Tropical Heat

CHAPTER 6

Carver drove inland to a phone booth on Regent Street and called Edwina Talbot at Quill Realty. He was told by a syrup-voiced receptionist that Edwina was out showing property and would be back in about an hour. Carver was disappointed. He needed to talk to her and thought it might as well be over lunch.

After hanging up the phone, he noticed a McDonald’s across the street. Even the wealthy residents of Del Moray needed a hamburger fix now and then. He waited for a break in traffic, then deliberately jaywalked and was almost run down by a van laden with teen-agers. He was pleased to find that when really inspired he could move faster with the cane than he’d anticipated.

He ate too many Chicken McNuggets and drank too much diet cola, then walked back to his car. This time he crossed at the corner; he had nothing to prove. On a whim, before getting into the Olds, he stepped into the sun-heated phone booth and tried Edwina again at Quill. He was surprised when he was told she was in.

“Mr. Carver,” she said, “have you learned anything about Willis?”

“Not much,” Carver said, “but I can pose more questions about him. I think we should meet and talk. And call me Carver without the ‘mister’ or we won’t get along.” He’d sounded grouchier than he intended. Too much time spent alone.

“You’ve grown a protective shell, there by the sea, Carver.”

“I’m not by the sea, I’m on Regent Street.”

“Maybe we can talk during lunch,” she said. “Or have you already had lunch?”

“No, I’m starving.”

“Do you know The Happy Lobster?”

“Sure, a fellow crustacean.”

“I mean-”

“I know. The circular glassed-in restaurant on the coast highway.”

“If that’s all right with you, I’ll leave now to meet you there.”

“Fine,” Carver said. “I’ll race you.”

“You seem to have recovered your zest for life, Carver.”

“It comes and goes,” Carver said, and hung up. He patted his full stomach, got in the Olds, and tried not to think about lobsters. Even on an empty stomach, he didn’t like eating them or watching people eat them; they looked too much like big spiders.

He started the engine and drove toward the coast highway.

“Where does this leave us?” Edwina asked Carver, after he’d described his visit with Ernie Franks at Sun South.

Carver looked out the curved window of The Happy Lobster at the vast blue sea and chewed the olive from his martini. “I’m not sure,” he said, swallowing. “The more I try to learn about Willis, the more lost I am. You worked for a while at Sun South; what do you think about Franks?”

“Ernie is a high-priced hustler, but an honest man. And a mush-hearted one. He found religion somewhere along the line. He prides himself on his fairness and his ability as a big-time developer. Maybe at one time he was the kind of semi-confidence man you find in these kinds of real-estate projects, but he isn’t now. Maybe simply because he’s reached the age and bank balance where he doesn’t have to be. Or maybe he really is born again, like the rest of us yearn to be in one way or another.”

“What is his religion?”

“I’m not sure. It’s nothing crazy. He doesn’t speak in tongues unexpectedly or dress funny on weekends.”

“Is he a worrier?”

“No. He’s a juggler of things to do and the time to do them in, but he doesn’t fret over his decisions either before or after he makes them. He’s often preoccupied, energetic and in a hurry, but I wouldn’t describe him as a worrier. Usually he’s cheerful, full of pep talk.”

“He’s worried now.”

“About what happened to Willis?”

“About something concerning Willis. I don’t know what, and Franks isn’t talking.”

Edwina worked studiously at freeing a strand of meat from one of the lobster tails on her plate. She seemed to be concentrating entirely on the task at hand. Then she gazed out the window, a pained, lost expression on her face.

“You okay?” Carver asked.

She turned back. “Yes. I just miss Willis. I miss him all the time. Did you ever feel that way about someone who was gone?”

“Why do you love Willis so much?” he asked her bluntly, without answering her question.

She thought for a moment, a desolate cast to her composed features. “You’re asking for a reason for something that doesn’t rest on a foundation of reason,” she told him. “Love simply is, and then it becomes what it will. We don’t have much choice in the matter.”

“I think we do,” he said.

“Sometimes, maybe.”

“Is there anything you’re not telling me about you and Willis?”

“There’s a lot I’m not telling you. Some of it you wouldn’t understand; some of it is none of your business.” There was no rancor in her tone; she was merely stating facts, keeping the door closed on the intimacy shared by lovers. Not unreasonable.

Yet Carver felt that there might be more to it than that.

She took a bite of lobster meat and watched as he forked another raw oyster from its half shell, dipped it into hot sauce, and popped it into his mouth. Carver had decided he was hungrier than he’d thought, and was on a second plate of oysters. This and two martinis were going to be his second lunch of the day.

“How can you eat something so almost alive?” Edwina asked, wincing in distaste as he let the oyster slide down his throat.

“There is no ‘almost alive,’ ” Carver told her. “There’s only alive and dead. There’s no difference between these oysters and your lobster and somebody else’s steak. We kill, then we eat the dead. But we don’t think about it in that light because of mental conditioning. Without all of our carefully developed protective delusions, we’d be in trouble. Me, I never developed the necessary protective layer of delusion about lobsters that have been dropped alive into boiling water.”

“Come off it, Carver, the cook isn’t a murderer because he boiled my lobster alive. And I’m not a ghoul for eating the carcass. And there’s nothing wrong with me because I haven’t developed the callousness to eat raw oysters. The damned things can make you sick, anyway. The cook and I don’t need any protective delusions.”

“You’re missing the point,” Carver said. “We’re the lobsters. It might behoove us to understand the cook.”

Edwina stuck the tines of her fork into a bite of lobster meat and held the fork still. She tilted her head to the side and stared at Carver. “What are you trying to tell me with your seafood-soup philosophy?”

Carver took a slow sip of his martini, then rattled the ice in the glass. “Maybe Willis Davis dropped you alive into hot water, used you somehow, and you can’t or won’t believe it.”

She put down her fork and looked out at a distant ship making its way inexorably toward a hazy horizon. Or was the ship really moving? From here it was impossible to tell. “I’m forty-one years old, Carver, and I’ve been fooled by more than one man. And I’ve fooled a few; I’ve been the cook. The thing is, I’ve played the game both ways and won and lost. It’s wised me up. Willis isn’t conning me. He loved me. I know enough to know that.”

“Maybe it’s a new kind of game,” Carver said. “Maybe you never met a Willis before.”

“I’ve known a few Willises. I’m not sure if I’ve ever met another Carver.”

“That could be a compliment.”

“There goes that protective layer of delusion. What I mean is that your job, your injury, your life, what you were born with-all or some of them have made you tough and cynical.”

“I know. I’m working to improve.”

“Then accept this: I love Willis, he loves me, something happened to him, I want to know what. I want him back. Simple as that.”

Carver grinned at her. “Okay. I’ll approach my job under that assumption.”

“Good. What next?”

“Dessert?”

“No, I mean in the investigation.”

“I want to go home with you.”

She dabbed at her lips with her napkin and frowned. He was always surprising her; it wasn’t fair.

“I’d like to examine what Willis left behind when he disappeared,” Carver said. “Clothing, accessories, whatever.”

“He didn’t leave much,” Edwina said. “It’s all in one closet. The only thing of interest was his attache case, but the police and I have already examined its contents. There’s nothing in it other than ordinary papers connected with his job.”

“I still might find something pertinent.”

“You harbor ego as well as cynicism,” Edwina said. “Do you think you’re smarter than the police?”

“I’m more interested,” Carver said. “They get paid whether they find something or not. Incidentally, did you know Sam Cahill at Sun South?”

“Yes. He was friendly with Willis. We saw him socially a couple of times.”

“What did you think of him?”

“Not much one way or the other. He was maybe too much of an operator, but then a lot of salespeople have that fault.”

“Do you know where Cahill went after he left Sun South?”

“No. He quit, Ernie Franks said, but there were rumors that he’d actually been fired. I heard he went someplace in southern Florida.”

Carver summoned the waitress. As he reached for his wallet, Edwina held up a hand palm-out. “I’ll buy,” she said. “When you bill me, you’ll put it on the expense account anyway.”

Only his own lunch, Carver thought, but he kept silent. Edwina was assuming again; now she was thinking of him as the opportunistic private eye who jockeyed for every advantage as a way of life and had a code of ethics slightly higher than Richard Nixon’s. Or maybe Carver was the one kidding himself; maybe he fit the stereotype.

After Edwina had smitten the bill with her American Express card, he walked with her from the restaurant.

“I’ll meet you at my house,” she said, as their soles crunched on the gravel parking lot, “but I’m sure you won’t find anything revealing.”

“Maybe not, but it’s a base that ought to be touched,” Carver said, with proper professional arrogance.

She nodded. The warm sunlight on her face lent it a healthy, youthful kind of radiance made beautifully ironic by the faintly crinkled flesh at the corners of her eyes and lips. Her gray eyes caught gold flecks of the sun.

He couldn’t help standing for a moment, staring after her, as they parted to walk to where their cars were parked.

The inside of Edwina’s house looked as if it had been furnished by a good interior decorator. Everything was in subdued blues and grays, with tasteful accents of red.

“Very nice,” Carver said, limping to the center of the living room and making an all-encompassing sweep with his cane, as if he were a visiting potentate bestowing a blessing with his scepter.

“A friend and I designed it,” Edwina told him. “You learn a lot about interior decorating while you’re showing customers through furnished display houses.”

“Is the friend a professional decorator?”

“She used to be. Alice sells real estate now for Quill.”

“Is this the Alice who discovered Willis’s jacket and shoes at the edge of the drop and phoned the police?”

“Yes. Alice Hargrove.” Edwina tossed her purse onto a modern blue chair and walked across the deep carpet, past Carver. “Come on, I’ll show you the bedroom.”

He limped after her. He felt like using the crook of his cane to trip her by the ankle so he could bolt past her down the short hall.

The bedroom was also done in blues and grays; maybe Alice was a Civil War buff. The furniture was light-grained oak. The bed was king-sized and had a padded blue headboard whose subdued print matched the drapes. It was probably the most restful room Carver had ever been in. One of the windows was open; the sea was whispering not to worry, kick off your shoes and stretch out on the bed, few things are forever.

There was no sign that a man had slept there. No comb or electric razor on the dresser, no tie draped over a doorknob, no worn copies of Playboy. A woman’s comb-and-brush set lay on the small dresser, which was equipped with a mirror. There was a white push-button phone, and a note pad and pen, next to a reading lamp on a small table by the bed. On a chair in a corner lay an outdated real-estate-listing book. By the chair was a bookshelf containing a single book, a collection of short stories by Stanley Ellin.

Carver looked at the room, then at Edwina. He wondered about Willis Davis’s sanity, if Davis had willingly walked away from this.

One end of the room was all closet. Edwina slid open one of four floor-to-ceiling doors. Even the soft rumble of the rollers in their track made a restful sound.

“Almost everything Willis left, I put in here,” Edwina said, stepping aside to give Carver a clear view and access to the closet.

Five suits, two blue and three gray, hung neatly on wooden hangers. Next to them on the closet rod hung several white and pale blue dress shirts with button-down collars; also half a dozen striped ties. The shirts’ sleeve lengths were 34, not so short; almost Carver’s size. On the floor a pair of black wingtip shoes gleamed dully, the kind with thick soles and heels.

Carver leaned against the edge of the open closet door and used both hands to rummage through the pockets of the hanging clothes. They were all empty. He straightened and leaned on his cane. “What about socks and underwear?” he asked Edwina.

She opened the top drawer of a large dresser. Inside were stacks of neatly folded white Jockey shorts and undershirts, along with black socks and two coiled black belts. In the drawer beneath that one were a folded pair of worn jeans and some pullover shirts. Also in that drawer was a flat black-leather attache case with brass latches.

“The rest of the drawers are empty,” Edwina said.

Carver removed the attache case and sat down on the edge of the bed, surprised by the softness of the mattress; so unlike the board-reinforced hardness of his own mattress. He laid the attache case on the bed, figured out how the latches worked, and raised the lid.

The contents were pretty much as Edwina had described. Sales brochures, expense-account forms, gas credit receipts, a used book of Disney World tickets, a pocket calculator, a few white business cards. There was a list of price changes for Sun South units, several sheets of plain white typing paper, and a stamped, blank envelope. Apparently Willis had intended to write a letter but hadn’t gotten the chance or had changed his mind. A suicide note?

Carver closed the attache case and stood up.

“Anything illuminating?” Edwina asked. There might have been a mocking edge in her voice. He sensed strongly that she was keeping something from him. Why, really, did she love Willis so fiercely? Why was she holding on so tightly to him?

“Nothing that sheds much light now,” Carver told her, “but who’s to say when a connection might be made that switches on a bulb? Did Willis wear sport coats very often?”

“No, he usually wore suits. He only owned one sport coat, and the police have it now.”

She let the attache case lie on the bed and abruptly led the way back into the living room, as if she’d suddenly realized Carver was violating a sexual sanctorum and wanted him out. As he followed her along the hall, he noticed the way her long dark hair swung in rhythm to the subtle roll of her hips. Willis Davis, Carver thought, you must be dead.

In the living room she said, “I have a real-estate closing to attend. It’s important.”

“Good luck,” Carver said.

“I’ll need it; I’m dealing with lawyers.” She led the way to the door, not bothering to look back. It was almost as if she had a leash on Carver. For now, he was content to follow.

“If I learn anything, will I be able to get in touch with you by phone tomorrow?”

“Yes, at the office or here.” She seemed pensive, as if she were talking to Carver and mulling over something else altogether at the same time. Had she seen something in the bedroom she didn’t want him to notice? Winston Churchill would have liked Edwina. She was a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside a great shape.

She stood in the doorway and watched as Carver got in his car and negotiated the winding driveway to the street. Low branches scratched an unheeded warning on the Olds’s canvas top as he made a right turn at the end of the drive.

He didn’t notice the rented white compact car that followed the Olds, like a pilot fish trailing a shark, as he hadn’t noticed it when it followed him from the restaurant.