by John Lutz
Since she had no idea who he was, Carver climbed out of the Olds and limped with his cane across the heat-softened blacktop and into McDonald’s.
It was bright and cool inside; he was glad Marla had come here. She’d just paid for her food and was carrying a tray toward the seating area. Carver ordered a Big Mac, fries, and diet Coke, then carried them to a booth where he could see Marla. There were about a dozen other customers scattered about the seating area: An old man, three teenage girls having a delicious confab, two guys in white coveralls loudly discussing the new Dodge pickup trucks, a harried-looking mother with three small children—the usual McDonald’s crowd. Even the single woman sitting alone, glumly and methodically chewing her food then sipping soda through a straw, fit right in. Marla Cloy. She didn’t look like a psychopath who’d try to ruin an innocent man’s life.
In the harsh light of the low evening sun streaming through the window, Carver decided she was rather pretty, with delicate features and eyes that were probably dark blue rather than brown—it was difficult to tell from where he sat. Her medium-length black hair framed a round but not fleshy face with cheeks that were either rouged or naturally flushed to give her a healthy, hearty look, like a robust skier who’d just clomped inside from the cold. She moved her head as if sensing she was being stared at, and Carver looked away and concentrated on salting his fries.
When he chanced another glance at Marla she was twisted sideways in the booth and was drawing something from her large brown purse.
It was a paperback book. She opened it to a middle page that was bent at the upper corner, then became engrossed in it, eating slowly and automatically without looking at her food. Now and then, also with her eyes still trained on the book, she moved her head sideways to sip from the straw protruding from her drink. Carver stared hard and tried to catch the paperback’s title. Marla’s fingers covered most of it, but he could make out that the book was written by a novelist named Ruth Rendell.
He finished his supper while Marla was still eating and reading, then he went outside to wait for her.
Within ten minutes she emerged, carrying her purse with its strap slung diagonally across her body again, and walked to her car without glancing in Carver’s direction, He wondered if she thought someone might try to snatch her purse between the restaurant door and the little Toyota. What might she have in there besides the paperback novel? Mace? A gun? This was Florida, land of sun, sand, and the occasional homicide. Not a few purses contained guns.
He followed her to a combination gas station—grocery store on Shell, where she filled the Toyota’s tank with low-octane gas and bought a half-quart carton of milk. Then she drove the short distance back to her house on Jacaranda and parked in the driveway. She was disappearing inside and shutting the door behind her as Carver drove past.
He circled the block again and parked in his previous spot, but a few feet nearer the house this time so he could see the front and one of the side windows.
That didn’t make much difference. Only faint movement was visible for a few seconds in the side window, then a pale hand as the shade was lowered. The front drapes were already closed.
A few minutes after seven-thirty, Marla came out of the house again and climbed into the Toyota. This time she was wearing a simple green dress with bare shoulders and had on black patent leather high heels.
Carver followed her to a lounge called Willet’s Bullet on Tenth Street and watched her stride inside.
He sat in the heat and waited until it was almost dark before going in after her.
Willet’s Bullet was crowded, which was no surprise to Carver, who for more than an hour had watched more people enter than leave. It was one of those bars that served finger food. Half the folks at the tables along the wall opposite the long bar were eating as well as drinking. An old man with stooped shoulders was acting as bartender while two women in black-and-white outfits were serving the tables. An all-female rock group with skull makeup, wearing black plastic trash bags cut to serve as dresses, was writhing around on a large video screen and moaning loudly and rhythmically about cancer and death and hell. Apparently girls didn’t just want to have fun.
Carver saw Marla sitting alone at a small table in back, near the entrance to the rest rooms, staring at the video and sipping what looked like a glass of white wine. He sat at the bar where he could see her in the mirror and ordered a draft Budweiser.
“How long you walked with that cane?” the man next to him asked. His words were slightly slurred, and Carver figured he was only a little drunk. Just enough to be a pest, if he was talkative.
“Few years,” Carver said, studying the man in the mirror. He was about sixty-five, with a wrinkled white shirt open at the collar and red suspenders. His hair was gray and bald on top like Carver’s. But his face was pale and jowly and he had bags beneath his eyes. The much younger Carver was tan and the fringe of hair around his ears and down the back of his neck was tightly curled. His blue eyes were alert and slightly uptilted at the corners, giving him an oddly feline expression. His upper body, clad in a black pullover shirt, was lean and muscular from walking with the cane and swimming. He looked like a feral cat. The older man exchanged glances with him in the mirror, and Carver hoped he’d be sober enough to sense this wasn’t a welcome conversation.
No chance.
“I used to walk with a cane,” the man said. “Had this broken leg that just wouldn’t heal. Doctors said it was something wrong with my bone. I mean all my bones. Like in the marrow. Never drank enough milk or ate enough bananas when I was a kid.”
“That’s too bad.”
Carver was watching Marla in the mirror. She looked lonely there, a solitary drinker hypnotized by the glowing video.
“My name’s Bernie,” the man said.
Carver didn’t answer. Hint, hint.
“How’d your leg get fucked up?” Bernie asked.
“I got shot.”
“No shit? Vietnam?”
“Orlando.”
“What are you, a cop?”
“Used to be. Till I got shot.”
A tall man with slicked-back dark hair and tight Levi’s had swiveled around off his bar stool and was approaching Marla. He had a sharp profile, pouty lips, and might have done OK as an Elvis impersonator. Marla continued to stare at the video and seemed oblivious of him, but Carver suspected she knew he was there.
“You stuck with that cane forever?” Bernie asked.
“Nothing’s forever.”
“My first marriage seemed like forever,” Bernie said. “Time didn’t start to move again till after my divorce sixteen years ago. Then it went in a hurry, and all of a sudden I was old. It’s OK, though. I still enjoy sex and good food, though it’s getting harder to tell the difference. I all of a sudden got six grandchildren, too. A guy with six grandchildren has to be very near death.”
The man was standing close to Marla now, talking to her. She was looking right at him and smiling, but shaking her head no. He reached out as if to touch her and she turned away from him. The man shrugged and returned, grinning, to the two guys he’d been drinking with at the bar. It didn’t appear that Marla had come to the bar for male companionship. Unless she was waiting for someone.
“Ever consider acupuncture?” Bernie asked. “That’s what finally got me back on two sound legs. They stuck pins in my ears. I can run five miles now without breathing hard. You believe that?”
“Sure.”
“Then you must have been one piss-poor cop.”
Carver laughed. “I wouldn’t believe you if I was still a cop.”
Bernie sipped his drink. “How ’bout them Marlins?”
“They might win a pennant in ten years.”
“You don’t sound like a baseball fan.”
“I am, though. That’s the problem.”
Bernie lowered his voice. “I notice you’re more interested in that gal in the mirror than in what I’m saying.”
Carver turned to face
him, catching a whiff of alcohol fumes. Bernie was drinking bourbon on the rocks and there were three swizzle sticks on the napkin next to his half-full glass. “You know her?”
“Nope. Just seen her come in a few times.”
“She ever in here looking for male company?”
“Nope. Willet’s ain’t what you’d call a meat market. Mostly working folks drop in here, just want to relax and be left alone.”
“That how she is? A loner?”
“I think so. Now and then some guy tries to get next to her, but she always sends him away. Polite, though. Seems nice enough.”
“Ever talk to her yourself?”
“Not me. She’s too young for me. Anyway, I got this prostate condition, and what it does—”
“Maybe she likes alcohol too much,” Carver suggested.
“Doubt it,” Bernie said. “She usually nurses a drink or two along, then she leaves. I think she just wants to come in here and take time out from the world like the rest of us. She don’t play the video games or nothing, and she don’t seem interested in even talking to the other women in here. A person that drinks alone has got problems, usually. It ain’t good. That poor girl’s most likely got problems.”
“Or is one,” Carver said. He planted the tip of his cane on the tile floor and stood up. “Nice talking to you, Bernie.”
“Don’t run off. Hang around, friend. I’ll buy you one.”
“Thanks,” Carver said, “but I gotta get home to the wife.”
“Hey,” Bernie said, “I know how that goes.”
Carver laid a ten-dollar bill on the bar. “Next one’s on me, Bernie.”
“Next two,” Bernie corrected, smiling broadly.
Carver made for the door.
He waited outside until Marla left alone, then he followed the Toyota back to the little house on Jacaranda Lane.
She stayed inside this time, and at 10:27 the lights winked out. He waited another twenty minutes before driving away down the winding street, enjoying the flow of air through the windows.
Her actions had all seemed innocent enough, he thought. An ordinary woman having an ordinary evening.
Almost as if she suspected someone other than Joel Brant might be watching her.
5
CARVER EASED THE SHOWER handle to cold and waited until his heart might stop before turning off the water. Then he swept the plastic curtain aside and, gripping the towel rack for support, stepped out of the tub and onto a thick, white terry-cloth bath mat. He’d had his therapeutic morning swim in the ocean and he could still feel sand he’d tracked in on the mat beneath his bare feet. With one hand on the washbasin he toweled himself dry, then he quickly shaved, rinsed his disposable razor, and replaced it in the medicine cabinet. He ran a comb through his thick fringe of wet hair then left the bathroom to get dressed.
He didn’t use his cane when he had fixtures or furniture to hold on to for balance. It had been hooked over the bathroom doorknob. He used it now to cross to the cottage’s screened-off sleeping area, smelling coffee. Beth must have gotten the Braun brewer going.
After sitting on the bed and working his way into underwear and gray slacks, he put on gray socks, black leather moccasins he didn’t have to contort himself to lace, and a dark green pullover shirt with a collar and pockets. He didn’t like shirts without pockets. He thought they should all be discounted as factory seconds.
Beth was perched on a stool, leaning with an elbow on the breakfast bar, when Carver limped into the cottage’s main area. She was eating buttered toast and had a cup of coffee poured for him. While he was swimming, she’d showered and dressed. Her hair, straightened long enough ago to have regained much of its curl, was parted neatly on the side and combed back to fall almost to her shoulders. She was wearing a long, baggy white T-shirt with shoulder pads and lettering, too faded to read, on the chest. She had large, firm breasts for such a thin woman, and it was obvious she was braless beneath the shirt. On her feet were the same white leather sandals she had worn yesterday, and presumably she was wearing shorts that were concealed by the length of the shirt. Before her was her oversize coffee mug with newspaper-caption bloopers printed on it. JERK INJURES NECK, WINS AWARD was visible to Carver as he sat on the stool across from her, on the kitchen side of the butcher-block counter.
“Want toast?” Beth asked.
“Maybe later. Just coffee now.”
She sipped. Her motion of lifting and tilting the mug rotated it to read RHODE ISLAND SECRETARY EXCITES FURNITURE EXPERTS. “So tell me about last night,” she said.
“It was wonderful, as usual.”
“Think back a few hours before that, Fred.”
He related his evening following Marla Cloy, then he got up and poured another cup of coffee. It was ordinary coffee this morning, not the chocolate-cinnamon gourmet stuff. He was glad.
“How’d Marla Cloy strike you personally?” Beth asked.
“Not at all. Didn’t lay a hand on me.”
She stared at him. A warning to get serious.
Carver placed his cup on the breakfast bar before getting back on his stool. “She’s not beautiful enough to storm beauty pageants, but she’s attractive.”
“Looks don’t always play a part in it when a dangerous sexual psychopath develops a fixation on a woman. Was there anything unusual in her behavior?”
“Not unless you find going to McDonald’s and reading a paperback novel unusual.”
“What about her going to the bar?”
“Well, it’s not the norm for a woman to sit alone and drink in a place like Willet’s Bullet.”
“But it’s OK for a man to do it?”
“I didn’t say it wasn’t OK or never happened. But most women stay home to drink alone. If they’re at a bar, they’re usually with friends. Dare I say they’re more convivial than us guys?”
“Maybe she’s got a drinking problem.”
“Bernie doesn’t think so.”
“Bernie?”
“An old guy who was nattering at me at the bar. He says she acts as if she just wants to step off the world, unwind, and be left alone for a while. Bernie’s the sort who’s had experience at that kind of thing; he’d know.”
Beth buttered another piece of whole-wheat toast. She took a bite, chewed, and swallowed. “Want the other half of this?”
“Sure.”
She slid the small plate with the half-piece of buttered toast to his side of the counter. “I did some checking, talked to Jeff Mehling.” Mehling was the computer genius at Burrow. “Marla Cloy really is a freelance writer. She even sold a small piece to Burrow last year on the preservation of the manatee. I had Jeff fax me a copy. It’s nothing original; there’ve been hundreds of articles during the past few years in Florida papers about trying to save the manatee. But it’s competent. Filler for page six.”
“Hmm. Professional jealousy showing?”
Beth gave him a look that would have made a lesser man scurry for shelter. “Not at all,” she said. “I only wanted to establish for you that the woman’s not faking it. She really is a freelance writer of professional caliber. She’s genuine.”
“She didn’t act particularly afraid that Brant might be following her,” Carver said.
“What do you want her to do, wear a bulletproof vest?”
“Maybe.”
“Maybe she had one on. Or maybe she got her order of protection from the court.” Beth had finished her toast. Now she picked up the slice she’d pledged to Carver and took a large bite out of it. Probably she was still thinking about that professional-jealousy remark. “You do realize,” she said, “that what Marla Cloy has butted up against is typical male reaction. She says she’s being threatened, and the police, and apparently you, think she’s merely another hysterical woman.”
“I’m not sure what she is. Neither is my client. That’s why I’m trying hard to find out. I’m not some stereotype male Bubba who thinks that because a man has a grudge against a woman, she proba
bly deserves it.”
“But you do make the assumption Brant’s story is fact.”
“He is my client.”
“So rather than see Marla Cloy as a victim, you see her as an aggressor.”
“She might be.”
Beth finished Carver’s toast and licked butter off her finger. “Well, we could go round again, but I doubt if it would change anything. We’re simply viewing this matter from two different perspectives.”
“I’m trying to get at the truth,” Carver said. “I don’t have any preconceived notions.”
She smiled. “Everybody has those, Fred. The truth nobody wants to face is that we all carry around our own ideas of the truth. We hardly ever know the real truth—or even if there is one. Life’s an ambiguous experience, lover, so don’t be too sure of anything.”
“Found that out long ago,” Carver said, gripping his cane and sliding off his stool.
“Keep finding it out,” Beth advised. “Where are you going now?”
“I’ve got an appointment to meet with Brant at ten o’clock, to let him know what’s going on.”
“Doesn’t sound as if you’ve accomplished much.”
“If Marla happens to claim he harassed her last night,” Carver said, “I’ll know otherwise.”
“There you go assuming her guilt again, even though she’s the one being stalked.”
“Maybe you’re assuming her innocence because of what you two have in common.”
“Our gender?”
“And you’re both journalists. She wants to save the manatee, you want to save the Everglades.”
“More than that,” Beth said, “I want to save Marla Cloy.”
Brant was waiting in his car with the engine and air conditioner running when Carver turned off Magellan into the strip shopping center parking lot where his office was located. The car was a black Stealth sports car, sleek, powerful, and expensive. And possibly bought with his dead wife’s life-insurance money.
Beth would suggest that, anyway.
By the time Carver had parked and climbed out of the Olds, Brant was out of the Stealth and leaning against the polished black door with his arms crossed. As Carver approached, he pushed away from the car, smiled, and walked toward him with his hand extended. “So detectives keep bankers’ hours.”