“Tell me about Willis Davis,” Carver said.
Edwina stared at her glass, slowly lifting it just a fraction of an inch off the metal table and putting it back down in its wet ring, as if studying with a scientific eye the amazing adhesion of the water. “Willis is a considerate, gentle man.”
“Likewise Bluebeard and Theodore Bundy. Tell me about Willis.”
“He’s a soft touch who probably got in trouble helping someone. So soft, in fact, that, to tell you the truth, it’s difficult for me to imagine him as a salesman. But on the other hand, there’s something tremendously persuasive about him. I’ve seen him use that persuasiveness on a customer. If he believes in a product, he might be able to sell it better than a dozen high-pressure types like me.”
“You don’t strike me as high-pressure,” Carver said. “High-voltage, maybe. It could be you’re not as hard as you think.”
“You haven’t seen me trying to close a real-estate deal.” She looked up from her drink. Her eyes were barely visible behind the green-tinted lenses. “I don’t mean pushy; that’s not what I am. Maybe I’m not exactly high- pressure at that. But I am relentless. That’s part of what I saw in Willis-a quiet, calm relentlessness.”
“Do you have a photograph of him?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
Edwina shrugged. “I didn’t know it was required by law. Some people are camera bugs, some aren’t. I never took his photograph; I don’t even own a camera.”
“Don’t real-estate salespeople around here photograph the houses they list?”
“No, a professional photographer hired by the company does that.”
“So describe Willis.”
Edwina drummed her fingertips on the metal table. The sound annoyed Carver. He could feel the subtle vibrations with his own hand, which was resting on his side of the table.
“He’s difficult to describe,” Edwina said finally. “He’s about your height-maybe five-foot-ten. Where you’re lean and muscular, Willis is well built but maybe a few pounds overweight. Still, he doesn’t have a stomach paunch and isn’t soft.”
“What color are his hair and eyes?” Carver asked.
“His hair is medium brown. His eyes are what you might call hazel. He’s sort of average-complexioned, with handsome, regular features. He has no distinguishing marks that I can think of. Oh-he has a scar on his right shoulder, in front, from an operation he had when he got hurt playing high-school football.”
“A shoulder separation?” That was the most common football injury that would leave the kind of scar Edwina had described.
“I don’t know.”
“What high school?”
“A private school up north. He was the team’s quarterback.”
“Where exactly is Willis from?”
“Orlando.”
“I mean, before that.”
“He never said. He did mention that he’d lived a while in the Midwest.”
“Did you get the impression he was a Florida native?”
“Nobody is a Florida native. Willis has a kind of nonregional accent. Which is no accent at all, if you know what I mean.”
“Sure. Like one of those talking-suit network TV anchormen: coast-to-coast bland. But what sort of dresser is Willis? Does he favor flashy clothes? Does he wear plaid socks and striped shorts?”
“He’s a conservative dresser,” Edwina said. “His suits are mostly gray and blue, with vests. He wears white shirts and ties that aren’t loud. His jackets don’t even have patterns in the material.”
“Expensive clothes?”
“Some cost a lot, some didn’t. He doesn’t wear thousand-dollar suits, but he mentioned once having a tailor.”
“You don’t have the tailor’s name, I suppose.”
“No.”
“Who are his friends in Orlando?”
“I never met any of them,” Edwina said. “It wasn’t that long after we met before he moved in with me here. Del Moray is where we spent most of our time together.”
“Where did Willis work?”
“At Sun South, just outside of Del Moray. Where I was working when we met. He sold time-share units. Do you know what those are?”
“I’m from Florida,” Carver said. Time-share projects were big in Florida. The customer bought the privilege of spending one or more weeks every year in an apartment, usually by the ocean. If he bought one week, he was in effect purchasing one fifty-second ownership of the apartment. Two weeks, one twenty-sixth. And so on. Time shares were a popular way to own at least a piece of valuable beachfront property that might continue to appreciate and be sold at a profit. Might.
“Who was Willis’s boss at Sun South?” Carver asked.
“Ernie Franks, the developer who built the project. Willis liked and admired him.”
Carver thought it was convenient to have his questions anticipated. Edwina seemed to be ahead of him; he wondered how far ahead. He stood up, bumping his head on the umbrella, and walked around the pool and onto the veranda.
Edwina followed him. As if she thought he might stumble and she should be there to catch him. He didn’t like that. She sensed it and fell back.
Carver stepped over another low wall and walked toward the edge of the drop above the sea.
“Be careful, Mr. Carver,” Edwina called behind him. She had stayed on the veranda and was staring out at him with what on her stony features passed for alarm.
“Don’t worry,” Carver tossed back over his shoulder, “I used to be in show business, diving into shallow water from a high platform in the circus.”
“Really?”
“No.” Carver inched nearer the edge of the outcropping of land and looked down. Diving experience wouldn’t help him here anyway; the sea foamed around unevenly piled jagged rocks directly below, and the water didn’t appear to be more than a few feet deep. His stomach took the plunge, beckoning Carver to follow. He declined and dizzily moved back from the drop, then turned to face Edwina. “Where were Willis’s jacket and shoes found?”
She pointed to a spot on the ground a few feet to Carver’s left.
The bare, rocky soil told him nothing. He started back to the veranda. By the time he got there, Edwina was seated in one of the webbed chairs at the table, waiting for him.
“Where are the shoes and jacket?” he asked.
“The police kept them.”
Carver sat down in one of the other chairs. He saw that his pants were dirty from when he’d struggled over the low walls around the veranda. He brushed at the loose earth and it fell away. “What else can you tell me about Willis?” he asked.
“He loved me.”
“You’re sure of that?”
“Is it important to you?”
“Yes.”
“I’m sure. One other man loved me in my life. It was the same way it was with Willis. I don’t want the result to be the same.”
Carver stared at her, sensed pain. There was something pertinent she wasn’t telling him. “Okay,” he said. He stood up, bumping his head on that umbrella as he had on the one by the pool. It felt about the same.
Edwina removed her sunglasses and looked up at him, appraising him with a pawnbroker’s squint. She had a way of seeming to see to the center of things.
“You look better than when we met at your place,” she said. “Almost as if you don’t mind being alive. It’s
