This kind of scene can. . well, it takes a toll on her.”
“I imagine,” Carver said.
“The bastard!” Bingham groaned, feeling better and getting mad again. “He kicked me in the balls!” As if mayhem were a sport and there were rules.
Carver limped over to the sofa. “I’ll drive you to get those ribs X-rayed,” he said.
“I can drive,” Bingham snapped, acting as though Carver had insulted him. He struggled to his feet. His tall, lanky body swayed, then steadied. His long face was still pinched with pain. He couldn’t quite believe what had happened. The good guys were supposed to win. This was an aberration and an outrage.
“Mel, you need help,” Adam told him. “Go have yourself looked at by a doctor. Promise to do that?”
“A doctor and a lawyer,” Bingham said. Man of the eighties. He hobbled bent-over out the door.
Carver and Adam said nothing while they waited, then they listened to the sound of his Jeep starting and screeching away. Tires counted for nothing in his budget.
“Shit!” Adam said, uncomfortable with this new silence and what had gone before it. “For something like this to happen. .” He glanced up at the beamed ceiling, as if suddenly he’d heard thunder and remembered there was a storm in the forecast. “You’ll have to excuse me, Carver; I better go upstairs and see to Elana.”
“You should. We can talk later.”
Adam clenched and unclenched his fists, as if exercising with invisible devices to strengthen his grip. His spring-trap jaw moved silently; he wanted to say more but couldn’t formulate adequate words to direct Carver’s way. He gave up and shambled from the room with his head bowed.
Carver put weight on the cane and moved out to the veranda; he needed fresh and less vibrant air.
Nadine was seated at the glass-topped table that was still cluttered with dishes and flatware and wadded napkins from breakfast. She was staring at the mess as if it were the remnants of her ruined young life. When she heard the clack of Carver’s cane she looked up at him, and then away. Her eyes were black with a nameless fear. “How’s Mel?”
“I think he’ll be all right,” Carver told her. The steady pulse of the ocean and the vastness of the sky made everything seem more placid out here. Eternity close by. Waiting.
“God, I thought Joel was gonna kill him!”
“He might have.”
Far out at sea hundreds of gulls were circling in the wake of a fishing boat, like a cloud of fleas following an indifferent dog.
“Joel’s in the bathroom washing blood off his shirt,” she said. “Mel hit him and cut his lip.” She talked as if a split lip were as serious as a cracked rib or ruptured spleen. “Despite what Mother says, Joel’s an honest and honorable man. I mean, just because he’s in a business where there are some crooks. .”
“I know,” Carver said. “In fact, I sympathize. Private investigators suffer from an unfair stereotype just like used-car dealers.”
“A couple of times I’ve driven down to Miami with Joel to pay back money his grandfather lent him. That old man’s Joel’s only relative; his mother deserted him when he was an infant. Joel’s always repaid the loans, and on time. That’s how he’s kept his business going through rough times, not by stealing people’s money like Elana or Mel Bingham would have you believe. His grandfather himself told me that. Joel’s a man who feels the responsibility of his debts.”
And Nadine was a woman who knew how to avoid an uncomfortable subject. Carver leaned with both hands cupped over his cane and looked deep into her dark eyes, trying to understand what was staring back at him and making him uneasy. “You met Paul last night, didn’t you, Nadine?”
She’d been waiting for him to ask. She pushed away from the table and stood up, not realizing her arm had brushed crumbs from the smooth glass onto her pale yellow shorts, where they clung like tiny insects.
She said, “Let’s go down to the beach, Mr. Carver. We need to talk where no one can overhear us but the fishes.”
Chapter 27
Carver was having difficulty walking with the cane on the damp sand, near where the surf foamed on the beach. Nadine looked over at him and stopped. He turned, and supported himself gingerly with the cane, facing her. She was wearing white Reebok jogging shoes that were wet from waves that had crawled far enough up on the sand to reach them. She didn’t seem to care that her shoes were wet. The mind was where she lived.
“I didn’t meet Mel Bingham last night,” she said. “I did meet Paul.”
Surprise, surprise, Carver thought. “Where?”
“At a marina in Fort Lauderdale. And if you’re thinking of trying to figure out which one, forget it. We won’t meet there again.” Her voice was taunting, as if she were playing a game and had gone one up on Carver.
“How’d you know where to go?”
“Paul swam to the boathouse here and left a note for me where we used to hide things when we were kids. It told me where and when to meet him. We talked for over an hour, Mr. Carver. I mean talked about everything, really deep. The way we used to confide in each other when we were in grade school. Nothing but the truth.” Her strong Kave features, half in bright sunlight, became serious. “Paul didn’t kill anyone.”
“Paul would say that.”
“Of course. Because he’s innocent.”
“The evidence says he’s guilty.”
She tilted her head to the side and stared at him with the mocking tolerance of youth. Wisdom time. “Isn’t that for a judge or jury to say?”
Carver matched her trite for trite. “I’d like to help Paul so he’ll stand in front of a jury instead of police guns.”
“That’s bullshit and we both know it.” Really, she was grown-up. At times, anyway.
Carver wasn’t sure how much she knew. He let her remark go by. He guessed she was letting her emotions talk for her. Like every other kind of love, sibling affection had a flip side that could cause pain. She’d learned, like everyone else; vulnerability was part of love’s bargain.
Then she said, “Paul didn’t kill your son.”
Carver felt his stomach dive.
Nadine had found him out and knew who he was and what he was doing, and there was nothing below him but space and a haunted future. Haunted by things interrupted. Incomplete. His son’s life. Justice and balance after death. Even simple revenge. He wondered with dismal detachment if he could live with that.
“How did Paul know one of his victims was my son?” he asked. His own voice sounded unfamiliar, muted by the sibilant roll of the surf.
Nadine spread her feet wide and propped her fists on her ample hips. Long-legged and sturdy, she stood as if nothing in the universe could budge her. She was a female colossus in complete charge of the conversation now. Or thought so. Information could do that to people. “He first knew you were. . stalking him when he learned you were asking about his car at Scuba Dan’s. You were all over the beach, asking about the murders, so he followed you and learned your identity and your relationship to the boy who was burned to death in Fort Lauderdale. He read in the papers that you were working for the family, trying to locate him, and he knew you must have lied to us about who you were.”
“Where’s Paul now?” Carver asked.
Her dark eyes were level, calm yet defiantly candid, as if it were only Carver who should fear the truth. Strength through naivete. “I don’t know. He doesn’t want me to know. It has to be that way.”
Carver believed her. Paul Kave was turning out to be wilier than he’d anticipated. Not to mention more persuasive. But then, Paul was supposed to possess a stratospheric I.Q. It would be easy for someone like him to take advantage of a sister’s unquestioning, simple love. To sense weakness and exploit it.
“He wanted to meet with me,” Nadine said, “to assure me he was okay, and to convey to you that he’s innocent.”
“And to ask you to bring him some of his antidepressant medicine?”
