“It only seems that way. Love’s actually a simple, one-syllable emotion.”
The sea smell of the shrimp and Edwina’s salad was suddenly too much. Carver’s appetite left him, but the hollowness in his stomach made him queasy.
He wasn’t sure how he felt about Laura. Or about Edwina, or Chipper, or Paul Kave, or about the wilderness he’d charged into and that had absorbed him.
He sat back and stared out at the waves, rolling in murky, ever-changing patterns and darkened by sudden low clouds. It all kept kaleidoscoping in his mind: Laura, Edwina, Paul, Nadine, Adam, McGregor, and the dark, sad corpse of his only son.
The ocean, vast and implacable, exerted a primal pull that was frightening.
Chapter 29
After leaving Edwina, Carver returned to the cottage and checked his answering machine. He’d received a call from Laura, and she’d left a number where she could be reached.
Carver dragged out his dog-eared directory and looked up the phone number of the Andrew Johnson Motel. It was the number on Laura’s recorded message. He imagined her sitting in her room, staring at vapid afternoon television and wondering where some oversized roulette wheel would stop. Or lounging by the motel pool, sweating and not really liking the sun, waiting for his return call. She was far from home, from where she belonged.
Carver decided not to return her call. Edwina was right about Laura’s renewed interest in him, and that scared him. He’d gone around the course once with Laura and didn’t want to again. Yet he knew that a mutually dependent attraction had been engendered by their son’s death, embryonic now, waiting to grow. She needed him, her fellow voyager through the mourning process. Carver didn’t want to need her.
He punched the Play button again on the answering machine and listened to a wrong number, a pitch to buy into a time-share project in Clearwater before his rare opportunity was gone forever, and a reminder from his insurance agent that the premium was due on the Olds.
Nothing from Emmett or Nadine Kave.
Carver had barely eaten at lunch, but he was feeling better now and figured he’d soon be hungry. He clomped with his cane into the kitchenette and opened the refrigerator.
Not an inspiring sight. Only two cans of beer, a small steak he’d allowed to go bad, and a container of yogurt that never had a chance. Edwina had bought the yogurt weeks ago. Carver loathed the stuff; it looked like cream trying to be something else.
Plan ahead, he thought. Resolving to eat an early dinner out this evening and then do some elemental grocery shopping, he pulled the tab on one of the beer cans, shoved the refrigerator door shut, and carried the can out onto the porch.
It was hot outside, even in the deep shade beneath the porch roof. But there was a breeze off the ocean that now and then evaporated perspiration on his arms and face and cooled. He settled into the webbed aluminum lawn chair, propped his good leg up on the wooden porch rail, and watched a tan and shapely woman in a red bikini dashing in and out of the surf far down the beach. She was animated and loud; she swayed her hips in exaggerated motion when she ran, and her shrill, desperately happy screams carried to Carver on the breeze. Some great time she was having, everything about her shouted. Trying to impress someone Carver couldn’t see. Her hair was long and dark and flew wildly with each foray into the waves. Carver enjoyed watching her.
One of the woman’s shrieks trailed off, then was continued by the phone inside the cottage.
Carver lowered his leg, pushed himself up out of the light-weight chair, and limped inside with his cane. Because he was in a hurry, he allowed the screen door to shut too fast and it nipped him on the right heel. Hurt like crazy for a second or two. He didn’t need another bad leg.
He snatched up the receiver and snarled a hello, still mad at the door.
“Carver?”
“Yeah.” He recognized McGregor’s voice. Wished he hadn’t picked up the phone.
“Whazza matter? You sound outa sorts and outa breath.”
“Just giving the place a quick coat of paint; you interrupted me.”
“Nice you can still joke,” McGregor said. “Now here’s something to cheer you down: your ex-wife’s been by to see me and threatened to tell Adam Kave you’re the father of one of his son’s victims. The poop’d hit the propeller then, hey? I thought she lived in Saint Louis; how the hell she even know you were on the case?”
“She’s been reading the Florida papers to keep track of the hunt for Paul Kave. When she read I’d been hired by the Kave family, she figured out the rest.”
“Well, I got her promise to stay clear of the case for a while. Scared shit out of her with the official-police- business line, then played nice cop and asked for her cooperation. It won’t last long, though; she’s too smart to buy it. I was very impressed. You seem to attract smart women, Carver. And good-lookers. Guess it’s that opposites thing. Anyway, you’re gonna have to talk to her, see she keeps her mouth shut.”
“I’ve already talked to her.”
“So talk again. Fast and hard. Do whatever you got to fast and hard. Damn it, she’s
“Yeah, that’s logical.”
“You’re the only one’s got a chance, pal. I could tell that after spending fifteen minutes with the lady. She’s worried all to hell about her daughter.”
“My daughter, too,” Carver said.
“Sure. What’s happening with the all-American Kave family? Not exactly Ward and June Cleaver and the kids, hey?”
Carver told him about Dewitt’s fight with Mel Bingham, and Nadine talking with Paul. He didn’t mention he was trying to set up a meeting with Paul through Nadine or Emmett Kave.
“Sounds like an ordinary tiff over pussy,” McGregor said. “We checked Bingham. He’s a senior at Florida State, going back soon for the fall semester. Working toward a degree in biochemistry. Normal asshole college kid. Drives a Jeep and thinks he’s living a beer commercial. Family’s well off, but not like the Kaves. Maybe he’s chasing the daughter for her money. Seems he dated Nadine all through high school and for awhile when she went to college, but the past several years she’s been spreading it around. Kind of wild, but no legal trouble. A minor drug charge two years ago, but it was dropped. One fella after another for her, though. Until Joel Dewitt. You’d think a girl like that, her money and looks, could do better than a guy like Dewitt. I can see why her mother wishes Dewitt would get run over by one of his used cars.”
“Could be they’re in love.”
“Uh-huh. I was younger, I’d try to move on that Nadine. Put it to her like one of her daddy’s jumbo hot dogs and change both our lives for the better. Hey, maybe you oughta try getting to her, Carver.”
“You’re twisted in a lot of ways,” Carver said.
“It’s the world made me that way,” McGregor said, agreeing and not caring. “What I am’s a realist. Better for you if you were one too. If you’d spent another five years on the force as a real detective, you’d
It scared Carver to think McGregor might be right. And it bothered him that he’d developed a modicum of compassion for Paul Kave, and a loathing for the police lieutenant stalking him. What had started out so simply had become a horrendous tangle of emotions and confusion, thanks mainly to McGregor, who seemed to care about nothing so much as McGregor.
“Buncha hypocrites out there in the world, Carver,” Mc shy;Gregor said. “Specially here in Florida. It’s all that fundamental religion bullshit; them people won’t fuck standing up ’cause somebody might see ’em and think they’re dancing. At least I know what I am and accept it. Tell you the truth, kinda enjoy it now and then. Like this gamble I’m taking on you.”
“I admire your honesty,” Carver said. Damned if he didn’t.
A car drove up outside and parked, its tires grinding on the sandy soil alongside the cottage. Carver heard its engine race, then die. Dust from its arrival drifted like a heat-spawned apparition across his field of vision outside
