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Carver hadn’t considered that one. Another layer of possible meaning.

“She might not care if Brant’s hired you,” Beth said. “It could be presented as another example of male harassment. If Brant were dead, it would be your word against hers as to why you were hired. She might be using you, Fred, if Brant isn’t.”

Carver lay for a while with his hands behind his head, staring up at the dark ceiling, listening to the gentle rush of the surf.

“I don’t like being used,” he said again.

Beth moved close to him. He could feel the heat of her body as she leaned in and kissed his cheek. Her breath was warm. Her fingers brushed his chest, then trailed lower.

“That right?” she said.

“Wait a minute, I’ll get a condom.”

“Fred.”

16

Carver was on Jacaranda Lane at ten the next morning.

This time he parked the Olds directly in front of Marla Cloy’s house. The maroon Toyota was parked in a patch of sunlight in the driveway, though there was no sign of life around the house. The drapes were closed and the green awnings drooped over blank windows. The lineup of dead plants on the small concrete porch hadn’t been moved. The cracks in the faded yellow stucco oddly gave the house the look of permanence, as if it had obtained a patina of long-ago minor damage and wear as it settled in for centuries. Age-checked oil paintings had that look about them, as did ancient mausoleums.

It was warm but not yet brutally hot, and a slight breeze kicked up to pop the house’s green awnings like sails and ruffle the palm trees that lined the sad avenue. A good morning to sleep in late with the windows open. Maybe that’s what Marla Cloy was doing, escaping into sleep from her daytime nightmare.

Or maybe not escaping anything and not dreaming at all, sleeping the sleep of the not-so-innocent.

Carver thought it would be fine if he woke her. Then she might not be thinking clearly enough to maintain whatever facade she could be hiding behind. The cobwebs of sleep might reveal more than they concealed.

He’d decided it was time to confront Marla directly. If she really was persecuting Brant with false claims of harassment, knowing that he’d hired help might prevent her from continuing. At least make her think twice before doing anything bold.

And if Brant really was harassing her, and was using Carver in whatever scheme he was working, Carver might be able to find out why.

He limped up onto the porch and pressed the doorbell button with his cane. The button had been painted over, and he had doubts as to whether it still worked, but he heard faintly from inside the house what sounded like the old triple-note NBC signal chimes. It brought to mind hours spent listening to the twilight of radio drama when he was a boy, the tiny arched dial glowing feebly in the dark.

The drapes in the window to the left of the porch moved a few inches to one side, then back.

Then the door opened. Carver had passed inspection. Meaning he wasn’t Brant.

Marla was wearing cutoff Levi’s with a tucked-in white T-shirt with BEYOND BITCH lettered on it. She was barefoot, and Carver was fascinated by the perfection of her squarish feet with their pedicured bright red nails. For the first time in his life he wondered if he might be a latent foot fetishist. Her dark hair was slightly mussed and her eyes-so deep a blue they were almost purple-looked lazy and sleepy, and bruised because of their odd color, which seemed to reflect on the flesh around them. Beneath the bleached and stringy unhemmed cutoffs, her legs were shapely and tan, so free of blemish that sheathing them in nylon would be redundant. She smelled un-perfumed but clean, a fresh, soapy scent. Carver noticed that her hair behind her ears and around the back of her neck was wet. She might have just gotten out of the bathtub or shower. Maybe she bathed as often as she washed her clothes.

He told her who he was and that he was working for Joel Brant.

She didn’t blink, but her eyes looked a little less drowsy. Close up, she was a lot more impressive. He thought he saw some of her mother’s strength in her features, a beauty that hinted at character.

“He’s not allowed to come near me, so he sent someone?” she asked, but she didn’t seem afraid.

“No, Joel doesn’t know I’m here. I decided on my own to talk to you and see if this thing can be settled.”

A smile was slow to form but quick to disappear on her fresh-scrubbed features. “He wants money, right?”

“Not any more than the rest of us. His story is that he never heard of you until you began filing complaints about him with the police. He’s puzzled, and he hired me to find out why you’re harassing him,”

A wasp was buzzing around the dead potted plants. The morning was beginning to heat up and get uncomfortable.

“May I come in?” Carver asked. He knew the sun wasn’t doing his bald pate any good.

She stared appraisingly at him, at his stiff leg and his cane.

“I’m allergic to wasp stings,” he lied.

She came to her decision about him and nodded, then stepped back to make extra room for him to pass, since he walked with a cane.

There didn’t seem to be any air-conditioning running, but the house was still cool from last night. The living room was dim and full of overstuffed blue furniture clustered around an oval, woven rug that contained every known color and so went with any decor. On one wall was a crude bookcase fashioned from cinder blocks and unfinished pine boards. It held a small stereo and a lot of tattered paperback books. A wooden table stood near the window. On it were an old portable Smith-Corona electric typewriter, a stack of vegetarian magazines, a thick paperback combination dictionary and thesaurus, a bottle of liquid white-out, and two plastic in-out trays that contained typing paper and long sheets of yellow paper from a legal pad. The top sheet had writing in pencil on it. There was a lamp with a black shade on a back corner of the table, plugged into a long, frayed extension cord that ran across the floor beneath the window and disappeared behind the bookcase. A fire hazard.

“I see you’re a writer,” Carver said, lowering himself into the soft, sprung sofa.

“I’m sure you already knew that,” Marla said. She walked over and opened the drapes so light flooded in over the worktable and made the room much brighter.

“I’d heard,” he admitted. He pointed at the magazines with his cane, remembering her devouring a hamburger at Mc shy;Donald’s. “Are you a vegetarian?” he asked, giving her a chance to lie.

“No, I’m doing an article on it, though. Some people theorize that since humans are omnivorous by nature, being a vegetarian might hold hidden long-term health hazards.”

“Oh? That’s interesting. What do you think?”

She smiled. “I’m omnivorous.”

She sat down in a bulging blue chair that matched the sofa and crossed her tan legs, pumped a perfect foot a few times. Deep inside him Carver felt a tugging sensation, as if something in him were attached to her toe by a string. He was undeniably attracted to this woman and wondered if in some complex way it had to do with Beth’s pregnancy. Or maybe it was because she might be extremely dangerous. Beth had once pointed out to him that he was drawn to dangerous women. Well, he wasn’t the only one with that failing; there were a lot of victims strewn along the landscape between Delilah and Lorena Bobbitt.

“Why are you doing this to Joel Brant?” Carver asked.

“I’m not. He’s doing it to me.”

“Why would he? He says he doesn’t even know you.”

“He knows me now. As to why he’d harass me, it’s well known how some men become fixated on a woman. She doesn’t have to be beautiful or behave in any particular manner. It all originates in the stalker, not in the object of his compulsion. She only has to strike some chord in his sick mind, and he chooses her for his victim.”