containing a single book, a collection of short stories by Stanley Ellin.
Carver looked at the room, then at Edwina. He wondered about Willis Davis’s sanity, if Davis had willingly walked away from this.
One end of the room was all closet. Edwina slid open one of four floor-to-ceiling doors. Even the soft rumble of the rollers in their track made a restful sound.
“Almost everything Willis left, I put in here,” Edwina said, stepping aside to give Carver a clear view and access to the closet.
Five suits, two blue and three gray, hung neatly on wooden hangers. Next to them on the closet rod hung several white and pale blue dress shirts with button-down collars; also half a dozen striped ties. The shirts’ sleeve lengths were 34, not so short; almost Carver’s size. On the floor a pair of black wingtip shoes gleamed dully, the kind with thick soles and heels.
Carver leaned against the edge of the open closet door and used both hands to rummage through the pockets of the hanging clothes. They were all empty. He straightened and leaned on his cane. “What about socks and underwear?” he asked Edwina.
She opened the top drawer of a large dresser. Inside were stacks of neatly folded white Jockey shorts and undershirts, along with black socks and two coiled black belts. In the drawer beneath that one were a folded pair of worn jeans and some pullover shirts. Also in that drawer was a flat black-leather attache case with brass latches.
“The rest of the drawers are empty,” Edwina said.
Carver removed the attache case and sat down on the edge of the bed, surprised by the softness of the mattress; so unlike the board-reinforced hardness of his own mattress. He laid the attache case on the bed, figured out how the latches worked, and raised the lid.
The contents were pretty much as Edwina had described. Sales brochures, expense-account forms, gas credit receipts, a used book of Disney World tickets, a pocket calculator, a few white business cards. There was a list of price changes for Sun South units, several sheets of plain white typing paper, and a stamped, blank envelope. Apparently Willis had intended to write a letter but hadn’t gotten the chance or had changed his mind. A suicide note?
Carver closed the attache case and stood up.
“Anything illuminating?” Edwina asked. There might have been a mocking edge in her voice. He sensed strongly that she was keeping something from him. Why, really, did she love Willis so fiercely? Why was she holding on so tightly to him?
“Nothing that sheds much light now,” Carver told her, “but who’s to say when a connection might be made that switches on a bulb? Did Willis wear sport coats very often?”
“No, he usually wore suits. He only owned one sport coat, and the police have it now.”
She let the attache case lie on the bed and abruptly led the way back into the living room, as if she’d suddenly realized Carver was violating a sexual sanctorum and wanted him out. As he followed her along the hall, he noticed the way her long dark hair swung in rhythm to the subtle roll of her hips. Willis Davis, Carver thought, you must be dead.
In the living room she said, “I have a real-estate closing to attend. It’s important.”
“Good luck,” Carver said.
“I’ll need it; I’m dealing with lawyers.” She led the way to the door, not bothering to look back. It was almost as if she had a leash on Carver. For now, he was content to follow.
“If I learn anything, will I be able to get in touch with you by phone tomorrow?”
“Yes, at the office or here.” She seemed pensive, as if she were talking to Carver and mulling over something else altogether at the same time. Had she seen something in the bedroom she didn’t want him to notice? Winston Churchill would have liked Edwina. She was a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside a great shape.
She stood in the doorway and watched as Carver got in his car and negotiated the winding driveway to the street. Low branches scratched an unheeded warning on the Olds’s canvas top as he made a right turn at the end of the drive.
He didn’t notice the rented white compact car that followed the Olds, like a pilot fish trailing a shark, as he hadn’t noticed it when it followed him from the restaurant.
CHAPTER 7
Carver drove around Del Moray for a while, looking at the wide streets, neat rows of palm trees, the rambling, expensive houses. As he drove west, away from the ocean, the streets became narrower, with hills and terraced lawns. The houses were still expensive. Only when he neared the western outskirts of town did he find himself in a poorer section, where the streets needed repaving and the houses repainting and the people hope. Most of the faces he saw on these streets were Latino or black, the maids and gardeners of the wealthier residents in the east end of town. There were shabby-looking night spots here, too, and small and obviously struggling businesses. The poor seemed to be a smaller minority in Del Moray than in most other cities. Still, they were there, and were oddly necessary in a way few would admit. Without the poor, there could, of course, be no rich. It was comforting to some people to have clearly defined rungs on the ladder.
Carver stopped at a drugstore and bought a Del Moray Gazette-Dispatch and a six-pack of Budweiser. He placed the paper and beer on the front seat of the car and got back in.
Ignoring the taunts of a group of young Latinos lounging on a corner near a frozen-custard stand, he made a U-turn, then drove back the way he’d come, toward the highway and home.
The next morning Carver swam for half an hour, then showered and cooked up a big breakfast of eggs, toast, and Canadian bacon. He felt good. He could look at his left leg now and not worriedly compare its size or shape with his right. The exercise regimen the therapist recommended would keep atrophy to a minimum if he followed it faithfully, and that was that-all he could do.
Carrying his third cup of coffee and the Del Moray paper from the day before, he limped out to the cottage’s small wooden porch and sat in the sun in a webbed aluminum lounge chair. The cup balanced okay on the chair’s plastic arm while Carver turned the paper to the classified ads. A glossy bluebottle fly landed on the real-estate section, and Carver watched it wobble down the page to a list of properties for sale by Quill, then take to the air to tend to more important matters.
After a while, Carver took a pen from his pocket, braced the folded newspaper against his thigh, and circled an advertisement for a vacant Del Moray house on Edgewick Avenue listed for an even half a million dollars. If he wasn’t going to buy a house, it might as well be an expensive one.
He tossed the rest of his cool coffee over the porch rail, admiring its bright amber arc, then went back inside and phoned Quill Realty.
The conversation worked out fine. He told whoever answered the phone that he was interested in seeing the house on Edgewick, and that someone had recommended an agent named Alice who had experience as an interior decorator. Alice could give him decorating tips while she was showing him the property.
Within half a minute he was talking to Alice, and they made an appointment to meet at the Edgewick property at ten o’clock.
Until it was time to leave for Del Moray, Carver idly watched a taped Atlanta Braves baseball game on television, mostly commercials. Somewhere in this land did flat-bellied cowboys actually drive dogies, then drive Jeeps to saloons with sawdust floors whereon trod barmaids with perfect teeth who served them diet beer? Carver doubted it. But then he hadn’t been everywhere.
He was secretly glad the game was a high-scoring dull one; he didn’t mind switching off the TV and leaving. He liked pitchers’ duels.
Carver remembered Edgewick Avenue from his drive around Del Moray the day before. It was a wide street with a grassy, palm-lined median, still in the desirable part of town, but only by a few blocks. The size and condition of the houses started slipping in this area, and an occasional Latino face could be seen among the residents. But it was still a prestige neighborhood, even if in one of the older sections of the city.
The house with a Quill Realty sign stuck in its yard was a gloomy stone monster that looked as if it might at
