Spark

by John Lutz

  The way Jerome Evans had.

  Carver squinted through the windshield to make sure the address number on the pale-blue house was Hattie’s, then parked the Olds in the driveway. The canvas top had been up and the air conditioner blasting and it was cool in the car. When he got out and stood supported by his cane, the heat attacked him as if he’d just flung open a blast furnace door. It was the curse of air-conditioning, he decided, that when you left it the heat was doubly vicious, as if trying to make you suffer for your temporary escape.

  The Olds’s big engine, hot from the drive, ticked in the sun as he limped up the driveway to the small concrete porch and pressed the doorbell button with his cane. Inside the house, barely audible, Westminster chimes imitated Big Ben half a world away in a cooler clime.

  After a few searing minutes even in the shade of the jutting porch roof, the door, a slightly darker blue than the rest of the house, eased open and Hattie Evans stared out at Carver.

  She said, “Have you found out anything?”

  “Found my way here,” Carver said. He limped past her, in from the heat. “Sun’s tough on us baldheaded guys.”

  She closed the door. “I know. My Jerome lost most of his hair twenty years ago. Virile men lose their hair earliest in life.”

  “That’s absolutely true,” Carver said, catching a sweet whiff of roses and thinking about his conversation with Beth that morning, wondering fleetingly about Hattie Evans.

  He was in a small but well-furnished living room. The furniture was light oak and teak. There was a low, cream-colored sofa, a matching Lazy-Boy recliner with its footrest raised. In one corner was a tall display cabinet full of plates, not the collector kind with Norman Rockwell scenes, or likenesses of John Wayne or Elvis, but mismatched dinner and luncheon plates of elegant designs and patterns. On another wall was a bleached wood entertainment center that contained mostly books and framed photographs, but also a television with a cable box on top. It was cool in the living room. Felt good.

  Hattie said, “Baby oil.”

  “Pardon?”

  “Try baby oil on your bald head,” she said. “It’s good for one end and the other. Keeps you from getting sore when you’re outside in the sun. Jerome used it and hardly ever wore a hat. You couldn’t get that man in a hat any sooner than you could get him to wear a tie.” The hard, handsome lines of her face softened as she remembered her husband.

  Through the window, Carver saw a big blue Lincoln pass like a mirage in the sun-washed street. It hadn’t made a sound, and he found himself surprised he’d seen it, almost wondering if it had been real. He said, “Not much goes on around here, does it, Hattie?”

  “Not out where it can be seen, anyway. This is a retirement community, so the people who run it don’t encourage children or any kind of raucous behavior. A buyer has to be at least fifty-five years old to become a home or condo owner in Solartown, and the presence of children is definitely discouraged, even as guests.”

  “You sound as if you disagree with that policy,” Carver said.

  Hattie smiled sadly. “I wouldn’t mind it if some nice young couple with children moved in next door. On the other hand, I understand why some residents want their hard-earned peace to remain undisturbed.”

  Until it merges with the peace of the grave, Carver thought, then chastised himself for being morbid.

  “Contrary to what some people might believe,” Hattie said, “retired schoolteachers miss children.”

  Carver shifted his weight more heavily over his cane and nodded. He’d have thought otherwise.

  “I’ve forgotten my manners,” Hattie said, as if surprised. “Please sit down, Mr. Carver, and I’ll prepare some cool drinks. We—I have orange juice, grapefruit juice. Pepsi-Cola if you don’t mind diet.”

  “Nothing, thanks,” Carver said, not moving to sit down. “What I’d really like is for you to come with me in my car and show me around Solartown.”

  “If you’re going to continue standing there leaving a dent in the carpet from the tip of your cane, then let’s go.”

  She was already moving toward the door, a woman of decision and action.

  Properly chastised, Carver followed.

  “What exactly do you want to see?” she asked, pausing at a closet near the door to get a navy-blue pillbox hat and plunk it on her head. Carver wondered if she wore hats because her hair was thinning.

  “Oh, I just want a general view of things. So I can get a feel for the place.”

  “Very good, Mr. Carver.” Her tone suggested she was voicing approval of his preparation for a test.

  Maybe that was how she meant it exactly.

  Hattie sat on the passenger side of the Olds’s wide front seat while Carver drove. She directed him along streets with names like Reward Lane, Restful Avenue, Pension Drive. They were the north-south streets. The streets that ran east and west were lettered alphabetically.

  After weaving among side streets with their middle-class, attractive but monotonous pastel houses, navigator Hattie directed Carver south on Golden Drive. They rolled past Z Street and beyond A South, B South, all the way past M South, where Golden was divided by a grassy median and widened to run toward a complex of low beige brick buildings.

  “That’s the community center,” Hattie said. “Want to stop and look it over?”

  Carver parked in front of a clean beige structure with RECREATION CENTER lettered in gold on a dark-brown sign. “Lead on,” he said, turning off the engine.

  She did.

  He limped behind Hattie into the cool rec center. A few feet inside the glazed-glass double doors was a bulletin board with notices pinned to it announcing schedules for weaving, flower arrangement, exercise classes, literary discussion groups, swimming parties, a golf and tennis tournament. There was also a smattering of 3 × 5 cards advertising cars, golf carts, and household items for sale.

  Hattie smiled and nodded hello to several gray-haired women as she led Carver along a wide, cool central corridor, past a small and busy bowling alley, past windows overlooking an Olympic-size pool where half a dozen older men and women were splashing about like kids, beyond rooms where various arts and crafts classes were in progress. Near the back of the center they stood at a floor-to-ceiling window and looked out at tennis courts, and beyond them a well-tended eighteen-hole golf course. Two golfers were jouncing on a yellow golf cart toward a distant green. On the third green, not far from where Hattie and Carver stood, a pudgy man in checked pants and a tight red pullover stood very still and studied a six-foot putt. Carver and Hattie were silent, as if their voices might disturb the golfer even at this distance and behind glass. Finally he tapped the ball neatly into the cup. Carver thought he should enter the tournament.

  “Nice setup,” Carver said, waving his arm in a motion that took in the rec center and outside facilities.

  “That’s why Jerome and I decided on this place to retire to,” Hattie told him.

  “Did Jerome golf?”

  “Sometimes, but he wasn’t a fanatic. Not like some of these retired fools who’d try to play right through a heart attack.”

  Beyond the trees on the far side of the course rose a circular, four-story building with a lot of windows winking in the sunlight. It seemed to be constructed of the same beige brick as the rec center. Carver asked Hattie if it was part of Solartown.

  “That’s our medical center,” she said without emotion. “Where Jerome died.”

  They turned away from the view and she showed Carver the restaurant, which was like a Denny’s only fancier and with more tables. “Food’s not bad,” she said, “and sometimes they have fashion shows here. Older male and female models wearing the kind of apparel bought by the people here in Solartown.”

  Apparel, Carver thought. The schoolteacher making itself evident again in Hattie. He said, “I think I’ll drop you off at home, then drive by the medical center and talk to Jerome’s doctor.”

  “His name’s Billingsly,” Hattie said. “Nice yo
ung 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.

  4

  AS CARVER 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 Jero
me 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.

  5

  MAUDE CRANE’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.