Torch

5

Carver swam out to sea to the point where he could watch other early morning risers walking the curved shoreline, some of them with their heads lowered, combing the beach for shells. The sun was still low and the ocean was cool. He stroked parallel to the shore for a while, feeling that the strength of his arms, his endurance, could power him forever, even though he knew better. In the water, kicking from the hips, his powerful upper body working in rhythm with his legs, he was as physically capable as any man and more capable than most. He loved his morning swims, so much so that at times he wondered if evolution might be working on him in reverse, luring him back to the sea.

He turned over and floated on his back for a while, gazing up at a cloudless sky going from gray to blue. The sun felt warm and heavy on his upper chest and face. The only sounds were the massive slide of the ocean and the occasional cry of a gull, like that of a woeful, desperate woman. He rode gentle swells that would become higher then flatten out before crashing onto the beach. As he rose on one of the swells to its peak, he glanced in at his cottage, a small, flat-roofed structure nestled where the beach curved to form a thin crescent of sand. The Olds sat by itself near a grouping of date palms beside the cottage; Beth had risen earlier and left to pursue her story for Burrow. He raised a wrist and glanced at his waterproof watch. Almost eight o’clock. Desoto would be at his desk in police headquarters on Hughey in Orlando.

Carver rolled over on his stomach and began swimming at an angle toward the beach, using the momentum of the waves to hasten his crawl stroke. Within a few minutes he was near enough to feel the backwash of the surf, and to see his cane jutting like a beacon from the sand near his white towel.

Next came the part he didn’t like. He waited for a particularly large and powerful wave, then stroked hard and rode it in as far as possible onto the beach, using the great momentum of the ocean to help him ashore. He lay still then, holding his ground as wet sand and shells around and beneath him moved again toward the sea in the backwash of the surf.

No matter how well this method worked, he still had to crawl several yards to the cane and his towel on dry sand. This morning was no exception, and he was glad as he often was that the stretch of beach in front of his cottage was almost completely private because of the curve of the shoreline.

In a sitting position, he dried off with the towel as best he could, then used the cane for support as he stood up. He draped the towel around the back of his neck, then set out for the cottage, careful where he placed the cane in the soft sand.

After showering and dressing, he poured a cup of coffee from the pot Beth had left on the burner of the Braun brewer, leaned on the breakfast counter near the phone, and called Desoto.

He got through to the lieutenant right away and filled him in on what had happened, and why he wanted the Corvette’s license plate number run through the Motor Vehicles Department.

For a few minutes Desoto said nothing, and all Carver heard on the line was a soft Latin melody he was sure came from the portable Sony that sat on the windowsill behind Desoto’s desk. Guitars, he thought. Desoto loved slow guitar music.

Then Desoto said, “A terrible way for a woman to go, amigo, stepping in front of a speeding truck.” Desoto truly loved women, the entire sex, and it pained him to see or hear about a woman in the kind of agony that had prodded Donna Winship to her death. “Are you thinking it might not have been suicide?”

“No, I think she killed herself,” Carver said.

“And you also think that by saying something else in the restaurant, treating her differently in perhaps some small matter, you might have prevented her death.”

“Yes, but I know that’s a stupid way to think.”

“It is. The world is always much simpler in retrospect. But if you’re satisfied the woman’s death was suicide, what’s your interest now?”

“I feel I owe her something.”

“Because you do feel remotely responsible for her death?”

“Maybe. And because she was Beth’s friend. And because when I went to Riley’s Clam Shop to get a look at Enrico Thomas just to satisfy my curiosity and to try to get some hint as to why Donna wanted herself followed, Thomas turned out to be worth learning more about.”

“And what will you do with the information?”

“Nothing, probably. He’s a dangerous sleazeball, but that isn’t illegal. I’m driving over to return Donna’s retainer to her husband this morning, then I should be out of whatever it is I’m in.”

“So this is merely more of your curiosity satisfying, hey?”

“Sure.”

“Well, I think it’s your dog-with-a-rag obsession. Once you get a lock on something that seems to tug back, you can’t turn loose.”

Carver felt a twinge of anger. “You’re constantly calling me obsessive.”

“Only an observation, my friend.”

“Well, you’re obsessive about it.”

“Only because you are constant in your obsessiveness and your impatience to get to whatever it is you’re seeking. It’s a problem for you, but it makes you good at what you do.”

“Are you going to run the Corvette’s license number?”

“Of course. I’ll phone you back as soon as I have any information.”

“How long will it take?”

“See, amigo: impatience. I’ll probably get back to you within the hour.”

Carver thanked him and hung up.

Obsessive. Desoto called him that, Beth called him that-only she didn’t seem to mind.

Carver wondered why they couldn’t simply think of him as determined.

He knew he was determined.

Only half an hour had passed before Desoto called.

“Red ninety-two Corvette belongs to one Carl Gretch,” he said, and gave Carver the address of the apartment on Belt Street in Orlando.

“Anything on Gretch?”

“No outstandings. But I checked further. He did a stretch in Raiford five years ago for burglary.”

“That it?”

“It is for the wages of sin; he’s no longer on parole. He’s a thirty-two-year-old male Caucasian, blue and black, five-foot-five and a hundred thirty-five pounds. Not a good size for penitentiary life.”

“The right size for Enrico Thomas, though. Know anything about the burglary?”

“No. Might have been youthful indiscretion, boys being boys.”

“I doubt it,” Carver said, ignoring Desoto’s sarcasm. “If it was a one-time thing, the judge probably would have allowed probation.”

“All it means, though, is that your late client was seeing a guy with a record. It happens.”

“Guy with a record with a knife.”

“Hmm.”

“I’m still curious,” Carver said.

“Still obsessed. Are you going to keep poking around?”

“No,” Carver said. “Whatever Donna Winship was mixed up in, it’s over. For her, anyway. For me, too.”

“Yes. Concentrate on living clients,” Desoto said. “They’re far more profitable.”

Carver thanked him for the help and advice, then broke the connection but didn’t hang up. He dialed the home number Donna Winship had given him. He wanted to make sure Mark Winship was there before driving to see him to return Donna’s check, tell his benign lies, then walk away from the Winship tragedy and let it play out on its own.

No answer.

Carver hung up the phone, then looked in the directory for Mark Winship’s address. Found it within seconds: 333 Blue Heron Road. On the moneyed side of town, farther from Carver’s cottage in decimal points than in miles. He decided to drive into Del Moray and drop by the Winship home even though he’d gotten no answer to his call, in the hope that the grieving widower would be there but didn’t want to speak on the phone. If Winship wasn’t home, Carver would drive to the office, do paperwork, and try to contact him later, maybe catch him this evening on the way back to the cottage.

There was, after all, no rush about returning Donna’s check.

The Winship house was one of the smaller ones on Blue Heron, but still expensive. The Del Moray paper’s account of Donna’s death had mentioned that her husband was a financial consultant; apparently he’d done well with his own investments.

The house was a low, contemporary structure of white bricks. The roof was all planes and angles, and the corner of the house nearest the driveway was floor-to-ceiling glass behind which drapes were closed to keep the sun out. There was no car in the driveway, but the garage door was closed. A tall sugar oak grew near the garage, and a walk led around through a colorful garden that looked as if it followed the property line into the backyard.

Carver got out of the Olds and walked onto the porch. Standing in the shade of the roof’s overhang, he pressed the door button and heard bells chime faintly inside. They played four notes of a song he didn’t recognize.

No one came to the door.

He pushed the button and heard the abbreviated tune again, waited a few minutes, then hobbled down off the porch and walked to the garage door. It was one of those overhead doors with a small window at eye level in each section. The windows were dirty, but Carver leaned close to one, rubbed it in a circular motion with the heel of his hand, then peered inside.

Two cars were parked in the dim garage, Donna’s gray convertible and a green Jaguar sedan. The Jag was doubtless Mark’s, so unless the family had a third car he might very well be home. Possibly he was outside and hadn’t heard the door chimes. It was worth checking on, anyway.

Carver followed the stepping-stone walk that led through the garden. Azaleas bordered the walk on the garage side. Beyond them long-stalked dahlias swayed in the faint warm breeze. Low ground cover bearing tiny white blooms spread to the garage’s back corner and around, where a small white iron bench posed pristinely beneath an oleander tree bearing clusters of pink flowers.

When Carver walked beyond the bench, he saw Mark Winship immediately. He was seated in a large wooden glider in the shade of an arched trellis bursting with red roses, an open book in his lap, his head bowed in concentration.

Carver set the tip of his cane on sunbaked lawn and limped toward him. Clouds of tiny insects rose around his feet and the cane with each step. Some of them found their way inside his pants cuffs, tickling his ankles.

When he got closer, he saw that Mark Winship was wearing glasses with tortoiseshell frames, resting somewhat crookedly halfway down his nose, and that the book in his lap was a Bible.

When he got closer still, he noticed the small silver revolver in Winship’s right hand.

Then the blue-black hole in his temple.