Tropical Heat

CHAPTER 17

After Edwina had checked in at the Tumble Inn, Carver took her to dinner at The Flame. They sat in a booth near the back, where they could see the regular customers, and the few tourists who’d been driving through and stopped to eat. The place was crowded; Carver noticed that most of the regulars-easy to spot by their casual clothes and familiarity with the waitresses-were having the Seminole Sizzler steak special.

There was a boisterous conversation among half a dozen men at the counter over the relative merits of different types of shotguns. It interested Carver because two of the men had been referred to as Sean and Gary. The Malone brothers. They were short, muscular men with similar strong, handsome faces. Sean was the heavier of the two, in his mid-thirties, about five years older than Gary, who told everybody to hell with shotguns, he was a good enough shot to use a rifle; shotguns were for blind men and pussies. Both Malone brothers had amused blue eyes, and noses that seemed to have been broken several times and never set. Sean dribbled his beer when he drank, and he laughed a lot with an annoying, nasal giggle; Gary’s remark about blind men and pussies ranked high on his list of things funny.

“Is this the best place in town to eat?” Edwina asked.

“It is for us.” Carver sipped his water, which was cold but tasted as if it had been pumped straight from the swamp. “This is where Sam Cahill has some of his meals. Besides, you might be surprised by the food and service here.”

“I thought you were watching Cahill on the sly, to see if Willis contacted him,” Edwina said. She sniffed her water, turned up her nose. City girl.

“I was,” Carver said. “But there’s no point in that now. He knows I’m in town, why I’m here.” Carver told Edwina everything that had happened since he’d arrived in Solarville. She leaned forward over the table, her expression serious, when he got to the fire that had almost asphyxiated him, then the murder attempt and the death of Silverio Lujan. He found it disturbingly gratifying to see the concern in her eyes.

“But maybe none of this has anything to do with Willis,” she said. She wouldn’t let go. Willis didn’t deserve her.

“Maybe not,” Carver said, “but it would be quite a stretch of coincidence if it didn’t. Cops, present or former, don’t believe in coincidence. Except for Chief Armont. He believes hard. It’s a prerequisite for his job.”

“Sam Cahill will recognize me if he comes in here,” Edwina said. “We worked together for almost a year at Sun South.”

“It doesn’t matter. It might be interesting to see his reaction when he notices you.”

A waitress Carver hadn’t seen before approached the table and asked if they were ready to order. Edwina asked for a tuna salad sandwich. Carver played it safe and ordered the steak special. The waitress, a very tall woman with dark hair and elongated, horsey features, tucked her order pad into her belt and walked off. Carver didn’t see Emma, but Verna Blaney was working behind the counter, passing orders back to the kitchen. When the tall waitress handed her their order slip, Verna glanced over at Carver and Edwina blankly, then looked away. The scar on the side of her face and neck flushed fiery red.

“Maybe Sam Cahill is just what he appears to be here,” Edwina said. “He might be selling real estate, trying to line up financing for the subdivision the police chief mentioned.” A thought startled her. “You’re not suggesting that Willis is going to back him with the supposedly stolen money, are you?”

“No,” Carver said. “A hundred thousand dollars might help procure financing, provide collateral for the first installments. But I don’t think Cahill intends to build anything in or around Solarville.”

“Why not?”

“Cynical me, I guess. And I don’t see people lined up to live in the swamp.” He took another sip of water. “I’ll take my cynicism further. We can’t be sure anything going on in Solarville involves Willis. We stepped into something nasty and dangerous, but it could be unrelated to what we’re after. However, since they’re so friendly, if it involves Cahill, it might very well involve Willis. Or it might only involve those two muscle-headed types at the counter. The Malone brothers. They’re reputed to be active in drug smuggling.”

“They don’t act like they have enough sense to know which end of a joint to light,” Edwina said.

Carver had to acknowledge that point. It had been bothering him, too.

“Maybe they’re working for somebody.”

“Not for Sam Cahill,” Edwina said. “It’s not his style to get involved with that sort.”

“Is it Willis’s style?”

She appeared uneasy. “I don’t think so. But I’m getting surprised a lot about Willis, aren’t I?”

Carver looked across the table at the agony in her eyes. He wanted to reach across and squeeze her hand, wanted to hold her, reassure her. Wanted to kick Willis Davis where it hurt for doing this to her.

Emotion, he warned himself. Don’t let it get in the way of your life, your judgment. Remember your children you seldom see, Anne and Fred Jr. Remember Laura, how it felt when she left. Not again. Not yet, anyway.

“Sorry to keep you all waitin’,” a voice said. The tall waitress with their supper. She set dishes and glasses about on the table quickly and expertly, then loped away.

The tuna salad sandwich looked okay. At least some small thing was going right for Edwina. Carver took a bite of his pan-fried steak. He understood why the special was popular at The Flame, and why he’d never be a gourmet like a P.I. he’d met in Boston.

The Malone brothers finished drinking beer and arguing about guns and swaggered out. The place was much quieter in their absence, and the food tasted better.

“The waitress behind the counter,” Carver said, “the one with the scar on her face. She and Cahill had a thing going, I’m told. Or at least they had a strong friendship.”

Edwina lowered her sandwich onto her plate and turned slightly to study Verna. “I’d bet on friendship,” she said. “This isn’t a criticism of the girl, but it isn’t like Sam Cahill to be with a woman disfigured that way. He prides himself on perfection. The kind of guy who suddenly runs outside to buff a smudge from his car. He sees his women as having to pass inspection, like all the rest of his possessions. They’re reflections of himself, or how he sees himself.”

“Maybe,” Carver said, “but who knows about love?”

“Who knows?” Edwina repeated. She swallowed, not tuna salad.

“Cahill seems to be putting on the outdoorsman act here,” Carver said.

Edwina shrugged. “Sales technique, probably. Cahill will do whatever he has to in order to swing a deal. He enjoys that part of the business, fancies himself a manipulator of people.”

Carver took another bite of steak, wondering how Edwina could see Cahill so clearly, but not see Willis.

“How’s your sandwich?” he asked.

“Like the rest of Solarville. Tolerable.”

Carver kept quiet and chewed.

Sam Cahill didn’t come into The Flame that evening. After supper, Carver and Edwina drove back to the Tumble Inn in the Olds with the top down. The heat of the night was moderated by the breeze that whipped around the windshield and rushed back to splay Edwina’s dark hair across her cheeks and forehead. In the constant flow of wind she looked oddly like a beautiful woman underwater, drowned and alone. When Carver slowed the Olds to take a curve in the road, the breeze lessened and the close scent of the swamp crept in for a few seconds, until he built up speed again. The secret of life: keep moving.

“We might as well leave here tomorrow,” he said, glancing over at Edwina. “If Willis was here when I arrived, he isn’t anymore.”

“Why not tonight?” she asked, as if she were afraid.

“A DEA agent named Burr wants to talk to me about Lujan.”

“Drugs,” Edwina said. “They think everything in Florida is drugs.”

“If you want to return to Del Moray tonight, you could get your rental car back and drive,” Carver said. She had left her Mercedes in the shop in Del Moray for service. He was afraid of the same thing she was; he wanted to make it clear to her that it made no difference to him if she drove back to Del Moray alone, tonight, without him.

She seemed to consider the idea. Then she said, “No, that would be stupid. We’re both going in the same direction, and my room is already paid for.”

As Carver turned the Olds onto the Tumble Inn’s parking lot, a black Lincoln coming out braked to make room for him, then turned left on the highway, traveling away from Solarville. The Lincoln’s windows were tinted, but not so darkly that Carver didn’t notice that the driver was the three-piece-suit type he’d seen earlier in the Tumble Inn restaurant, and his passenger, sitting as far away from him as possible on the front seat, was the executive-tailored blonde woman who’d been with him. Off to new diversions, Carver thought, wondering how it would be to have that kind of money, that kind of leisure. Lately he’d found himself envying other people too often.

He parked the Olds halfway between his room and Edwina’s.

Neither of them moved to get out of the car right away.

“Do you want some coffee?” Carver asked. “Or a drink in the hotel lounge?”

“No, it’s late. I’m tired.” The car’s engine ticked, cooling.

For the first time Carver realized it was almost ten o’clock. They’d had a late supper, sat longer than he’d planned in The Flame. Against the dark sky, a huge full moon was plastered like a decoration at a dance, low on the haze above the swamp. Night insects were screaming as if they were dismayed about the world in general.

“What time are we leaving tomorrow?” Edwina asked.

“I don’t know. I’ll call you after I talk with Burr.”

She worked the chrome handle, started to push open the door to get out of the car. Carver’s hand was on her shoulder before he knew it had moved, feeling the sharpness of bone and the warmth of flesh beneath the crisp white material of her blouse. There was something desperate in the action. She twisted on the seat and looked at him, confused and a little angry in the moonlight.

“Not a good idea,” she said. “Wrong.” But her own hand rose and her fingertips brushed the side of Carver’s face, so lightly he might have imagined it.

She got out of the car and he watched her walk to her door. She unlocked it and went inside without looking back.

Carver put up the canvas top on the Olds, then went to the Tumble Inn lounge and sat nursing one beer for almost an hour, listening to an unbroken string of sad love songs wafting from unseen speakers. It was almost as if the bastards who’d set up the music knew.

Not a good idea. Wrong.

He didn’t feel like sleeping. But he didn’t feel like sitting there and drinking and feeling mawkish any longer either, so he left the lounge and walked back across the parking lot to his room, listening to the solemn sound of his soles crunching on gravel, the growling drag of his cane.

It took as much willpower as he’d mustered in years not to stop and knock on Edwina’s door.

But she was waiting for him in front of his door. So much for willpower.

He touched her shoulder and she came to him, clung to him. He bowed his head, sought her eager mouth, found it with his own. Her grip on him tightened, and her body writhed tight against his.

Somehow he managed to fit his key into the lock.