Scorcher (30 page)

“Wasn’t that,” McGregor said. He straightened his tall body awkwardly, as if his back were stiff, then walked over and sat down opposite Carver. He ran his tongue across the wide gap between his front teeth and folded his big hands. He seemed to consider not telling Carver about the note’s contents, but only for a second; pals all the way. He said, “She was, in a manner of speaking, Emmett’s accomplice.”

Carver remembered Elana’s beauty and gentleness and reacted instinctively, as Adam might have. Protecting her memory in Adam’s stead. Carver’s obligation. He’d done things to this family. “Bullshit! She hated Emmett. He tried to rape her.”

“That’s true,” McGregor said. “Still, she had no choice but to cooperate with him. She married young, before she knew Adam Kave, and had a child. Her husband was killed in Korea. Afterward, while she was grieving, she fell in love with and married a guy who made her life pure hell and caused severe depression. She ran away from her new husband and her son, and probably herself. Years later she was penniless and in trouble, and she remembered things she’d heard about Adam Kave even though she’d never met him. She came to the Fort Lauderdale area and got to know him under an assumed identity, and ingratiated herself until he helped her financially and in other ways. It was a desperate kind of con she worked on him, but not an unusual one, what with all the unattached big-rich assholes in Florida. Then she unexpectedly fell in love and married him, and never could muster the guts to tell him the truth.”

McGregor smiled nastily, loving the effect this was having on Carver. “Some juicy suicide note, hey?” he said. “Never know what you’ll find when you kick over a gold rock and study these wealthy families. I seen it time and again.”

Carver’s mind was numb except for some far corner that was trying to fit all this together. Trying to accept it as truth. McGregor helped him.

“Elana had to stay silent or have Adam and the kids learn about her long-ago relationship with Emmett, and the blackmail money she’d been paying Emmett for years, in amounts small enough to escape Adam’s notice. She was Emmett’s former wife, Carver. Her maiden name was Jones. She was the woman who met Emmett Kave at the Orlando motel. Joel Dewitt’s mother.”

Carver said, “Sweet Christ!” And full realization rolled over him.

McGregor laughed. “Explains some things, don’t it?”

“Some things. Other things can never be explained.”

“Don’t you believe it,” McGregor said. “The guy doing the explaining just has to be convincing, is all. Way the world works, pardner.”

“Did she actually think she could marry Adam without Emmett ever finding out her identity?”

“Sure. Remember, the brothers were estranged, hated each other, and never saw one another. There’s so many rich jokers in this part of Florida, they get married and divorced all the time without anybody’s picture getting on the society page—not that Emmett would read the society page. And she hadn’t planned on love rearing its nasty head. Once she fell for Adam and didn’t want to lose him, she had no choice. She was desperate.”

“Did Dewitt know about all this?”

“I was interrogating him when you called and told me Elana was dead. He knew about everything. That was how Emmett got him to go along with the plan. Dewitt was getting even with the woman who abandoned him as a child, and he thought he had some kind of moral claim on the Kave fortune. Once Elana died before Adam, Dewitt was out in the cold forever. Adam ain’t the charitable type.”

“Then Dewitt knew Paul was his brother.”

“Hey, don’t look so shocked, Carver. Cain did it to Abel. And these guys are only half brothers.”

“But Nadine . . .”

“So Dewitt was plugging his sister—hell, there was a lotta money at stake.”

Wind off the ocean whipped the canvas awning again, cracking it like a sail. The breeze felt cool on Carver’s face and he realized he was perspiring. He was nauseated and wanted to get away from McGregor immediately. Didn’t want to look at him or hear his voice ever again.

He stood up shakily with his cane and shoved his chair back, almost tipping it over. His mind still trying to assimilate what had happened, he limped toward the door to the house. He knew his way through the place and out.

Behind him McGregor said, “We oughta work together again sometime, tough guy. Ain’t we a fuckin’ team?”

C
ARVER WANTED TO
attend Elana Kave’s funeral, but he found out too late that she’d been cremated. There’d been only a brief, private memorial service. Adam Kave had wanted it that way.

Three months later Carver read in the
Orlando Sentinel
that Adam’s Inns had been sold to a conglomerate that owned a series of chain restaurants. Adam would no longer be connected with the company he’d built with his life at the cost of his son. Nadine, Carver heard, had gone to Hawaii to finish college and do postgraduate work in anthropology. He thought that was exactly the field for her.

Lieutenant McGregor was now Captain McGregor and in charge of Internal Affairs, investigating reports of corruption within the Fort Lauderdale Police Department. Justice was blind, all right.

Carver spent his days at Edwina’s, rising early and limping down to a flat stretch of beach. He’d leave his cane on the warm sand, slither awkwardly into the surf until he was floating free and graceful, and take long, therapeutic swims.

Occasionally Paul Kave would drive up A1A from Hillsboro and join him. They both loved the sea and liked to test themselves against it.

They’d roam far enough out from shore to worry Edwina. One man of maimed body and the other of maimed mind, struggling against the incoming waves.

Strong swimmers.

During unlikely moments, Carver would find himself wondering whether Adam Kave had suspected all along that there’d been something between Elana and Emmett, and had held his silence to protect the possession he’d most treasured. But not even Adam could answer that one with certainty, Carver decided.

And it was something he never asked Paul.

Some things you left alone.

John Lutz is one of the foremost voices in contemporary hard-boiled fiction.

First published in
Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine
in 1966, Lutz has written dozens of novels and over 250 short stories in the last four decades. His earliest success came with the Alo Nudger series, set in his hometown of St. Louis. A meek private detective, Nudger swills antacid instead of whiskey, and his greatest nemesis is his run-down Volkswagen. In his offices, permeated by the smell of the downstairs donut shop, he spends his time clipping coupons and studying baseball trivia. Though not a tough guy, he gets results. Lutz continued the series through eleven novels and over a dozen short stories, one of which—“Ride the Lightning”—won an Edgar Award for best story in 1986.

Lutz’s next big success also came in 1986, when he published
Tropical Heat
, the first Fred Carver mystery. The ensuing series took Lutz into darker territory, as he invented an Orlando cop forced to retire by a bullet that permanently disabled his left knee. Hobbled by injury and cynicism, he begins a career as a private detective, following low-lifes and beautiful women all over sunny, deadly Florida. In ten years Lutz wrote ten Carver novels, among them
Scorcher
(1987),
Bloodfire
(1991), and
Lightning
(1996), and as a whole they form a gut-wrenching depiction of the underbelly of the Sunshine State. Meanwhile, he also wrote
Dancing with the Dead
(1992), in which a serial killer targets ballroom dancers.

In 1992 his novel
SWF Seeks Same
was adapted for the screen as
Single White Female
, starring Bridget Fonda and Jennifer Jason Leigh. His novel
The Ex
was made into an HBO film for which Lutz co-wrote the screenplay. In 2001 his book
The Night Caller
inaugurated a new series of novels about ex-NYPD cops who hunt serial killers on the streets of New York City, and with
Darker Than Night
(2004) he introduced Frank Quinn, whose own series has yielded five books, the most recent being
Mister X
(2010).

Lutz is a former president of the Mystery Writers of America, and his many awards include Shamus Awards for
Kiss
and “Ride the Lightning,” and lifetime achievement awards from the Short Mystery Fiction Society and the Private Eye Writers of America. He lives in St. Louis.

A two-year old Lutz, photographed in 1941. The photograph was taken by Lutz’s father, Jack Lutz, who was a local photographer out of downtown St. Louis.

A young Lutz with his little brother, Jim, and sisters, Jacqui and Janie.

Lutz at ten years old, with his mother, Jane, grandmother, Kate, and brother, Jim. Lutz grew up in a sturdy brick city house that sat at an incline, halfway down a hill; according to Lutz, this made for optimal sledding during Missouri’s cold winters.

Lutz in his very first suit, purchased for his grade school graduation.

Lutz’s graduation photo from Southwest High School.