Spark (3 page)

“His name’s Billingsly,” Hattie said. “Nice young man, and reasonably competent. I’ll phone and tell him you’re coming and he’s to confide in you about Jerome. After I talk to him he’ll surely be cooperative.”

“I’ll just bet,” Carver said.

“No lip,” Hattie warned him.

Carver drove her back to her house.

Kept a civil tongue in his head.

A
S
C
ARVER STEERED THE
Olds into the driveway of Hattie’s pastel-blue house, he noticed a man on the porch.

“Val Green,” Hattie said with a trace of irritation. “He lives next door. Pesky devil.”

Carver parked the car and limped beside Hattie up to the house. He was struck again by how quiet it was in Solartown. Minimum traffic noise, no voices of children. And now, in midmorning heat, not even the drone of a power mower. It wasn’t going to get cooler today. Or rain. There was only unbroken blue overhead except for an airliner’s high, wind-shredded vapor trail that hung in the sky like a spirit.

“Just picked up your newspaper and was setting it on the porch for you,” the pesky devil named Val said to Hattie with a smile. He was a wiry little guy about seventy who had one of those faces people said would always look young, so that now it resembled a boy’s face someone had penciled lines on. Carver thought he resembled Elisha Cook, Jr., the actor who was in a lot of the old black-and-white gangster films Desoto loved to watch on late-night TV.

“I’d adopt a dog if I wanted my paper fetched,” Hattie told him.

His hopeful, leprechaun features fell in disappointment. Carver felt sorry for him. Hattie could be rough, all right.

“No need for a dog,” Val said. “I was outside watering my lawn, so I figured I’d help out. You shouldn’t be too proud to accept help, Hattie, in your stressful situation.”

“Widows aren’t parasites,” she said. Then she seemed to remember her manners and introduced Carver to Val Green.

“I live in that green house,” Val said, pointing to the pale-green house on the left of Hattie’s. It was recently painted and immaculately kept. “Green like my name, so’s I can always remember where I live if I was to drink too much some night.” He laughed. Carver politely followed suit. Hattie somberly unlocked the door.

“Thanks,” she said, as Val handed her the rolled-up newspaper.

“No trouble whatsoever. With Jerome gone, you need any heavy work done, man’s work, you just call or knock on my door.”

“I’ll do that,” Hattie said, but not with any sincerity. “Please come in, Mr. Carver.”

That hadn’t been in the plan, but Carver limped toward the door.

“Nice meeting you, Mr. Carver,” Val said.

Carver caught a glimpse of the expression on his face as Hattie shut the door. He was sure Val was in love with Hattie. That was probably what it was about him that irritated her.

“I just wanted to give Val a chance to go home,” she said. “He’s difficult to be rid of when he gets talking.”

“I wouldn’t mind listening to him,” Carver said.

“Yes you would. He can be a trial.”

“He and Jerome get along?”

“Oh, sure. They’d go fishing, play cards or golf now and then. Jerome would go next door and they’d watch Braves games on TV from Atlanta. I don’t like spectator sports. Or the Turner network. He colored over all those fine old movies. Sometimes Jerome and Val would watch one of those crayoned abominations.”

“Aren’t you being kind of tough on him?”

“Not tough enough. Anyway, he’s got millions of dollars and Jane Fonda.”

“I mean Val Green. He seemed a nice enough guy.”

She removed her hat and sighed. “Oh, I suppose he is, at heart.”

Speaking of heart. “He seems to like you a lot.”

“Too much. That’s the problem.”

“I have to ask this,” Carver said. “When Jerome was alive—”

“Val never once acted in an ungentlemanly fashion toward me,” Hattie interrupted. “I will say that for him. Had he been less than honorable I would have slapped his face red and then told Jerome, and their friendship would have been terminated.”

“I expect so,” Carver said.

Hattie walked to the window and peeked out through the white lace curtain. “I think he’s gone back in. I knew he would. It’s too hot out there for an old goat like him.”

“Safe for me to go, then,” Carver told her. He limped to the door and opened it. “I’ll call if I learn anything. If you want me, leave a message at the Warm Sands Motel. I’ve got a room reserved there, but I haven’t checked in yet.”

“That place has a reputation,” Hattie said.

It took Carver a few seconds to realize what she meant. “It would anyway,” Carver told her, “being near a retirement community.”

Hattie seemed to find nothing incongruous in that observation as she saw him out.

Val hadn’t gone inside. He was standing in his front yard watering his lawn with a green hose equipped with a complicated brass nozzle.

As Carver was about to get in the Olds, Val did something to the nozzle that stopped the flow of water, then walked over to him. He moved stiffly yet with a spry kind of nimbleness, as if his legs were still strong out of proportion to his thin frame. Carver leaned with his forearm on the open car door and waited for him.

“Wanted to talk to you alone,” Val said, when he’d gotten near enough for there to be no chance he might be overheard inside the house. “There’s a few things you need to understand about Hattie.”

Carver hoped she wasn’t watching through the window; he understood that much about her.

“She’s plenty broke up about Jerome’s passing,” Val said.

“That’s natural. He was her husband.”

“But it don’t mean she ain’t thinking straight in being suspicious about how he died.”

“She tell you she had suspicions?”

“Didn’t have to tell me. I can read her.”

“What do you think?” Carver asked. “You knew Jerome.”

“Knew him, all right. He seemed a healthy one. I didn’t figure him for a heart attack.”

“You think he died from one?”

“I don’t see how it coulda been anything else, but somehow it don’t set right. That’s why I wanted to tell you, you need my help for anything just ask. I’m a member of the Posse.”

“Posse?”

“The Solartown Posse.” Val pointed to his garage. The overhead door was raised and the rear bumper of the green Dodge Aries parked inside sported a sticker that said just that: SOLARTOWN POSSE.

“What’s the Solartown Posse?” Carver asked.

“We’re an auxiliary of the Orlando Police Department. Solartown’s in their jurisdiction, but we’re out far enough from the center of town we’re kinda isolated, so we run our own civilian patrols. We ain’t armed, but we got radios, and we keep an eye on things and phone in for the law if we see a crime going down. We’re the eyes and ears of the law, you might say.”

Or might not, Carver thought, considering the eyesight and hearing of a senior citizens’ patrol. On the other hand, their seasoned judgment might far outweigh any physical disadvantages. It was easier to see things in shades of gray once your hair had made the transition.

“I’ll keep your offer in mind,” Carver said. “But how did you know I might be looking into the circumstances of Jerome’s death?”

“Hattie’s been talking about hiring someone, and I figured you was it. No offense, but you got cop written on your forehead. And I seen your bum leg and figured you wasn’t active in the department, so I thought you was probably private. I was right, wasn’t I?” He arched pointy gray eyebrows. “Wasn’t I?” he repeated.

Carver said he was.

“That being the case,” Val said, “I advise you to go talk to Maude Crane. Lives over on the corner of Beach and G Street.”

“Hattie didn’t mention her.”

“She wouldn’t. Maude and Jerome was more’n a little friendly. You understand my meaning?”

“Sure. But how do you know it’s true?”

“Jerome told a few of us when we had too much to drink after a round of golf one day. Bragged, is what he did. No gentleman, Jerome. Thing is, Hattie didn’t know about any of it. I wouldn’t want her to find out now. There wouldn’t be no use in it, only pain for her.”

“I doubt she’ll need to know,” Carver said.

“Good. I’m on night patrol for a while. You need me anytime after eleven, call that number on my bumper sticker. That’s headquarters. They’ll get a hold of me on the radio.”

“I’ll do that,” Carver said. He lowered himself into the Olds. The afternoon was still glaringly bright and hot. Carver’s shirt became glued to his back immediately when he settled into the sticky vinyl upholstery. His bald pate was throbbing. Val didn’t seem to feel the heat.

“I don’t wanna see Hattie get hurt any more’n is necessary,” Val said.

“I can see that.”

Val stepped back, and Carver shut the car door and started the engine.

He backed out into the street and saw that Val had returned to watering his lawn. There seemed to be someone standing behind the front curtains in Hattie’s house, but Carver couldn’t be sure. The sunlight glancing off the glass made seeing inside difficult. He put the Olds in drive.

There was plenty of time to see Dr. Billingsly at the medical center. Right now, he was anxious to meet Maude Crane.

He drove toward the corner of Beach and G Street, not liking the direction matters had taken, but amused and buoyed by the knowledge that infatuation could strike at any age.

M
AUDE
C
RANE’S HOUSE
was exactly the shade of pastel green as Val’s. Made Carver wonder.

The house was angled on a wide corner lot strewn with small citrus trees, most of which bore oranges or grapefruits. Some of the fruit lay rotting on the ground. The drapes were closed on all the windows except for the standard bay window in the dining room, and there appeared to be a large potted indoor plant before that window that blocked the view out or in.

Carver sat in the parked Olds and studied the house. After a while in his business, you developed an instinct. There was something about the house that didn’t feel right.

Then he realized what it was. There was mail visible in the box by the door, and the screen door was slightly ajar, as if the postman had run out of room in the box and had been stuffing mail inside the outer door.

As he planted his cane and levered himself up out of the Olds, Carver noticed that the grass, though of uniform height, needed mowing. He limped across the sunbaked lawn in a path directly to the porch, each step raising a cloud of tiny insects, a few of which found their way up his pants legs to where his ankles were bare above his socks. The yard was as unyielding beneath the tip of his cane as if it were concrete; it hadn’t been watered for a long time. There was a medium-size sugar oak near the corner of the house, its leaves perforated until they’d been turned into fine lace by insects. Florida in the summer belonged to the bugs.

His suspicion was confirmed. The space between the screen door and the green-enameled front door was stuffed with mail. Bills, advertising circulars, a few letters. There was a scattering of small, glossy mail-order catalogs. A pretty blond woman squeezing some kind of exercise device between her thighs was on one cover, smiling up at Carver as if she might be doing something naughty.

There was a brass knocker shaped like a lion’s head on the door. Carver banged it loudly and waited. He wasn’t surprised when there was no response. The lion roared at him silently.

He stood on the porch and glanced around. There was no one in sight. He felt like the only living and moving figure in a painting. The orderly retirement community might as well have featured crypts instead of houses.

He chastised himself for the thought. Get up in your sixties, seventies, or older, it was apparently silence and order you preferred. That was how it seemed to work. He’d know for sure soon enough.

The slam of a door made him turn.

A woman had emerged from the house next door. She was heavy and trudged with effort but determination, wearing paint-smeared white overalls and carrying a screwdriver. A pair of rimless glasses rode low on her wide nose and she squinted over them in the bright sunlight. Her bulldog features tried a smile but it only made her uglier as she got near Carver.

“You David?” she asked.

Carver shook his head no.

The woman seemed to have known he wasn’t really David, but she said, “Thought you might be David Crane from Atlanta. Maude’s nephew. She was expecting him. I’m Mildred Klein from next door. Some way I can help you?”

“I was looking for Maude Crane.”

“I figured that, you being on her porch and all.”

Ah, the neighbors watching out for one another. The old tended to band close together like any other minority group. The paranoia wasn’t completely unjustified.

“Do you know where I can find her?”

“Maybe she drove on into Orlando to shop,” Mildred said. “She does that now and again.” Her grip on the screwdriver’s yellow plastic handle tightened, as if she were ready to use it as a weapon if necessary. “You selling something?”

“No, I’m—” Carver suddenly became aware of a sound that had been on the edge of his consciousness, like something electrical buzzing inside the house. “You hear that?”

“Hear what?”

Carver put his ear to the door. The buzzing was louder. He moved away and leaned on his cane, motioning for Mildred to listen.

Without taking her gaze from him, she mimicked his actions at the door, pressing her ear close to the wood. She nodded, puzzled. “I hear. Something running in there.”

“Maybe an electric alarm clock,” Carver said.

“Maybe.” But Mildred seemed doubtful. It didn’t really sound like an alarm clock.

“We should look,” Carver said.

“None of our business.”

“If Maude left something on, you can turn it off. I’ll wait out here.”

“What makes you think I can get in?”

“I figure you’re her closest neighbor, and you came over here looking out for her, so maybe she gave you a key in case of emergency.”

“You see this as an emergency?”

Carver stirred the clutter of mail with his cane. The girl with the exerciser between her thighs smiled up at him, trying to reassure him there was nothing in the world worth his worry. “Maude mention to you she was taking a trip?”