“I won’t be at our condo for a week or so,” Ghostly said. “A convention down in Miami I can’t skip without fear of losing employment.” He worked his out-of-whack eyebrows fearfully. “Christ, that’d be the kicker, if I lost my job on top of the rest of this mess.”
Carver said, “Go to your convention. If I need more information I’ll phone you at your hotel.”
“Fine. It’s the Holiday Inn on Collins.” He lurched forward and shook Carver’s hand again. This time there was unsteadiness in his grip, and not much strength. “Find her, Carver, please.”
Carver said, “I’ll be working at it. Any of your neighbors Beth was particularly thick with?”
“Not really. We kept pretty much to ourselves. And I traveled most of the time.”
Carver disengaged his right hand from Ghostly’s. He said he wanted Ghostly to sign a standard contract before he left, then answer a few more questions. Ghostly agreed immediately, and Carver limped to his dresser behind the folding screen and got a contract from the middle drawer.
Ghostly scrawled his signature, set down the pen, and said again, “Find her.” More prayer than request.
“If I can’t find her,” Carver said, “she’ll still need to be found. Still need help. Will you agree to go to the police when I tell you I’m wasting your money?”
Ghostly said, “I thought that out carefully before I walked in here. The answer’s yes.”
Carver gave him his copy of the contract. “I’ll do what I can to see that doesn’t happen, Mr. Ghostly.”
Ghostly submitted himself to another ten minutes of question-and-answer. Then he managed a thin grin and walked from the cottage, leaving behind to linger whatever it was that had aroused uneasiness in Carver when he’d approached him on the beach.
Maybe it was the uneasiness, and his curiosity, that had really prompted Carver to take the case. That and the money.
And a young woman out there alone somewhere, running and bedeviled.
3
The Beau Capri condominiums didn’t look remotely French. As Carver steered his ancient Olds convertible onto the azalea-bordered driveway of the parking lot, he saw a series of three-story buildings constructed of vertical slabs of cast concrete, with what appeared to be seashells embedded in them. The flat roofs had air-conditioning units mounted on them, surrounded by symmetrical, blunt-tipped picket fences that looked as if they ought to be on the ground and not three stories in the air. Set in the middle of the four buildings was the ubiquitous swimming pool, this one as unimaginative as the rest of the architecture. A rectangular pool with high and low diving boards, a wide concrete apron, and uncomfortable-looking nylon-webbed chairs and lounges. The whole bland creation was surrounded by a chain-link fence coated with some sort of pastel pink rubber Carver had never seen before. Voltaire would have defended to his death the residents’ right to live in Beau Capri, but he would never have moved in himself.
The drive from Del Moray to the Orlando area had taken only about an hour on sun-washed highways, and it wasn’t yet noon. Carver had driven in with the Olds’s canvas top down, letting the wind whip around him and try to mess up hair no longer on his head. A small and bitter triumph over nature.
He parked the Olds at the far end of the lot, alongside a low red Porsche. After killing the powerful V-8 engine, he listened for a moment to cooling metal ticking beneath the long hood. Most of the cars in the lot were expensive; the dented and rusty Olds looked like a wino who’d crashed a swank party.
Carver checked addresses emblazoned on the visible sides of each building and saw that the Ghostly unit would be in the extreme left building, on the third floor. As he climbed out of the Olds, heat from beneath the car wafted out and embraced his ankles. He set his cane on the sun-warmed concrete and began limping toward the sidewalk that flanked the pool’s pink fence.
There were a few kids splashing around in the pool. Also an old man with a chest thick with gray hair and gold medallions. A lean and beautifully built woman about fifty, in a scanty black bikini, stood hipshot near the fence. She had platinum blond hair, skin the color of burnt toast, and sharp white teeth, which she showed as she glanced at Carver and either grimaced or smiled-he wasn’t sure which.
“Help you?”
An elderly, gray-haired man with a huge stomach paunch was blocking Carver’s way on the sidewalk. He wore dark slacks and a white short-sleeved shirt with some sort of insignia on one shoulder. Low-key but alert security. Apparently people didn’t simply walk into Beau Capri. If it wasn’t exclusive, what was it selling?
Carver flashed his reassuring, beatific smile, in surprising contrast to the harshness of his features. “I’m looking for the Ghostlys’ condo. It’s in that end building, they said.”
“That’s right.” The old man’s faded blue eyes had narrowed. He was measuring Carver, staying affable but suspicious, in the manner of security guards. He tugged his belt up on his right hip, as if he was used to having a gun there. A former cop, maybe. “Mind if I ask the nature of your business, sir?”
“I’m not a pesky salesman,” Carver said.
The old guy said, “Didn’t figure.”
Carver drew out his wallet and showed his ID.
“Private, huh?” the guard said. “Ghostlys got some kinda trouble?”
“Maybe. Seen Mrs. Ghostly lately?”
“Not in a while. But that ain’t unusual, what with the baby and all.”
“Baby?”
He brushed aside a mosquito that had been droning around his eyes in defiance of authority. “Sure. She’s pregnant as hell. Been that way for about eight months.”
Here was something Bob Ghostly hadn’t mentioned. Carver leaned on his cane. He felt something cold slink up his spine. “We talking about the same Elizabeth Ghostly?”
“ ’Magine so. Husband name of Robert. One nice gal. Well liked around here, even though she does tend to keep to herself. Got her reasons, I expect.”
“What kinda reasons?”
“Oh, they’d be personal, I’m sure.”
“I noticed you didn’t say hubby was well liked.”
The guard seemed to consider leveling with Carver. A warm breeze ruffled his white hair, rattled the palm fronds overhead. He said, “ ’Tween you and me, hubby’s a prick. Acts like he owns this place and everyone in it.”
“Really?” Carver feigned surprise. “He told me he was hardly ever here. Said he traveled around selling medical supplies.”
“Yeah, he’s gone mosta the time, but when he’s here he expects folks to get outa his way. Beth Ghostly, now, she’ll always stop and talk to the other residents. They was cool to her at first, her being black and all, but once they got to know her they had no choice but to like her. Most everyone here’s interested in her pregnancy. Lotsa folks figure she disappeared ’cause she went into labor, maybe had the baby. Couple of people tried to ask her husband, but he just ignored them and hurried on about his business. Always in a major fuckin’ rush, that one. Important man on the run. Or so he sees himself.”
Carver considered telling the guard Bob Ghostly had hired him and that Beth was missing, but he decided not to get the residents all excited and gossiping. The main reason Ghostly had come to him instead of going to the law was to keep the investigation low-profile.
He handed the guard one of his cards. “Maybe she did have that baby. I’ll let you know. Meanwhile, will you give me a call if you see her?”
“Sure.” The guard slipped the card into his shirt pocket. “You don’t figure. . well, I shouldn’t ask this. I mean, why you’re working for the Ghostlys is none of my business, and I guess you wouldn’t tell me if I asked.”
Carver said, “That’s right. Client confidentiality.”
“I’m curious, though. There some kinda trouble between Beth and her husband?”
“No reason to think that.”
The guard smiled. He’d have thought less of Carver if he’d gotten an answer.