eight-year-old son. And on the plus side, Edwina. “I don’t blame you for leaving,” he told her. “I’m sorry. Maybe I’m not the right man for this case.”
“You’re not,” she said, “but you’re the only man. Desoto’s your friend and he trusts you.” She walked over to Carver and kissed him on the mouth. She tasted like lemonade.
“See you tonight,” she said, and turned and swayed out of the kitchen.
He heard the side door open and close, and he waited for the sound of her car starting.
Instead, the side door opened and closed again, and someone walked across the carpet toward the kitchen.
Something cold moved through Carver, like the ghost of ancient premonition. Something beyond thought.
Edwina was in the doorway. She was frowning.
Carver set the tip of his cane and limped toward her.
“A car coasted down the driveway as I left the house,” she said.
He stopped and stood near her. Why had what she’d seen upset her?
“Someone turning around,” he suggested.
“No, it was far up in the driveway, near the house.”
“What kind of car?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Big? Small? What color?”
“It was a fairly large car. White. There was only the driver in it. A man. I only saw him for a moment, from the back, so I couldn’t say what he looked like.”
“Could be someone drove up here to see you, then changed his mind,” Carver said.
“It’s possible. Only there was something… furtive about the way he drove away. The car was just rolling down the driveway, already turned around and pointing that way. As if he’d backed up to where he’d been parked. I’m sure the engine was off.”
Carver said, “I wouldn’t worry about it. Just one of those things that happen without apparent reason. But if we knew more we’d understand why. Might be a number of explanations. Someone was coming to see you-or me- lost his nerve, and didn’t want us to know he’d been here.”
Edwina clutched her purse close to her body, as if she’d heard pickpockets were all around her. “Doesn’t that strike you as a bit peculiar?”
“Sure. It’s a peculiar world. Maybe your condo customer wanted to see how the saleslady lived. Maybe somebody at the office has a crush on you. You know how beautiful women attract this sorta thing.”
Edwina didn’t seem soothed by that line of reasoning.
He kissed her this time. Gently. On the forehead. “It’s okay,” he told her.
“Has to be, I guess.”
She pushed a dubious smile his way and left the house again.
He listened closely. This time she got in the Mercedes and drove away. He followed the wavering sound of the car’s engine until she’d turned out of the driveway and accelerated.
Edwina’s house wasn’t visible from the coast highway. Someone who’d followed him here from Sunhaven might have wanted to get a look at what was at the other end of the long, winding drive Carver had turned onto. Seeing Edwina steer her car into the driveway shortly afterward might have piqued his curiosity and provoked action. Contemplating a quick getaway, the watcher might indeed have turned his car around and backed up the drive toward the house, then parked near enough for observation but far enough away so the sound of the engine wouldn’t reach whoever was inside.
A pro would do it that way. That concerned Carver.
The phone jangled, startling him.
Probably Desoto.
5
But the caller wasn’t Desoto; it was Alice Hargrove, a real-estate agent from Quill, trying to get in touch with Edwina. Carver had met Alice a few times, the first a long time ago when he’d pretended to be a customer so he could talk to her about Edwina’s former lover Willis Davis. Willis was dead now, which was a condition he deserved.
Carver told Alice she’d just missed Edwina, made some polite and inane small talk, and hung up. He hated small talk.
A few hours later, he was dozing on the sofa with his shoes off when the phone brought him quickly awake. In his stocking feet, without his cane, he balanced himself with a palm on the sofa arm and lunged the few feet to where the ringing phone sat on an end table. Half asleep, he’d momentarily forgotten he was crippled.
This time the caller was Desoto. Carver could hear Latin music pulsing softly from the portable radio the lieutenant kept on the windowsill behind his desk. A sad guitar backing a woman’s melodic lament. Love was full of drama on Desoto’s station.
“Nurse Rule is Nora Rule,” Desoto said. He told Carver her address in Del Moray. “She’s been working at Sunhaven three years. Before that she worked at a medical clinic in Miami.”
“Wait a minute,” Carver said. “Not-”
“Not the same clinic where Dr. Pauly practiced,” Desoto interrupted. He began to read directly, apparently from his computer printout. Cop voice, cop talk. “Single female Caucasian, brown and blue, thirty-seven, five-feet- six, a hundred fifty pounds, born Camden, New Jersey. Father and mother deceased since she was twelve. They died in an auto accident.”
“How can you know so much about her?” Carver asked.
“Told you, amigo, computers.”
“Computers shit,” Carver said.
“Okay, so she was in the military. They got records on her. The army. She was a sergeant. That’s where she learned nursing. Got out in ’seventy-six and furthered her education, got a job, wound up with a better job at Sunhaven. The American way, to be upwardly mobile.”
“What about the others?” Carver asked.
“Ah, there we weren’t so lucky, my friend. Kearny Williams seems to be what he says he is: a retired over- the-road trucker from New Orleans. Ask me, everything about Kearny sets right. Nothing more pertinent on the doctors Pauly or Macklin. And nothing at all on Birdie Reeves.”
Carver wasn’t surprised about Birdie. The check did reveal she’d never been arrested. Someone that young, if they hadn’t been in the military or been fingerprinted by the law or worked for the government, had nothing on them in the data banks that fed law-agency computers.
“Got any idea what her real first name is?” Desoto asked. “Surely can’t be Birdie.”
“Wouldn’t think so,” Carver said. “I’ll find out.”
Desoto read in his police lieutenant’s monotone the addresses of the principal staff at Sunhaven. Then he said, “What now?”
“I’m going back to Sunhaven, but first I need a little background information. Your uncle express any fear for his life when he was at Sunhaven?”
“If he had,” Desoto said, “I’d have gotten him outta there. He did say a couple of times he thought somebody had tossed his room, gone through his things and then tried to put them back the way they’d been so he wouldn’t know.”
“Funny thing,” Carver said. “Edwina was leaving here a few hours ago and saw a car glide down the driveway, she thinks with its engine off. A big car. White.”
“Hmm. You maybe stirred the pot, amigo. Brought something to the surface.” Desoto seemed glad, but at the same time somewhat regretful that he’d brought this kind of possible trouble to Carver. Or to Edwina.
“Why you hired me,” Carver reminded him.
“Yes. You’ll keep me informed?”
