a long, lukewarm shower. After toweling off with rough terry cloth, he got his cane from where it was leaning against the toilet tank and limped back into the cool room. He put on Levi’s, gray sweat socks, and soft brown moccasins, a gray pullover shirt with a pocket for his sunglasses. Then he limped back into the bathroom and brushed his hair, studied himself in the mirror and decided he looked like the same guy only a shade older. That was okay; he had no illusions about time. His bald pate was deeply tanned and a little tender, but it didn’t seem as if it would peel. Reasonably satisfied with his mirror image, he left the room and limped outside and down past the office to the Warm Sands Seagrill Cafe for an early supper. Compensation for having skipped lunch.

After the swordfish steak dinner and two cups of coffee, he went outside and wrestled an Orlando Sentinel from a vending machine. He sat on a bench in the shade, listening to the kids screech and splash down on the artificial beach by the artificial lake while he read about real violence all over the world. Seen as part of the big picture, Jerome Evans’s death seemed relatively unimportant. Which Carver supposed it was-except to Hattie Evans.

Mosquitoes found him, notified the rest of the squadron, and began to go to work on him, sometimes seeming to attack in formation. But he doggedly read on, checking the sports page to see how the Braves did last night, scanning the comics section to see how Charlie Brown was doing in his running conflict with Lucy. They’d both lost.

When he was finished with the paper, he limped back into his room, sat on the edge of the bed with the phone in his lap, and called Beth.

“I need you to do something for me,” he said, when she’d picked up in Del Moray.

“Sure you do, Fred,” she said in a husky voice. “You miss me already.”

“That all you think about?”

“No, but I think about it a lot.”

“Think about using the resources of Burrow and your own limitless resourcefulness to do some research for me. Might involve some computer work. That possible?”

“My, my. Butter wouldn’t melt.”

“Will you do it?”

“Sure. Burrow’s got computer people working for them who make NASA seem like hackers. What you need to know? How to get the Ninja Turtles past all those obstacles?”

He listened to the voices of the young from down at the beach. Listened to the rush of traffic over on the Orange Blossom Trail, not so unlike the eternal sigh of the sea. “I need to know how the death rate at Solartown compares with the rates at similar retirement communities.”

She was silent for a moment. Then she said, “It’d all be public record, in state data banks. It’s the kind of information Jeff could come up with.”

“Jeff?”

“Jeff Mehling, computer guy at Burrow. He’s part microchip himself.”

“How long would it take this Jeff to do the job?”

“Nanoseconds, if he knows what keys to punch. He’s hooked into the office with his home computer, so I can probably call you back with the information tonight.”

Carver told her he’d be waiting, she should take as many nanoseconds as she needed.

“There a story in this for Burrow?” she asked. “That’d be part of the bargain.”

“Our bargain?”

“It’s what Clive’ll ask.” Clive Jones was the founder and managing editor of Burrow, an intrepid former ACLU lawyer who wore conservative business suits while riding a motorcycle with suicidal abandon. “What should I tell him?”

“Say that if there’s a story, you’ll be the one to get it.”

“What Clive’ll say, Fred, is that I oughta be where you are, covering this thing firsthand.”

“There’s nothing yet to cover with any hand.”

“But there will be, right?” She was like a radar-homed missile.

“My sense of it is there will be,” he admitted. “Why don’t you drive here tomorrow, meet me at the motel about noon.”

“So, you need my help in more ways than one.”

“Many more ways.”

“You need many ways, I got ’em.”

“I miss you,” he said, scratching a mosquito bite.

“That all you think about?”

He said, “No, but I think about it a lot.”

“We got a lunch date,” she said, and broke the connection.

He hung up the phone and stretched out on his back on the bed, thinking about it.

The room was dark when the phone’s persistent ringing hauled him up from deep sleep.

The first thing he realized was that he had an erection. The second was that his head throbbed with pain each time the phone jangled. The second realization had taken care of the first by the time he’d dragged the receiver to him and mumbled a hello.

“You been sleepin’, Fred?”

Beth.

He shook his head, trying to rattle sleep from his brain. “Just resting my eyes.” The room was cool and dim. He peered at the glowing red numerals on the TV clock radio: 10:30. “Jesus!”

“Whazza matter, lover?”

“Didn’t realize it was so late.”

“Well, you gave your eyes a good long rest. Other parts of you might get tired, but those eyes are probably good for all night.”

Carver was awake enough now to be irritated. “You call to aggravate me, or do you have that information?”

“Called ’cause I’m doing you a favor, remember?”

“Yeah, I recollect.” He switched on the lamp, wincing as the light assailed his eyes. “Sorry.”

“You’re a bear when you first wake up, Fred.”

He waited in bearish silence. There was a terrible taste in his mouth. Possibly the fur on his teeth.

“Jeff accessed various data banks, did some checking and cross-checking. He worked this out on a per-capita basis, deaths per thousand people in various age groups. Compared to other retirement communities in Florida, California, and Arizona, the Solartown death rate is nine-point-eight percent higher across the board.”

“Across the board? That mean in every age group?”

“Jeff said there’s less than a three-tenths of a percent difference in the rates within age groups. Of course, the higher the age bracket, the more annual deaths per thousand residents.”

Carver didn’t know what to think. “That seem reasonable, that nine-point-eight percent difference?”

“Jeff thought it was high, but within the realm of a statistical fluke. Might mean something or nothing. In Solartown, out of a population of over four thousand, there were two hundred twenty natural deaths. So you’ve got an extra twenty-one-point-something people died there over the average. That mean anything to your investigation, Fred?”

“Not necessarily. It doesn’t mean there’s a serial killer operating in Solartown, but it doesn’t mean there isn’t. It might simply have been a bad year for fatalities.”

“Bad couple of years. These figures cover twenty-four months.”

“Jeff’s thorough. Tell him I said thanks.”

“Sure. Remember our lunch date.”

Carver assured her he would, then hung up. He lay back down on the bed but left the light on. It would be interesting to know how many of Solartown’s 220 deaths last year were due to heart attacks, and how many of them were male. How many widows were created.

It was time to talk with Dr. Arthur Wynn at the medical center.

Rather, it would be time tomorrow. Carver knew he had a better chance of meeting the subject of a seance than convincing a medical doctor to talk with him at ten-forty in the evening.

He dragged the phone over to him and rested it on his chest. Remembering the number on the POSSE bumper sticker on Val Green’s car, he pecked it out with his forefinger.

An elderly female voice told him which part of Solartown Val was patrolling.

Carver thanked her, then replaced the phone, got up, and went into the bathroom. He rinsed his face, brushed his teeth, then limped outside into the warm night to where the Olds was parked.

He wanted to find out what Val Green had to say away from Hattie’s presence and influence.

Val was doubtless an honorable and tight-lipped man, but Carver was reasonably sure he could bribe him with free coffee and doughnuts. Make him feel like a real cop.