by John Lutz
Her smile stuck, didn’t waver. It was a good one. Her facial muscles had to be tiring. “I’m Chris,” the woman said. “I can assist you if you’re interested in one of our units. Our one-bedroom Poseidon model is on sale this month, with special financing. There are plenty of prime weeks left.”
“I’m not interested in buying a time share,” Carver said.
Even that didn’t sweep the smile from Chris’s freckled friendliness, but it did make her smile a bit crooked. What was this guy with the limp and cane doing here if he wasn’t a customer?
Carver gave her back her smile, watched her soften, but just a little. “Tell Mr. Franks I need to talk to him about one of his former employees.”
“Which employee is that?” Chris asked, teeth still going at it but eyes not smiling now; but interested eyes nonetheless.
What the hell, Carver thought, and decided to see what reaction he might get from Chris. “Willis Davis.”
She didn’t seem surprised. She’d expected to hear Davis’s name.
“I’ll tell Mr. Franks’s secretary you’re here,” she said.
Carver watched her sashay across the pale green carpet, around a bespectacled salesman showing a politely interested white-haired couple some brochures, and through a narrow hall between the pastel, partitioned offices where promises and sales were made, more of the former than the latter. Life was such a game of percentages.
While he waited, Carver walked over to gaze out the wide, curved window that overlooked the sea. To his right was a low, grayish-black building that was supposed to appear as if it had been crudely built of driftwood. But its windows were framed in aluminum, and an air-conditioning unit squatted on its flat roof, SUN SOUTH CAFETERIA, a sign on a landlocked weathered dinghy near its entrance read. Behind and to the left of the cafeteria some of the tennis courts were visible. Carver watched a leggy woman in a pink tennis outfit slap neat base-line returns. Her opponent was out of Carver’s sight, beyond the corner of the cafeteria, but whoever was on the other end of the court returned the woman’s shots crisply to almost precisely the same location. It occurred to him that she might be playing a machine that launched tennis balls for practice. To Carver’s right, two men in a yellow golf cart bounced softly to or from the course. Life at Sun South looked posh and easy for those who could afford to buy a time share or two.
“Mr. Carver?”
He turned from the view outside to see a tall blonde in a navy blue dress smiling at him. Standing well behind her, still smiling but looking a bit uncertain, was Chris. Everyone seemed to smile a lot at Sun South, as if the air were tinged with cheer.
“Mr. Franks will see you,” the blonde said.
Carver nodded and followed her toward the hall between the partitions. She walked slowly so he could keep up, which in this case was fortunate, because the spongy green carpeting made walking with a cane a chore.
Franks’s office was large and plush, furnished in pale wood and fabric, and decorated in shades of gray. Franks was large and done in shades of gray himself. He was six feet tall, prosperous-looking and fiftyish, and his expensive gray suit couldn’t quite hide his stomach paunch. He had flawlessly groomed wavy grayish hair, gray eyes, and a rather unhealthy-looking grayish complexion. This was an aging, handsome man who spurned the sun. He was the only person Carver had seen at Sun South who wasn’t smiling.
Franks waited for his secretary to leave before he spoke.
“Sit down, please, Mr. Carver.” He did manage a good old Sun South smile as he motioned toward a chair near his desk, then sat down in his gray, executive’s chair behind the desk. Behind the chair was a window that bathed the visitor in light but silhouetted and to some degree concealed the features of Franks where he sat facing Carver. A cheap and obvious trick to gain advantage in interviews. Carver resented it; too many of these half-ass, big-money entrepreneurs had their offices arranged this way.
Easy, he cautioned himself, don’t be cynical.
But he was cynical. He knew it. Couldn’t help himself.
The office was soundproofed, private to the point of defensive isolation; only the soft sigh of cooled air rolling through the ceiling vents, and the ocean view out the window, gave evidence of an outside world.
“You wanted to talk about Willis Davis?” Franks asked. His voice seemed muffled by the silence, yet still managed to convey an amiable but unmistakable authority.
“Actually, I wanted you to talk about him,” Carver said. “I’m a private investigator, hired to look into his suicide.” He leaned forward and showed Franks his P.I. license.
A flicker of alarm seemed to dance for just an instant over Franks’s distinguished gray features. “Hired by whom?”
“I’d have to get my client’s permission to reveal that,” Carver said. “Professional ethics.”
“Oh? You have those?”
Carver nodded.
“One doesn’t associate the profession of private detective with ethics,” Franks said.
“One is wrong.”
Franks raised a manicured hand that looked as if it had never known manual labor. “I didn’t mean offense.”
“Tell me about Davis,” Carver said.
“Willis was quiet for a salesman, but he knew how to close a deal. He could smell blood, sense vulnerability. I liked him.”
“Would you peg him as the type to commit suicide?”
Franks looked thoughtful. “No, but I’m not sure there is a specific suicidal type.” He leaned back, gazed for a moment at his fingertips resting lightly on the desk. Outside the double-pane window, the ocean rolled soundlessly, as if its power had been tamed. “Are you working with the police?”
“Yes. With Lieutenant Desoto of Orlando.”
Franks touched his fingers together, then pressed them with springy persistence back and forth against each other, and digested that semi-accurate information silently.
“Was Willis Davis happy with his job here?” Carver asked.
“Of course. Oh, he’d get restless now and then, talk about moving on, getting financing and starting some development of his own. But his kind talk that way, think that way. I understand that; I came up through sales myself.”
Carver just bet he had. So smooth. “How did Davis behave in the weeks before his suicide?”
“I would say normally, for him. He was reserved when he wasn’t onto a client. He kept to himself; a private person. Willis Davis seemed to live for his work, knew how to sell and was proud of it. It was like a science to him, Mr. Carver. I have to admit he pulled a few tricks I never heard of.”
“Who were his friends among the other employees?” Carver asked.
“Only one other salesperson I’d describe as Willis’s friend. Sam Cahill.”
“Can I talk to Cahill?”
“He’s no longer with the company. He quit and moved on a few months ago. He didn’t say where he was going, and I’m afraid I’ve lost track of him.”
“You said earlier that you liked Davis,” Carver said.
“Yes, he was a likable man.”
“And an honest one?”
Franks’s grayish face became flushed. “Of course. That’s especially important in this business. In the office where we close deals is a picture of the crucifixion, with an oath of integrity printed on it; I had all my employees sign it, in ink. Sure, sales is like a game, but we’re honest here. I mean that. I’m an honest man.”
“I didn’t mean to imply that you weren’t. I have to ask that sort of thing in a possible murder case.”
Franks looked startled. He turned away for a moment as if to gather his thoughts. His profile was surprisingly hawkish against the bright window, a glimpse of what he had been before so many years and pounds and three-martini lunches. When he turned back to face Carver he said, “Whose murder?”
“Willis Davis’s.”
“But he committed suicide.”
“Some people, including the police, think he might have been murdered. Or that
he might still be alive.”
“Faked his suicide, you mean?” That possibility seemed to interest Franks.
“Maybe,” Carver said. “A phony death. A sales job. Maybe he had a reason.”
“What kind of reason?”
“Hiding from somebody who was out to harm him, perhaps.”
Franks drew a gold ballpoint pen from his shirt pocket, as if he might make a note of something. But he simply rotated the pen a few times between his fingers, then replaced it in the pocket, carefully securing it with its clip. “What do you think?” he asked.
“I’m not sure,” Carver said. “I’m trying to find out.”
A Lucite button on the desk phone began to blink. Franks lifted the receiver and pressed it to his ear, said, “I’ll take care of it,” and hung up. Then he stood up.
“Do you have a card, Mr. Carver?”
“Time for a magic trick?”
“Ah, you like to joke.” No Sun South smile. “I meant a business card, of course.”
Carver gripped the curve of his cane, leaned forward, and straightened up from the chair. He gave Franks one of his cards.
Franks glanced at it, then laid it with a neat little snap on the corner of his desk, as if he were a poker player finishing the deal. The interview was over.
“Thanks for your time, Mr. Franks,” Carver told him, meaning it.
“If you find out anything,” Franks said, “about Willis Davis, will you let me know?”
“I’m doing that for my client,” Carver said.
Franks looked embarrassed, irritated, as if he’d revealed a weakness in himself. “Of course. Afternoon, Mr. Carver.”
“Afternoon,” Carver said, and limped from the office.
His good leg had stiffened up somewhat as he’d sat talking, but he didn’t pay much attention to it as he made his way across the sales-area carpet toward the exit. He was thinking about Franks. Something was bothering the developer, something he hadn’t told the police. Carver was sure of it. The uneasy thing that had looked out through the eyes of so many victims Carver had talked with over the years was alive in Franks. Alive and gnawing on him.
Chris was talking to a prospective customer near the sales display, doing her damnedest to sell time shares. She glanced over at Carver and he waved good-bye.
She smiled at him as he left. Not the Sun South smile. A different sort of smile altogether. Time shares. Weren’t they what all of us dealt in?
CHAPTER 6
Carver drove inland to a phone booth on Regent Street and called Edwina Talbot at Quill Realty. He was told by a syrup-voiced receptionist that Edwina was out showing property and would be back in about an hour. Carver was disappointed. He needed to talk to her and thought it might as well be over lunch.
After hanging up the phone, he noticed a McDonald’s across the street. Even the wealthy residents of Del Moray needed a hamburger fix now and then. He waited for a break in traffic, then deliberately jaywalked and was almost run down by a van laden with teen-agers. He was pleased to find that when really inspired he could move faster with the cane than he’d anticipated.
He ate too many Chicken McNuggets and drank too much diet cola, then walked back to his car. This time he crossed at the corner; he had nothing to prove. On a whim, before getting into the Olds, he stepped into the sun-heated phone booth and tried Edwina again at Quill. He was surprised when he was told she was in.
“Mr. Carver,” she said, “have you learned anything about Willis?”
“Not much,” Carver said, “but I can pose more questions about him. I think we should meet and talk. And call me Carver without the ‘mister’ or we won’t get along.” He’d sounded grouchier than he intended. Too much time spent alone.
“You’ve grown a protective shell, there by the sea, Carver.”
“I’m not by the sea, I’m on Regent Street.”
“Maybe we can talk during lunch,” she said. “Or have you already had lunch?”
“No, I’m starving.”
“Do you know The Happy Lobster?”
“Sure, a fellow crustacean.”
“I mean-”
“I know. The circular glassed-in restaurant on the coast highway.”
“If that’s all right with you, I’ll leave now to meet you there.”
“Fine,” Carver said. “I’ll race you.”
“You seem to have recovered your zest for life, Carver.”
“It comes and goes,” Carver said, and hung up. He patted his full stomach, got in the Olds, and tried not to think about lobsters. Even on an empty stomach, he didn’t like eating them or watching people eat them; they looked too much like big spiders.
He started the engine and drove toward the coast highway.
“Where does this leave us?” Edwina asked Carver, after he’d described his visit with Ernie Franks at Sun South.
Carver looked out the curved window of The Happy Lobster at the vast blue sea and chewed the olive from his martini. “I’m not sure,” he said, swallowing. “The more I try to learn about Willis, the more lost I am. You worked for a while at Sun South; what do you think about Franks?”
“Ernie is a high-priced hustler, but an honest man. And a mush-hearted one. He found religion somewhere along the line. He prides himself on his fairness and his ability as a big-time developer. Maybe at one time he was the kind of semi-confidence man you find in these kinds of real-estate projects, but he isn’t now. Maybe simply because he’s reached the age and bank balance where he doesn’t have to be. Or maybe he really is born again, like the rest of us yearn to be in one way or another.”
“What is his religion?”
“I’m not sure. It’s nothing crazy. He doesn’t speak in tongues unexpectedly or dress funny on weekends.”
“Is he a worrier?”
“No. He’s a juggler of things to do and the time to do them in, but he doesn’t fret over his decisions either before or after he makes them. He’s often preoccupied, energetic and in a hurry, but I wouldn’t describe him as a worrier. Usually he’s cheerful, full of pep talk.”
“He’s worried now.”
“About what happened to Willis?”
“About something concerning Willis. I don’t know what, and Franks isn’t talking.”
Edwina worked studiously at freeing a strand of meat from one of the lobster tails on her plate. She seemed to be concentrating entirely on the task at hand. Then she gazed out the window, a pained, lost expression on her face.
“You okay?” Carver asked.
She turned back. “Yes. I just miss Willis. I miss him all the time. Did you ever feel that way about someone who was gone?”
“Why do you love Willis so much?” he asked her bluntly, without answering her question.
She thought for a moment, a desolate cast to her composed features. “You’re asking for a reason for something that doesn’t rest on a foundation of reason,” she told him. “Love simply is, and then it becomes what it will. We don’t have much choice in the matter.”
“I think we do,” he said.
“Sometimes, maybe.”
“Is there anything you’re not telling me about you and Willis?”
“There’s a lot I’m not telling you. Some of it you wouldn’t understand; some of it is none of your business.” There was no rancor in her tone; she was merely stating facts, keeping the door closed on the intimacy shared by lovers. Not unreasonable.
Yet Carver felt that there might be more to it than that.
She took a bite of lobster meat and watched as he forked another raw oyster from its half shell, dipped it into hot sauce, and popped it into his mouth. Carver had decided he was hungrier than he’d thought, and was on a second plate of oysters. This and two martinis were going to be his second lunch of the day.
“How can you eat something so almost alive?” Edwina asked, wincing in distaste as he let the oyster slide down his throat.
“There is no ‘almost alive,’ ” Carver told her. “There�
��s only alive and dead. There’s no difference between these oysters and your lobster and somebody else’s steak. We kill, then we eat the dead. But we don’t think about it in that light because of mental conditioning. Without all of our carefully developed protective delusions, we’d be in trouble. Me, I never developed the necessary protective layer of delusion about lobsters that have been dropped alive into boiling water.”
“Come off it, Carver, the cook isn’t a murderer because he boiled my lobster alive. And I’m not a ghoul for eating the carcass. And there’s nothing wrong with me because I haven’t developed the callousness to eat raw oysters. The damned things can make you sick, anyway. The cook and I don’t need any protective delusions.”
“You’re missing the point,” Carver said. “We’re the lobsters. It might behoove us to understand the cook.”
Edwina stuck the tines of her fork into a bite of lobster meat and held the fork still. She tilted her head to the side and stared at Carver. “What are you trying to tell me with your seafood-soup philosophy?”
Carver took a slow sip of his martini, then rattled the ice in the glass. “Maybe Willis Davis dropped you alive into hot water, used you somehow, and you can’t or won’t believe it.”
She put down her fork and looked out at a distant ship making its way inexorably toward a hazy horizon. Or was the ship really moving? From here it was impossible to tell. “I’m forty-one years old, Carver, and I’ve been fooled by more than one man. And I’ve fooled a few; I’ve been the cook. The thing is, I’ve played the game both ways and won and lost. It’s wised me up. Willis isn’t conning me. He loved me. I know enough to know that.”
“Maybe it’s a new kind of game,” Carver said. “Maybe you never met a Willis before.”
“I’ve known a few Willises. I’m not sure if I’ve ever met another Carver.”
“That could be a compliment.”
“There goes that protective layer of delusion. What I mean is that your job, your injury, your life, what you were born with-all or some of them have made you tough and cynical.”