Portia’s face haunted him. The death of a woman like that, the way she’d died, how might it have affected her husband beyond normal grief? If Joel Brant was psychologically askew after such an experience, who could blame him?
As long as it didn’t result in the stalking and killing of an innocent woman.
Feeling slightly queasy, Carver stood up and walked from the library, nodding to a stern-faced librarian on the way out.
Outside in the heat and sun, the nausea stayed with him. What now? Sympathetic morning sickness?
Pushing such nonsense from his mind, he decided his stomach was probably upset from the constant sideways motion of the microfilm being run through the viewer. Something like seasickness. He would skip lunch and drive directly back to the Brant Estates construction site and see if Joel Brant was still there.
The red convertible was gone from where it had been parked, and Brant was nowhere in sight. The cement mixers had gone, too. Carpenters were swarming over the studwork of a house near the recently poured foundations, and farther down the same street roofers were hard at work. Their hammering was a discordant symphony only slightly softened by distance.
Carver’s stomach was okay now, but his damaged rib was aching. He decided to drive to his office and find something to do that wasn’t strenuous or stressful. Maybe he’d even down one of the pills Beth had stuck in his hand as he was leaving the cottage that morning.
Half a mile down the highway he passed a low, flat-roofed structure with a sign proclaiming it to be the Egret Lounge. Despite the early hour, a row of vehicles was nosed tightly against the front of the building. They reminded Carver of suckling pigs lined against the side of their reclining mother.
One of them was the brown pickup truck driven by Brant’s foreman.
Carver braked the LeBaron and pulled onto the gravel shoulder, made a slow but tire-squealing U-turn, and parked two spaces down from the truck.
What he might learn in the Egret Lounge he wasn’t sure, but there was at least one person inside who knew Joel Brant.
23
The Egret Lounge was cool and dim inside. The mini-blinds along the front windows were sharply slanted so that bars of light traversed the low ceiling. A paddle fan, the kind that mounts flush with the ceiling to allow more headroom, was slowly revolving. It wasn’t needed to make the place cooler, but it seemed to be doing a pretty good job of keeping the tobacco smoke circulating. The Egret hadn’t yet caught up with the nonsmoking movement.
As Carver’s eyes adjusted to the dimness, he saw a long bar fronting about a dozen round tables with blue-and-white checked tablecloths on them. Each table had a napkin holder and a cluster of condiment bottles in its center, along with a large glass ashtray. Except for the bar itself, the Egret looked more like a restaurant than a lounge, though a lunch menu mounted behind the bar featured nothing other than hamburgers, cheeseburgers, and fried potatoes and onions.
The place smelled like fried beef and onions as well as cigarette smoke. Carver’s stomach, which had calmed down, gave a slight twitch. Country and western was also in the air, a Randy Travis soundalike singing in a deep, deep voice about God and the flag and an old hound and the wife and kids and something about a ’75 Ford. Carver couldn’t make sense of it, but it was sad.
About a dozen customers were scattered about the Egret, four of them slouched on stools in the habitual drinker’s posture of relaxed despondency at the bar. Brant’s foreman was sitting alone at a table, staring at a full mug of beer in front of him. It must have just been drawn, because it had a thick, foamy head. The foreman looked as pensive as the melancholy lost souls at the bar. Maybe because of the music.
Carver approached the table, and the foreman looked up at him. Without his hard hat he had a head of bushy red hair that curled wherever it wanted. Unruly red eyebrows, too. His face was sunburned so that his nose was peeling; he had the kind of skin that would never tan. He squinted blue eyes at Carver, as if trying to recognize him.
“Howdy,” Carver said, also maybe because of the music. “You’re the foreman over at Brant Estates, aren’t you?”
The man nodded.
Carver used the crook of his cane to pull back a chair. “Fred Carver,” he said, extending his hand. “I noticed you over where they were building this morning.”
“Wade Schultz.” Schultz’s grip was strong, dry, and callused.
“I’d offer to buy you a drink,” Carver said, “only that one looks fresh.”
“It is,” Schultz said. He seemed neither friendly nor unfriendly, and not particularly curious.
“I was thinking about buying at Brant Estates, and when I saw your truck parked outside, I thought it might be wise to drop in and talk with you. My theory is, talk to the foreman if you really want to find out how sturdy a house is built. What do you say?”
“About what?”
“Those houses good and sound?”
“I’d say so. We’re a company that doesn’t scrimp on materials, and I can guarantee you the building codes are followed right to the letter.”
“The houses are only half of it,” Carver said. “The company itself, Brant Development, is it as sound as the houses? A guarantee’s no good if the company goes out of business.”
“Company’s sound. Brant’s been building houses in Florida for a while now, and we don’t get many complaints.”
“What about those you do get?”
“We jump on them and fix what’s broke,” Schultz said promptly.
“How about the guy that owns the company? Joe Brant, is it?”
“It’s Joel. Joel Brant.” Schultz toyed with the handle of his beer mug. Muscles and tendons danced in his bulging forearm.
Carver leaned in closer to Schultz, speaking confidentially. “This won’t get back to your boss, but. . well, is he a reasonably honest man?”
Schultz smiled. “He’s my boss. What am I gonna do, tell you the truth if he’s a crook?”
“I don’t know. Are you?”
“He’s honest enough,” Schultz said.
“Just enough?”
Schultz took a pull of his beer and wiped a foam mustache away with the back of his hand. “You buy in Brant Estates, Mr. Carver, and you won’t be sorry. Those houses are a solid product and they’re priced right. And the honest to God truth is, Joel Brant’s as straight as any builder you can buy from.”
Carver smiled. “Sounds good to me. So he’s an honest businessman. And you tell me he’s solvent, or at least his company is. But what about his personal life? I mean, I knew a fella bought into a subdivision and the builder ran away with one of the saleswomen. Place went all to hell in no time while they were winning limbo contests in Hawaii. This Brant married?”
“Not anymore. His wife died a while back in a car accident.” Another pull of beer. “He isn’t going to run away with anyone, Mr. Carver. He’s not the irresponsible type.”
“Wife died? That’s a shame. He a young man?”
“Fortyish.” Schultz tilted back his head and drank his mug of beer down past the halfway point.
“I’d like to think that’s young,” Carver said. “It can hit a man hard, losing his wife so suddenly. Make him somebody other than himself for a while, if you know what I mean.”
“Some men.”
“Is Brant one of them?”
“Listen, I been on an extended lunch hour, waiting on some lumber deliveries.” Schultz glanced at his watch. “They oughta be there by now.” He stood up. “Been nice meeting you, Mr. Carver. I hope to be building your house one of these days.”
“It’s possible,” Carver said.
He watched as Schultz swaggered from the Egret, opening the door and disappearing from dimness in a blast of sunlight that made it appear he was walking into a stoked furnace. The door swung back quickly, cutting short the rude interruption of the outside world.