Hot

by John Lutz

  “I’ll just clean up some paperwork here,” Wicke said, “then I’ll go talk to Davy. Maybe we can throw light on this thing.”

  Carver thanked him and limped from the office. There was no point getting on the wrong side of Chief Wicke, but he didn’t think he could count on him for a lot of help. The incident had convinced Carver that Henry was on to something. Carver, younger and taken more seriously than Henry, would pose a genuine threat, so Davy, on his own or on Walter Rainer’s orders, had attempted to scare him off the case.

  He slid in behind the Olds’s steering wheel and sat with the windows up and the engine and air conditioner off, thinking and perspiring. It would be necessary to move in on the Rainer estate and watch it carefully, and for that he’d need help. It was time to ask Beth to drive down and join him.

  Carver was aware he tended to be too independent, to become obsessive and develop tunnel vision to go along with what Desoto often referred to as his dog-with-a-rag neuroses. Once committed to anything, he found it very difficult to give up, even when logically he should. Obsession could be his weakness as well as his strength; a dog tugging on a rag sometimes lost a tooth and the rag.

  He was sure he wanted Beth on Key Montaigne because he needed somebody reliable to spell him staking out the Rainer estate. It couldn’t be because he missed her and needed her in ways other than professional. Sitting there on the sweat-moistened upholstery and suffering in the heat, that kind of need must be the farthest thing from his mind.

  Right.

  That settled, he started the engine and got what he could from the laboring air conditioner.

  10

  IT WAS LATE the next morning before Carver was able to contact Beth. She’d been at the library working on a paper for a postgraduate communications class at the University of Florida, but she told him it would be no problem to set it aside and help him in Key Montaigne. She’d leave soon as possible, she said, and should be able to drive south and join him by that evening. “You and I got a dinner date,” she told him.

  He said he’d make reservations at the Key Lime Pie.

  “I gotta dress up for that place?” Beth asked.

  “Casual clothes are de rigueur there,” he assured her, wondering what Fern the waitress would think if Beth strolled into the Key Lime Pie on Carver’s arm, looking like a high-fashion model for Ebony.

  “Bring the infrared binoculars,” he added. “Some of what we’ll be doing’s at night.”

  “I’ll just bet.” He liked her tone of voice.

  “Incidentally,” he added, “bring my gun, too.”

  “‘Incidentally,’ huh? You step in something nasty down there, Fred?”

  “I’m not sure yet. The gun’s in a brown envelope taped to the back of my top dresser drawer.”

  “I know where it is, and I’ll bring it with me. You just try’n stay alive till I get there to take care of you.”

  Carver said, “Bring along some extra ammunition.”

  “Never leave home without it.”

  After hanging up on Beth, Carver rummaged through Henry’s refrigerator and came up with the ingredients of lunch: some oat bran health bread Henry kept in there so it would stay fresh longer, extra-lean sliced turkey that smelled edible enough, some Heartline low-cholesterol cheese, a half-used jar of vitamin-enriched diet mayonnaise. Henry apparently feared slipping physically as well as mentally in his old age.

  Carver built a sandwich that was probably no more than two or three calories, then washed it down with three beers from the six-pack of Budweisers in the back of the refrigerator. He reminded himself he’d better stop by the Food Emporium Supermarket in town and pick up some more beer and food. He and Beth might get tired of romping through the culinary delights of Fishback’s eateries.

  Before returning to the Bing residence, he decided to give Millicent Bing a call. Shy as Chief Wicke said she was, she might be more likely to answer the phone than the doorbell.

  The Bings were listed in Key Montaigne’s thin phone directory. It took ten rings, but finally Millicent picked up the receiver and uttered a tentative hello.

  Carver told her who he was, then said, “Katia Marsh over at the research center assured me you’d talk with me.”

  “Katia said that?”

  “Just this morning.”

  “Talk with you about what?” She had the wary voice of a hostile witness at her own trial.

  “Henry Tiller.”

  “You mean his accident?”

  “If it was that.”

  A pause while she thought things over. “You’re not from an insurance company, are you? Trying to trick me?”

  He laughed at the absurd notion that he might be devious; maybe he’d sell her some magazine subscriptions while he was at it. “No, no, honestly, I’m just a friend of Henry’s who promised him I’d look into what happened. I can be at your place within fifteen minutes, Mrs. Bing, and I won’t take up much of your time at all. I thought I’d just stop by for a few minutes before lunch, while I was out.”

  The connection was silent for so long he wondered if she’d hung up. Then: “Oh, I suppose it’ll be all right, if it’s soon as you say.”

  “It will be, Mrs. Bing. Thank you.” He hung up before she could change her uncertain mind. She seemed the type who reconsidered everything, always combed her hair twice.

  Less than fifteen minutes later he was standing on the shaded porch of the Bings’ house by the sea, hoping the dozen or so bees circling among the bougainvillea wouldn’t get it into their collective mind to swarm in his direction before his knock was answered. One of them made a darting, circling pass at him, like an armed reconnaissance plane.

  Before the bee had a chance to return with friends, the door swung open and Carver saw that Millicent Bing was indeed the sharp-faced woman in the research center brochure. She was thin, and slightly stoop-shouldered despite the disguising oversized shoulder pads beneath her silky gray blouse. She had narrowed and suspicious blue eyes and a marvelous pale complexion. Her sharp, elongated nose and receding chin gave her the look of a pretty but nervous ferret.

  “Mr. Carver?” Her voice sounded even more tentative in person than on the phone.

  He smiled at her and confirmed who he was, then thanked her again for letting him take up her valuable time. That seemed to make her feel guilty, and she hastily invited him inside.

  “I notice you’ve got a bee problem on the porch,” Carver told her.

  “They’re like sentries,” she said. “They discourage unwelcome visitors.”

  She could sure put a guest at ease.

  It was almost cold in the living room. The severe modern furniture and chrome-framed, surreal-looking color photographs of sea life didn’t add one degree of warmth.

  Millicent invited Carver to sit down, and he shifted his weight over his cane then lowered himself into a white vinyl chair with bleached wood arms. It was hard as cold concrete, but it enabled him to extend his bad leg out in front of him comfortably. He could get up out of the chair easily, too, which was always a consideration for a man with a cane.

  Millicent perched on the edge of the low vinyl sofa as if poised for the start of a race. She would have tripped and fallen at the sound of the starter’s gun, though, because her beige skirt was wound like a shroud around her legs. Carver asked her a few perfunctory questions about Henry to put her at ease, then said, “Henry seems to think something might have been going on over at the Walter Rainer estate. I noticed there was a clear view of the grounds from the research center, and I wondered if you or your husband ever observed anything there worth mentioning.”

  She looked flustered for a moment, then puzzled. “What on earth do you mean by ‘something might have been going on’?”

  “Well, Henry wasn’t specific, so I thought I’d ask you and your husband.”

  “Dr. Sam’s in Mexico,” she said, “buying specimens that can only be found along the coast in that area.”

  “Katia Marsh told me t
hat’s where he is,” Carver said, wondering if she called her husband “Dr. Sam” in bed. “About the Rainer estate—”

  “Neither my husband nor I are nosy people, Mr. Carver,” she interrupted. She raised her pointed but almost nonexistent chin in a futile effort to look haughty. “Nor would we like anyone nosing into our business.”

  “I’m not asking you to be nosy,” he assured her. “Or to gossip. Henry’s been run down and almost killed, and the car sped away. A crime’s been committed.”

  She looked astounded. “And you assume it has something to do with Walter Rainer?”

  “I don’t assume anything, Mrs. Bing, I’m only asking.”

  “Well, the answer’s no, I’ve never observed anything unusual there, and my husband’s never mentioned to me that he has, either.”

  “Are you also a research scientist?”

  She seemed amused by the question. “Not I, Mr. Carver. I played the faithful faculty wife for years, until Dr. Sam got the funding to start the research center and aquarium.” She sounded oddly bitter. Must have realized it, and smiled. She had an overbite but an unexpectedly nice smile. “It’s Dr. Sam who’s the biologist, and that’s fine with me. Early in my academic endeavors, I found that science bored me.” She stood up and smoothed her skirt over her thighs. Carver was boring her, too, the gesture suggested; why didn’t he leave?

  He couldn’t think of a good reason not to, and the base of his spine was beginning to ache, so he set the tip of the cane in the Berber weave carpet and stood up from the uncomfortable chair. “I’d like to ask Dr. Sam some of the same questions,” he said. “When will he be back?”

  “When he gets back,” Millicent said. Her Adam’s apple bobbed in her long throat. “I mean, he doesn’t keep to a regular schedule when he goes on buying trips.” She moved toward the door. He noticed that she had almost no breasts, but an elegant lower body. “If you don’t mind, Mr. Carver, I’ve got a great deal of work to do.”

  “I didn’t think you worked.”

  “I do the bookkeeping for the center.”

  “I see.” He limped toward the door. She was alongside him, then ahead of him, holding it open. Warm air rolled in from outside. “When your husband returns,” he said, “would you or he phone me at Henry Tiller’s cottage?”

  “Certainly, but I don’t know when that’ll be.”

  Carver smiled and said, “Whenever. Thanks for seeing me, Mrs. Bing.”

  She didn’t answer. Her mind seemed to be far away as he stepped out onto the porch and she closed the door behind him.

  A bee followed him as he limped back to the Olds. He used his cane to bat it like a baseball, and didn’t see where it went, so he hurriedly got into the car.

  He was sure Millicent Bing was watching him from the window behind the bougainvillea-strewn trellis as he backed out of the driveway onto Shoreline.

  She was obviously nervous about something, maybe even afraid, but it wasn’t necessarily connected with Henry Tiller or Walter Rainer. Carver cautioned himself not to see something sinister where there was no proof. Fear could become habit, then personality. As with a lot of people, Millicent Bing’s unease might be about something relatively innocent that had ingrained itself as dread, maybe even something that could be traced back to her childhood.

  The Easter Bunny?

  11

  CARVER DROVE BACK to the cottage and called Henry Tiller at Faith United in Miami. Henry answered the phone on the third ring. He sounded weak.

  “How’re you making it, Henry?” Carver asked.

  “They got inside me with their knives, took out some of this, some of that, sewed me up where I was tore. What there’s left of me’s gonna be okay, I think. They gave me a CAT scan yesterday and now they say I got a head injury. Hell, that’s just what I need, the way people think of me already.”

  “They’re gonna have to start taking you more seriously, Henry.”

  “Ah! You’re on to the bastards?”

  Carver filled Henry in on what had occurred since his arrival on Key Montaigne. He tried not to make it sound as if they had enough to send Walter Rainer to the gas chamber.

  When he was finished, Henry sounded stronger, exhilarated. He said, “Gotta be that shit-bum Davy tried to run you off the road, Carver.”

  “Wicke thinks so, too, I’m sure, only he won’t admit it.”

  “Wicke’d be a good cop if he wasn’t running so scared of his job. But the fact is, his position’s a political appointment, so he kisses ass to keep it. And Walter Rainer’s ass is one of the kissed. I up and told Wicke that one time. Got him irritated, I think.”

  Carver smiled. He could imagine.

  “I figure it was Davy in a rented car tried to do me in, too,” Henry said.

  “Wouldn’t doubt it,” Carver told him. “Proving it’s the hard part. You know police work.”

  “Sure as hell do. From years in the department in Milwaukee, then later in Lauderdale. You give me a call when you learn anything else, you hear?”

  “I hear,” Carver said.

  “I think you oughta find out about that dead boy, too. The one washed up on the beach. Did I tell you there was traces of cocaine found in his blood?”

  “You told me.”

  “Something like that happens, and that ass-kisser Wicke’s got the nerve to tell me there ain’t no drug trafficking to speak of on Key Montaigne.”

  “Effie seems to agree with him,” Carver said. “She told me there’s a fair amount of drug use, but nothing big-time happening.”

  “Hell, Effie’s just a kid. She don’t run in the kinda major money circles that’d deal hard stuff.”

  “The boy found washed up on the beach was just a kid, too. Younger than Effie, in fact.”

  “Younger in years, maybe,” Henry said, “but he was a runaway. Two months on the street and Effie’d be ten years older, God willing it never happens.”

  “You’re right about that,” Carver said. He’d met too many kids not old enough to shave or have regular periods, whose lives were set on unalterable courses to hell. Drugs were always involved. Always.

  “There was cocaine in that dead boy’s blood, Carver. I figure we oughta find out what that means.”

  “We will. You get some rest, though, Henry. Best thing you can do is get well enough for them to release you so you can come down here and help with the investigation.”

  “You’re right, damnit! You keep in touch with me, you hear, Carver.”

  “I hear,” Carver said again.

  “This phone call was better painkiller than them little white pills the nurses give me. I might disconnect these tubes they got plugged into me and check myself out.”

  Carver didn’t know if he was serious. “Listen, Henry, just rest. Recuperate.”

  “Aw, that’s what I’ll do,” Henry said. “You stay in touch, Carver, you hear?”

  Carver said he heard. Hung up. Drank the last beer in Henry’s refrigerator.

  He’d go nuts waiting in the little cottage for Beth to arrive, so he decided to drive into Fishback and pick up the beer and groceries, then go by police headquarters and see if Chief Wicke was around. Carver was working for Henry, and Henry was right again: It was time to find out more about the boy who’d mixed cocaine and seawater.

  The Food Emporium was hot, humid, and crowded. Every resident and tourist in the area must have decided to go shopping today. Carver limped along with his cane, bumping with his grocery cart and getting bumped in return. The cart’s left front wheel squealed and hopped with regularity, exactly the way they manufactured them. Every other passing cart was equipped with a squawling, grasping infant in the wire basket-seat where produce normally went. A fat woman in a frilly white sundress nudged Carver aside with her hip and snatched the last jar of dill pickles from a top shelf. “I got a coupon,” she explained.

  Finally, after checking out behind a man with twenty items in the ten-items-or-less express lane, he limped behind the squeaking cart to his car
and slung the plastic bags into the trunk. Shoved the cart out of the way and drove from the lot feeling like a commando who’d just raided an enemy storehouse.

  Deciding that fifteen or twenty minutes in the Olds’s trunk wouldn’t spoil anything that needed refrigeration, he drove to police headquarters, where the mayhem was less frequent and more controlled than at the Food Emporium. He parked in the side lot, in the shade of the building, and struggled out of the car to lean on his cane.

  The Toyota station wagon he’d seen there yesterday rolled into the lot and braked alongside the Olds. Today it had a magnetic cherry light stuck on its roof. Chief Wicke climbed out. Every hair on his head was in place and he looked dry and cool, even had his dark blue uniform tie tightly knotted. The Toyota must have a terrific air conditioner. Not like the Olds.

  “Mr. Carver again,” Wicke said, walking around the Olds and showing a smile as frosty as the rest of him. “Here to see me, I presume.”

  “Am I getting to be a pest?” Carver asked. He could feel rivulets of sweat trickling down his back; they felt like insects crawling toward his belt.

  “I’ll hide behind the Fifth Amendment,” Wicke said. “C’mon inside.”

  Carver followed Wicke into his office and told him what he wanted, and Wicke had the skinny cop he’d been lambasting yesterday pull the file and bring it in.

  “Thanks, Dewey,” Wicke said amiably. They were on the best of terms today.

  Dewey withdrew, poker-faced, and closed the door behind him. He’d been chewing candy or breath mint and left in his wake the scent of peppermint.

  “Dead kid’s name turned out to be Leonard Eugene Everman,” Wicke said, staring into the open file folder. “Just turned thirteen before he died. Coroner’s report says death by drowning, traces of cocaine in the blood but not nearly enough to make him an O.D. victim. Enough to fuck up his judgment and swimming ability, however.”

  “Any other marks on the body?”