Spark (17 page)

“. . . help you with something?” the man was almost shouting over the racket raised by the barking dog.

Carver said nothing.

The Doberman was joined by an identical twin. The barking was twice as boisterous.

“There’s nobody at home here,” the flat-nosed man said, still glaring fiercely at Carver. The dogs barked even louder and hurled themselves again and again at the fence, causing the chain link to rattle and bulge ominously. The metal NO TRESPASSING sign flapped and
boing
ed each time the fence was hit by all that dog.

Concluding that he was probably unwelcome, Carver drove away. In the rearview mirror he saw the man in the chauffeur’s uniform walk out beyond the gate and stand hands on hips, staring after him.

Carver decided he’d pretty much worn out his welcome all the way around in the Fort Lauderdale area. After checking out of the motel, he turned the Plymouth in at the rental agency.

Then he treated himself to a couple more Tylenol tablets and drove the Olds to Solartown and beyond to the Warm Sands Motel.

T
HEY WERE IN
C
ARVER’S
room, in Carver’s bed, breaking the rules, maybe breaking the springs. Beth was sure no one had seen her come to his door, and Carver didn’t argue with her. He knew her; she was going to come to him when she wanted to anyway. Besides, he wanted to believe her.

Still breathing hard, he lay beside her, watching a rivulet of sweat wend its way slowly down her bare breast, along her ribs, clinging to her. Her ragged breathing rasped in rhythm with his own.

“Love in the afternoon,” she gasped. “Ain’t it grand?”

Carver rotated his sweaty wrist to glance at his watch. The crystal was fogged, obscuring the numerals. Beth laughed. He craned his neck to see the clock on the table by the bed. Three o’clock.

Beth clutched the top of the sheet and used it to pat her face dry. “Got things to tell you,” she said, breathing evenly now. It didn’t take her long to recover from most things, to recharge her batteries.

“You just finished telling me some interesting things,” Carver said. A car passed at a crawl outside in the parking lot, its tires crunching gravel with a sound like strings of tiny firecrackers exploding.

“I mean about what I learned on the Solartown reverse mortgage money. This
is
a business meeting, right?”

“The minutes are in my mind forever.”

“Better’n that headache you said you had.” She scratched her hip. “Hmph! We got rid of that sucker in a hurry.”

She was right. He decided not to tell her the headache was threatening to return, hinting at heaviness and pain behind his left eye. Not that he didn’t feel better in a lot of other respects. “So what’d you find out?”

She eased sideways on the bed, then reached out a long arm and grabbed the bulky attaché case she’d brought with her. After dragging the case near enough, she opened it and withdrew a yellow legal pad with tiny, neat handwriting on it.

“Near as I can tell,” she said, “most of the money from the sales of reverse mortgage repossessions eventually goes into the Solartown, Inc. general cash fund. Immediately after the company reclaims a house, a small amount of ready cash is set aside to make whatever repairs are necessary and to maintain the property until it resells.”

“Do the figures tally?” Carver asked, meshing his fingers behind his head and staring at the ceiling. There was a bright rectangular pattern of afternoon sun there; it didn’t seem right to be looking at it while he was still perspiring from lovemaking. Beth could sure do things to a life.

“The numbers balance,” she said.

Carver gave that some thought. What were numbers but somebody’s information, good or bad? “Might somebody be cooking the books?”

“Always possible. You wanna check over the figures?”

“Later.” He knew she’d already checked and double-checked. “How’d you manage to get that kinda information?”

“Some of it’s public record. Some of it came by way of the custom software Jeff the computer whiz lent me. You feed it subject information, and it calculates various program passwords and file names the way it would chess moves. And Jeff would send me information via modem. What I did—”

“You or Jeff broke into Solartown’s computer system,” Carver interrupted.

“That’s illegal. Hackers go to jail for doing it.”

“Some do. Will Solartown be able to tell its data’s been raided?”

She let the legal pad drop onto the floor. “Maybe. Depends what kinda safeguards they had built in. We mighta tripped some delayed alarms.”

“If the company’s into something illegitimate, it makes sense they’d have plenty of safeguards and alarms built into their computer system.”

“Wouldn’t argue that.” She didn’t seem particularly apprehensive.

He watched a small spider make its way across the ceiling to the edge of the bright rectangle of sunlight, then veer away toward the supposed security of dimness. “Any way for Solartown to trace who gained access?”

“Doubt it. Jeff’s software has safeguards of its own.”

“Microchip eavesdropping,” Carver said. “I hate the age of the computer.”

“It’s like all progress, lover. You become part of it one way or the other, either by adapting or getting paved over.” She propped herself up on one elbow and stared at him. Her large breasts were so firm they barely sagged sideways. She was no longer sweating or breathing hard. She said, “You feel like telling me about that lump on the side of your head?”

Carver told her everything that had happened over in Lauderdale.

As he finished, she was gazing at him intently. Was she going to offer sympathy? Kiss the warrior’s wound?

“Just thought of something,” she said, and rolled sideways away from him to sit on the edge of the bed. She bent down to reach her open attaché case, then swiveled on her bare rear end to sit cross-legged on the mattress with her back against the headboard. In her lap was her portable Toshiba computer.

Carver watched silently as she raised the lid, booted the system, and began working the keys. Within a few seconds her expression became that of a mystic gazing into a crystal ball that held all answers to all questions. Computers did that to people.

After a while she said, “Keller Pharmaceutical.”

The name was barely familiar to Carver. “What about them?”

Instead of answering, she played the keyboard some more. The disk drive clucked and whirred softly, as if in pleasure.

At last she said, “Major-league pharmaceutical company. They’re one of the suppliers for the Solartown Medical Center.” Studying the glowing monitor, she looked disappointed. “I thought I remembered . . . wait a minute.” Her long fingers danced gracefully over the gray keyboard. “Not Keller—Mercury Laboratories.”

“They supply the medical center, too?”

“They don’t supply; they’re a much smaller company that does research and development for Keller Pharmaceutical. I came across them when I was following Solartown funds to various subcontractors and suppliers. When the recipients were publicly owned companies, I used accessible information to carry the trace several steps further, assuming they might be acting as money launderers.”

“I think I’ve heard of Keller Pharmaceutical,” Carver said.

“Sure, they’re headquartered here in Florida and they’re listed on the big board.”

“You thought a company on the New York Stock Exchange might be laundering money from Solartown?”

“I can name you two big-board companies that launder drug money,” she told him with a direct stare, “so why not money from con-job real estate repossessions? Or whatever else is going on here?”

“Why not indeed,” Carver said.

“Anyway, Keller Pharmaceutical’s annual report shows regular payments to a number of companies, including Mercury Laboratories.”

“That unusual?” Carver asked.

“Nope. They fund several research laboratories. Here’s what’s interesting about Mercury.” She swiveled the laptop computer so he could see the screen. The organizational chart of Mercury Laboratories was displayed there. “The president and chief executive officer was Dr. Jamie Sanchez.”

Carver said, mostly to himself, “Same guy?”

“Figures to be. Mercury Laboratories is located in Fort Lauderdale.”

“Figures to be,” Carver agreed. He dragged the phone over and punched out Fort Lauderdale directory assistance. When he asked for the number of Dr. Sanchez and gave the address of the house where Roger Karl had left the briefcase, the operator informed him that Dr. Sanchez’s number was unlisted. So the address was correct. Carver hung up and nodded.

“I’ll do some checking around,” Beth said, “make sure the two men really are one and the same. But I think we can proceed on the premise that they are.”

“Dr. Sanchez is moving money through a bagman,” Carver said, “for whatever reason.”

“Might not be Solartown money, though. Or it might not have anything to do with Keller Pharmaceutical. And who’s the final recipient of whatever was in that briefcase if it went farther than Dr. Sanchez?”

“I don’t know,” Carver said. “What I do know is Roger Karl sure as hell didn’t want me to find out. That’s why he panicked and sent the giant in overalls to convince me I should forget about any more snooping.”

Beth switched off her laptop and snapped the case closed. “Way I see it, Fred, you were hired to look into an old man’s death, and now you’re into something unrelated and plenty dangerous.”

“Maybe not unrelated.”

“Why would Solartown, Inc. or anybody else want to do away with an old gent like Jerome Evans? I just can’t buy the idea it’s Solartown trying to set up his widow so they can reclaim their property. What do you think, lover, there’s oil under that house?”

He wished it could be that simple. Poke a stick in the ground, find a motive. “Maybe it has nothing to do with the property. Maybe Jerome found out something he shouldn’t have known. And maybe somebody was afraid he’d told Maude Crane.”

“If that’s true—”

“Right,” Carver said. “He might also have told his wife.”

Beth frowned. “You best move that woman outa that house, Fred. Soon as enough time passes so it won’t look so suspicious, Hattie’s liable to wind up a suicide like Maude.”

“If she’ll leave,” Carver said. “I doubt anyone ever ran her out of the classroom in her life.”

“Huh?”

“Never mind. I’ll talk to her.”

“When?”

He rolled onto his side, reaching for his cane. “Now.” His headache flared when he stood up.

Beth idly ran her hands across her bare midsection, up over her rigid nipples. She said, “A lot came outa this business meeting, don’t you think?”

He didn’t feel like crossing words with her; his head hurt.

“Not gonna answer, huh? Gonna play the strong silent guy in charge?”

He told her to wait exactly five minutes after he was gone before she left his room, and to be sure nobody saw her.

She told him to leave the shower running for her.

H
ATTIE
E
VANS SAT WITH
her hands clasped in her lap, her knees pressed tightly together, her haunches on the very edge of the sofa. Carver didn’t think she looked persuadable.

He was right.

“Nothing you’ve said changes my mind,” she told him. “I’m still not going anywhere. I refuse to leave my home. When you reach my age, certain possible consequences don’t scare you, so you don’t easily abandon what’s dear to you.”

“This house?”

“This
home
,” she corrected.

“I had the impression you didn’t even like living here.”

“It doesn’t matter where home is, Mr. Carver. Or how much you like it. What matters is that no one should be able to uproot you from the place where you’ve sunk roots and grown memories. That’s very important. The concept of home becomes less portable as we grow older.”

Carver shook his head. “You’re stubborn, Hattie.”

“You would know about stubborn, Mr. Carver.” Maybe she’d been talking some more to Desoto. Or to Beth. “The names I mentioned—Roger Karl, Dr. Jamie Sanchez—do you remember Jerome mentioning either of them?”

“Of course not. He had no reason.”

Carver decided there was no way to get through to her on this issue. It reminded him of when he’d once tried to talk an unwilling octogenarian into a hearing aid. “I’m uneasy about you remaining in this house,” he told her. “Or anywhere you can be easily located.”

“You’ve made that clear. But there’s no need for you to feel that way. Jerome didn’t have any secret information, or he would have told me.” A faint smile crossed her features like a shadow. “He could never keep anything from me.”

“What about Maude Crane?” It was cruel, but he had to say it, had to convince her she might actually be in danger.

“That woman was no secret,” she said, lifting her chin high.

“I mean, he might have told Maude what he knew, and that’s the reason she’s dead.”

“The woman hanged herself.”

“As far as we know.”

She smiled tolerantly, as if he were a pupil who’d spelled “Albuquerque” wrong. “Believe me, Mr. Carver, Jerome wasn’t the type of man to get involved in conspiracy or illegal money transfers. He was an old fool I happened to love too much, but I knew him. He might well have been killed because he possessed some dangerous knowledge. But if so, he didn’t realize he had it.”

“The people who killed him, and possibly Maude Crane, wouldn’t know how much he understood, or who he might have talked to about it.”

“Use your reasoning ability,” she said sternly. “If what you say was true, I’d have been murdered by now.”

“No, whoever killed Jerome and Maude would almost surely wait. A man dies, then his grief-stricken mistress hangs herself. Okay, that’s believable enough. But if his widow also commits suicide, or dies an even slightly suspicious accidental death, credulity is stretched and the law might investigate and find enough threads to weave a rope.”

“So I’m not in any danger, even if your theory happens to be correct.”

“I think you might be in danger. There’s some indication the people involved in this don’t always behave rationally. And who knows what they’ll consider a reasonable amount of time?”