not far in front of Carver. “I ain’t so sure of that.”
“The scar isn’t as bad as you think,” Carver said. “And plastic surgery-”
“Good-bye,” Verna Blaney said in a flat voice.
“At least you’ve got two good legs,” Carver said.
Oh-oh, the wrong thing to say, considering what Verna was sure he was thinking.
“And don’t bother coming back,” she said sternly. She took a step toward him and aimed the shotgun.
Carver felt the flesh bunch up on the back of his neck. He used the cane more nimbly than he thought he could and backed up several steps, staring at the black eternity inside the gun barrels. This was a tortured woman he’d caught at a bad time, one who saw before her a member of the sex she feared and distrusted. And she’d obviously had experience in handling a gun. A body sunk in the swamp’s quicksand might never be found.
The shotgun’s long barrels didn’t waver.
It was too nice a day for death. Carver continued his retreat.
When he was on the gravel driveway, near his car, he finally turned his back on Verna Blaney. He opened the door and tossed his cane on the seat.
“Mister!” Verna called, as he was about to lower himself into the Olds.
He turned, standing balanced by supporting himself on the open door, one hand on the warm chrome windshield frame.
“I don’t know anything about Sam Cahill,” she said. “Haven’t seen him in a long spell. Don’t want to. Don’t want to see you again, neither.” She raised the shotgun and fired a blast into the treetops. Birds screeched and flapped into the sky, like a scene from an old Tarzan movie; something Carver didn’t recognize gave an animal scream deep in the swamp.
He climbed the rest of the way into the Olds and drove away from there in a hurry. Verna Blaney still had the shotgun’s other loaded barrel to use against her fear and pain, and Carver’s flesh and blood.
He’d known women like her; she wanted male companionship more than she would admit to herself, and she hated men for that persistent desire, and for shunning her because of her scar. For what one or more men had done to her. Making her different. She was twisted and agonized in her loneliness.
And maybe able to kill.
When Carver got back to the Tumble Inn, he found Edwina sunning herself by the pool. She and two skinny, preteen boys in the deep end were the only ones there. One of the lads appeared to have an erection.
“Where have you been?” she asked, lowering her oversized sunglasses and peering coolly up at Carver above the frames.
“I wanted to talk to Verna Blaney.”
“And did you?”
“Not in any way productive. She ran me off her property. Threatened to shoot me. I would say she hates men.”
“Or would like to think so,” Edwina said. Savvy. Catty.
“I thought she might have some idea where Sam Cahill is, but if she does, she isn’t willing to share it.” Carver felt a bead of perspiration play over his temple, run down his cheek to tickle the side of his neck. Like an insect. He wanted to get in out of the heat. “Had lunch?” he asked.
“I was waiting for you.”
“Get dressed and we’ll drive into town,” Carver said. “Have us a bite. Maybe talk to Chief Armont again.”
Edwina hitched up the top of her suit and stood up from the chaise longue. The two boys splashing around at the other end of the pool took time out from any pretense and gaped at her in unabashed admiration. Carver thought they were developing good taste young.
Armont laughed when Carver told him about his encounter with Verna Blaney. “She usually reacts with disfavor toward men who drive out there uninvited to sweet-talk her, but I’ll admit she’s been a little extreme this time.”
“I wasn’t there to sweet-talk her.”
“Sure, but she don’t usually give her surprise callers a chance to say what they want, just runs them off. Generally she only uses shouts and threats, though, not a shotgun. You want to press an assault-with-a-deadly- weapon charge?”
“No,” Carver said. “Has Verna ever been really serious about a man?”
“She’s had her beaus,” the chief said, “but not for long. She doesn’t have any illusions about what men want from her. That scar disfigured her inside as well as out. Her daddy’s fault; he should have had the damn thing stitched up right after it happened. But he didn’t, cantankerous old asshole, and now it would cost a fortune to have a plastic surgeon fix that scar, and even then there’d be no guarantee. At least that’s what old Ned Blaney used to say whenever anybody brought up the subject.”
“What kind of man was her father?”
“Nobody really knows,” Armont said, pecking out a rhythm with a pen point on his desk. “Kept to himself, ran his airboat rides for tourists who were driving by on the main highway and got steered to his place by the signs he had up and down the road. I think he was fond of Verna, and a good father in his way, but crude. Too crude to realize how deep a scar like that might run in a pretty young girl.”
Carver thanked the chief and turned to Edwina.
“You two looking for a place to eat lunch,” Armont said, “The Flame should be open now.”
“I drove by there this morning and it was closed,” Carver said.
“They only serve lunch and supper on Sundays,” Armont explained. “Folks like to sleep in late or go to church Sundays in Solarville, depending on what they been up to the night before.” If there was irony in his voice, Carver couldn’t catch it.
He and Edwina left Chief Armont and had salads and coffee at The Flame. There weren’t many customers, but people were wandering in at a steady pace. Soon the place would be crowded. Emma and the horsey waitress were on duty, but not Verna Blaney.
When Carver asked Emma about Verna, she said that Verna wouldn’t be in that day or any other, except possibly as a customer. She’d quit the day before yesterday, and rumor had it that she’d sold her house and ground and was moving away. She’d had enough of Solarville, she’d said. Couldn’t blame the woman, the waitress confided in a lowered voice. Emma cautioned Carver that what she’d just told him was only rumor.
Twenty minutes later, at the cash register, the tall waitress with the equine features told Carver and Edwina the same story and assured them that it was fact. The truth was slippery at The Flame, just like everywhere else.
“What next, O Sleuth?” Edwina asked, on the sunny sidewalk outside the restaurant.
Carver leaned on his cane with both hands and glanced up and down the street. There was little traffic, no pedestrians other than the two of them. “We go back to the motel and swim,” he said.
“I’ve already been swimming,” she told him.
“Then we’ll find something else to do. I can think of a few things. But we’re at a standstill right now because it’s Sunday and city hall won’t be open until tomorrow.”
Edwina looked curiously at him. “What’s city hall got to do with why we’re here?”
“We’ll go there tomorrow,” Carver said, “and use your real-estate expertise to find out whether the Blaney property’s been sold.”
“If it was sold recently, it might not be recorded yet.”
“That’s where your expertise comes in,” Carver said. “If it isn’t recorded, do you think you can talk to the right people in the right way, find out whether there’s been a transaction?”
“I think so. There can’t be that many title companies in town, and I’m in the business.”
That was the way Carver had it figured.
He drove them back to the Tumble Inn. But they didn’t swim. Instead they made love that afternoon in Edwina’s room, ate supper in the motel restaurant, and made love in the evening in Carver’s room. Each time they were together, lost in the exploration phase of their affair, it was better. Exhilarating. Bad memories were fading. They were both beginning to think highly of the Tumble Inn.
Carver was asleep when the jangling phone by the bed dragged him from deep, indecipherable dreams to the surface of wakefulness. He resisted, so the dreams couldn’t have been bad ones. As he pulled the ringing, vibrating
