pants down.”
As soon as McGregor had hung up, Carver tapped the cradle button for a dial tone, then punched out Edwina’s number with his forefinger.
She still wasn’t home. He tried Quill Realty again, and the receptionist told him Edwina wasn’t there, then interrupted herself to say she was at that moment walking into the office. She asked him to wait, Ms. Talbot would take the call at her desk.
Carver waited. The wasp had given up on the window and was circling in the middle of the room. Now and then it darted angrily almost straight up, then struck the ceiling and spiraled lower. Carver could hear it droning. He wished it would go back to the window.
A minute later there were a couple of clicks on the line and Edwina’s voice said, “Fred?”
“How’d you know?”
“The receptionist recognized your voice.” Edwina sounded harried, annoyed that she’d been interrupted on the job. “I can’t make it tonight for dinner,” she said.
“I wasn’t going to ask you.”
“Oh?”
“I called to tell you I have to leave town again for a while. I’m not sure for how long.”
“Where you going?”
“It’s better if you don’t know. I don’t want you connected with this in any way.”
“More melodrama.”
Carver thought about the corpse in the barrel and said, “Just like a movie.”
She paused, then said, “I’ll have to give Jack Lester my answer on the Hawaii job.”
“Yeah, I guess you will.”
“Fred?”
He felt his throat constrict. He couldn’t tell her he didn’t want her to go. Not if
“I’ll be waiting.” She hung up hard enough to hurt his ear.
He unpacked the dirty clothes from his suitcase, from his short stay in Fort Lauderdale. After tossing them in a pile on the bed, he stuffed the suitcase with clean clothes.
He dug an old plastic milk bottle from the trash, rinsed out the sour-smelling white residue, then used the bottle to fill the Olds’s radiator with water. The engine had cooled, but the split hose was still dribbling. He tied a rag around the split. Should do for a while.
After washing his hands, he put the suitcase in the trunk and drove to a service station on the highway, where he had the leaking radiator hose replaced. The mechanic was good; the job took even less than the fifteen minutes Carver figured he would have spent on it.
Carver drove to Edwina’s house on the coast and let himself in the back door with his key. He made his way to the bedroom where they’d made love so many times. The window was raised a few inches and he could hear the ocean. He limped to Edwina’s dresser and removed the top drawer.
A large, folded yellow envelope was fastened to the back of the drawer with masking tape. Inside the envelope was Carver’s blue steel Colt.38 automatic.
He removed the gun and left the empty envelope taped to the drawer. Put the drawer back, then checked the Colt’s clip and mechanism, smelling oil and metal as the gun snicked heavily in his hand. Making sure the chamber was empty and the safety on, he replaced the loaded clip and tucked the Colt in his waistband beneath his shirt. Death waiting to be used.
Before he left, he called Melanie Beame’s house and talked briefly to Beth Gomez. Told her he was on his way.
19
Carver drove into Fort Lauderdale and ran a few red lights. Cut suddenly up a one-way street, one eye on the road, the other on the rearview mirror. He spent fifteen minutes doing that kind of thing, being unpredictable as if he’d gone mad from the summer heat, until he was sure the Olds wasn’t being followed.
Melanie Beame answered the door of the tiny frame house on Wayfare Lane. She glanced behind her as if waiting for some kind of signal before letting Carver limp inside.
Beth Gomez was standing in the middle of the living room. She was wearing Levi’s and a yellow blouse, looking beautiful and fresh-scrubbed, her hair pulled back and tied with a yellow ribbon. If McGregor ever saw her in person, he’d know why Roberto Gomez had coveted her above other women.
She’d followed Carver’s instructions and packed immediately and lightly. At her feet, as if worshipping her, lay a gray tweed Gucci suitcase.
She said, “This is Melanie, Carver.”
Carver almost blurted out that they’d met, then he remembered the only time he’d seen Melanie Beame was through binoculars while spying on her in this very room. The bookcase cluttered with stereo equipment, the brown easy chair, the table and lamp, all looked familiar yet somehow different now that he was among them. As if objects in a painting had acquired dimension because he, Carver, had become a figure in the scene.
Melanie Beame looked the same, though. A too-thin redhead with a cadaverous yet undeniably pretty face. Carver couldn’t help thinking she appeared as if she were still being ravaged by drugs. He told her he was pleased to meet her, then turned to Beth and asked if she was ready to leave.
“Not yet,” she said. She walked to a fancy maple cradle in a corner and bent over it gracefully. The look on her face was something.
The son of Beth and Roberto Gomez must have been sleeping. She whispered to him softly, cooing motherese that Carver probably wouldn’t have understood even if he’d been close enough to hear. He looked over at Melanie Beame, who was staring at Beth with red-rimmed blue eyes that glistened with tears. Carver hoped she wouldn’t start crying. That might set Beth off. Not to mention young Adam.
Beth straightened up and turned to face Carver. Wiped her eyes daintily with a long and tapered forefinger. “You sure we can’t take him?”
Carver said, “He’ll be safer here. And you know how difficult it’d be to care for him and avoid Roberto at the same time.”
“He’s right, Beth,” Melanie said, moving closer to Beth and speaking softly so as not to wake Adam.
She had on peculiarly scented perfume, Carver thought. Then he realized it was talcum powder he smelled. It had been years since he’d been around infants. His own. He didn’t like to think of those years. His own son was dead; he hadn’t seen his daughter since last fall.
Melanie said, “Don’t worry, I’ll take care of him as if he were my own.”
Beth curled her fingers into fists, probably digging her long red nails into her palms. “Oh, I know that, Melanie. But, Christ, this is hard!”
“But it’s the right thing to do, Beth. Adam’ll be fine; you just take care of yourself. Let Carver, here, take care of you. Know what I mean?”
Beth gnawed her lower lip. Nodded.
Carver limped over to the cradle and looked down at the dark, tiny infant huddled in a corner among scrunched-up blankets. Adam Gomez had a bald head except for a swatch of black hair over his left ear. He was curled on his side; Carver wondered if there was a similar patch of hair over the concealed right ear. He commented again that Adam was a good-looking kid, and meant it. The baby seemed to have all its parts and nothing jumped out as ugly, anyway.
Beth had moved over and was standing near Melanie, her hands still balled into tight brown fists. She took a few steps toward the cradle, then stopped as if she’d come to the edge of a drop. Her shoulders lifted and expanded as she drew in breath.
After a few seconds she exhaled in a low sigh, spun around, and with an obvious effort of will snatched up her suitcase and walked to the door without looking back at her child.
