Spark

by John Lutz

  “Where’ve you been?” he asked, realizing immediately that he sounded like a disapproving father grilling a wayward teen. Hell with it; he couldn’t help it.

  “Spent much of the day doing a follow-up interview with Brad Faravelli, then had dinner with a source.”

  “Source of what?”

  “You sound aggravated, and I notice you’re carrying a gun. Something wrong, lover?”

  “I was worried about you, that’s all.”

  She didn’t seem sympathetic. “I don’t like it when people worry about me.”

  He’d known it, but the concern had crept in.

  “You like people worrying over you, Fred?” She was pressing, grinning.

  He walked to the desk and laid the gun on it, catching a whiff of her perfume. It was subtle yet forceful, as if derived from some sort of flower that choked off weeds.

  “What’d you get out of the Faravelli interview?” he asked, all business. Still irritated, though.

  “Reinforcement of my notion that he’s a straight arrow and the Solartown money flows in proper channels. Also, he’s more than a little interested in me.” She winked.

  “Maybe he wants to sell you a house.”

  “Bastard!” She laughed and tackled him, knocking him back on the bed. His cane caught on the edge of the mattress and fell to the floor. “He’s rumored to have a mistress, a real humdinger beauty-queen type. Anyway, I said he was interested in me, not vice versa. But speaking of vice . . .” She was lying full length on top of Carver, attempting to work a hand between their bodies to unzip his fly.

  He pretended that he was trying to cast her away, heard the bedside table with the lamp and phone on it hit the floor as she thrashed around for leverage. Giggling, she eased to the center of the mattress and let him work his way on top of her.

  “How long have you had this libido problem?” he asked. He kissed her on the lips. She kissed back hard, probing with her tongue, then pulled away. Not amused now. Her dark eyes were misty, serious, pulling him toward the center of the earth.

  She said, “Whatever my problem is, it can be solved.”

  He raised himself up on one elbow and unbuttoned her blouse, knowing from wrestling with her she wasn’t wearing a bra. He felt her hands working surely at the button to his fly. The zipper. He kissed her nipples, then her lips, and breath rushed from her and she helped him with the bottom buttons on her blouse, with his shirt, his briefs, undressing him and herself in a mad flurry of urgency. A button popped airborne and bounced off his bare back. The bedsprings squealed and the headboard crashed against the wall.

  He said, “This hurricane season?”

  She said, “It is for you.”

  When he’d entered her and her long legs were wrapped around him, he said, “I wasn’t actually worried, but Christ, it’s good to see you!”

  35

  A BRILLIANT SUNBEAM lanced through the part in the drapes and lay in a gauzy strip of light across Carver’s eyes. He opened his right eye, closed it immediately, then groaned and rolled over in bed. He could feel the warm sunbeam like a weight on his bare shoulder and arm.

  He’d gone to sleep within seconds after Beth had left his bed and returned to her room last night. She sometimes had that effect on him. He wondered if Brad Faravelli had earlier that day laid a foundation of arousal in her, then he mentally kicked himself for considering such a thing. He didn’t like to think of himself as a male chauvinist, but he knew that at times he must be, and he was working on the problem. Beth was helping him.

  Realizing by the amount of light in the room that it must be later than he wanted it to be, he braved the malicious sunbeam again by rolling back on his left side to peer at the clock.

  No clock.

  No phone.

  No bedside table.

  Huh?

  Then he remembered hearing Beth’s leg or arm knock the table over as they’d wrestled last night like possessed teenagers on the bed. Some foreplay, that turned over furniture. With Beth, sometimes the earth moved even before penetration.

  He scooted sideways on the bed, moving completely out from beneath the sheet and realizing that it was cool in the room; the air conditioner was still on high.

  There was the table on the floor, all right, along with what had been on it.

  Carver reached out and turned the clock around, then right side up: 9:15. He didn’t like to stay in bed past eight, no matter what time he’d gone to sleep. Made him feel brain-dead the rest of the morning.

  He grabbed the table by a leg and drew it nearer, then used both hands to stand it upright. Placed the clock on it, then the white plastic phone base. Reeled in the receiver, resisting like a hooked fish on its springy, coiled cord, and dropped it into its cradle.

  Instantly the phone rang and Carver jumped.

  When it began its second ring a bolt of pain shot through his head, and he snatched up the receiver and held its cool hardness to his ear.

  Beth’s voice said, “Fred?”

  “Yeah.” God! What a taste in his mouth!

  “Remember me from last night?”

  “Vague recollection.”

  “Hattie Evans just phoned my room, lover. She said she’d been trying to call you but only got a busy signal.”

  “You knocked the receiver off the phone last night,” Carver said. “Knocked the whole damned table and contents over. I just woke up and put everything back together.”

  “Whatever. Thing is, Hattie said for me to tell you she found her husband’s prescription bottle.”

  Carver came all the way alert and sat up. His bare toe touched his cane where it had fallen on the floor. “She say it was Luridus-X?”

  “Didn’t get into that.”

  “I’m going to drive over to her place and get the bottle, then take it into Orlando for analysis. Wanna come with me?”

  “Sure, but I’m still in bed.”

  Where did she think he was?

  “So meet me at the lab in Orlando in about an hour. Just a second. Hold on.” He’d spotted the memo pad that had been next to the phone on the floor, and scooted off the bed and down to a sitting position on the carpet. After straightening out the pad’s kinked pages, he found the analysis lab’s address and gave it to Beth.

  “Got it,” she said. He knew that with her memory she never had to write down addresses or phone numbers. “See you there in an hour, Fred, and we can have some breakfast while we wait for test results.”

  He hung up, hoping she was right and the lab would provide answers about Luridus-X that quickly. Probably they were computerized and could do it. God bless microchips.

  Using the mattress and his cane for support, he stood up and waited a few seconds for the room to level out. Then he hurried into the bathroom to step in and out of the shower before getting dressed and leaving for Hattie’s house.

  She’d seen him drive up and was waiting for him with the door open.

  Hattie was wearing a belted dress that emphasized her waspish midsection and schoolteacher posture. The dress was made of some kind of soft, crinkly material and was white with thin pastel stripes of various colors that gave it a fresh, crisp look that suited her personality. Her perfume was an elusive hint of roses in the warm morning. She was smiling with satisfaction and a kind of eagerness, as if this might be the end of the semester and exam day. In a way, that was the situation.

  “I finally found it in here,” she said, leading Carver to the kitchen. The tiles and appliances were gleaming. There was half a pot of coffee in the Braun brewer, permeating the kitchen with an aroma that ordinarily would have made Carver hungry for breakfast. Not this morning.

  Hattie opened a cabinet that contained a rack of small spice containers in front and several wine and liquor bottles in back. “It was in with the spices, where I must have placed it by mistake after Jerome left it here in the kitchen. We used this cabinet for nothing other than spices and seldom-served beverages like hard liquor and mixing ingredients. I haven’t
had much company or done any fancy cooking for quite a while, so I hardly ever looked in this cabinet. I don’t remember opening the door since Jerome passed, actually. Anyway, I glanced in here this morning without any real hope of finding the medication, and there it was next to the anise.”

  “Where is it now?” Carver asked. He was eager to get to the lab in Orlando, anxious for answers.

  She reached into a pocket in her dress skirt and handed him a small brown plastic bottle about the size of some of the spice bottles. Only this one had a medical center pharmacy prescription label fastened to it with clear cellophane tape. It was half full of a syrupy liquid that appeared quite dark, even taking into account the color of the bottle.

  Carver held the bottle up and squinted at the scrawled lettering on the label. Nowhere did it seem to read “Luridus-X” but the directions were for Jerome to take one half-teaspoonful before bedtime if having difficulty sleeping.

  “Sure this is it?” Carver asked.

  Hattie said, “It’s not the kind of thing I’d be unsure of, Mr. Carver, or I wouldn’t have phoned you or your, uh, associate.”

  Carver slipped the bottle in his pocket and told Hattie he was driving it into Orlando for analysis; he’d call her as soon as he learned what it contained.

  Her eyes were bright and grimly determined as she said, “We’re truly going to discover some things about Jerome’s death now, aren’t we, Mr. Carver?”

  “One way or the other.” He told her he’d find his own way out, but she followed him as he limped back into the living room and toward the door.

  When he dug the cane’s tip into the carpet and stopped abruptly, she bumped into him.

  “Something the matter?” she asked.

  “That,” Carver said. He pointed with his cane at the sun-washed view out the living-room window.

  A Winnebago motor home was parked across the street, and Adam Beed had climbed out and was buttoning his dark suit coat. He was staring at Hattie’s house with a nasty little smile Carver had seen before.

  Carver told Hattie who he was.

  She stared out the window and stood even more erect, jutting out her chin. “Leave by the back door, Mr. Carver,” she said firmly. “Make it to your car and deliver that bottle to the police or the laboratory in Orlando.”

  Carver watched Adam Beed stride toward the house. He was carrying an attaché case and looked like a prosperous, muscular insurance agent on his way to bore prospective clients. But he wasn’t that at all.

  “You’re my employee, Mr. Carver, so please obey my instructions this instant.”

  He didn’t move.

  “You’re being recalcitrant.”

  “I won’t leave you alone,” he said. “I’m going into the kitchen. If Beed asks about me, tell him I left fifteen minutes ago with Lieutenant Desoto, in Desoto’s car.”

  She looked up at him with fear in her eyes, but also resolve. Carver thought she was about to speak, but she remained silent.

  He limped to the kitchen and got busy, and within seconds heard the door chimes pealing like alarm bells.

  36

  FROM WHERE HE SAT at the kitchen table, Carver heard the chimes sound two more times, Hattie was in no rush to go to the front door.

  Then he heard the door open, Beed’s voice from out on the porch. Carver couldn’t understand what he was saying, but his tone was amicable.

  “He isn’t here, I’m afraid,” Hattie said. “He left with Lieutenant Desoto ten or fifteen minutes ago. Should I—”

  There was the sound of a slap.

  “How dare—” Another slap.

  The front door closing.

  Silence.

  Carver gripped his cane and fought the impulse to get up and go into the living room. He hadn’t expected Beed to become violent so quickly; if he’d been boozing as heavily as Desoto suspected, he might be on the very edge. Carver had handled it wrong. He knew that now but it was too late; he had to follow the course he’d set.

  “I assume Mr. Carver’s in the house,” Beed said loudly in the living room.

  “I told you—”

  “I know,” Beed interrupted Hattie. At least he didn’t slap her this time. “Carver, you hear me?”

  Carver held his silence. He’d screwed up about as much as fate would allow.

  He heard movement in the living room, footsteps going away, then coming nearer. He drew the Colt from its holster and laid it on the table with his fingertips resting lightly on it. He hadn’t wanted to use it, but he thought now there might be no choice. He’d used the gun before and knew he could do it.

  Adam Beed appeared in the kitchen doorway. He was holding an AK-47 automatic weapon in his right hand. His thick left arm was clamped around Hattie. The left side of her jaw was ballooned out and her eyes were teared with rage and fear. The automatic’s sleek blue barrel wasn’t aimed at Carver. It was digging into Hattie’s ribs.

  “Ah, here’s where you’ve been keeping yourself,” Beed said, as if making small talk at a party. So neatly and conservatively dressed—blue suit, white shirt, red tie—and holding gun and hostage, he looked like a political fund raiser who’d gone too far. He was grinning but there was a tic in the parchmentlike flesh beneath his right eye. He appeared pale, strung out, and dangerous. A wave of fear hit Carver, and he waited until he had control before answering.

  “What caused you to drop by?” he asked. He was pleased that his voice remained level and conversational. He hadn’t removed his fingertips from the gun, but he knew he couldn’t use it while Beed had Hattie.

  “The social butterfly in me, I guess. Why didn’t you say something when I called your name?”

  “That old maxim, ‘If you don’t have anything nice to say about somebody . . .’ ”

  Beed nodded toward the Colt. “I’d like that gun for my collection.”

  “I don’t want to sell it.”

  “No, but I’m sure you’ll give it away rather than see old lady all over the walls. Drop it on the floor and slide it over here with your foot.”

  Carver obeyed.

  Beed released Hattie as he stooped gracefully and picked up the gun. He stuck it in his belt inside his suit coat and came all the way into the room. Hattie edged over to stand near Carver. She seemed calm but for a faint quivering in the fingers of her hand near Carver’s cheek.

  Beed’s glance traveled around the kitchen. “Another thing I want,” he said, “is a small brown bottle.”

  Carver said, “I’ll just bet.”

  The flesh beneath Beed’s eye danced again and he leveled the automatic at Carver. “The old bitch here’s all I need to get that bottle. Something you should keep in mind.”

  “Another thing to keep in mind is that if I tell you where it is, you’ll kill us both.”

  “Definitely. Gonna kill you both either way and it doesn’t matter if we all know it. You two fall on the debit side of the ledger, and there’s nothing I enjoy more than balancing the books.”

  “The way you subtracted Roger Karl and Otto Fingerhut?”

  Beed shrugged. “There are layoffs in every business.”

  A sound from outside caught his attention. Carver hadn’t heard it.

  Now he did hear something, the slam of a car door.

  “Let’s go into the living room,” Beed said, like a considerate host trying to put his guests at ease.

  Carver stood up and limped after Hattie. Beed followed with the automatic, an unwanted, menacing shadow.

  Through the living-room window Carver saw a gray Cadillac parked behind the Winnebago. Nurse Monica Gorham and an extremely thin Latin man were walking up Hattie’s driveway toward the house. The man was wearing a dark pinstripe suit even spiffier than Beed’s. Nurse Gorham was dressed in a severe gray business suit with pale stockings and white high heels beneath its modest-length skirt. Everyone other than Carver and Hattie was dressed for a board of directors’ meeting.

  Keeping the gun trained on Carver, Beed opened the front door to ad
mit them.

  Inside, Nurse Gorham gazed at Carver and Hattie with remote curiosity, as if they might be objects in an aquarium.

  The Latino barely glanced at them. He had a smooth complexion and was almost feminine looking, naturally dark around the eyes as if he wore makeup. It took a second glance to see that he was probably in his forties. He gave the impression this was all distasteful and he’d rather be someplace else. Well, so would Carver. Philadelphia, even.

  Carver guessed and said, “Hello, Dr. Sanchez.”

  The man nodded to him with a slight smile that wasn’t at all infectious. He had the unrevealing eyes of a snake.

  “It hardly matters if he knows you,” Beed said to the man.

  Dr. Sanchez said, “If it did, I wouldn’t be here.” He spoke with a slight accent, probably Cuban, and a calm authority that meant he was in charge. “Did you get what we want?”

  “Haven’t had a chance.”

  “What about next door?”

  “Game old fucker,” Beed said. “I worked on him last night until he lost consciousness once too often and I couldn’t revive him. He never really spilled his guts, but whatever he knows, he won’t be telling it around town.”

  “Val!” Hattie said. “What have you done to Val?”

  “Old fart’s in love with her,” Beed said. “That’s why he wrote her those anonymous letters about her husband’s death and got this whole mess started.”

  “Val wrote those letters?” Hattie said. So the culprit was right next door. She glanced over at Carver. What a detective he was.

  Beed said, “Shut the fuck up.” His professional veneer was falling away fast. He looked at Carver. “I followed you into Orlando and had a talk with Mark the friendly pharmacist, told him I was your assistant. He told me about that list of medications you showed him.”

  “Then I suppose Nurse Gorham checked the medical center files.”

  Nurse Gorham said, “I found a spreadsheet program in the files instead of the Keller Pharmaceutical disk, and the computerized Christmas card mailing list instead of Jerome Evans’s medical history.”