by John Lutz
“I’m going back to Sunhaven, but first I need a little background information. Your uncle express any fear for his life when he was at Sunhaven?”
“If he had,” Desoto said, “I’d have gotten him outta there. He did say a couple of times he thought somebody had tossed his room, gone through his things and then tried to put them back the way they’d been so he wouldn’t know.”
“Funny thing,” Carver said. “Edwina was leaving here a few hours ago and saw a car glide down the driveway, she thinks with its engine off. A big car. White.”
“Hmm. You maybe stirred the pot, amigo. Brought something to the surface.” Desoto seemed glad, but at the same time somewhat regretful that he’d brought this kind of possible trouble to Carver. Or to Edwina.
“Why you hired me,” Carver reminded him.
“Yes. You’ll keep me informed?”
“Sure. Also why you hired me.”
Desoto was quiet for a moment. Carver could hear the sounds that empty houses make: the breezy, rushing hum of the air-conditioning unit, the higher-pitched drone of the refrigerator. Now and then a low groan, creak, or snap. The noises made by materials heating and expanding beneath the malicious Florida sun.
Then Desoto said, “There’s something you don’t know, my friend. Something I should have told you.”
Carver waited, not liking the icy sensation on the back of his neck. Friends were more dangerous than enemies. They came with obligations and they knew the chinks in your armor.
“There’s another reason I wanted you to handle this,” Desoto said. “If you didn’t, it’d all be up to Lieutenant William McGregor.”
Carver felt his stomach roll over. McGregor was a Fort Lauderdale police officer who’d been in on the investigation of the murder of Carver’s son last year. He had this idea he’d saved Carver’s life and solved the case, and parlayed that into a lot of publicity that resulted in his being hailed for heroism and then promoted. Those had been his goals all along. Justice wasn’t of much interest to McGregor.
“I thought McGregor was a captain,” Carver said. “In Fort Lauderdale.”
“So he was,” Desoto said. “But things do change. A few months ago there was some question about the fidelity of a Fort Lauderdale politico’s wife. An older woman, but not without beauty.”
“She was seeing McGregor?” Carver asked. He couldn’t imagine the towering, homely McGregor as a lothario, stealing someone’s wife. Not unless the woman liked her men vulgar and unscrupulous. But then, some women did.
“She was paying McGregor to keep quiet about her affair with her brother-in-law,” Desoto explained. “Then one day she broke down and confessed everything to her husband, who was in a position to force McGregor’s resignation from the Fort Lauderdale department. The only thing McGregor could do was accept a position in a smaller department at reduced rank. The Del Moray department.”
“Why the hell would anyone hire him?” Carver asked.
“He’s an acquaintance of your fair city’s mayor,” Desoto said. “And my guess would be the mayor doesn’t have any choice. You know McGregor; kinda guy collects secrets and turns them into currency of one kind or another. Listen, I was afraid if I told anyone but you what I thought, what Uncle Sam had told me, there mighta been an investigation by the Del Moray law, with McGregor having a hand in it. I wouldn’t want that. I don’t like McGregor.”
“Only folks who like poisonous snakes like McGregor,” Carver said.
“Ah, then you understand.”
“Yeah, but I’m not crazy about it. Sooner or later I’ll have to deal with McGregor. Once he finds out you and I are in this—two cops, and not his best buddies at that—he’ll get curious.”
“You can deal with him; you have before.”
“I’ll keep him out of it as long as possible,” Carver said. “Do my nosing around quietly.”
“I’ll let you get to your work, then, amigo, and I’d better get busy with mine. Crime’s picking up here.”
Carver said good-bye and hung up, leaving Desoto to his Latin rhythm and his busy day. Orlando was a rapidly expanding city with growing pains, and the police department was hard-pressed to keep up. It had been that way even when Carver was on the force. Always more crime than time.
He put on his shoes, then limped into the bathroom and rinsed away the sleep-sour taste in his mouth with some kind of blue, minty liquid Edwina had bought. He squinted at himself in the mirror. A dusty swirl of sunlight streaming in through the window highlighted his graying stubble and made it evident he hadn’t shaved closely enough that morning. So what? Scruffy guys were in style. They were everywhere, like dressed-up bums, and women couldn’t get enough of them. He raked his fringe of hair back with his fingers and told himself he was ready to do business. Told himself twice, so he believed it.
But as he stepped outside, the heat sapped him of much of his resolve. For a moment he thought it would be nice to go back in the house and stretch out again on the couch and breathe cool air. Then he gripped his cane with a sweat-slippery hand and reminded himself that the weather forecast called for rain sometime this afternoon. That would cool things off for a while, before it became steam. There was a price that went with beaches and palm trees, and it could be calculated in Fahrenheit.
He made his way across the wide driveway to where the Olds squatted half in sun and half in shadow.
The big engine fired right up and clattered loudly for a moment before the heat-thinned oil built pressure. Carver wristed perspiration from his forehead and jammed the shift lever into Drive.
He knew how to tail suspects, but his police training hadn’t included spotting someone following him. When he jockeyed the Olds in a sharp, rocking left turn out of the driveway, he gave no more than a glance at his rearview mirror.
It was Satchel Paige who’d suggested people not look back because something might be gaining on them.
That kind of advice could cause trouble.
6
WHAT CARVER NEEDED WAS a clearer picture of the people involved in this. What sorts were they? Where and how did they live? What were their interests? Their virtues and vices? Who were their friends? Every problem, almost everything in life, sooner or later came down to people. And what they did to each other and why.
Birdie Reeves lived in an apartment on the west side of Del Moray, away from the beach and the expensive neighborhoods of the young and successful and the wealthy retirees. Her building was on the corner of West Palm Drive and Newport Avenue. It was a low, rectangular structure of beige stucco with a brown tile roof. The stucco had been chipped away here and there by time and weather and needed paint. A large sugar oak grew in the front yard and cast dappled, shifting light over the grounds. Off to one corner a couple of grapefruit trees that long ago had been planted too close together rustled in leafy embrace. The building sat well back from the street, and the entrance was a cedar gate in an ornate wrought-iron arch that served as a trellis for vines on which bloomed brilliant red and yellow roses. The gate, and the curlicued iron arch, also needed paint. Some oil on the hinges, too. There was a piercing squeal as Carver shoved the gate open and pushed into a courtyard overgrown with weeds and more roses. Somebody here liked roses, all right. There were red and yellow ones to match the blossoms over the gate, but these bloomed on bushes instead of vines. Here and there a white rose or a purple hollyhock peeked out from between high weeds that bent over the brick walk.
Careful how he set the tip of his cane on the uneven bricks, Carver limped to a wooden door with a metal D nailed crookedly on it. To the left of the door clung more rose vines; they’d scaled the cracked and patched stucco wall by climbing from one rusty nail to another. The long nails were hammered in a staggered pattern to provide maximum coverage. Someday the wall would be nothing but roses, like a parade float.
In the middle of the D on the door was a round glass peephole. Carver knocked loudly and stood so he was visible to anyone inside. Birdie was working at Sunhaven
; he figured the apartment was empty, but there was always the possibility of a roommate or long-term guest. If anyone answered his knock, he was ready with an insurance-salesman cover story to explain his presence. Carver could be full of bullshit when it was necessary.
The only sound came from the unit next door: a radio tuned to an Atlanta Braves day game. A huge mosquito lit on Carver’s arm and drew about a pint of blood before he realized what was going on and slapped at it. He missed. The insect flitted at his nostrils as if angry with him and then droned away.
Carver tried the knob and wasn’t surprised to find the door locked. This was the kind of neighborhood where people pinched their pennies for everything else, but spent lavishly for locks and window grilles. Even if he’d considered breaking and entering, he’d have had a difficult time picking the bulky, shiny Yale dead bolt that had recently been installed. He glanced at the door to the unit where the radio was playing. It had the same kind of apparently new dead-bolt lock.
The sportscaster’s excited voice inside the apartment said, “Deep, deep to left! Back, back, back! . . .” A much calmer voice behind Carver said, “She ain’t home.”
He turned and was face-to-face with a stocky, sixtyish woman in a limp tan housedress. Her broad face would have been plumply pretty except for half a dozen warts on her cheeks and the sides of her nose, and the glint of suspicion in her narrowed blue eyes. Carver knew he ought to do something to alleviate that suspicion. Muster up some charm.
He smiled. A beautiful smile that came as a surprise on such a fierce-looking man. “Know where she is?”
“At work. I’m Mrs. Horton, the building manager. Didn’t catch your name.”
“Didn’t throw it,” Carver said, still with the smile, “but it’s Elmont. Roger Elmont.” The name of the broker who handled his car insurance. “I’m in the insurance business.” He nodded toward the new heavy-duty lock. “Theft insurance’d be a lot cheaper if more people put that kind of hardware on their door.”
Mrs. Horton’s eyes stayed narrowed; Carver saw they might simply appear that way due to the fleshiness of her florid face. She didn’t offer her first name; she thought of herself as “Mrs. Horton,” and expected Carver to address her as such. Hers was a righteous and proper world.
She said, “We had some burglaries in this area about six months ago.”
“This building?”
“Nope. But right down the block. Fella walked in on two punks ransacking his apartment. They gave him a bash on the head took twenty stitches to close. So I got in touch with the building owner—he lives in Miami—and told him I wasn’t gonna keep living here and managing the place ’less he furnished me and the other tenants with pickproof locks. He didn’t want to at first, but he gave in.”
“A wise move on your part,” Carver told her. “And the owner’s. Statistics show the burglary rate’s up all across the country, but especially here in Florida.”
“All them drugs, I reckon. People hooked on them’s gotta steal to support their habits.”
“That’s a big part of it,” Carver agreed. “It costs my company plenty, I can tell you.”
“That what you wanna see Birdie about? Insurance?”
“Is that what her friends call her? Birdie?”
Mrs. Horton nodded. Her shrewd eyes flicked up and down Carver, lingering for a moment on the cane; he wondered if she thought he should be wearing a dark suit and carrying an attaché case full of boring material.
“Actually, all I wanted was to talk to Mrs. Logan about her statement on the crime she witnessed in February.”
Mrs. Horton frowned, sniffed, and backed up a step. “Birdie’s last name ain’t Logan. And she ain’t no missus. Hell, she don’t look any older’n twelve. Little bitty thing, she is.”
Carver gave her his alarmed, then puzzled expression. “Hmm. The main office told me to look up Mrs. Betty Logan, 126 Newport.”
“This building only sides on Newport,” Mrs. Horton said with a hint of triumph, as if they were in a game and she’d made a point by knowing something Carver had gotten wrong. “Address here’s West Palm.”
Carver leaned hard on his cane and wrestled his wallet from his hip pocket. He drew out one of his own business cards and stared at it. He said in an apologetic voice, “What they have written here is West Newport.”
“Ain’t no West Newport. Street runs north and south.” She was smiling faintly; she was even one up on the bigger brains at the main office. Not a bad day for her.
Carver shook his head and gnawed his lower lip, as if suddenly irritated. He stuck the business card back in his wallet, the wallet back in his pocket. “I’ve wasted a lot of time.”
Mrs. Horton shrugged and backed away a few more steps, allowing Carver room to move around her toward the gate. There was no mistaking the gesture. Obviously he’d wasted some of her time, too, and she was calling a halt to it.
He probed for firm ground with the cane and moved around her. She was wearing cheap, cloying perfume that mingled with the stale smell of perspiration. “At least I’ve seen some beautiful roses,” he told her.
“Manager before me planted ’em,” Mrs. Horton said. “Damn things come back year after year.”
“Perennials,” Carver said.
“I ain’t sure what kind they are. Don’t know one rose from another.”
He apologized again for invading her iron-fenced domain to see a tenant who wasn’t home and had a different name and lived on a different street and was someone else’s tenant. He stopped short of telling her there was no Betty Logan on Newport Avenue. It would have been small satisfaction.
The landlady seemed to feel the same protectiveness toward Birdie Reeves that Kearny had displayed at Sunhaven. Maybe it was because of Birdie’s youth and country-girl naïveté. Or maybe she was simply the kind of vulnerable kid who brought out the parental instinct in people over fifty. He wished he could get Mrs. Horton drunk and pump her for information about Birdie, but he doubted that she drank anything stronger than grapefruit juice squeezed from the fruit of the two trees at the south corner of the building. And that without sugar.
As he played the cane over the brick walkway and awkwardly sidestepped around the inward-swinging gate to the street, he was sure Mrs. Horton was watching him from the other end of the wild garden. They weren’t her roses. He shouldn’t be her thorn. She was glad to be rid of him.
Nurse Nora Rule lived in a different sort of apartment, on Osprey Avenue in the opposite end of town. It was a tan, three-story brick building constructed in a U around an oval swimming pool. The place was well tended and clean and the rent had to be high. There was a long, low carport along the west side of the building, shaded by a line of palm trees planted five feet apart. The trunk of each tree was painted white, the paint ending evenly about four feet above the ground. No one had ever given Carver an adequate explanation as to why people would want to paint the bottoms of tree trunks white. He’d stopped asking.
Each tenant had an assigned parking space. The carport was stocked with late-model cars, a few of them expensive Porsches and the omnipresent Cadillacs and Lincolns. Carver watched a blue Lincoln with darkly tinted windows back from its parking slot and drive away. Windshields and chromed bumpers that weren’t shaded by the carport’s roof glinted in the brilliant sun and hurt the eye.
As he limped toward Nurse Rule’s apartment, he saw that the people poolside were mostly middle-aged and prosperous-looking. Sleek, tanned women lounged about with feline haughtiness in designer swimsuits and sunglasses. Some of the men wore gaudy matching beach outfits of trunks and pullover shirts or light jackets.
A few of the pool people interrupted their chatting and splashing to glance at Carver, but no one said anything about, or to, the gimpy guy dressed like a Paris hoodlum.
A blond woman with short, spiked hair, wearing a skimpy red suit over a deep brown tan, paused on the end of the diving board and grinned with toothy wickedness at Carver, then did a neat swan dive into
the pool. Nifty. Hardly made a splash. She surfaced still grinning, but made it a point to ignore him as she swam toward the shallow end of the pool, where a couple of preteenagers were swatting around a white-and-yellow-striped beachball. She had a nice stroke. Nice everything.
There was an empty brass mailbox next to Nurse Rule’s door with “Nora Rule, #3” neatly lettered on a white card under clear plastic set in a slot. All the units had similar fancy mailboxes. A large bee droned about the mailbox momentarily, saw that no one had sent any pollen, and buzzed away in concentric circles toward a flower bed in front of the unit next door. Wondering if anyone at the pool was watching him, Carver rang the doorbell.
No one came to the door. What a surprise.
A few minutes passed, and he casually stepped off the walk and stood shielding his eyes from the sun while he peered in through the front window.
The furniture looked new and expensive; it was modern, lots of glass and chrome on the tables, sharply angled arms and legs on the low, cream-colored sofa and matching chairs. One of those metal-shaded floor lamps that resembled bulging eyes on long, curved stalks arced above one end of the sofa, as if eager to read over someone’s shoulder. Carver could see into part of the kitchen: a wooden table with gleaming steel legs, an uncluttered sink counter, fancy oak cabinets with brass hardware. There was a gigantic wall clock above the sink, pale blue and shaped like a frying pan, whiling away empty time with its red, oversized second hand. The apartment had about it a decorator’s touch and an almost military neatness.
Carver pushed down on his cane and leaned away from the window. He glanced at his watch, as if he’d had an appointment with Nora Rule and was curious as to why she hadn’t answered his ring. Then he shrugged and made his way back toward where he’d parked the Olds.
No one around the pool paid any attention to him. The kids at the shallow end were arguing over the striped beachball; the woman with the blond spiked hair was standing hipshot, busy sipping a tall, green drink with an orange peel splayed on the glass rim. She was listening raptly to a gray-haired, paunchy guy who apparently swam wearing half a dozen gold chains draped around his neck. Across the street, beyond the palm trees gently swaying in the breeze, lay the white-flecked, undulating blue of the ocean. A few sailboats and expensive cruisers were visible frolicking beyond the breakers.