Tropical Heat

by John Lutz

  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 attaché 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 attaché case with brass latches.

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

  Carver removed the attaché 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 attaché 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 attaché 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 attaché 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.

  CHAPTER 7

  CARVER DROVE AROUND Del Moray for a while, looking at the wide streets, neat rows of palm trees, the rambling, expensive houses. As he drove west, away from the ocean, the streets became narrower, with hills and terraced lawns. The houses were still expensive. Only when he neared the western outskirts of town did he find himself in a poorer section, where the streets needed repaving and the houses repainting and the people hope. Most of the faces he saw on these streets were Latino or black, the maids and gardeners of the wealthier residents in the east end of town. There were shabby-looking night spots here, too, and small and obviously struggling businesses. The poor seemed to be a smaller minority in Del Moray than in most other cities. Still, they were there, and were oddly necessary in a way few would admit. Without the poor, there could, of course, be no rich. It was comforting to some people to have clearly defined rungs on the ladder.

  Carver stopped at a drugstore and bought a Del Moray Gazette-Dispatch and a six-pack of Budweiser. He placed the paper and beer on the front seat of the car and got back in.

  Ignoring the taunts of a group of young Latinos lounging on a corner near a frozen-custard stand, he made a U-turn, then drove back the way he’d come, toward the highway and home.

  The next morning Carver swam for half an hour, then showered and cooked up a big breakfast of eggs, toast, and Canadian bacon. He felt good. He could look at his left leg now and not worriedly compare its size or shape with his right. The exercise regimen the therapist recommended would keep atrophy to a minimum if he followed it faithfully, and that was that—all he could do.

  Carrying his third cup of coffee and the Del Moray paper from the day before, he limped out to the cottage’s small wooden porch and sat in the sun in a webbed aluminum lounge chair. The cup balanced okay on the chair’s plastic arm while Carver turned the paper to the classified ads. A glossy bluebottle fly landed on the real-estate section, and Carver watched it wobble down the page to a list of properties for sale by Quill, then take to the air to tend to more important matters.

  After a while, Carver took a pen from his pocket, braced the folded newspaper against his thigh, and circled an advertisement for a vacant Del Moray house on Edgewick Avenue listed for an even half a million dollars. If he wasn’t going to buy a house, it might as well be an expensive one.

  He tossed the rest of his cool coffee over the porch rail, admiring its bright amber arc, then went back inside and phoned Quill Realty.

  The conversation worked out fine. He told whoever answered the phone that he was interested in seeing the house on Edgewick, and that someone had recommended an agent named Alice who had experience as an interior decorator. Alice could give him decorating tips while she was showing him the property.

  Within half a minute he was talking to Alice, and they made an appointment to meet at the Edgewick property at ten o’clock.

  Until it was time to leave for Del Moray, Carver idly watched a taped Atlanta Braves baseball game on television, mostly commercials. Somewhere in this land did flat-bellied cowboys actually drive dogies, then drive Jeeps to saloons with sawdust floors whereon trod barmaids with perfect teeth who served them diet beer? Carver doubted it. But then he hadn’t been everywhere.

  He was secretly glad the game was a high-scoring dull one; he didn’t mind switching off the TV and leaving. He liked pitchers’ duels.

  Carver remembered Edgewick Avenue from his drive around Del Moray the day before. It was a wide street with a grassy, palm-lined median, still in the desirable part of town, but only by a few blocks. The size and condition of the houses started slipping in this area, and an occasional Latino face could be seen among the residents. But it was still a prestige neighborhood, even if in one of the older sections of the city.

  The house with a Quill Realty sign stuck in its yard was a gloomy stone monster that looked as if it might at any moment venture ponderously down from the hill on which it was so forebodingly perched to devour the smaller houses on Edgewick Avenue. It had cupolas that looked like watchtowers, and windows that resembled malevolent eyes. It was probably old when it was built, Carver decided. Also, it had a lot of damned steps.

  Carver was breathing hard by the time he’d made it up to the porch, and stood before the house’s ten-foot-tall heavy oak doors. When he leaned on his cane and extended a hand to ring the doorbell, one of the doors opened smoothly and an attractive thirtyish woman with blond hair framing a roundly pretty, tiny-featured face smiled out at him. He had the strange feeling that she was the maid and would usher him into the den to await the master. Would she curtsy, call him “sire,” and step aside?

  “Mr. Carver?” she said crisply, and held out a hand. When he nodded, she said, “I’m Alice Hargrove.” She spoke with the slightest suggestion of a lisp, had dark crescents beneath her eyes, as if she hadn’t slept the night before, and her too-fine short hair had been rudely mussed by the wind. Her smile made everything else about her seem unimportant; it was a light that warmed.

  Carver shook the slender cool hand gently, so as not to break fine bones, and stepped into the house. Alice’s blue eyes flicked to his cane, registered no change of expression. He knew she was thinking about all the steps leading up to the house and how she might talk him into ignoring them if he turned out to be a serious prospect. You had to be wily to survive in sales.

  The house was bare and needed a lot of interior work. The walls were faded and paint was peeling from the ornate woodwork. A kidney-shaped water stain marred the high ceiling. There was a large stone fireplace in the room they were in, flanked by bookcases beneath fancy stained-glass windows that muted the sun and did wonderful Technicolor tricks with the light.

  “As you can see,” Alice said, “the place needs work but has tremendous potential.” Her voice bounced around in the emptiness.

  Carver tapped the hardwood floor with his cane. The clatter might have been heard for miles. “I plan on putting some heavy manufacturing equipment in this room,” he said. “We build locomotive engines. Do you think the floor will support the weight?”

  For only a second she was confused. “Mr. Carver, I don’t think the zoning on this property . . .” She stopped talking
. An expression of fear, then admirable determination and cunning subtly transformed her round, sweet features. She tried not to move her eyes toward the door; he was between her and it, and that might mean everything. Here was the real-estate lady’s nightmare. “You’re not actually interested in buying this property, are you, Mr. Carver? Or is Carver your real name?”

  “Relax, Alice,” Carver said reassuringly. “I’m not interested in anything you’d object to. Anyway, you could outrun me if I tried anything.”

  She exhaled slowly and seemed slightly more at ease, looking dubious, waiting.

  “My time is pressing and this is the surest way I could get to talk to you,” Carver explained. “My name really is Fred Carver. I’m a detective.”

  “Police?”

  “No, private.” Carver got out his wallet and showed her his investigator’s license.

  Still dubious. He hoped she wasn’t the type who carried Mace.

  “I’m working for a friend of yours,” he said. “Edwina Talbot. I think you might be able to help me help her. You can tell her about this conversation when we’re finished.”

  “We could have met in a more conventional way, Mr. Carver. I’d say that the reason we didn’t was that you didn’t want me to know beforehand that the conversation was going to be about Edwina.” Perceptive lady. “Were you afraid she and I might agree on some sort of lie?”

  “No,” Carver said. “It’s true that I didn’t want you and Edwina to talk before I met you, but only because what she told you might color what you’d tell me.”

  “Is it so important to you that I don’t have any preconceived notions?”

  “It is. I’m probing for nuances as well as hard information.”

  “I thought detectives dealt only in facts.”

  “We do, but first we have to catch the slippery things. That’s why I need your help.”

  Alice breathed in and out noisily, got a filter-tipped cigarette from her purse, and began to pace. Beneath one of the stained-glass windows, she turned. The softened light made her twenty again. “You’re trying to find poor Willis.” She flicked a dainty silver lighter and touched the bluish tip of its flame to her cigarette in a lingering way that suggested the cigarette might enjoy it.