Burn (4 page)

“Few years,” Carver said, studying the man in the mirror. He was about sixty-five, with a wrinkled white shirt open at the collar and red suspenders. His hair was gray and bald on top like Carver’s. But his face was pale and jowly and he had bags beneath his eyes. The much younger Carver was tan and the fringe of hair around his ears and down the back of his neck was tightly curled. His blue eyes were alert and slightly uptilted at the corners, giving him an oddly feline expression. His upper body, clad in a black pullover shirt, was lean and muscular from walking with the cane and swimming. He looked like a feral cat. The older man exchanged glances with him in the mirror, and Carver hoped he’d be sober enough to sense this wasn’t a welcome conversation.

No chance.

“I used to walk with a cane,” the man said. “Had this broken leg that just wouldn’t heal. Doctors said it was something wrong with my bone. I mean all my bones. Like in the marrow. Never drank enough milk or ate enough bananas when I was a kid.”

“That’s too bad.”

Carver was watching Marla in the mirror. She looked lonely there, a solitary drinker hypnotized by the glowing video.

“My name’s Bernie,” the man said.

Carver didn’t answer. Hint, hint.

“How’d your leg get fucked up?” Bernie asked.

“I got shot.”

“No shit? Vietnam?”

“Orlando.”

“What are you, a cop?”

“Used to be. Till I got shot.”

A tall man with slicked-back dark hair and tight Levi’s had swiveled around off his bar stool and was approaching Marla. He had a sharp profile, pouty lips, and might have done OK as an Elvis impersonator. Marla continued to stare at the video and seemed oblivious of him, but Carver suspected she knew he was there.

“You stuck with that cane forever?” Bernie asked.

“Nothing’s forever.”

“My first marriage seemed like forever,” Bernie said. “Time didn’t start to move again till after my divorce sixteen years ago. Then it went in a hurry, and all of a sudden I was old. It’s OK, though. I still enjoy sex and good food, though it’s getting harder to tell the difference. I all of a sudden got six grandchildren, too. A guy with six grandchildren has to be very near death.”

The man was standing close to Marla now, talking to her. She was looking right at him and smiling, but shaking her head no. He reached out as if to touch her and she turned away from him. The man shrugged and returned, grinning, to the two guys he’d been drinking with at the bar. It didn’t appear that Marla had come to the bar for male companionship. Unless she was waiting for someone.

“Ever consider acupuncture?” Bernie asked. “That’s what finally got me back on two sound legs. They stuck pins in my ears. I can run five miles now without breathing hard. You believe that?”

“Sure.”

“Then you must have been one piss-poor cop.”

Carver laughed. “I wouldn’t believe you if I was still a cop.”

Bernie sipped his drink. “How ’bout them Marlins?”

“They might win a pennant in ten years.”

“You don’t sound like a baseball fan.”

“I am, though. That’s the problem.”

Bernie lowered his voice. “I notice you’re more interested in that gal in the mirror than in what I’m saying.”

Carver turned to face him, catching a whiff of alcohol fumes. Bernie was drinking bourbon on the rocks and there were three swizzle sticks on the napkin next to his half-full glass. “You know her?”

“Nope. Just seen her come in a few times.”

“She ever in here looking for male company?”

“Nope. Willet’s ain’t what you’d call a meat market. Mostly working folks drop in here, just want to relax and be left alone.”

“That how she is? A loner?”

“I think so. Now and then some guy tries to get next to her, but she always sends him away. Polite, though. Seems nice enough.”

“Ever talk to her yourself?”

“Not me. She’s too young for me. Anyway, I got this prostate condition, and what it does—”

“Maybe she likes alcohol too much,” Carver suggested.

“Doubt it,” Bernie said. “She usually nurses a drink or two along, then she leaves. I think she just wants to come in here and take time out from the world like the rest of us. She don’t play the video games or nothing, and she don’t seem interested in even talking to the other women in here. A person that drinks alone has got problems, usually. It ain’t good. That poor girl’s most likely got problems.”

“Or is one,” Carver said. He planted the tip of his cane on the tile floor and stood up. “Nice talking to you, Bernie.”

“Don’t run off. Hang around, friend. I’ll buy you one.”

“Thanks,” Carver said, “but I gotta get home to the wife.”

“Hey,” Bernie said, “I know how that goes.”

Carver laid a ten-dollar bill on the bar. “Next one’s on me, Bernie.”

“Next two,” Bernie corrected, smiling broadly.

Carver made for the door.

He waited outside until Marla left alone, then he followed the Toyota back to the little house on Jacaranda Lane.

She stayed inside this time, and at 10:27 the lights winked out. He waited another twenty minutes before driving away down the winding street, enjoying the flow of air through the windows.

Her actions had all seemed innocent enough, he thought. An ordinary woman having an ordinary evening.

Almost as if she suspected someone other than Joel Brant might be watching her.

C
ARVER EASED THE SHOWER
handle to cold and waited until his heart might stop before turning off the water. Then he swept the plastic curtain aside and, gripping the towel rack for support, stepped out of the tub and onto a thick, white terry-cloth bath mat. He’d had his therapeutic morning swim in the ocean and he could still feel sand he’d tracked in on the mat beneath his bare feet. With one hand on the washbasin he toweled himself dry, then he quickly shaved, rinsed his disposable razor, and replaced it in the medicine cabinet. He ran a comb through his thick fringe of wet hair then left the bathroom to get dressed.

He didn’t use his cane when he had fixtures or furniture to hold on to for balance. It had been hooked over the bathroom doorknob. He used it now to cross to the cottage’s screened-off sleeping area, smelling coffee. Beth must have gotten the Braun brewer going.

After sitting on the bed and working his way into underwear and gray slacks, he put on gray socks, black leather moccasins he didn’t have to contort himself to lace, and a dark green pullover shirt with a collar and pockets. He didn’t like shirts without pockets. He thought they should all be discounted as factory seconds.

Beth was perched on a stool, leaning with an elbow on the breakfast bar, when Carver limped into the cottage’s main area. She was eating buttered toast and had a cup of coffee poured for him. While he was swimming, she’d showered and dressed. Her hair, straightened long enough ago to have regained much of its curl, was parted neatly on the side and combed back to fall almost to her shoulders. She was wearing a long, baggy white T-shirt with shoulder pads and lettering, too faded to read, on the chest. She had large, firm breasts for such a thin woman, and it was obvious she was braless beneath the shirt. On her feet were the same white leather sandals she had worn yesterday, and presumably she was wearing shorts that were concealed by the length of the shirt. Before her was her oversize coffee mug with newspaper-caption bloopers printed on it.
JERK INJURES NECK, WINS AWARD
was visible to Carver as he sat on the stool across from her, on the kitchen side of the butcher-block counter.

“Want toast?” Beth asked.

“Maybe later. Just coffee now.”

She sipped. Her motion of lifting and tilting the mug rotated it to read
RHODE ISLAND SECRETARY EXCITES FURNITURE EXPERTS.
“So tell me about last night,” she said.

“It was wonderful, as usual.”

“Think back a few hours before that, Fred.”

He related his evening following Marla Cloy, then he got up and poured another cup of coffee. It was ordinary coffee this morning, not the chocolate-cinnamon gourmet stuff. He was glad.

“How’d Marla Cloy strike you personally?” Beth asked.

“Not at all. Didn’t lay a hand on me.”

She stared at him. A warning to get serious.

Carver placed his cup on the breakfast bar before getting back on his stool. “She’s not beautiful enough to storm beauty pageants, but she’s attractive.”

“Looks don’t always play a part in it when a dangerous sexual psychopath develops a fixation on a woman. Was there anything unusual in her behavior?”

“Not unless you find going to McDonald’s and reading a paperback novel unusual.”

“What about her going to the bar?”

“Well, it’s not the norm for a woman to sit alone and drink in a place like Willet’s Bullet.”

“But it’s OK for a man to do it?”

“I didn’t say it wasn’t OK or never happened. But most women stay home to drink alone. If they’re at a bar, they’re usually with friends. Dare I say they’re more convivial than us guys?”

“Maybe she’s got a drinking problem.”

“Bernie doesn’t think so.”

“Bernie?”

“An old guy who was nattering at me at the bar. He says she acts as if she just wants to step off the world, unwind, and be left alone for a while. Bernie’s the sort who’s had experience at that kind of thing; he’d know.”

Beth buttered another piece of whole-wheat toast. She took a bite, chewed, and swallowed. “Want the other half of this?”

“Sure.”

She slid the small plate with the half-piece of buttered toast to his side of the counter. “I did some checking, talked to Jeff Mehling.” Mehling was the computer genius at
Burrow.
“Marla Cloy really is a freelance writer. She even sold a small piece to
Burrow
last year on the preservation of the manatee. I had Jeff fax me a copy. It’s nothing original; there’ve been hundreds of articles during the past few years in Florida papers about trying to save the manatee. But it’s competent. Filler for page six.”

“Hmm. Professional jealousy showing?”

Beth gave him a look that would have made a lesser man scurry for shelter. “Not at all,” she said. “I only wanted to establish for you that the woman’s not faking it. She really is a freelance writer of professional caliber. She’s genuine.”

“She didn’t act particularly afraid that Brant might be following her,” Carver said.

“What do you want her to do, wear a bulletproof vest?”

“Maybe.”

“Maybe she had one on. Or maybe she got her order of protection from the court.” Beth had finished her toast. Now she picked up the slice she’d pledged to Carver and took a large bite out of it. Probably she was still thinking about that professional-jealousy remark. “You do realize,” she said, “that what Marla Cloy has butted up against is typical male reaction. She says she’s being threatened, and the police, and apparently you, think she’s merely another hysterical woman.”

“I’m not sure what she is. Neither is my client. That’s why I’m trying hard to find out. I’m not some stereotype male Bubba who thinks that because a man has a grudge against a woman, she probably deserves it.”

“But you do make the assumption Brant’s story is fact.”

“He
is
my client.”

“So rather than see Marla Cloy as a victim, you see her as an aggressor.”

“She might be.”

Beth finished Carver’s toast and licked butter off her finger. “Well, we could go round again, but I doubt if it would change anything. We’re simply viewing this matter from two different perspectives.”

“I’m trying to get at the truth,” Carver said. “I don’t have any preconceived notions.”

She smiled. “Everybody has those, Fred. The truth nobody wants to face is that we all carry around our own ideas of the truth. We hardly ever know the real truth—or even if there is one. Life’s an ambiguous experience, lover, so don’t be too sure of anything.”

“Found that out long ago,” Carver said, gripping his cane and sliding off his stool.

“Keep finding it out,” Beth advised. “Where are you going now?”

“I’ve got an appointment to meet with Brant at ten o’clock, to let him know what’s going on.”

“Doesn’t sound as if you’ve accomplished much.”

“If Marla happens to claim he harassed her last night,” Carver said, “I’ll know otherwise.”

“There you go assuming her guilt again, even though she’s the one being stalked.”

“Maybe you’re assuming her innocence because of what you two have in common.”

“Our gender?”

“And you’re both journalists. She wants to save the manatee, you want to save the Everglades.”

“More than that,” Beth said, “I want to save Marla Cloy.”

Brant was waiting in his car with the engine and air conditioner running when Carver turned off Magellan into the strip shopping center parking lot where his office was located. The car was a black Stealth sports car, sleek, powerful, and expensive. And possibly bought with his dead wife’s life-insurance money.

Beth would suggest that, anyway.

By the time Carver had parked and climbed out of the Olds, Brant was out of the Stealth and leaning against the polished black door with his arms crossed. As Carver approached, he pushed away from the car, smiled, and walked toward him with his hand extended. “So detectives keep bankers’ hours.”

Carver shook his hand. “Not bankers’ money, though.”

He invited Brant inside, then unlocked the office door and stood aside for him to pass. The temperature outside was already in the mid-eighties, and the inside temperature was catching up fast. Carver moved the thermostat down enough for the air conditioner to start humming, then closed the drapes partway to block the morning sun from pouring in and warming the place. It didn’t help much. The sun was sparking silver off the ocean visible between the buildings across the street, its rays entering through the window at a low angle. He leaned his cane against the wall and sat down behind the desk. “Hot this morning,” he said.

“The tropics,” Brant said, lowering himself into the small, padded chair in front of the desk. “Thank God for air-conditioning, or nobody would live here and I’d be out of business.” He crossed his legs and laced his hands together in his lap, actually twiddling his thumbs nervously. He was wearing prefaded Levi’s today, and a blue-checked short-sleeved shirt with a pen and some kind of slide rule sticking out of the breast pocket. Dressed for business at a construction site, Carver supposed, though he didn’t think people used slide rules anymore, in the age of minicalculators that could compute what you needed to know in seconds and remind you when it was time for lunch. Brant had slept in one position too long and his hair stuck out in a clump on the right side of his head. It made him look boyish. And not at all the sort of lad who’d stalk and murder a woman.