Probably it was a great place to sell real estate.
“Willis enjoyed driving back and forth,” she said. “He was happy. I was happy. Neither of us had anyone else. Do you have anyone, Mr. Carver?”
“No,” he said, thrown for a moment by the question. Resenting it.
“A month ago,” Edwina went on, “Willis began acting strangely, moodily. He hadn’t been moody before.”
“You hadn’t known him very long,” Carver pointed out.
“But I knew him very well,” Edwina said. “I told you, neither of us has anyone else.”
The ocean sighed again, like a huge thing breathing.
Edwina walked to a high-backed wooden chair and sat down, gracefully crossing legs whose curvaceousness even the severe skirt couldn’t tame. “One night a week ago, Mr. Carver, Willis made love to me as he never had before. So intensely.” One of her hands began absently caressing the top of her thigh. “Even desperately. The next morning, I went to show a piece of property and he stayed behind. He was sitting on the veranda drinking coffee when I drove away.” She suddenly realized she was about to rub a hole in her skirt, and the naughty hand joined the nice hand in her lap and they knitted fingers to stay out of mischief. “When I came back that afternoon, the police were there.”
She paused and chewed on her lower lip. Carver waited, wondering if she’d draw blood.
She hadn’t. He was disappointed.
“A friend of mine,” she continued, “another salesperson, had come by my house to see me on business earlier that afternoon. When she got no answer at the door, she walked around to see if I was outside on the veranda. She was about to leave, when she spotted Willis’s sport jacket and shoes on the edge of the drop.”
“Drop?” Carver asked.
“Where the Army Corps of Engineers graded the land to rise well above sea level,” Edwina said. “They placed rocks about sixty feet below to keep the beach from eroding.”
Carver was getting the idea. “Was it your friend who called the police?” he asked.
“Yes. Alice phoned them from my house. The back door was unlocked. Willis had poured another cup of coffee, apparently. It was on the veranda table, cool and full to the brim. There was a glass of grapefruit juice, untouched, and on a plate was a sweet roll with only one bite out of it. And, most important, there wasn’t a body on the rocks at the foot of the drop.”
“It might have washed away, out to sea. Bodies do that.”
“That’s what the police say.”
“The police know bodies and water.”
“I’m reminded of that every time I go to headquarters,” Edwina said.
So Willis had decided to commit suicide in the middle of breakfast, Carver thought. What an impulsive guy. He’d suddenly put down his sweet roll and walked to the edge of the drop, then removed his shoes and jacket and dived onto the rocks. Then the sea had pulled his body out to the depths, maybe claiming it for the rest of recorded time. Well, it could have happened that way. The shoes and jacket didn’t bother Carver; suicides often prepared methodically for death, as if in the hereafter they might be graded for neatness.
“Was the jacket folded?” he asked.
Edwina nodded. “It was resting on top of the shoes so it wouldn’t get dirty. As if Willis expected to return for it.”
“Was anything in the pockets?”
“Willis’s wallet, with all his credit cards and over a hundred dollars in it. Also a few other things: a comb, two ticket stubs.”
Carver took another sip of beer, noticing that it was getting warm from the heat of his hand on the can. “Miss Talbot… Edwina… I have to tell you that Willis’s behavior isn’t inconsistent with suicide.”
She raised her eyebrows as if annoyed that Carver had jumped to a conclusion, irritated by a world in general that wouldn’t hear her out before passing judgment. “I thought it was suicide myself, until I began to think about how Willis had acted with me that last night we were together. I can’t simply close my mind to that.”
Carver tried the beer again. It was too warm for his taste. Foamy. Edwina was gazing with unblinking beautiful gray eyes at him.
He matched her stare, trying not to get lost in those eyes. “What do you hypothesize?” he asked. “What really happened?”
“I think Willis is still alive. He knew someone was after him, coming for him; he was afraid. He was taken by whoever came. Or he faked his own death, so he’d be safe, and then ran.”
“Ran why?”
“I don’t know. Gambling debts, trouble with someone from his past. It could be any of a hundred reasons.”
“You must have some specific idea, among that hundred.”
“Well, there’s something I didn’t mention to the police,” Edwina said in a measured voice, “because I didn’t want to risk getting Willis into any more trouble than he might already be in. There was some money. I saw it the week before he disappeared, in a shoe box in his dresser drawer.”
“How much money?”
“I don’t know. There were hundred-dollar bills on top, several of them. I don’t know what was down deeper in the box. I just got a glimpse of it as he was putting the lid on before he pushed the drawer shut.”
“Did you ask Willis about the money?”
“Yes. He said he’d cashed some bonds at the bank. To loan the money to a friend.”
“What bank? What friend?”
“He didn’t say.”
“Do you think the money is connected to his disappearance?”
“No,” she said, “but I can’t be sure. I do know that the money, shoe box and all, is gone now. Willis is a kind and considerate person, not the sort to get into trouble. But he likes to help people, more than he should. I think he inadvertently got mixed up with the wrong people. He’s running from them now, and when-if-they find him, they might…” She swallowed hard. Holding back tears? “You have to find him before whoever is after him does.”
“Do you know what wrong people might be after him?” Carver asked.
“No, I don’t. Honestly.”
He didn’t know if he believed her. She’d do almost anything to make sure he took the case. He wasn’t all that impressed by this money story, didn’t know if he believed even that. She might be throwing it at him as added incentive to believe Willis was alive and to find him.
“I only know he isn’t dead,” she said. “He didn’t kill himself. He’s still alive somewhere. In danger.” Her voice almost broke. “Maybe terrible danger.”
“I’m not sure the facts indicate that, Edwina.”
“I told you the way Willis made love to me the night before he left, as if he knew it might be the last time, as if he were saying good-bye. I’ve been told good-bye that way before. I recognize it. I know Willis didn’t commit a sudden-impulse suicide. But how do I convince the police?”
How indeed? Carver thought, picturing Lieutenant Desoto’s handsome, somber face as the lieutenant listened to a hunch based on passion. It wasn’t the sort of evidence to convince a coroner’s inquest. It wasn’t evidence at all.
“Why are the Orlando police involved?” Carver asked. “You live in Del Moray.”
“When Willis moved in with me he kept his apartment in Orlando because he couldn’t get out of his year’s lease. His official address is still Orlando. I tried to get the police there to list him as a missing person, but they wouldn’t.”
“Desoto is in Homicide,” Carver noted.
“Missing Persons had me talk with him. Willis left no note, nothing. Though Willis is missing, the police see his disappearance as a possible murder officially, only what they really believe is that he committed suicide and the current carried him out to sea. So they’re not investigating a murder, and they’re not searching for a missing person. They’re doing nothing.”
“They’re officially keeping the case open,” Carver said, “and unofficially closing it. Leaving it in limbo in the wrong department-if it is the wrong department. If Willis was a suicide, they don’t have a worry. If it turns out he might have been a murder victim, the department’s ass is covered; it’s a pending case.” For a moment his
