Tropical Heat

CHAPTER 2

“Interesting place,” she commented, as Carver let her walk ahead of him into his cottage.

“Only one room,” he told her, closing the door, “but it’s all mine and all I need.”

“One large room,” Edwina said, looking around appraisingly. “Private. And with a great view.” The cottage was mostly glass on the sea side and afforded a wide view of the Atlantic, an airy scene broken only by potted plants dangling on chains from the window frame. When seas were high, the ocean appeared to be above the level of the cottage’s flat roof. Sometimes Carver had the feeling that any second he and the beach and the cottage would be engulfed and washed away, torn from the land and lost forever in the sea.

A breakfast counter separated the small kitchen area from the rest of the cottage, and a latticed room divider partitioned off space for a bed and dresser. Beyond the sleeping area were two doors: one to a tiny bathroom, the other to the outside.

“Even though it’s on the beach,” Carver said, “the land juts out so that the cottage is pretty much concealed from sunbathers or from the road.”

Edwina turned her attention from the cottage to Carver. “Why do you live here? Do you want to be concealed?”

Carver wished she’d give up asking probing questions whose answers were none of her business. “I bought the place with part of my insurance settlement so I could be near the ocean. Swimming being recommended therapy for my leg.” He limped around the Formica counter into the kitchen area, playing host. “Can I get you something to drink?”

She was still standing just inside the door; there was something mocking in that hipshot stance. “No, thank you,” she said. “I want to talk about Willis.” She shook sand from her feet, then slipped her shoes back on and walked to the center of the room. It was something to see, that walk.

Carver opened the refrigerator and got out a can of Budweiser. He popped the pull tab and stayed behind the counter while he talked to Edwina. “Willis Davis, wasn’t it?”

“ Isn’t it.”

He took a sip of cold beer and gazed at her over the rim of the can. “That’s right, he’s alive. And he’s your lover.”

She didn’t differ with him on that. The ocean rolled and sighed outside, beyond the wide windows and silhouetted dangling plants.

Carver put down the beer can and leaned forward, supporting himself with both hands on the counter. “So tell me about you and Willis.”

“Willis is a salesman,” she said. “I’m in sales, too. Real estate. We met six months ago at a direct sales convention in Orlando.” She paced, not far, just a few elegant steps, then looked straight at Carver. “We met in the hotel lounge, I let him buy me a drink, and we talked for a while. We liked each other. It was late; I’d had too many whiskey sours; I went with him to his room.”

Carver nodded. It wasn’t called a direct sales convention for nothing. He understood. He knew how it was at conventions. Private investigators held conventions, too, but he’d never been to one.

“I’ve got a place on the beach, too,” Edwina said. “Down the coast in Del Moray. That’s where I live and work, in Del Moray. A month after we met, Willis moved in with me. He still worked in Orlando for a while, before he got a job where I was working at the time. He commuted.”

“A long commute,” Carver said, “but I can understand why he thought it worth his while.”

Edwina’s features registered no reaction to the compliment. Hers was a face that seemed to have already run the entire range of emotions and was weary of responding. He took another look at her crisp gray business suit. It was tailored and expensive. Del Moray was a wealthy little community with a high percentage of rich retirees. Probably it was a great place to sell real estate.

“Willis enjoyed driving back and forth,” she said. “He was happy. I was happy. Neither of us had anyone else. Do you have anyone, Mr. Carver?”

“No,” he said, thrown for a moment by the question. Resenting it.

“A month ago,” Edwina went on, “Willis began acting strangely, moodily. He hadn’t been moody before.”

“You hadn’t known him very long,” Carver pointed out.

“But I knew him very well,” Edwina said. “I told you, neither of us has anyone else.”

The ocean sighed again, like a huge thing breathing.

Edwina walked to a high-backed wooden chair and sat down, gracefully crossing legs whose curvaceousness even the severe skirt couldn’t tame. “One night a week ago, Mr. Carver, Willis made love to me as he never had before. So intensely.” One of her hands began absently caressing the top of her thigh. “Even desperately. The next morning, I went to show a piece of property and he stayed behind. He was sitting on the veranda drinking coffee when I drove away.” She suddenly realized she was about to rub a hole in her skirt, and the naughty hand joined the nice hand in her lap and they knitted fingers to stay out of mischief. “When I came back that afternoon, the police were there.”

She paused and chewed on her lower lip. Carver waited, wondering if she’d draw blood.

She hadn’t. He was disappointed.

“A friend of mine,” she continued, “another salesperson, had come by my house to see me on business earlier that afternoon. When she got no answer at the door, she walked around to see if I was outside on the veranda. She was about to leave, when she spotted Willis’s sport jacket and shoes on the edge of the drop.”

“Drop?” Carver asked.

“Where the Army Corps of Engineers graded the land to rise well above sea level,” Edwina said. “They placed rocks about sixty feet below to keep the beach from eroding.”

Carver was getting the idea. “Was it your friend who called the police?” he asked.

“Yes. Alice phoned them from my house. The back door was unlocked. Willis had poured another cup of coffee, apparently. It was on the veranda table, cool and full to the brim. There was a glass of grapefruit juice, untouched, and on a plate was a sweet roll with only one bite out of it. And, most important, there wasn’t a body on the rocks at the foot of the drop.”

“It might have washed away, out to sea. Bodies do that.”

“That’s what the police say.”

“The police know bodies and water.”

“I’m reminded of that every time I go to headquarters,” Edwina said.

So Willis had decided to commit suicide in the middle of breakfast, Carver thought. What an impulsive guy. He’d suddenly put down his sweet roll and walked to the edge of the drop, then removed his shoes and jacket and dived onto the rocks. Then the sea had pulled his body out to the depths, maybe claiming it for the rest of recorded time. Well, it could have happened that way. The shoes and jacket didn’t bother Carver; suicides often prepared methodically for death, as if in the hereafter they might be graded for neatness.

“Was the jacket folded?” he asked.

Edwina nodded. “It was resting on top of the shoes so it wouldn’t get dirty. As if Willis expected to return for it.”

“Was anything in the pockets?”

“Willis’s wallet, with all his credit cards and over a hundred dollars in it. Also a few other things: a comb, two ticket stubs.”

Carver took another sip of beer, noticing that it was getting warm from the heat of his hand on the can. “Miss Talbot… Edwina… I have to tell you that Willis’s behavior isn’t inconsistent with suicide.”

She raised her eyebrows as if annoyed that Carver had jumped to a conclusion, irritated by a world in general that wouldn’t hear her out before passing judgment. “I thought it was suicide myself, until I began to think about how Willis had acted with me that last night we were together. I can’t simply close my mind to that.”

Carver tried the beer again. It was too warm for his taste. Foamy. Edwina was gazing with unblinking beautiful gray eyes at him.

He matched her stare, trying not to get lost in those eyes. “What do you hypothesize?” he asked. “What really happened?”

“I think Willis is still alive. He knew someone was after him, coming for him; he was afraid. He was taken by whoever came. Or he faked his own death, so he’d be safe, and then ran.”

“Ran why?”

“I don’t know. Gambling debts, trouble with someone from his past. It could be any of a hundred reasons.”

“You must have some specific idea, among that hundred.”

“Well, there’s something I didn’t mention to the police,” Edwina said in a measured voice, “because I didn’t want to risk getting Willis into any more trouble than he might already be in. There was some money. I saw it the week before he disappeared, in a shoe box in his dresser drawer.”

“How much money?”

“I don’t know. There were hundred-dollar bills on top, several of them. I don’t know what was down deeper in the box. I just got a glimpse of it as he was putting the lid on before he pushed the drawer shut.”

“Did you ask Willis about the money?”

“Yes. He said he’d cashed some bonds at the bank. To loan the money to a friend.”

“What bank? What friend?”

“He didn’t say.”

“Do you think the money is connected to his disappearance?”

“No,” she said, “but I can’t be sure. I do know that the money, shoe box and all, is gone now. Willis is a kind and considerate person, not the sort to get into trouble. But he likes to help people, more than he should. I think he inadvertently got mixed up with the wrong people. He’s running from them now, and when-if-they find him, they might…” She swallowed hard. Holding back tears? “You have to find him before whoever is after him does.”

“Do you know what wrong people might be after him?” Carver asked.

“No, I don’t. Honestly.”

He didn’t know if he believed her. She’d do almost anything to make sure he took the case. He wasn’t all that impressed by this money story, didn’t know if he believed even that. She might be throwing it at him as added incentive to believe Willis was alive and to find him.

“I only know he isn’t dead,” she said. “He didn’t kill himself. He’s still alive somewhere. In danger.” Her voice almost broke. “Maybe terrible danger.”

“I’m not sure the facts indicate that, Edwina.”

“I told you the way Willis made love to me the night before he left, as if he knew it might be the last time, as if he were saying good-bye. I’ve been told good-bye that way before. I recognize it. I know Willis didn’t commit a sudden-impulse suicide. But how do I convince the police?”

How indeed? Carver thought, picturing Lieutenant Desoto’s handsome, somber face as the lieutenant listened to a hunch based on passion. It wasn’t the sort of evidence to convince a coroner’s inquest. It wasn’t evidence at all.

“Why are the Orlando police involved?” Carver asked. “You live in Del Moray.”

“When Willis moved in with me he kept his apartment in Orlando because he couldn’t get out of his year’s lease. His official address is still Orlando. I tried to get the police there to list him as a missing person, but they wouldn’t.”

“Desoto is in Homicide,” Carver noted.

“Missing Persons had me talk with him. Willis left no note, nothing. Though Willis is missing, the police see his disappearance as a possible murder officially, only what they really believe is that he committed suicide and the current carried him out to sea. So they’re not investigating a murder, and they’re not searching for a missing person. They’re doing nothing.”

“They’re officially keeping the case open,” Carver said, “and unofficially closing it. Leaving it in limbo in the wrong department-if it is the wrong department. If Willis was a suicide, they don’t have a worry. If it turns out he might have been a murder victim, the department’s ass is covered; it’s a pending case.” For a moment his expression was one of distaste. “Bureaucracy,” he said. He poured the rest of his beer down the sink drain, watching it foam and swirl and disappear.

“Your friend Desoto doesn’t strike me as a bureaucrat.”

“He is, though, in his bossa nova way. The Orlando police have a caseload they can barely cope with. It’s a fact of life that prevents them from paying proper attention to certain odds-against cases. They call it ‘prioritizing.’ Maybe it’s necessary, but it ignores the human factor. Most cops are human, and prioritizing bothers them. Even Desoto is human. So he sent you to see me so that justice might be served, and to get you off his back.”

“That sounds about right. Desoto explained that you’d been injured and were retired from the force. He said you were recuperating here and had gone into business as a private detective. He thought you might want to hear my story. I’m willing to pay whatever you charge to find Willis, Mr. Carver.”

“You really should hire a bigger organization.”

She was adamant. “Lieutenant Desoto recommended you. He said you could use the business. He also said you were tough, skeptical, had principles, and would surprise me, and you, with your compassion. I’m still waiting for the compassion.”

Carver came out from behind the Formica counter and limped across the hardwood floor, supporting himself with his hands on furniture and the wall, then slumped into a chair opposite Edwina’s. It was a director’s chair, canvas, one he got wet each day after his swim.

“Desoto is a bastard,” he said.

Edwina stared at him in that blank, impenetrable way of hers. “I got the impression he was your friend.”

“He is. I’m a bastard, too. This knee is locked tight at a slight angle for life, Edwina. I’m finished as a cop, and I don’t know any other line of work. Desoto often thinks he knows what’s best for me. Right now, he’s trying to make sure I succeed in the private-investigation business.”

“Maybe he does know what’s best for you.”

Carver kept silent, remembering times when Desoto had known that very thing.

“Lieutenant Desoto says you’re a good detective,” Edwina said. “He says you think like a criminal.”

“I do,” Carver said, “but I only think like one. It’s Desoto who fixes all his relatives’ traffic tickets.”

Edwina shifted her weight in her chair, crossing her legs the other way. Her right leg, which had been on the bottom, was pale where its circulation had been impaired by the weight of the left. For some reason the splotchy coloring beneath her light nylon panty hose intrigued Carver. Aroused him. He hadn’t thought enough about the opposite sex for a long time. His divorce from Laura had been finalized just three days before he’d been shot. Two deep wounds in one week took it out of a man.

“I’m going to make a guess, Mr. Carver,” Edwina said. “It’s true that Lieutenant Desoto probably doesn’t have the manpower to spare for an investigation into what happened to Willis. Or maybe he couldn’t justify such an investigation to his superiors. But he must see a lot of cases like this that he lets drift into official never-never land. I don’t think he’d have sent me to see you unless he thought it was worth discovering what happened to Willis, and unless he thought you were the one who could do the discovering.”

“You’re probably right,” Carver admitted.

“Which leaves us only with the question of whether you want to help me. And help yourself instead of vegetating here.”

Carver didn’t answer. Who was she, to talk to him this way?

“That’s what Lieutenant Desoto said you were doing out here, vegetating.”

“Piss on Lieutenant Desoto. He wouldn’t know a vegetable if it jumped up and gave him vitamin D.”

“But I suspect he knows you quite well.”

“Suspecting seems to be an obsession with you.”

“Lately it has been,” Edwina said. “I’m looking for someone to share that obsession. Shall we discuss terms?”

Carver stood up, leaned to the side, and got his cane from where he’d left it propped against the wall. He planted it firmly on the wood floor, squeezing its burnished walnut handle hard enough to whiten his knuckles.

“Where are you going?” Edwina asked.

“For another swim. I didn’t drip enough water on the floor from the last time I was interrupted.” He tap-tap-tapped to the door with his cane.

“You don’t get around so bad,” Edwina said, following him outside. The screen door slapped shut behind them and reverberated. “You’ve got a lean, strong body; be thankful for that.”

“I am,” Carver said, making for the beach. “You should see me run.” A gull wheeled in low and then soared away in an exquisite arc, screaming, as if taunting him with its limitless blue freedom.

“I’m seeing you run now,” she said. “Away from this case. But you can find Willis. I know it. I can feel it. Lieutenant Desoto knew what he was doing when he sent me here.”

“That’s your own unreasonable optimism you feel.”

“There’s nothing wrong with being an optimist,” Edwina said. She sounded annoyed.

“Not if you thrive on disappointment.” The tip of Carver’s cane hit a soft spot and he almost fell. He was walking too fast; he was annoyed, too.

“I was warned you were cynical,” Edwina said in disgust.

Desoto again.

Near the surf, Carver stopped walking and turned to face her. He didn’t want her to see him backcrawl into the water. She got one of her business cards from her purse and handed it to him. It was an expensive thick white card, engraved with QUILL REALTY and her home and office phone numbers. There was a company logo-a red feather-in the upper right corner.

“Don’t get it wet,” she said. “Consider my offer and phone me.”

“Ever think about trying to find Willis yourself?” he asked.

“I know what I’m good at, Mr. Carver. And what I’m not good at.”

When she turned and began to walk away, Carver extended his cane and used its crook to catch her elbow, gently pulling her around in the soft sand to face him.

She stared at him, seemingly more amused than angry. She was too tough to be swayed by strong-arm tactics, she was telling him with that look.

“If Willis Davis did commit suicide,” Carver said, “he was crazy.”

She removed the cane from her arm. “I know. And Willis isn’t crazy.”

Carver sat down at the edge of the surf and watched her walk away down the beach. Carrying her high-heeled shoes, she strode erectly in her tailored dark business suit among the sunbathers, among all that tanned and glistening female flesh. She was the sexiest thing on the sand. Half a dozen male heads turned in her wake to stare at her as Carver was doing.

He patted his stiff left leg. “Getting well,” he muttered to himself. “Getting well…”

After carefully placing Edwina’s white business card beneath the cane, far enough up on the beach so it wouldn’t get wet, he turned again to the ocean.

It was time to get back in the water.