“Not a good idea,” she said. “Wrong.” But her own hand rose and her fingertips brushed the side of Carver’s face, so lightly he might have imagined it.
She got out of the car and he watched her walk to her door. She unlocked it and went inside without looking back.
Carver put up the canvas top on the Olds, then went to the Tumble Inn lounge and sat nursing one beer for almost an hour, listening to an unbroken string of sad love songs wafting from unseen speakers. It was almost as if the bastards who’d set up the music knew.
Not a good idea. Wrong.
He didn’t feel like sleeping. But he didn’t feel like sitting there and drinking and feeling mawkish any longer either, so he left the lounge and walked back across the parking lot to his room, listening to the solemn sound of his soles crunching on gravel, the growling drag of his cane.
It took as much willpower as he’d mustered in years not to stop and knock on Edwina’s door.
But she was waiting for him in front of his door. So much for willpower.
He touched her shoulder and she came to him, clung to him. He bowed his head, sought her eager mouth, found it with his own. Her grip on him tightened, and her body writhed tight against his.
Somehow he managed to fit his key into the lock.
CHAPTER 18
The next morning, Carver studied Edwina over the rim of his coffee cup. She kept her eyes averted from him, her gaze downcast. She wasn’t wearing makeup; her face was fresh-scrubbed and her eyes were puffy. Her dark hair gave off a faint, clean perfumed scent and was drawn back from her forehead, parted and combed oh so neatly. She was wearing a denim skirt and a tailored blue pinstripe blouse, no jewelry. She might have been a nun in street clothes.
But Carver remembered her fierce and desperate softness of the night before. He’d been awkward at first, with his lame leg, having to support and lever himself carefully with his good knee and his arms. But within a few minutes Edwina had made him forget all about the leg, about everything but her. Her intensity had amazed and delighted him, taken him away. His own intensity had shocked him. She was like a hand grenade tossed into his mind.
But now it was Willis Davis again. He could see that. Or was it something more than Willis?
How had she viewed the night before? As a lapse, a temporary surrender to desire? An unfortunate, never- to-be-repeated interlude?
Carver knew that now he had every reason to find Willis Davis, to lay Willis to rest alive or dead in the mental landscape of Carver’s relationship with Edwina. Otherwise Willis would continue to haunt them, to sour what could be between them. Willis was one of the world’s spoilers, all right. Carver disliked him more than anyone he’d never met.
“I’d use your toothbrush,” Carver said.
Edwina stared at him. “What?”
“That’s the test of true intimacy, if you’d use your partner’s toothbrush.”
She didn’t smile. “That’s disgusting. And you’ve already brushed this morning. Finish your coffee.”
They sat for a while without speaking in the cool motel restaurant. It was as if the night before had been cut from the calendar. Carver stared out the window at the cloudless sky, the morning heating up in the glare of slanted sunlight. At the edge of the swamp beyond the parking lot, Spanish moss and vines seemed to drip from the trees as if the branches were melting in the sun. Carver looked at his watch. Nine-thirty. Alex Burr had phoned half an hour ago. Carver was to meet him in town at eleven. He had time to kill; he knew how he wanted to kill it.
“Do you want to take a walk?” he asked Edwina.
“No, I’ll stay here for a while.”
The implication was clear: Carver could take a walk. Alone. Down love’s rough road. With a pang of jealousy, he remembered how, the night before, she had called him Willis without realizing it.
He thought he’d better not push Edwina any further. When the waitress wandered by, he waved her down and had her refill both coffee cups. Edwina didn’t look up, absently added cream and sugar to her coffee, and stirred. She seemed listless, somewhat confused beneath her brittleness.
“What are you going to tell Burr?” she asked.
“Whatever he wants to know. He’ll probably have the answers to everything he’s going to question me about anyway, or he wouldn’t ask. It’s the way the feds work.”
“That doesn’t make sense.”
“Think of your tax form.”
Daninger walked past the restaurant entrance from the lobby, looked in, and smiled tentatively at Carver. Everything was all right now, the smile said. Wasn’t it? Carver hoped Daninger didn’t come into the restaurant for added reassurance that the legal profession wasn’t going to pounce on him.
Outside the window, along the line of ground-floor rooms, Carver saw Curt, wearing jeans and a gray T-shirt lettered Slow Is Better, sauntering along carrying a gas-powered weed trimmer. Carver wished people would run out of things to say on T-shirts.
“Do you think I should be there when you talk to Burr?” Edwina asked.
“No. I might be able to learn something from his questions. And he might not ask the same questions if he knows the extent of your relationship with Willis. DEA agents have the suspicious minds of witch burners who’ve been to college.”
“You mean he might think I know where Willis is.”
“He might. On the other hand, he might take the official view that Willis is dead. It’s Silverio Lujan who drew DEA attention. He was a Marielito who died an unnatural death. To the government, that means narcotics.”
“I know Willis wouldn’t be mixed up in drugs.”
“You might be right.”
The weed trimmer kicked into life behind the motel and began to chortle and buzz, like a gigantic insect in the swamp making determined passes at its prey. The wavering sound made the heat outside seem thicker, palpable as clear, still water.
Edwina stood up without having touched her fresh cup of coffee.
“Where are you going?” Carver asked. There were things he wanted to say to her, even though she wouldn’t listen. He preferred having her around in case she changed her mind.
“To my room. To pack, to rest, to think.”
He watched her walk from the restaurant. He didn’t ask her what she was going to think about. He knew. Willis.
Carver thought about Laura. But not for long, and with lessened pain. She was definitely alive and had made it abundantly clear that she no longer wanted or needed him. Not like Willis and Edwina. Emotional ties had been cut, the loose ends knotted. That was the critical difference. Finality.
He sipped his coffee and watched the shadows and sunlight sharpen in contrast on the parking lot.
Alex Burr had borrowed Armont’s office to talk with Carver, but he acted as if it were his office. He was a trim and athletic-looking blond man who wore a black eye patch. The patch might have made him a romantic figure ten years ago, but his lean features had become a bit jowly with his forty-odd years, and there was a pouch beneath his visible unblinking blue eye. His hair was straight and professionally styled, worn longish to hide the straps from the eye patch. He’d removed his coat but hadn’t loosened his small, neat tie knot. His pants had sharp creases and his white dress shirt was spotless and starched and would do any laundry-detergent commercial proud. He hadn’t rolled up his sleeves; that would be giving in to mere heat. He reminded Carver of a middle-aged German duelist lost in time.
But Burr didn’t say Achtung! or flip his gloves in Carver’s face. Instead he stood up behind Armont’s desk, smiled, extended a hand, and assured Carver he wouldn’t take up much of his time. Carver figured he had probably said that to people who were serving twenty years.
They shook hands, and Burr waited while Carver sat down and rested his cane against the desk.
