Burn (27 page)

When Beth answered the phone, he knew better than to ask how she felt.

Instead he said, “Can you get your friend the
Burrow
computer hacker to try tracing the origins of Portia Brant and Marla Cloy?”

“Origins? You mean their childhoods?”

“Yes. As far back as possible.”

“All I have to do is ask,” Beth said. “Jeff already has a lot of information on them, from social security numbers to their credit ratings. Backtracking into their childhoods should be relatively easy. But why do you want to do it?”

“I just came from seeing Marla’s parents. Turns out Marla was adopted.”

“I don’t see the significance,” Beth said.

“I’m not sure I do, either, but it’s worth exploring.”

A young family came in from outside, Mom and Dad and three little preschool-age blond girls. Mom and Dad were sweaty and looked to be in mild shock. The girls looked irritable. One of them grabbed at the hair of another. They all screamed. Mom and Dad seemed not to have heard. Carver hoped they wouldn’t sit near his table.

Beth must have heard the screaming over the phone. “Where are you, Fred?”

“Just outside Orlando, about to dine on Florida tourist cuisine.”

He observed the waitress setting his food on his table, looking around for him. When her gaze slid his way, he waved to her. She smiled and nodded, finished laying out his lunch, then moved away toward the kitchen.

“I was hard on you this morning,” Beth said. “I’m sorry.”

“No need.”

He watched the couple with the loud kids go to a table all the way in the back of the restaurant. No, wait. Only two kids. The third blond girl was sitting at the table behind Carver’s, demanding that the family sit there. Mom and Dad looked at each other, shrugged, rose slowly from their chairs, and the girl at the table behind Carver’s was joined by the rest of the family.

“Yes, there is a need,” Beth said. “I apologize. I can be a bitch sometimes.”

“You’ve been consistently swell before today.”

“Don’t be ironic, Fred. I appreciate what you told me this morning, that no matter what I decide you’ll stand by me, and we’ll be all right together.”

“I meant it,” Carver said. “Sometimes it takes me a while to get where I need to go. I have a hard time empathizing, putting myself in other people’s skins unless I’m trying to figure them out in relation to my work.”

“You got there, though,” Beth said. “Most men don’t.”

One of the blond girls was turned around in her chair and had developed an interest in Carver’s food.

“Speaking of going places,” he said, “after lunch I’m driving over to talk with Gloria Bream. It’s possible she knows where Brant is.”

“Maybe he’ll call and tell you himself,” Beth said. “He’s your client. Have you checked your answering machine at the office?”

“No. I’m going to as soon as I hang up.”

The blond girl reached for Carver’s sandwich but Mom clutched her wrist, stopping her just in time. Mom looked around, saw Carver on the phone, and smiled at him.
Kids,
said the smile.
What are you gonna do?

“Want me to call you when Jeff gets the information on Portia and Marla?” Beth asked.

“I’ll call you,” Carver said. “Or I’ll come by the cottage. I’ll be back sometime late afternoon.”

“If you get a chance, stop someplace and buy some lemons.”

He looked over at the mountains of citrus fruit displayed in bins outside the restaurant and told her lemons would be no problem.

Then he hung up, fed more change into the phone, and called his office. When his machine answered, he punched in the code that would play his messages.

A man wanting to sell him international mutual funds had called, and Desoto. No one else. Not Joel Brant.

Carver decided to drop in and see Desoto instead of returning his call. He hung up the phone then limped over to his table. He didn’t give the international funds a thought; he had a difficult enough time figuring out Florida.

Lunch looked terrible but tasted good. Especially the Gallopin’ Grapefruit Freezy. The little blond girl who wanted his sandwich swiveled around in her chair again and stared at him with eyes like laser beams.

He ate fast and got out of there, pausing only to buy lemons.

Desoto looked up from what he was working on and smiled at Carver. He was holding a round magnifying glass with a long handle in his left hand, the kind Sherlock Holmes used. Before him on his desk lay his gold wristwatch and an array of miniature tools. The watch’s back had been removed. In Desoto’s other hand was a tiny screwdriver with a yellow plastic handle.

“You ever try to replace a watch battery,
amigo?”
Desoto asked.

Carver leaned on his cane and shook his head no.

“You’ve got to remove these two minuscule screws you can hardly even see. Do it with this tiny screwdriver almost too small to pick up with your bare fingers, all the time watching what you’re doing through a magnifying glass.”

“You better take the watch to a jeweler.”

“Yeah.” He put down the magnifying glass and carefully moved everything to the side. “I thought it would be something like changing a battery in a flashlight.” Wiping his hands with a white handkerchief he produced from a pocket, he leaned back in his chair. His windowsill stereo was silent today, maybe so his concentration on the watch wouldn’t be broken. “I wanted to let you know we got a print from your office that matches the ones on the wrecked Harley and on the trunk lid of Spotto’s rental car.”

“Now all you need is Achilles Jones.”

“That’s another reason I wanted to talk to you. A nineteen ninety-four Harley-Davidson Electra Glide Ultra was stolen from in front of a biker bar over on Vermont Avenue late last night. The owner apparently tried to stop the thief.”

“Apparently?”

“Nobody saw what happened. The guy who owned the bike went outside to get cigarettes from his saddlebag. When he didn’t come back, one of his friends went to see what was keeping him. Found him dead behind a line of parked motorcycles. His nose and eye area had been smashed in hard enough to drive bone splinters into his brain. The M.E. says the fatal injury required incredible force and was done with a blunt instrument, possibly a huge fist.”

Carver told Desoto about the motorcycle tire tracks Wade Schultz had pointed out this morning at Brant Estates.

“I’ll get somebody out there and makes casts of the tread,” Desoto said. “Something else. The dead biker—Rawley Everwatt was his name—was holding a knife with blood on the blade. Must have taken a run at the thief and got some of him. It’s the same type as a blood sample we took off the wrecked motorcycle after its run-in with your car.”

Carver grinned appreciatively. “You really are good at your work.”

“So Jones is wounded beyond whatever injuries he received in the accident with your car. But there’s no way to know how bad he’s hurt from either incident. He might have superficial injuries from the accident, and Everwatt might only have managed to nick him with the knife before getting punched out of the world.” Desoto’s tanned features creased to form his handsome white smile, but there was nothing of humor there. “The case builds. When we get this Jones, we’ll have him good.”

“He’s too large to go unnoticed forever,” Carver said.

Desoto picked up his wristwatch and carefully snapped its back into place. He stared at the watch as if contemplating putting it on his wrist, then wrapped it in the white handkerchief and slipped it into an inside pocket of his pale yellow suit coat. “Why were you at Brant Estates this morning?” he asked.

“To talk to Brant’s foreman, Wade Schultz.”

Carver told Desoto about Marla’s claim that Brant tried to run her down. About Brant’s disappearance, then Marla’s. About McGregor’s repeated threat to nail him as Brant’s accomplice.

Desoto’s brown eyes darkened and seemed to lose depth, as if his attention had flagged and turned inward. Carver knew better. He’d seen Desoto angry before.

“This gets more serious,” Desoto said. “And don’t worry about McGregor. His Marla Cloy and Brant are part of my homicide case. I’m going to give him a call.”

Carver wasn’t so sure Desoto could hobble McGregor. “Don’t expect professional courtesy.”

“I don’t. But McGregor can expect a professional reaming out if he doesn’t stop playing personal games and cooperate. Where are you going when you leave here?”

“Red Feather Realty, to try to see Gloria Bream.”

Desoto arched an eyebrow in puzzlement. “Who is?”

“A real estate agent. Red Feather handles the listings in the condo development where Brant lives. Gloria Bream and Brant are rumored to be in a personal relationship.”

“Hmm. You better let us talk to her. Brant might have hired Achilles Jones to scare you off delving into his life when you were supposed to be investigating Marla Cloy. Questioning Gloria Bream might qualify as delving.”

“Or Marla might have hired Jones to scare me off investigating her claims of harassment against Brant.”

“That could be. Why do you think he killed Spotto?”

“He knew Spotto was working for me, but that doesn’t tell us much. He might have thought Spotto’s involvement was in regard to either Brant or Marla. If you find Jones, that’s what I need to know from him, which of the two hired him.”

“It might not have been either of them.”

“There’s that possibility,” Carver admitted.

Desoto unconsciously caressed a gold cuff link with the very tip of his middle finger. “It’s difficult,” he said, “to know where the truth lies. Maybe we won’t even know the truth for sure when this is over.”

“That’s what Beth says. You two think amazingly alike at times.”

“About you, I expect we do. Where’s Beth now?”

“My cottage.”

“I think you better go to her. I’ll send some of our people over to talk with this Gloria Bream. Achilles Jones might still be searching for you, and he might find Beth.”

Carver knew he was right, and suddenly he was struck by a sense of urgency so strong that he almost felt he could dash from the office without his cane.

“Call me after you get Gloria Bream’s statement,” he said.

“Sure. And you remember to be careful,” he heard Desoto say behind him as he headed for the door and the hot, fast drive back to Del Moray.

T
HEY’D MADE LOVE
within minutes after Carver arrived at the cottage, the Colt handgun within easy reach on his side of the bed. Though the breeze that found its way in through the screened window was warm, its whimsical movement kept the dim room comfortable.

Beth slept sprawled loosely on her back, while Carver lay awake, listening to the ocean continue its endless and ultimately victorious assault on the land. He tried to discern some primal truth in its hushed message, but failed. Something profound was always there, inches or seconds beyond reach and understanding, Carver had read somewhere that ancient philosophers believed the basic elements of all things, singly or in combination, were earth, fire, water, and air. Maybe, in a way that had little do with hard fact, they were right.

The phone by the bed trilled, and so alert was Carver to sound that he snatched it up before its first ring was completed.

He glanced over at Beth, who hadn’t moved, then whispered a hello into the receiver.

Desoto said, “Isn’t it early to be in bed?”

“How do you know I’m in bed?” Carver asked.

“Someone is, or you wouldn’t be whispering, right?”

“Not necessarily.”

“Besides, I heard bed springs squeak as you picked up the phone. I know that sound.”

“All right. I’m in bed.”

Desoto could probably guess why, at four in the afternoon, but he dropped the subject. “We were told at Red Feather Realty that Gloria Bream was on vacation, visiting her mother in Kansas City.”

“You check on that?”

“Of course. We talked to her. Then we even had the Kansas City police make sure the woman who told us on the phone she was Gloria Bream was actually there and was who she claimed to be. And her vacation and visit had been planned for a month, according to some of the other Red Feather employees. It looks like Bream’s out of the picture here.”

“Unless Kansas City is where Brant’s gone.”

“The K.C. police are onto that possibility, but they say it’s unlikely, given the situation there. They’re keeping the Bream house, and Gloria Bream, under observation in case Brant does show up, but it’s more a matter of touching all the bases than thinking in terms of a home run.”

“There’s always the possibility of a wild pitch,” Carver said.

“Ah! Another baseball analogy. Very good,
amigo,
but I’d already changed seasons to football.”

“Football?”

“Yes. I see your dilemma more as sudden-death overtime than extra innings.”

“Is that your way of cautioning me?”

“It is, though I don’t delude myself that it makes any difference. Still, one must try.”

“One sure doesn’t talk like a cop sometimes.”

“Like a friend, I hope.”

“Like a friend,” Carver confirmed. “And it does make a difference.”

“I’m assuming Beth’s okay.”

“She’s never been better.”

“Uh-huh.”

Carver thanked Desoto and hung up, letting the back of his head sink deep into the pillow. For more than the obvious reasons, he’d been hoping Brant had run to Gloria Bream. It would mean he hadn’t snapped entirely under the strain and frustration and been serious about his threat to kill Marla. Now Carver feared Brant was determined to thwart Marla by actually killing her, his judgment warped as he moved in a dream of vengeance. Carver knew how it was to be trapped in that dream, and how difficult it was to escape. Revenge could be as basic and powerful a craving as hunger or sex. He wondered how the ancient philosophers had regarded revenge. Fire, he decided.

Fire and then earth.

He didn’t remember falling asleep. His mind and body lurched, and suddenly he realized the room was dark. The digital numerals on the clock near the bed said it was almost ten o’clock.

Beth’s form was barely visible, but he could hear her snoring lightly. She didn’t seem to have changed position. The crash of the surf on the beach was louder, with more time between incoming waves. Though it was probably cooler outside, the breeze had died and the bedroom was warm. Carver’s nude body was perspiring, and he could feel heat emanating from Beth. The scent of their coupling was heavier in the air than when he’d fallen asleep, stirring desire in him again, but only faintly. He became aware of the pressure of his bladder and reached for his cane so he could make his way into the bathroom.