Tropical Heat (16 page)

“No,” Carver said. “A hundred thousand dollars might help procure financing, provide collateral for the first installments. But I don’t think Cahill intends to build anything in or around Solarville.”

“Why not?”

“Cynical me, I guess. And I don’t see people lined up to live in the swamp.” He took another sip of water. “I’ll take my cynicism further. We can’t be sure anything going on in Solarville involves Willis. We stepped into something nasty and dangerous, but it could be unrelated to what we’re after. However, since they’re so friendly, if it involves Cahill, it might very well involve Willis. Or it might only involve those two muscle-headed types at the counter. The Malone brothers. They’re reputed to be active in drug smuggling.”

“They don’t act like they have enough sense to know which end of a joint to light,” Edwina said.

Carver had to acknowledge that point. It had been bothering him, too.

“Maybe they’re working for somebody.”

“Not for Sam Cahill,” Edwina said. “It’s not his style to get involved with that sort.”

“Is it Willis’s style?”

She appeared uneasy. “I don’t think so. But I’m getting surprised a lot about Willis, aren’t I?”

Carver looked across the table at the agony in her eyes. He wanted to reach across and squeeze her hand, wanted to hold her, reassure her. Wanted to kick Willis Davis where it hurt for doing this to her.

Emotion, he warned himself. Don’t let it get in the way of your life, your judgment. Remember your children you seldom see, Anne and Fred Jr. Remember Laura, how it felt when she left. Not again. Not yet, anyway.

“Sorry to keep you all waitin’,” a voice said. The tall waitress with their supper. She set dishes and glasses about on the table quickly and expertly, then loped away.

The tuna salad sandwich looked okay. At least some small thing was going right for Edwina. Carver took a bite of his pan-fried steak. He understood why the special was popular at The Flame, and why he’d never be a gourmet like a P.I. he’d met in Boston.

The Malone brothers finished drinking beer and arguing about guns and swaggered out. The place was much quieter in their absence, and the food tasted better.

“The waitress behind the counter,” Carver said, “the one with the scar on her face. She and Cahill had a thing going, I’m told. Or at least they had a strong friendship.”

Edwina lowered her sandwich onto her plate and turned slightly to study Verna. “I’d bet on friendship,” she said. “This isn’t a criticism of the girl, but it isn’t like Sam Cahill to be with a woman disfigured that way. He prides himself on perfection. The kind of guy who suddenly runs outside to buff a smudge from his car. He sees his women as having to pass inspection, like all the rest of his possessions. They’re reflections of himself, or how he sees himself.”

“Maybe,” Carver said, “but who knows about love?”

“Who knows?” Edwina repeated. She swallowed, not tuna salad.

“Cahill seems to be putting on the outdoorsman act here,” Carver said.

Edwina shrugged. “Sales technique, probably. Cahill will do whatever he has to in order to swing a deal. He enjoys that part of the business, fancies himself a manipulator of people.”

Carver took another bite of steak, wondering how Edwina could see Cahill so clearly, but not see Willis.

“How’s your sandwich?” he asked.

“Like the rest of Solarville. Tolerable.”

Carver kept quiet and chewed.

Sam Cahill didn’t come into The Flame that evening. After supper, Carver and Edwina drove back to the Tumble Inn in the Olds with the top down. The heat of the night was moderated by the breeze that whipped around the windshield and rushed back to splay Edwina’s dark hair across her cheeks and forehead. In the constant flow of wind she looked oddly like a beautiful woman underwater, drowned and alone. When Carver slowed the Olds to take a curve in the road, the breeze lessened and the close scent of the swamp crept in for a few seconds, until he built up speed again. The secret of life: keep moving.

“We might as well leave here tomorrow,” he said, glancing over at Edwina. “If Willis was here when I arrived, he isn’t anymore.”

“Why not tonight?” she asked, as if she were afraid.

“A DEA agent named Burr wants to talk to me about Lujan.”

“Drugs,” Edwina said. “They think everything in Florida is drugs.”

“If you want to return to Del Moray tonight, you could get your rental car back and drive,” Carver said. She had left her Mercedes in the shop in Del Moray for service. He was afraid of the same thing she was; he wanted to make it clear to her that it made no difference to him if she drove back to Del Moray alone, tonight, without him.

She seemed to consider the idea. Then she said, “No, that would be stupid. We’re both going in the same direction, and my room is already paid for.”

As Carver turned the Olds onto the Tumble Inn’s parking lot, a black Lincoln coming out braked to make room for him, then turned left on the highway, traveling away from Solarville. The Lincoln’s windows were tinted, but not so darkly that Carver didn’t notice that the driver was the three-piece-suit type he’d seen earlier in the Tumble Inn restaurant, and his passenger, sitting as far away from him as possible on the front seat, was the executive-tailored blonde woman who’d been with him. Off to new diversions, Carver thought, wondering how it would be to have that kind of money, that kind of leisure. Lately he’d found himself envying other people too often.

He parked the Olds halfway between his room and Edwina’s.

Neither of them moved to get out of the car right away.

“Do you want some coffee?” Carver asked. “Or a drink in the hotel lounge?”

“No, it’s late. I’m tired.” The car’s engine ticked, cooling.

For the first time Carver realized it was almost ten o’clock. They’d had a late supper, sat longer than he’d planned in The Flame. Against the dark sky, a huge full moon was plastered like a decoration at a dance, low on the haze above the swamp. Night insects were screaming as if they were dismayed about the world in general.

“What time are we leaving tomorrow?” Edwina asked.

“I don’t know. I’ll call you after I talk with Burr.”

She worked the chrome handle, started to push open the door to get out of the car. Carver’s hand was on her shoulder before he knew it had moved, feeling the sharpness of bone and the warmth of flesh beneath the crisp white material of her blouse. There was something desperate in the action. She twisted on the seat and looked at him, confused and a little angry in the moonlight.

“Not a good idea,” she said. “Wrong.” But her own hand rose and her fingertips brushed the side of Carver’s face, so lightly he might have imagined it.

She got out of the car and he watched her walk to her door. She unlocked it and went inside without looking back.

Carver put up the canvas top on the Olds, then went to the Tumble Inn lounge and sat nursing one beer for almost an hour, listening to an unbroken string of sad love songs wafting from unseen speakers. It was almost as if the bastards who’d set up the music knew.

Not a good idea. Wrong.

He didn’t feel like sleeping. But he didn’t feel like sitting there and drinking and feeling mawkish any longer either, so he left the lounge and walked back across the parking lot to his room, listening to the solemn sound of his soles crunching on gravel, the growling drag of his cane.

It took as much willpower as he’d mustered in years not to stop and knock on Edwina’s door.

But she was waiting for him in front of his door. So much for willpower.

He touched her shoulder and she came to him, clung to him. He bowed his head, sought her eager mouth, found it with his own. Her grip on him tightened, and her body writhed tight against his.

Somehow he managed to fit his key into the lock.

T
HE NEXT MORNING,
Carver studied Edwina over the rim of his coffee cup. She kept her eyes averted from him, her gaze downcast. She wasn’t wearing makeup; her face was fresh-scrubbed and her eyes were puffy. Her dark hair gave off a faint, clean perfumed scent and was drawn back from her forehead, parted and combed oh so neatly. She was wearing a denim skirt and a tailored blue pinstripe blouse, no jewelry. She might have been a nun in street clothes.

But Carver remembered her fierce and desperate softness of the night before. He’d been awkward at first, with his lame leg, having to support and lever himself carefully with his good knee and his arms. But within a few minutes Edwina had made him forget all about the leg, about everything but her. Her intensity had amazed and delighted him, taken him away. His own intensity had shocked him. She was like a hand grenade tossed into his mind.

But now it was Willis Davis again. He could see that. Or was it something more than Willis?

How had she viewed the night before? As a lapse, a temporary surrender to desire? An unfortunate, never-to-be-repeated interlude?

Carver knew that now he had every reason to find Willis Davis, to lay Willis to rest alive or dead in the mental landscape of Carver’s relationship with Edwina. Otherwise Willis would continue to haunt them, to sour what could be between them. Willis was one of the world’s spoilers, all right. Carver disliked him more than anyone he’d never met.

“I’d use your toothbrush,” Carver said.

Edwina stared at him. “What?”

“That’s the test of true intimacy, if you’d use your partner’s toothbrush.”

She didn’t smile. “That’s disgusting. And you’ve already brushed this morning. Finish your coffee.”

They sat for a while without speaking in the cool motel restaurant. It was as if the night before had been cut from the calendar. Carver stared out the window at the cloudless sky, the morning heating up in the glare of slanted sunlight. At the edge of the swamp beyond the parking lot, Spanish moss and vines seemed to drip from the trees as if the branches were melting in the sun. Carver looked at his watch. Nine-thirty. Alex Burr had phoned half an hour ago. Carver was to meet him in town at eleven. He had time to kill; he knew how he wanted to kill it.

“Do you want to take a walk?” he asked Edwina.

“No, I’ll stay here for a while.”

The implication was clear: Carver could take a walk. Alone. Down love’s rough road. With a pang of jealousy, he remembered how, the night before, she had called him Willis without realizing it.

He thought he’d better not push Edwina any further. When the waitress wandered by, he waved her down and had her refill both coffee cups. Edwina didn’t look up, absently added cream and sugar to her coffee, and stirred. She seemed listless, somewhat confused beneath her brittleness.

“What are you going to tell Burr?” she asked.

“Whatever he wants to know. He’ll probably have the answers to everything he’s going to question me about anyway, or he wouldn’t ask. It’s the way the feds work.”

“That doesn’t make sense.”

“Think of your tax form.”

Daninger walked past the restaurant entrance from the lobby, looked in, and smiled tentatively at Carver. Everything was all right now, the smile said. Wasn’t it? Carver hoped Daninger didn’t come into the restaurant for added reassurance that the legal profession wasn’t going to pounce on him.

Outside the window, along the line of ground-floor rooms, Carver saw Curt, wearing jeans and a gray T-shirt lettered
Slow Is Better
, sauntering along carrying a gas-powered weed trimmer. Carver wished people would run out of things to say on T-shirts.

“Do you think I should be there when you talk to Burr?” Edwina asked.

“No. I might be able to learn something from his questions. And he might not ask the same questions if he knows the extent of your relationship with Willis. DEA agents have the suspicious minds of witch burners who’ve been to college.”

“You mean he might think I know where Willis is.”

“He might. On the other hand, he might take the official view that Willis is dead. It’s Silverio Lujan who drew DEA attention. He was a Marielito who died an unnatural death. To the government, that means narcotics.”

“I know Willis wouldn’t be mixed up in drugs.”

“You might be right.”

The weed trimmer kicked into life behind the motel and began to chortle and buzz, like a gigantic insect in the swamp making determined passes at its prey. The wavering sound made the heat outside seem thicker, palpable as clear, still water.

Edwina stood up without having touched her fresh cup of coffee.

“Where are you going?” Carver asked. There were things he wanted to say to her, even though she wouldn’t listen. He preferred having her around in case she changed her mind.

“To my room. To pack, to rest, to think.”

He watched her walk from the restaurant. He didn’t ask her what she was going to think about. He knew. Willis.

Carver thought about Laura. But not for long, and with lessened pain. She was definitely alive and had made it abundantly clear that she no longer wanted or needed him. Not like Willis and Edwina. Emotional ties had been cut, the loose ends knotted. That was the critical difference. Finality.

He sipped his coffee and watched the shadows and sunlight sharpen in contrast on the parking lot.

Alex Burr had borrowed Armont’s office to talk with Carver, but he acted as if it were his office. He was a trim and athletic-looking blond man who wore a black eye patch. The patch might have made him a romantic figure ten years ago, but his lean features had become a bit jowly with his forty-odd years, and there was a pouch beneath his visible unblinking blue eye. His hair was straight and professionally styled, worn longish to hide the straps from the eye patch. He’d removed his coat but hadn’t loosened his small, neat tie knot. His pants had sharp creases and his white dress shirt was spotless and starched and would do any laundry-detergent commercial proud. He hadn’t rolled up his sleeves; that would be giving in to mere heat. He reminded Carver of a middle-aged German duelist lost in time.

But Burr didn’t say
Achtung!
or flip his gloves in Carver’s face. Instead he stood up behind Armont’s desk, smiled, extended a hand, and assured Carver he wouldn’t take up much of his time. Carver figured he had probably said that to people who were serving twenty years.