Burn

few minutes before the giant with mechanic’s fingernails had entered and beaten him.

The odds were, he decided, that his attacker had been trying to warn him away from asking questions concerning Marla Cloy. Of course, there was no way to be sure. But another run-in with the man wouldn’t be wise so soon after the first, so Carver decided to play the odds and follow Joel Brant tomorrow rather than Marla. He wasn’t too obstinate to give himself time to heal.

The commercial was over and the camera caught the pixielike actress with a serious expression. Damned if she didn’t look like a pocket-size Ava Gardner. Then she realized she was on camera and grinned, crinkling her nose. She moved over a seat as Leno stood, applauding vigorously, and Eric Clapton strolled into the picture, tall and lanky and smiling and waving to the audience.

Carver thought Clapton was great, and he decided that if he played his guitar and sang it might be worth risking waking Beth by raising the TV’s volume.

But within minutes after Clapton had sat down and selfconsciously scratched his scraggly beard with a forefinger, Carver was asleep.

He was awake before six the next morning and thought he’d be able to get away from the cottage without rousing Beth, but when he came out of the bathroom after showering and shaving, there she was in her terry-cloth robe, seated at the breakfast counter. She was drinking a cup of the coffee Carver had made in the Braun brewer.

“Where you going, Fred?”

“I plan on making it an easy day,” he said. “Maybe follow Brant around and see what kind of mischief he gets into.” He gripped his cane and made his way into the sleeping area.

By the time he’d dressed and returned to the kitchen, she was munching soda crackers and had poured a second cup of coffee for him. It was the second time in the last few days he’d seen her eating dry crackers.

“Maybe I should go with you,” she said.

“How can you eat crackers for breakfast?” he asked.

“So I’m not going,” she said, keying off his mood. She didn’t say anything about the crackers; she was still in some kind of denial and not willing to talk about how pregnancy had strangely altered her diet.

“How about using Burrow’s resources to see what you can find out about Brant Development?” he asked.

“Sure. That oughta keep me out of your hair for a while.”

He smiled, passing his hand over his bald pate.

“How do you feel?” she asked.

“Almost normal if I don’t do any deep breathing. Want to help me with this bracer?” He held up the elastic support that had been draped over a stool.

She came around the counter and he raised his pullover shirt while she fastened the brace around his lower ribs. He felt a little pain now, and he wondered if she’d deliberately cinched the support too tight so she could make her point that he should rest another day. They’d fallen into fighting petty subterranean duels.

“Want some breakfast?” she asked.

He tucked in his shirt. “No. I’ll get something to eat at a drive-through. People in construction start work early, so I want to be outside Brant’s condo before seven.”

“He’s a boss,” Beth said. “They don’t start at any seven o’clock.”

“They do if they own the company and they’re successful.” He downed half the coffee she’d poured for him. Now that his rib support was in place, he made his way back into the sleeping area.

As quietly as possible, he got his Colt.38 semiautomatic from where it was taped to the back of his top dresser drawer. He used the leather belt holster and concealed the gun beneath his shirt.

Beth seemed not to notice that his shirt was again untucked when he returned to the main room. Pregnancy might have taken the edge off her alertness.

“OK if I take your car today?” he asked. “Brant might recognize mine.”

She got down off her stool and walked to where her purse sat on a table near the door. After fishing out her key ring, she detached one of the keys and came to him, kissed him lightly on the lips, then handed him the key. Her kiss tasted like coffee. He held his body slightly away from her so she wouldn’t feel the gun.

“Don’t forget these,” she said, and with her other hand gave him the vial of pills Dr. Woosman had prescribed.

He brushed his lips against her forehead, which was surprisingly cool. “Thanks. I’ll take one if I need it.”

She returned to her stool at the breakfast counter, and he headed toward the door.

“Fred.”

He turned.

“Don’t wait any longer than you have to, if you’ve gotta use that gun.”

He nodded and left her drinking coffee and munching dry crackers and thinking God knew what.

22

Beth’s LeBaron convertible wasn’t as fast as the Olds, but it also wasn’t as noticeable; there were a zillion like it in Florida, most of them rentals driven by tourists living the fun-and-sun fantasies pictured in color travel brochures. Life was a series of illusions large and small, and some of them could be bought.

Carver had topped off the gas tank and now was parked near Brant’s condo. He had the car’s top up and the windows closed and the air conditioner humming away. It was cool in the LeBaron; it had a more efficient air conditioner than the Olds, maybe because it hadn’t labored through so many merciless summers. And the Olds was rusty enough to let some of the cold air escape.

At 7:30 Brant drove from between the white-brick mock guard kiosks marking the entrance to Warwick Village. He was behind the wheel of a LeBaron convertible, not the sleek black Stealth. His convertible was red, however, and he drove with the top down. Carver hadn’t figured him for a two-car kind of guy, but then maybe the Stealth was in the shop and he was driving a loaner. It was difficult to identify a rental car in Florida. The leasing agencies operated under new restraints, since some of the local criminals had decided to view tourists as game animals.

Carver depressed the accelerator and stayed well back of the red LeBaron. Another LeBaron convertible turned from a side street and rode between them. If they all lowered their tops and had beauty queens as passengers, they could have a parade. Brant was wearing a white shirt and had his sport jacket or suit coat folded and draped over the back of the passenger seat, so he was easy to track even in heavy traffic. Carver, wearing the horn-rimmed dark glasses that he fancied made him look a little like Jack Nicholson only with less hair, didn’t think he’d be at all conspicuous in Brant’s rearview mirror if he kept his distance.

The red LeBaron led him west of town to Brant Estates. He parked on the highway shoulder and watched the sleek red car glide along recently poured concrete streets to where three display houses were lined facing north. They were ranch houses with pale gray or blue siding, powder blue roofs, and two-car garages. The house in the middle had a low white picket fence around the front yard, and its garage had been converted into a sales office. Carver watched as Brant parked in front of that house, climbed out of the red convertible, and walked into the office with his coat slung over his shoulder.

He didn’t emerge from the office for almost an hour. Carver sat watching cement trucks rumble one by one to where slab foundations were being poured at the far end of the subdivision. Several workmen were standing around, leaning on shovel handles and staring as if hypnotized by the mixers. Each time one of the mixers released its gravelly soup to pour down its steel funnel, they would get to work frenziedly shoveling, evenly distributing the wet concrete. A bulldozer was grading not far from where the concrete work was being done, raising copious clouds of dust that hung almost motionless to blemish the china blue sky. Beyond where the bulldozer was relentlessly moving earth, about a dozen houses seemed to have been completed. There were a dozen more in various stages of construction, spaced out around the new streets. Carver remembered Charley Spotto referring to them as cookie-cutter houses. Spotto was right. Though they were attractively designed, there was a numbing sameness about them.