Scorcher (5 page)

Jerry Gepman shook his head and grinned. His kids would do nothing really wrong, ever. “They keep the wife hopping,” he said, as if that were the test of quality in a child. “All boys,” he added, beaming.

Carver swallowed.

“Hey, I’m sorry,” Gepman said. “I forgot.”

“That’s okay,” Carver said. The thrust of anguish that had sliced into him subsided. The lump in his throat went away. “Was the Lincoln still there when you came out of the shop?”

Gepman thought back, rubbing his bristly chin again. Sunlight glinted off his beard stubble, showing a little gray though he was only in his mid-thirties. “That I can’t tell you. I mean, we were too shook up over what happened to notice much of anything. And I was worried about Maggie, the way she was crying and all.”

“Is there anything else you can think of that might have slipped your mind down in Florida?”

“No, there isn’t. I mean, I hope they catch the crud who did that to your son. We read about it in the papers, and we tried to think of some detail that might help. The first night we were home, me and Maggie prayed. Then we sat at the kitchen table after the kids were in bed and talked over what happened. I mean for hours, since we couldn’t sleep anyway.”

“Anything you might not have mentioned to the police about the killer’s description?”

“No. Listen, I’m sorry, but we really been over this. We just saw what we said we saw and nothing else. The Florida cops were great at helping us remember.”

Carver gave Gepman his card and told him to call collect if he or his wife did happen to think of anything new.

“Something jogs my memory,” Gepman promised, “I’ll call.” He slipped the card smoothly into the pocket of his wrinkled plaid sport shirt. Probably it would be forgotten there and run through the wash with miniature socks and jeans.

Carver thanked him for his time. “You’ve been a help.”

“I hope so. You want to stay around, have some supper with us?”

“Thanks,” Carver said, “but I’ve got a plane to catch. Tell your wife I said good-bye.”

“Sure will.” Gepman got up to show him out, walking slowly as Carver limped to the door. “Some families,” he said, “tragedy just haunts them. Won’t let up. It’s too bad.”

Another healthy young scream erupted from the kitchen. Carver understood why the din failed to bother Gepman. For an instant he envied the man almost painfully.

“Too bad,” he agreed, and he made his way down the walk and beneath the magnolia tree to his rental car.

W
HEN
C
ARVER STEPPED
into his cottage, cool, dry air hit him and he knew Edwina was there waiting for him. He wasn’t sure how he felt about that.

She was in the chair by the wide window that looked out on the ocean, sitting with her legs crossed. Apparently she’d been showing property or doing floor duty today; she was wearing a pale blue skirt and blazer and what appeared to be a man’s black silky bow tie. Her business look. She said, “How was the funeral?”

Carver let the door swing shut behind him and struggled in with his carry-on suitcase. “Grim and too long,” he told her. He dropped the suitcase near a wall, where it would be out of the way until he was ready to unpack it, then he limped to the refrigerator behind the counter that separated the tiny kitchen from the main room and got a cold can of Budweiser.

“Are you coming home now?” Edwina asked.

“It wouldn’t be a good idea,” Carver said. The refrigerator clicked on when he shut its door. He popped the tab on the can, fizzing beer onto the back of his hand, then leaned on the counter and sipped. The beer stung his dry throat but felt good going down. There was a point, in a case like this, where hunter might become hunted. Whoever had burned Chipper might go on the offensive and come looking for Carver, to stop him from closing in, and might find Edwina. Carver didn’t want her hurt or killed. He’d made it no secret that he’d moved out of Edwina’s home and was staying at the cottage.

She knew what he was thinking. “You didn’t change your mailing address,” she said. She got up, languidly crossed the room on her high heels, and handed him a white envelope.

It was addressed, typewritten, to “Fred Carver, Curious Cat.” Carver had a good idea who it was from. A killer who liked to joke.

Though the address was that of Carver’s beach cottage, the envelope had been forwarded to Edwina’s house. It bore a Fort Lauderdale postmark. “I found it in the mailbox this afternoon,” she said. “Right in there with the seed catalogs and offers to virtually steal nylon luggage.”

“You tell Desoto about it?”

“No, I wasn’t sure you’d want that. I handled it as carefully as I could. Can they get fingerprints off of paper?”

“They can sometimes,” Carver said. “They can even lift prints off human flesh now.”

“Science,” Edwina said, and crossed the room again and sat down. She stared at Carver, waiting for him to open the envelope, not wanting to show too much interest and intrude in what to him was an intensely personal matter. He could share with her what was inside, or he could choose not to, her blasé expression told him.

Carver got a sharp knife from beneath the counter, held the envelope gingerly by the edges, and slit the top open. It was a cheap envelope, dime-store quality, and it parted easily and smoothly with a soft tearing sound.

Inside was a matchbook that read
Casey’s Wings and Yummy Things.
There was nothing else. Carver suddenly felt ice in his stomach.

Lifting the matchbook carefully at the edges, lightly between thumb and forefinger, he held it up for Edwina to see.

She squinted at it but didn’t rise from her chair. “What is it?”

“A matchbook from the restaurant where Chipper died.”

“You think the killer sent it?”

“Yeah. A warning to me to stop asking questions. Or I go the same way.”

“What curiosity did to the cat, huh? Subtle but to the point.”

“If curiosity killed all cats,” Carver said, “dogs would lead dull lives.”

“Interesting reasoning. If it’s reasoning at all. You going to heed the warning?”

“Think I should?”

An enraged, reckless kind of light glittered for an instant in her gray-green eyes. “No. I’m scared for you, worried, but if it’s what you need, I think you should keep at it.”

“It’s what I need.”

“But I think you should give the matchbook and envelope to Desoto, or to the Fort Lauderdale police.”

“I will,” Carver assured her. He didn’t understand why he’d received the matchbook. How did the killer even know Carver was after him?

He replaced the matchbook in the envelope and took a swig of beer. Out the window, beyond the dead potted vines, the sky was beginning to darken as the sun made contact with the horizon behind the cottage. A pelican skimmed gracefully inches above the sea, flying a final search mission for dinner before nightfall. On the beach the surf rolled and foamed in lacy white ribbons, but Carver couldn’t hear it because of the hum of the air-conditioner. “Have you eaten?” he asked Edwina.

“No. I’ve been showing property to a retired couple from New York. They wanted to look at one condo after another.”

“They’ve come to the right state,” Carver said. “Florida’s got one condo after another.”

“You’ve changed the subject. When are you going to tell the police about that envelope?”

“Morning’s soon enough. Let’s drive somewhere and get supper.”

“How was Laura at the funeral?”

“She held together.”

“You see her afterward?”

“No.”

“You
do
know I love you?”

“I know. I don’t take it lightly. Right now, all I can think about is finding my son’s killer. And supper.”

“Two kinds of hunger.”

Carver stared at her silently.

Edwina started to say something else, then thought better of it. She got up and followed him out to where the Olds sat ticking in the heat.

In the morning Carver drove into Orlando and gave the envelope to Desoto. The lieutenant, sitting behind his desk, manipulated his shoulders so that the sleeves of his elegant dove-gray suitcoat rode up on his arms, out of the way, before he examined the envelope and its sparse contents.

“A murderer not without humor,” he said. “Of a kind, anyway.”

“Missed my funny bone entirely,” Carver told him.

“There are still people who think ‘I Love Lucy’ is funny.”

“Some,” Carver said.

“Fort Lauderdale ought to have this. It’s their case.”

“You’ve got better lab facilities.”

“So true,
amigo.
We’re all-round more capable crime fighters here.” The radio was on today, playing music softly with a hypnotic Latin beat. Carver thought it was the score from
Evita
, but he wasn’t sure. The yellow ribbons on the air-conditioner grille were straight out this morning. The day was already steaming; the unit was on High. “Obviously a warning,” Desoto said, studying the envelope and matchbook on his desk. “I don’t have much hope these’ll tell us much, despite the expertise of our lab personnel.”

“Give them to Marillo,” Carver said. “He’ll find something.”

“Then they go to Fort Lauderdale,” Desoto said. “Professional protocol. Can’t have them too pissed off over there.”

Carver sat silently while Desoto made an interdepartmental call and a clerk came in, used a tweezers to place the match-book and envelope in a plastic container, then left for the lab.

“There’s a Lieutenant William McGregor in Fort Lauderdale who resents you snooping around over there,” Desoto said. “It’s his town, his department, he’s in charge of the investigation, and he’s got this idea that makes it his case.”

“My son,” Carver said. “Fuck McGregor.”

“Hmm,” Desoto said. The breeze from the air-conditioner ruffled the dark hair over his left ear. Behind him, on the radio, a woman with a sad voice began singing “Don’t Cry for Me, Argentina.” “Did you stop over in Chattanooga and talk to the Gepmans?”

“The husband told me he was sure he saw a white-over-blue Lincoln parked near the restaurant the day of the murder.”

Desoto seemed interested, but he said nothing and sat there wearing his stoic Latin mask. He’d have looked at home on an Aztec coin.

“An older model,” Carver said. “They look like Fords of a later vintage. Gepman restores cars for a hobby, so he knows Lincolns from Fords. He also remembers a dent in the right front fender.”

“Could mean nothing,
amigo.
”

“It’s your optimism I like most about you.”

“I can’t be optimistic about that envelope and matchbook,” Desoto said. “It means you’re in danger now. You’ve stirred the beast in his lair. It also suggests that whoever killed your son is methodical and aggressive, a difficult combination.”

Carver held his cane vertically with both hands and absently rotated it between his fingers, its tip revolving on the tile floor like a blunt drill bit. “Why not gasoline or kerosene?” he said. “And why go to the trouble to mix thickener with the naphtha? If our man is careful, wouldn’t he have used some more common flammable liquid by itself, something more difficult to trace?”

“I’ve thought about that,” Desoto said. He hesitated. “It could be he wanted something sticky that burned longer so it would cause more suffering.” He regretted his words immediately and bit his lower lip with his very white teeth. Then he frowned. “I’m sorry,
amigo
.”

“I came to the same conclusion,” Carver said softly, trying not to remember his son’s blackened body on the morgue table, trying not to picture the yawning grave waiting for the casket after the funeral back in Saint Louis. Yesterday. My God, that had been only yesterday. Time could torture as well as heal.

“The man who did this,” Desoto said quietly, “I feel the way you do about him, Carver.”

“Yeah, but it’s a matter of degree.”

“Like most things in life.”

“Maybe he isn’t warning me with the matchbook,” Carver said. “Maybe he doesn’t want me to back off. He might be taunting me.”

“That’s even worse,” Desoto said. “Cats do that with mice. Mice usually lose.”

“The guy who sent that matchbook thinks I’m a cat.”

“You’re not, though. He wants you to think that so you’ll get confident and careless. Old cat trick. What better way to corner a mouse?”

Carver stopped rotating the cane, shifted his weight over it, and stood up. It was a relief to be out of the straight-backed chair. “I’ll check with you this afternoon about the matchbook and envelope.”

“And in the meantime you’ll drive down to the Fort Lauderdale-Pompano Beach area and continue your search along the shore for the driver of a blue Lincoln, despite this message from a killer.”

“That’s where I’ll be,” Carver confirmed.

Desoto sighed. “Mice should learn when to lay low in their holes,” he said, “but they don’t. They keep finding the cheese irresistible.”

A
ROUND THREE IN THE
afternoon it began to rain, as it often did at that time in Florida in midsummer. A squall had drifted in off the sea, churning water and bending palm trees and sending the swimmers and boaters with good sense scurrying for shore.

Carver put up the top on the Olds and raised the windows just enough to keep rain from blowing in. He sat quietly, occasionally switching on the wipers for a couple of swipes so he could maintain a clear view of Scuba Dan’s. The rain pattered like fingers drumming impatiently on the canvas top.

He was parked down the road, on the ocean side, near a line of tall palm trees whose long fronds were whipping wildly in the wind like the hair of madwomen tossing their heads. Scuba Dan’s hadn’t done much business in the past three hours; Carver had seen only half a dozen customers entering and leaving the low building with the roof-mounted air-conditioner and aluminum gutters. Scuba Dan’s phony antique wooden sign was swinging lustily now in the storm like that of an eighteenth-century pub’s, a pirates’ hangout. Even with the car windows rolled halfway up, and parked as he was some distance from the place, Carver could hear the sign creaking as it fought to free itself from its mountings and fly through time back to the days of the Jolly Roger.