what’s in those hot dogs,
“Don’t want to know,” Carver said.
“Damned additives,” Desoto said. “Things’ll kill you.”
He finished his coffee in a gulp, somehow without dissolving his tongue and tonsils, then placed the cup on an end table and stood up. “I’m heading back to work, dutiful civil servant that I am. You rest, eh?”
“I can’t rest,” Carver said. He considered making a smartass remark about the coffee but thought better of it. Desoto was proud of the terrible stuff.
“Guess you can’t,” Desoto said. “Take care of the arm then, okay,
“Sure,” Carver said. He gripped the cane and worked himself to his feet. “You were right most of the way,” he said. “Thanks for trying to make me listen. Thanks for. . well, just thanks. I mean that.”
Desoto smiled, shrugged, and went out.
Carver limped into the kitchen and poured the rest of his coffee into the sink, listening to it hiss and gurgle down the drain. Steam rose. That should take care of any clogged pipes.
He decided to shower and get dressed. He owed Adam Kave a final report and some explanation, regardless of his status as a former client.
How would Adam receive him, after Emmett’s death and the arrest of Joel Dewitt?
And the return of Paul.
Chapter 36
No one answered Carver’s ring at the Kave estate. He limped around the side of the house, calling Adam Kave’s name, getting only silence for his effort. The hot weight of the sun bore down on his shoulders; the day was heating up to record temperatures, according to the sadistic forecast out of Fort Lauderdale. He unfastened the top button of his shirt.
Then he saw the figure on the beach, a man seated facing the wide ocean with his knees drawn up. An exceptionally large wave sent foaming surf fingers scrambling up the sand, getting the man’s ankles wet. He didn’t budge. There was something unnatural about his perfect stillness. He reminded Carver of one of those sculptures of people in repose that kept turning up in museums and shopping centers, appearing real even down to the color and texture of their clothes.
Carver gingerly took the steep wooden steps down to the beach, then started across the sand, moving tentatively as the tip of his cane sank into softness and lent little support. The cane left a pattern of deep depressions and narrow drag marks behind him.
As he neared the unmoving figure he recognized Adam Kave. Adam was dressed in a white shirt and dark pants. He had on polished black wing-tip shoes and black silk socks, waterlogged by the ocean. The back of his neck was flushed and his dark hair was matted with perspiration.
When Carver got close he called, “Adam?”
No answer. No movement.
Carver worked forward with the cane and stood a few feet behind and to the side of Adam, who sat staring out at the sea and tightly hugging his knees. The surf slapped and spread high onto the beach again and foamed around his skinny black-clad ankles. He was clutching something white in his right hand. It looked like a crumpled envelope, but Carver couldn’t be sure.
“Where’s Paul?” Carver asked between crashes of surf.
Adam didn’t look at him. “He and Nadine drove to Joel Dewitt’s apartment to get some of Nadine’s things. They left this morning.” The husky voice was an odd monotone.
Carver started to crouch but found that he couldn’t. The cane in the soft sand was too unstable. “What’s wrong, Adam?”
Adam seemed to have forgotten Carver was there. Had he been so devastated by the news about Emmett and Dewitt? Or was his peculiar behavior in some way connected to Paul’s recently established innocence? Paul the troubled son, back in the human race and the family fold.
Carver turned and stared up at the rambling house with its many windows looking out on the ocean. He studied the green and manicured lawn and shrubbery, broken here and there by colorful flower beds. The place looked postcard-plush and sterile. Unoccupied. No one was on the grounds, or at any of the windows. No one had answered Carver’s ring. That could mean nothing. Elana might be asleep in her upstairs room, and Adam was here on the beach.
Sitting in the surf in his suit pants and wing-tip shoes. Not doing much talking.
A gull wheeled and soared delicately on an updraft, then arced in low off the sea and screamed. The sound pierced something in Carver’s mind and sent a cold tingle up his spine.
“Adam, where’s Elana?”
Adam said, “You did a fine job, Carver. Lying bastard that you are. You unearthed the truth. That’s why I hired you. But I didn’t know. . The truth’s a sonuvabitch, isn’t it?”
“Too much of the time,” Carver said. He watched a sailboat in the distance tack away from shore and disappear into low haze, as if it had never been there. Magic on bright water. “Where’s Elana?” he repeated.
Adam was still staring out at the ocean, his head raised in a strained, attentive attitude, as if anxiously waiting for something to appear among the waves. “Elana?” he said vaguely. “Oh, she’s in the boathouse.”
Carver left him there and trudged with his cane toward the boathouse down the beach, near the base of the wooden steps. A miniature canal had been carved in the beach, lessening the impact of the waves, and the boathouse, a weathered old structure with a leaky roof and glassless windows, straddled the foot of the canal. It had been there for decades, and only a small boat could be docked in it out of the weather. The white-and-brown Kave pleasure yacht still rode at the dock on the beach beyond, clean and fresh and yearning for deep water.
Carver clomped with the cane across gray, weathered wood to the boathouse door. He could hear water lapping inside in rhythm with the surf. He saw the rusty padlock hanging sprung on its hasp, and he extended his cane and shoved the door open on screaming hinges. The scream sounded exactly like the gull that had circled in near where Adam was sitting on the beach.
Sun and water sent shimmering reflections over the old walls. A small, open boat with a rotted teakwood bow rose and fell with the rush and ebb of the sea. The inside of the boat-house was undulating with dancing shadows and brightness, all silent, glimmering motion.
The only still thing-so very still-was Elana Kave, hanging by her neck from a rope looped over a rafter. She was even stiller than her husband out on the beach.
She was nude, her wasted, pale body unblemished and suspended in frozen grace. Her face was grotesque, tongue protruding and eyes wide with the final surprise and comprehension. Death had diminished her, made her seem incredibly small; she was a perfect but ephemeral miniature with a gargoyle head. Ruined mortal beauty on the first leg of its journey to dust.
Glittering brilliance shafted and swirled through the old structure and bounced broken off the water, a thousand brightly mocking things playing over her, somehow only emphasizing her waxlike stillness. She was no longer any part of the warmth and movement and suffering of life.
Adam must have found her like this.
Almost stumbling, Carver backed out of the boathouse. He didn’t look away from Elana until he’d shut the squealing door.
He glanced down the beach at Adam, who was still seated as before and staring out to sea. Then he made his way toward the house and a phone.
An hour later Carver was sitting with McGregor on the screened veranda overlooking the beach and ocean. The police technicians had come and gone, and Elana had been removed in a black rubber body bag. Adam Kave had been taken inside and was being treated for shock. Nadine and Paul hadn’t been located and still didn’t know about their mother’s death. They hadn’t learned they were in a nightmare without end.
Carver sat at the glass-topped table where he’d seen the Kaves have breakfast. Not exactly amiable family meals. He tapped his cane lightly and rhythmically against a chair leg, trying to keep his mind from flashing to Elana dangling in the boathouse. It wasn’t unusual for suicides to hang themselves nude, as if the act were a return to the
