“The black woman? Beth?”
“A different woman. She was there when I needed her. So was Beth, but that was later.”
Posey stopped walking and stared down at his dusty loafers. They were the kind with a leather slot on each instep where people used to insert pennies. There was only sand in the slots. “You saying I’ll meet another woman?”
“I’m saying the world will keep turning and your life will change. More slowly than it did the morning of the bombing, but it will change.”
“Maybe, but right now I’m thinking about Wanda.”
“You should be.”
“I want to hire you to find out if Norton really is the bomber, Mr. Carver. And if he is, who if anybody was behind him and involved in planting that bomb.”
Carver looked over at the youthful face made younger by a sun that revealed no mark of experience or hard-earned wisdom. “You want revenge.”
“No. I want to understand what happened, all of it. I need to know why Wanda died; then maybe I can let her go someday.”
“She died because she was in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
“I can’t just accept that. Why was it the wrong place and time? The days leading up to the bombing, and earlier that morning, I need to know about them so maybe they can provide an explanation for what happened, how it all fit together and why. I can pay you-I’ve got money. I can write you a big retainer check right now.” He reached toward his back pocket.
Carver gripped his arm at the elbow and held it motionless. Posey winced and stared at him, surprised by his strength. A man and woman, probably from the Honda station wagon, were on the beach, he in baggy red shorts, she in a one-piece black swimming suit. They were strolling along the surf line, staring over at Carver and Posey. The woman said something and they looked away.
“I don’t want you to pay me,” Carver said. “I’ll find the answers to some of your questions because I need to know them myself. Beth was carrying our child. She’d decided not to have an abortion and was at the clinic to cancel her appointment. It was only a matter of chance that she was there, just like with Wanda.”
Posey stopped wincing and blinked. “Then maybe you know how I feel. Maybe you feel the same way yourself.”
Carver released his arm. “Same bolt of lightning,” he said.
20
On the drive back to the cottage, Carver thought about his conversation with Nate Posey. Posey was still young and discovering how life could stun him and the future could dart away in unexpected directions.
Carver pitied the grieving youth. Despite the kind words of mourners and assurances of professional counselors, what had happened at the Women’s Light Clinic would always be with him, and the pain, even if eased, would remain a part of him. The past was immortal and lived with the present.
Before making a right turn off the coast highway onto the road to the cottage, he pulled the Olds onto the shoulder and braked to a halt.
He’d slowed the car deliberately and studied the area where he knew someone watching or visiting the cottage unobtrusively might park, and he’d caught a glimpse of gleaming blue metal. Almost certainly a car, not quite well enough concealed among tall brush and a copse of sugar oaks. The low rumbling of the Olds’s idling V-8 engine was probably carried away by the ocean breeze, but Carver switched off the engine anyway. He reached into the back of the car and got the Gator-lock that in crime-ridden areas he used to lock the steering wheel in place. It was tempered steel and heavier than the cane and would make a more devastating weapon up close-an ideal club. He climbed out of the car, shutting its door quietly. Gripping his cane in one hand and the rubber handle of the Gator-lock firmly in the other, he started walking through the brush toward the parked car below.
Carver was soon out of sight of the highway and whoever might be in the parked blue car. He maintained his sense of direction easily and kept moving toward the sound of the sea. Grit from the sandy soil worked into his moccasins, and once he almost fell when the tip of his cane broke through a crust of sand and plunged about six inches into a sink hole or the burrow of a small animal.
There! He saw blue metal again, slightly off to the left. He veered that way, moving slower and more quietly, and worked his way up to the edge of the stand of trees. Though he was in the shade, sweat streamed down his face and he could feel it trickle stop-and-go down his ribs. Concealed by a wild, thorny bush with tiny red blossoms, he stared at a blue Dodge parked well off the narrow road, in a spot where the driver had a clear view of the cottage and the beach.
But the driver wasn’t in the car. He was standing facing away from Carver on the other side of the vehicle, leaning back against its front fender. The first thing Carver noticed was that the man was too small to be the WASP. He was wearing gray slacks and a blue shirt. His suit coat, carefully folded inside-out so that only its gray silk lining was visible, had been laid neatly across the car’s waxed and gleaming hood. The man had bright red hair, cut short on the sides and grown bushy on top, combed neatly except for a single lock standing straight up on the left side of his head, displaced by the ocean breeze. A narrow dark strap traversed his back just below the armpit. Another strap lay at an angle across his shoulder. He was wearing a leather shoulder holster. He raised his right hand to his face now and then, as if he were eating something. From his angle, Carver couldn’t see what was in the hand.
A sudden soft rustling sound off to Carver’s left caused the redheaded man to stand up straight and turn that way. In that instant Carver saw the holstered gun and a pair of binoculars slung around his neck by a black leather strap. Carver turned his head then to see what had caused the rustling sound.
Nothing was visible. The redheaded man walked around to the back of the car, the binoculars bouncing gently against his stomach, and stood by the trunk. Carver saw now that he was carrying a brown paper sack that must have contained whatever he’d been eating.
There was the noise again. The redheaded man stiffened, placed the paper bag on the trunk, and removed the small handgun from its holster.
Carver hunched lower, watching.
Branches moved, the soft rustling resumed, and Al trotted out of the foliage.
The man smiled and tucked his handgun back into its holster.
“Hi there, boy,” he said, not loud, but Carver heard him.
Al walked over to the man, who bent down and patted the top of his head. Then the man reached for the paper sack on the trunk and drew out a sandwich. He tore off part of the sandwich and tossed it to Al, who caught it effortlessly in mid-air and scarfed it down.
This wasn’t what Carver had had in mind when he got Al. Instead of protecting Beth at the cottage, here Al was accepting food from a man who was obviously spying on Beth.
Carver looked more closely at the man, then at the blue Dodge. He began to understand. Trying not to make noise, he cautiously began backing away behind the bush, careful to avoid the thorns.
Al suddenly looked in his direction, turned toward him, hunkered down and pointed his nose and cocked a front leg.
“So you’re part pointer,” the redheaded man with binoculars said, as if delighted. “Well, I’m not hunting quail today, fella.”
Al continued to stare and point at Carver.
Carver raised a forefinger to his lips, urging the dog to be quiet, but immediately realized how stupid that was. And the motion caused him to wave the red steel Gator-lock around, which might attract attention.
The man tossed Al another bite of sandwich. As Al broke the classic pointer stance to pick it up from the ground, Carver moved back quickly.