“You going to ask me inside where it’s cool?”
“I’d better not, Laura.”
She gave him a slow, silky smile. She knew, all right. She said, “Worried about those statistics concerning sex after divorce?”
“What statistics? Where’d you see them?”
She waved a hand. “
“I’m not sure,” he said. Why not be honest with her? She was being disturbingly honest with him.
“I won’t try to convince you that way to stop searching for Paul Kave,” she assured him. “But I want you to stop. If you won’t, I’ll go to the Kave family and tell them who you are and what you’re doing.”
He gripped her upper arm and squeezed. “I want you to promise you won’t do that, Laura.”
Anger flared in her eyes. “Trying to make my arm like your leg?”
“Why did you come here? The entire reason.”
She locked stares with him; didn’t blink. “I told you, I want you to stop hunting Paul Kave. Remember what Sam said, about how some things should be left alone.”
“You didn’t tell me everything.”
“You hear what you want to hear. Always did.”
He released her and moved back, leaning on his cane and breathing heavily. He wouldn’t have minded crippling Laura just then, for coming here taunting and threatening. As if she were in control of things and he weren’t. Her hand moved toward her reddened bicep, then withdrew. She wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of letting him see her rub where he’d hurt her.
“You’re sick with this thing,” she told him. “Edwina told me about the fire. You need someone to save you from yourself. She won’t, apparently.”
“You don’t understand how it is between us.”
“Somebody doesn’t.”
“I don’t want you talking to the Kaves. I mean that.”
She gave him a long, careful look. Her entire face trembled slightly, as if she were about to cry or scream. Or bolt into the ocean.
Then she whirled and stepped down off the porch. “I can’t promise I won’t!” she said, not looking back as she strode to her rental car parked in the sparse shade of the palms. Tiny clouds of dust kicked up behind her as her straw slip-ons flapped against her bare soles.
Carver watched her drive away, spinning the little car’s tires on the sandy earth, raising more dust.
God damn her! She was complicating his life again, multiplying his worries and making him feel like a fool.
Hurling the truth in his face like a custard pie and then grinding it.
He struck his cane against the wooden porch railing hard enough to make a sound like a pistol shot, then he limped inside, slamming the screen door behind him like return fire.
Chapter 26
When Carver awoke in the dark cottage he thought he smelled smoke. He lay for the moment where he was, very still, the side of his face mashed into the sweat-damp pillow, his exposed eye bulged open. The clock by the bed read 5:00 A.M. The sea was pounding and smacking at the beach: high tide. It sounded as if it were all happening two feet outside the cottage, just on the other side of the wall.
The telephone rang, and he groggily fought toward greater awareness and realized it had been ringing for a while and its persistent jangle was what had drawn him from his dream of fire. A dream; that’s all it had been.
He sucked in clean sea air from the open window; no smoke. Then he picked up the receiver and quieted the pesky phone. When he tried to say hello, his mouth was so dry and the taste on his tongue so sour that no sound came out. The smoke-filled dream he could barely remember had really worked him over, kicked around the old subconscious.
“This is Van Meter,” the voice on the phone said. “You awake, Carver?”
“Yumph.”
“Means yes, I suppose. Well, what I called about, my man watching the Kave estate said he saw Nadine return home fifteen minutes ago.”
Carver swallowed. Licked his lips. They were coated with mucus that felt and tasted like glue. “Return from where?” His voice was a cross between a whisper and a croak. He swallowed again. It hurt his throat.
“That’s the problem,” Van Meter said. “She snuck out without being seen. We don’t know where she went. My man figures, though, that she left sometime after midnight. He saw her at the house about then.”
“She drive?”
“No, she came home in a cab.”
“Why would she take a cab when the family’s got three cars sitting around getting dusty?”
“Maybe she suspects the place is being watched. She’s no dummy, if she’s Adam Kave’s daughter. Only thing my man can figure is she left the house by a side window and made her way down to the road, where she walked to a phone booth and called a taxi. That little red sports cars of hers never moved; she probably parked it out where it was visible so her folks’d think she was home.”
“Or so your man’d think so.”
“Naw. He’s good. She didn’t know he was there; she was being careful in general. Maybe she went to meet Dewitt to go play house somewhere. Girl and Boy Stuff.”
“She’d drive to see him,” Carver said. “No need for secrecy there. Hell, they’re supposed to be engaged, and Nadine’s not the type to worry about whether people think she’s a virgin. It’s the late-twentieth century, Van Meter; I’m surprised at you. Girl and Boy Stuff goes on right under your nose all the time.”
“Not under my nose,” Van Meter said. “Not so much anymore.”
“Point is,” Carver said, “she wouldn’t worry about her reputation or family if she went to meet Dewitt in the early morning hours. Not Nadine Kave.”
Van Meter sighed into the phone. “Yeah. That attitude went the way of fins on cars. Looks like she might have gone someplace to meet her brother.”
“Your guy get the cab number?”
“ ’Fraid not,” Van Meter said. “He was too far away, and it all happened fast. The cab let her out at the base of the drive and she walked to the house. I can check with the cab companies, though, and probably find out where she went. Don’t know how much that’ll tell us. My guess is she’d meet Paul Kave someplace other than where he’s holed up. Some bar or all-night restaurant, maybe.”
“Better check anyway,” Carver said. “She and Paul might set up another meeting at the same place-if that’s who she went to see.”
“Yeah. Listen, I’m sorry we fucked up, Carver.”
“S’okay.”
“It’s not, but that’s how it goes sometimes. Imperfect world. Sorry I had to wake you, but I thought you’d want to know about this as soon as possible. In case you wanted to act on it right away.”
“Right now, I’m too tired to act on anything short of an alligator chewing on my good leg.”
“Get back to bed, why don’t you?”
“I will,” Carver said, and hung up.
But he was finished sleeping. He lay awake and watched the black patch of the window, waiting for the sun.
He’d decided not to tell Nadine he knew about her nighttime excursion, but he wanted to talk with her anyway, in case she might volunteer information.
A part-time maid, in for the day from Fort Lauderdale, answered Carver’s ring at the Kave estate. He waited just inside the door amid mock-Spanish splendor while she disappeared down the hall to announce his presence. Her footfalls made no noise.
