Scorcher fc-2

by John Lutz

  No wonder Paul felt constricted, Carver thought. It wouldn’t be difficult to become paranoid with a father like Adam Kave.

  Nadine came back onto the veranda, flanked by two men. The one on her right had his arm lightly around her waist. He was about six feet tall and built lean, with straight brown razor-styled hair, a neatly trimmed mustache, and bright blue eyes full of chips of light; the sort of guy who’d look great in any kind of uniform.

  The man on Nadine’s left looked like a troll that had crawled out from under a bridge. He was not more than five and a half feet tall, and his neck swelled into shoulders bunched with muscle. His hair was a dark, Medusalike mass of ropy curls. The backs of his gnarled hands were sooted with black hair, and Carver imagined the stocky little man had hair matted over most of his body. His face was swarthy and wide, with a pushed-in nose and protruding brown eyes. He reminded Carver of a Pekingese pup; yet, strangely enough, there was a crude kind of confidence and vitality about him of the sort Carver had seen appeal to women. A beast not quite tamed.

  Both men and Nadine were smiling broadly, as if they’d shared a bawdy joke on the walk through the house to the veranda.

  The tall one with his arm around Nadine she introduced as her fiance, Joel Dewitt. The troll was Nick Fanning, CEO of Adam’s Inns.

  Nadine, Dewitt, and Fanning sat down at the table, and Nadine poured them coffee from the fancy carafe. Carver had to refuse another cup of the stuff.

  Fanning seemed very much at home here. “These two tell me the wedding’s set for April,” he said.

  Adam shrugged. “That’s what they tell me, too, Nick.”

  Fanning looked around abruptly, as if a slight noise had attracted his attention. The smile was still a shadow on his broad face. As he rotated his head, the cords on his muscular neck jumped like taut cables straining to escape from beneath his flesh. “Where’s Elana?”

  “Not feeling well this morning,” Adam told him.

  “Sorry to hear,” Fanning said. He added cream to his coffee. He kind of jabbed the marbled liquid with his spoon and swirled it around a few times, then rested the spoon on his saucer with a single faint click. Casual.

  Silence moved onto the veranda, stayed, and got heavy. Nobody wanted that.

  “Some hot morning,” Joel Dewitt remarked.

  “Summer,” Adam said, explaining it neatly.

  “Summer in hell,” Fanning said.

  “How’s the car business?” Carver asked Joel Dewitt.

  Dewitt gave him a sharp glance; somebody had been talking about him to Carver. “Booming. I sell Honda cycles, too. New ones. Say, you look like the motorcycle type, Fred.”

  “Not me,” Carver said.

  “You driving the Olds convertible out front?”

  Carver nodded. “My style. My price range.”

  Dewitt smiled. “Don’t be so sure. Come on in and see me and I’ll convince you otherwise. Put you on a cycle and show you what you been missing.”

  Adam stood up. Fanning took the cue and stood also.

  “Well, Nick and I’ve got a ton of work to do,” Adam said. He looked at Carver. “Be in touch soon, eh?”

  Carver said he would.

  “Bring your coffee, Nick,” Adam said, and he and Fanning disappeared into the cool dimness of the house, Adam leading the way. They were reminiscent of Dr. Frankenstein and his assistant Igor.

  “They’re going to talk for hours about goddamn wieners,” Nadine said. “One time they had a four-hour nationwide conference call about how many sesame seeds should be on the bun of something called the Ali-Baba Dog.”

  “I’ve tried that one,” Dewitt said. “It’s not bad. Probably made lots of money for your dad, too.”

  A large pleasure boat veered in toward shore, moving at a fast clip just outside the breakers and tooting its air horn, as if it knew the Kaves and was saying hello. Carver watched it continue close to the beach, then angle into the waves seaward, spreading a trough of white foam and unsettled water in its wake. Fantasy was lettered on its stern. Neighbors, maybe. The boat was similar to the one moored down at Adam Kave’s private dock. Nadine gave no indication that she’d noticed it.

  “Any news on Paul?” Dewitt asked her. Carver found it odd that he’d ask Nadine that in front of him.

  “Not much,” she said. “He’s still missing. Mr. Carver’s trying to locate him.”

  Dewitt shot Carver an appraising, cold blue look. “Any way I can help. .” he said. His words trailed to silence as he caught sight of the figure to his left.

  Elana was standing in the doorway to the house. “Nadine, Mel Bingham is here to see you.” She didn’t acknowledge Dewitt’s presence-a queen enduring the company of a fool.

  Nadine flushed slightly and squeezed Dewitt’s hand. “I won’t be long,” she said in a tight voice. She got up and followed her mother into the house. Dewitt twisted in his chair and watched them. Maybe he was looking at Nadine’s legs. Carver was.

  “How well do you know Paul?” Carver asked.

  Dewitt swiveled back to face the table, then idly nudged around a bowl with a squashed half-grapefruit in it. He was nervous; possibly he didn’t like Nadine talking to Mel Bingham, whoever Bingham might be.

  “Paul and I got along okay,” Dewitt said. “He’s kinda odd, but not a bad kid. It’s rough seeing this happen to him.”

  “Think he’s guilty?”

  “Don’t really know.” Dewitt touched the ruined grapefruit with his forefinger, then pressed the fingertip to his tongue, as if to ascertain that the taste was sour. He grimaced slightly. Genuine grapefruit, all right. “The police seem to think Paul’s the one.”

  “You know this Mel Bingham?” Carver asked.

  Dewitt’s ears reddened. “He’s some asshole pesters Nadine, is all. Thinks she should go for him. Elana’s all for the idea, I can tell. What are you, a private detective or something? I mean, if the family hired you to find Paul, that’s what you must be. Right?”

  “That’s it,” Carver said. “That doesn’t mean you have to answer my questions. I’m not the police, just a guy making conversation.”

  “Hey, I know. Listen, I’d like to help Paul, if for no other reason than he’s Nadine’s brother. Fact is, Fred, I didn’t see him all that much when I came around. The mother, Elana, she isn’t so hot on this marriage. So it’s uncomfortable for Nadine and me here. We generally don’t hang around. Paul never did either. So, you see, our schedules didn’t overlap much.”

  “Why do you think Elana’s against the marriage?”

  Dewitt turned his hands palms up and raised them a few inches in a helpless gesture, or as if he might be trying to levitate the table. “She doesn’t like me. Hell, I don’t know why. Chemistry, maybe. Or maybe she’s got this idea car dealers are all swindlers. You’d be surprised the kind of prejudice there is against some occupations. Or maybe you wouldn’t, being a private detective.”

  Carver hadn’t been off the force and in private practice very long, but he’d already been called a keyhole peeper, a sleaze bag, and assorted things even less nice. Joel Dewitt had a point. But Elana didn’t seem the sort to tag people that way. There was a sadness and wisdom to her that suggested understanding gained the hard way and not forgotten.

  He gave Dewitt one of his cards and asked him to call if he had anything to say about Paul Kave. Dewitt handed Carver a card with a Fort Lauderdale address and told him he should come in and see if maybe he really was the cycle type. “Never too old,” he said. Carver didn’t care for that, but what the hell, Dewitt might still be in his twenties. Go-getter making it in his youth and about to marry into more of it. Full throttle, kid.

  “Tell Nadine I said good-bye,” Carver said. He leaned on his cane and straightened up. The cane had been beneath the table, so Dewitt had to be seeing it for the first time, but there was no change of expression in his eyes. “I’ll go out this way and walk around the side of the house.” Carver limped toward a door in the aluminum screen.

/>   “Remember what I said about that motorcycle,” Dewitt said behind him. “Cane don’t make any difference.”

  “Might even be a good thing to use on sharp corners,” Carver said, and went out. The screen door clicked solidly closed behind him; it didn’t slam and reverberate like the one on Carver’s beach cottage. The fit and finish of big money.

  When he’d almost reached the Olds, he heard a spat-out oath and saw a lanky young man stalking toward a mud-spattered red Jeep parked in the shade of the portico. His elongated face was creased with anger and his white jogging shoes seemed to want to pause of their own accord and kick pebbles and bits of bark, causing him to lurch. Forces he couldn’t comprehend had control of him.

  He spotted Carver and glared; might have been able to burn a hole in paper with that look. “Fuckin’ Dewitt!” he said. “When you see him, you tell him I know he’s a crook!”

  This must be Mel Bingham, and he must be connecting Carver and Dewitt because Carver was standing near the car parked next to the Olds, a new, deep blue Jaguar sedan with tinted windows. Bingham probably thought Carver was waiting for Dewitt.

  “I might not see him again,” Carver said. “I just met him. You better tell him yourself.”

  “Oh, I’ve told him before,” Bingham said. He had flame-red hair to match his temper and his splotchy, freckled complexion. He was wearing jeans and a gray T-shirt with Have a Shitty Day lettered in black across the front. His caved-in chest was trembling and his hands were white-knuckled fists that seemed to want to strike and burrow and pluck out vital organs. He’d followed the advice on his T-shirt and he was mad.

  “I’d like to talk to you for a minute,” Carver said, wondering if Bingham could calm down enough for coherent conversation.

  Carver wasn’t going to find out today.

  “Later!” Bingham snarled. He swung his long body up into the Jeep, fired up the engine, and probably got a lot of satisfaction from the screeching of the knobby tires on the driveway.

  Carver watched the Jeep two-wheel it around a corner and out of sight behind some palm trees. He wondered if the automatic barrier at the base of the drive would be triggered soon enough to rise before the Jeep reached it. Bingham was furious enough to drive through the barrier. Through brick walls, maybe.

  The Rejected Suitor Blues, Carver figured.

  He got into the Olds and started the engine. The vinyl upholstery was searingly hot, and he put the car in Drive immediately to get out of there and enjoy the breeze of motion.

  Carver thought he glimpsed Elana’s pale features floating behind a front window as he pulled sharply out onto the driveway and coasted toward the highway. He hoped he wouldn’t see Mel Bingham’s red Jeep twisted around a tree on the way.

  Nadine was crazy to prefer Dewitt, he thought. Bingham belonged in this family.

  Chapter 14

  Carver found Dr. Roland Elsing’s office easily. Paul Kave’s psychiatrist was listed in the phone directory, the detective’s friend. There was more information in phone books than most people thought; they were short-form encyclopedias of cities, revealing economic standing, status, neighborhood, entertainment and industrial trends-the stage setting in which the detective had to play out his or her role.

  Elsing’s address meant he was expensive; most of his patients would be affluent if not downright obscenely rich like the Kaves. Carver remembered Emmett’s scathing opinion of psychiatrists, apparently shared by Paul.

  The doctor’s office was on the second floor of a newish glass and pale-stone building on Commercial, in the heart of town. Architecturally, it looked a lot like a crypt with a view. Next to Elsing’s office was a broker who dealt in “pre-owned” yachts. There was a glassed-in corkboard in the hall, plastered with photographs and typed information on various boats, some of them big enough to be called ships. Carver looked at a few of the photographs, a few of the prices. Looked away.

  He buttoned his powder blue sportcoat, which felt comfortable in the coolly air-conditioned tomb of a building, and pushed through a brass-lettered oak door into Dr. Elsing’s office.

  The reception area was carpeted in deep green. The walls were pale green. Most of the Danish furniture was dark green or beige, and the long, curved receptionist’s desk had a greenish tint to its gray wood. Must be true about green being the calming color, Carver thought.

  He set sail across the sea of green carpet. It wasn’t easy to stay on his feet, but the softness sure felt good beneath and around his soles. His cane dragged in the plush pile.

  The receptionist herself wasn’t green, though she wore a light brown dress with an off-white collar, and went with the decor very nicely. She was attractive in an intellectual way, with probing gray eyes behind round-rimmed glasses, and a prim, lipsticked mouth that looked as if it had never done anything unnatural. Though she was sitting down, it was apparent that she was trim and shapely. There were no sleeves to her dress, and her biceps were firm and smooth: an athlete. Maybe racquetball or Nautilus training on weekends. Body and mind as one, Carver thought. And here was a woman-Beverly, according to her desk plaque-who didn’t look as if she’d neglected either. Could she stay with Nadine at tennis?

  There was no one other than Carver and Beverly in the reception room. He approached the desk and she smiled up at him. Great teeth. Was there no flaw in this person? He said, “Does it always smell like spearmint in here?”

  “It’s probably my sugarless gum,” she said, holding her perfect smile. “May I help you?”

  “I’m a private investigator. I’d like to talk with Dr. Elsing concerning one of his patients.”

  Beverly stopped smiling and stared inquisitively at him through her round glasses. Maybe she didn’t believe he was really a private detective even if he did. Could be a common delusion. This was, after all, a psychiatrist’s office. Some of the people who came here probably acted crazy, maybe thought they were Marlowe or Spenser or other dead English poets.

  Carver showed her his identification. “Lighten up, Bev. I’m who and what I say.”

  She nodded and leaned back in her chair, crossing her creamy arms and thinking about Carver’s request. It was part of her job to protect Dr. Elsing from the sort of people who might wander into a psychiatrist’s office unannounced to sell medical supplies or malpractice insurance. Or to look for trouble instead of help.

  “I don’t have a salesman’s sample case with me,” Carver said. “And I sometimes think I might be going mad, so I must be sane.”

  “Uh-hm. Which patient did you want to discuss with the doctor?”

  “Paul Kave. I’ve been hired by his family to try to locate him. I really could use Dr. Elsing’s help.”

  At the mention of Paul she uncrossed her arms and sat forward. The Kave name was magic in places where money changed hands. Dr. Elsing wouldn’t like it if Beverly pissed off Adam Kave, even indirectly.

  She lifted her pale green phone delicately, as if it might be coated with something that would burn her fingers. Then she pecked out a number with a long pencil to protect her painted nail, and explained the situation briefly to Dr. Elsing.

  “He’s with a patient now,” she said to Carver, replacing the receiver. “He’ll talk to you in about twenty minutes, if you’d like to wait.”

  “I’d like,” Carver said.

  He limped across the soft green carpet and sat down in a leather Danish chair that sighed as it took the brunt of his weight. Beverly glanced with disinterest at his cane, then got busy with paperwork. The maimed were the maimed, physically or mentally. Infirmities were all the same to her, whether she could or couldn’t see them.

  Ten minutes later an unbelievably obese girl in her teens wedged herself through the reception-room door and said hello to Beverly. Beverly smiled and said hello back, calling the girl Marie. Marie had a face that was all flesh-padded sweetness. She said a shy “hi” to Carver and sat down as far away from him as possible. The chair popped and groaned beneath her. Then she picked up a Sevente
en magazine and started leafing through it, and Carver ceased to exist.

  Some seventeen it must be for Marie, he thought. Grossly overweight and seeing a psychiatrist. Fate was a sadist.

  Then it occurred to him that Chipper would never see any kind of seventeen, and he felt less pity for Marie. He looked at the four-color, glossy ad for skin cream on the back cover of the magazine, then looked at Beverly, who was engrossed again in making entries in a large ledger book with pages that crinkled as she leafed through them.

  “We can talk in about five minutes, Marie,” a man’s voice said. It was a soothing voice that came down softly on the crisp consonants. If voices had color, this one would be green.

  Dr. Roland Elsing was standing by a light-oak door that had just opened. He was a medium-height man in his late forties, with a balding pate and a moon-shaped face that had deeply etched lines, like bloodless incisions, running symmetrically from the sides of his nose to the corners of his thin lips to form a sort of triangle. They were the kind of lines people with poorly fitted dentures developed. He wasn’t dressed the way Carver imagined psychiatrists clothed themselves; he had on a windowpane check sportcoat, wrinkled charcoal slacks, and brown shoes with thick and wavy gum-rubber soles and heels. Practical shoes, made more for comfort and hiking than for impressing wealthy clients who wandered in with phobias and fat wallets. Emmett might be wrong about this guy.

  “Mr. Carver?”

  Carver leaned on the cane and stood up.

  “Come in, please.” No flicker of eye movement to the cane. Elsing opened the door wider to make room for Carver to pass.

  The soft green decor was carried into the office. There were tall, glass-lined bookcases along one green wall, with books and papers stuffed into the shelves in a jumble. The doctor’s desk was dark mahogany. The thick brown drapes behind it were closed. A pale ceramic bust of someone who looked like Beethoven sat on top of one of the bookcases, gazing down on the scene with blank eyes. There was a tiny beige sofa in the room, a love seat. Also a comfortable-looking chocolate brown easy chair. Though it was afternoon, a brass gooseneck lamp with a green-tinted shade glowed on Elsing’s desk. It was a restful room, unnaturally quiet. Almost made you wish you had mental anguish so you could come here now and then and pass the time. It was impossible to hear the street sounds down on Commercial.