“Most men aren’t like that,” Carver said. “Joel Brant doesn’t strike me as an exception.”
Again the smile, confident, superior. “I’m not surprised you don’t believe me. You’re a man. Only women really understand this kind of all-too-common oppression and victimization.”
“I didn’t say I disbelieved you.”
“Yes, you did. Indirectly.”
She might be right; he couldn’t recall. “I came here to listen to your story,” he said. “That means I must have harbored some tiny doubt about Joel’s.”
“My story is that I turned around one day and Brant was there, and I was in the crosshairs, where I’ve been ever since. He’s stalking me. It’s a familiar story, but too often the woman being stalked isn’t believed until she’s proved her point by dying.”
“You’re an enigma,” Carver said.
“Maybe I am. Men can’t stand an enigma. They have to try to figure it out, to master it so they can discard it and move on.”
He was getting tired of her talking like a 1970s militant feminist, but he didn’t tell her so. “It sounds as if you’ve had some bad experiences.”
“Some. They made me realistic, but they didn’t make me paranoid or delusionary. I’m not imagining Joel Brant is a threat to me. He showed me a knife and said he was going to kill me.”
“He denies that.”
“Can he say where he was at the time it happened?”
“Yes. He was at the grocery store the same time you were, but that could be because you made it a point to be there at the same time he was.”
“Uh-huh. As I said, I’m not surprised you don’t believe me.”
Being a man, Carver thought. “It’s not a gender thing,” he said.
“Sure it isn’t.”
Trying not to show his irritation, he decided he could never convince her that he wasn’t a misogynist. “Are you writing about this?”
“This what?”
“You and Joel Brant.”
She laughed bitterly, “Sure, I’m persecuting an innocent stranger so I can do an article.”
“A book, maybe.”
“I’m afraid not, Mr. Carver. But I’m not at all shocked that you’d think so. Did you ever consider that Joel Brant might be writing a book? You don’t have to be a pro to be published.”
Carver smiled. “You’ve got me.” He tapped soundlessly on the woven rug with the tip of his cane. From the rear of the house he could hear a soft humming now, probably a window air conditioner. “Do you feel safer now that a restraining order’s been issued?”
“Safer,” she said, “but not safe.”
“If Brant were really stalking you, why would he hire me?”
“That’s a question he might want asked in court some day.” She stood up and crossed her arms beneath her breasts. “I was just about to settle down and try to do some work.”
Carver leaned his weight over his cane and fought his way up out of the deep, deep sofa.
“Something bothers me,” he said. “You don’t seem frightened.”
She moved a step closer to him and her face got hard. Her dark eyes sparked with pinpoints of light as she moved into the sun pouring through the window. “I’m frightened, all right,” she said, “but I’m also determined. I won’t be brutalized or die a helpless victim who didn’t fight back. I intend to defend myself if I must.”
Carver remembered Willa Krull telling him she was trying to talk Marla into buying a gun. “Defend yourself how?”
“Any way I can.”
“Do you own a gun?”
“Does Joel Brant?”
“I don’t know. He didn’t say.”
“Neither did I.”
Carver made his way to the door, walking slower than he had to with the cane. She walked ahead of him and held the door open.
Heat moved in as he moved out. Marla didn’t flinch or move her body an inch as he edged past her onto the porch.
He turned to face her. “Believe it or not, I agree with you about how women are at a disadvantage in something like this,” he said. “I’m only trying to get a sense of what’s really going on.”
“Thanks for you sympathy.” She said it with a faint curl of her upper lip. “I’m going to do whatever I can to make sure you won’t be expressing it at my funeral.”
He looked directly into her deep blue eyes and found nothing he could read. She stared back at him with no sign of discomfort, only calm determination. He didn’t hear the door close behind him until he was almost to the street.
When he’d started the engine and switched on the air conditioner, he sat for a while in the car before driving away. It was unsettling to him that he felt himself drawn to Marla Cloy even though she was no less a dilemma and a danger than when he’d rung her doorbell.
And something else was unsettling. He had the feeling that despite her brittle and wary talk, she might be attracted to him.
Of course, he could be dead wrong about that. He’d been wrong that way before. Male ego, Marla would probably say.
Beth would probably say the same.
He drove.
17
After leaving Marla, Carver drove to Brant’s address, which turned out to be in Warwick Village, a luxury condominium complex on the east side of town, not on the ocean but with an ocean view if you were on a high floor.
Half a dozen identical white brick buildings made up Warwick Village. They had powder blue shutters and decorative blackiron balconies. A network of pale concrete sidewalks connected the buildings, all emanating from a fancy white gazebo as if it were the hub of a wheel. Flowers were planted around the gazebo, and it had a rooster weather vane on its roof. The rooster’s head was tossed back and its beak was spread wide as if it were crowing. Someone had painted an oblong eye on it that looked like the eye of a human.
On a cedar board near the gazebo was a directory of Warwick Village, under a sheet of Plexiglas to protect it from the weather. There was also a small sign directing prospective buyers to Red Feather Realty, the agency that apparently handled all Warwick Village listings.
A man wearing plaid slacks, a white shirt, and a white cap emerged from one of the buildings, walking a short-legged, grayish dog of indeterminate breed. The dog was in a bigger hurry than the man and kept the leash tight while all four legs churned on the grass just off the sidewalk. It was sniffing around, searching almost in a panic for the precise spot to relieve itself, the way dogs did when they’d been indoors too long and had finally found hope for relief.
Carver made his way casually over to the gazebo so the dog walker couldn’t avoid passing him.
It was easy enough to act interested in the place and strike up a conversation with the man, who told him that the condo was five years old and had been built by Brant Development. He didn’t know Brant personally, but he knew which of the white brick buildings he lived in, and that Brant was on the condominium board. “That means a lot,” the man said, “that the condo builder thinks enough of the place to live in one of the units.” The little dog wasn’t interested in any of this. It was yanking around on its leash, acting desperate and staring intently at Carver’s cane. Carver thought it was time to end the conversation.
He drove to Red Feather Realty, whose main office was in a small strip shopping center not unlike the one where Carver’s office was located, and pretended to be a prospective buyer of a Warwick Village condo.
The agent handling Warwick Village, a middle-aged and ferocious woman named Hilda who wore an obvious wig, said she knew Joel Brant and used the fact that the builder himself lived in one of the units as a selling point. “Very important,” she said. Apparently she’d talked to the man with the desperate little dog. Brant had moved in nearly six months ago, after his wife died in an auto accident, Hilda said. He was a nice man.
Could be, Carver thought.
Hilda loaded him up with glossy and colorful brochures about Warwick Village and gave him her card, took his. She reminded him that membership in the Warwick Village Racquet Club was built into the monthly maintenance fee, then asked Carver when he wanted to tour the display units.