Beth looked down at Al. Al looked up at Beth. His vote was in his eyes.
“Majority rules,” Beth said, laughing and stroking Al’s scruffy neck. “Al goes.”
For good would be nice, Carver thought, but he knew better than to say it.
31
The next morning, Carver finished his swim in the ocean and limped up the beach toward the cottage, his white beach towel slung over his shoulders like a cape, leaning forward with each step as his cane sank into the warm sand. His swim had invigorated him and he felt wonderful. The sun was warm on his shoulders, and even the sand that had worked into his rubber thongs felt good between his toes.
His mood suddenly soured when he noticed the drab brown Plymouth parked near the cottage. It was the unmarked Del Moray police car McGregor usually drove.
On the porch, Carver tapped his cane against the edges of his thongs to knock sand from them, then opened the door and went inside.
The interior of the cottage felt chilly and the light was dim after the brilliance of the morning outside. It seemed even dimmer because of the looming presence of McGregor slouched on one of the stools at the breakfast bar, his long body twisted around in its baggy brown suit so he could look at Carver as he came through the door. Beth was on the kitchen side of the counter, standing tensely with her back rigid, using both hands to sip from a cup of coffee, as if she needed a prop to give her something to do so she wouldn’t appear agitated. McGregor had a cup of coffee on the counter, near his right elbow.
“I’m always amazed when you go out to swim and make it back,” McGregor said with his lewd grin. “You’d think a shark’d pick off a gimp like you thrashing around in the water.”
“I see you’re as cheerful and tactful as usual in the morning,” Carver said, slipping his feet from the still-gritty thongs and drying himself some more with the towel so he wouldn’t trail water. He wadded the towel, tossed it into the canvas director’s chair by the door that didn’t mind getting wet, and looked at Beth. “Is he trying to bother you?” He pointed at McGregor with his cane while steadying himself with a hand on the chair.
Beth shrugged. “Actually I think he was waiting for you for someone to really bother.”
There was a whining and scratching sound at the door, then a single demanding bark.
“That’s Al,” Beth said to Carver.
He turned around and opened the door. Al came in. He glanced at Carver then walked past him, stepping on Carver’s bare foot and causing considerable pain. Then he trotted over to McGregor, sniffed one of his boat-size brown wingtips, and began wagging his tail. McGregor smiled and absently patted the top of Al’s head, something Al wouldn’t ordinarily like. People were always patting dogs on the head, which wasn’t much to them but was probably like a cranial earthquake to the dog. But Al continued wagging his tail, then wagged everything from the midpoint of his body back.
“This is a nice mutt,” McGregor said. “Cute, too. He looks like he’s got eyebrows.” He stopped patting and straightened up. Al yawned, licked McGregor’s dangling hand, then stretched out on the floor at his feet. “He’s got good instincts.”
“Al and I are going to have a talk,” Beth said.
McGregor fixed a tiny, cruel blue eye on Carver. “Speaking of talking, I hear that’s what you’ve been doing, fuckhead, wandering around talking to people about the Women’s Light Clinic bombing.”
“I’m a detective,” Carver reminded him. “That’s one of the ways I detect.”
“Which brings us to why I’m here. It’s time for you to bring me up to date on whatever it is you’ve detected so I can see if it dovetails with what we in the department have learned. We detect also. You remember, don’t you, I’m with the police?”
“You’re only sort of with the police,” Carver said, walking over to the sofa to sit on its arm. “I’ve always seen you as working almost exclusively for yourself.”
“Well, I’m like you, then. An independent businessman only kind of employed.” He grinned fiercely. “And empowered. Something you should take into account. Time’s gonna come when this case is in the past and the FBI has gone back to fucking Washington where it belongs, then it’s gonna be you and me alone without the feebs to watch over you. And believe me, once they’re done here, they won’t give a fuck if I make sure you get life imprisonment for a broken taillight.”
Al raised his head and looked up at McGregor with seeming approval, then dropped his jaw back to rest on his paws.
“Now,” McGregor went on, “what do you know that I should know? Keeping in mind that anything you neglect to mention will almost surely come back to haunt you.”
Beth went to the brewer on the sink counter and refilled her cup with coffee, then stayed back where she was. Fading away, Carver figured, so McGregor wouldn’t ask her what she knew. That was sensible. McGregor was human waste, but he did have authority and would gladly misuse it.
Carver had played this game before with McGregor and had become good at it. He leaned forward, centering his weight over his cane, and told McGregor only what he had to in order to stay legal, but not enough for McGregor to find terribly useful.
When Carver was finished talking, McGregor leaned back against the counter and rubbed his jutting chin with long fingers. The crescents of dirt beneath his nails were vividly dark against his pale skin. Carver wondered if he’d been changing the oil in his hair.
“I didn’t know about the Benedict bitch leaving hubby,” McGregor said, “but I’m not surprised. The man spends most of his time looking at other women’s private parts.”
“I doubt that was the reason,” Beth said, biting off the words. Carver hoped she could control her temper.
“Then why’d she go?” McGregor asked Carver, as if genuinely befuddled. “She get the hots for somebody richer or better looking? Some guy better hung?”
“Operation Alive was demonstrating outside her house when I was there the day she left. The pressure they and people like them put on her and her husband finally got to her, made her break and run.”
“Hmm. Is that what she told you?”
“More or less.”
“My guess is it was just an excuse. Time for the doctor’s wife to cash in, drag hubby off the golf course and into court, come away with a nice settlement, the house and the Mercedes. One thing I know, Carver, it’s women.”
Beth moved forward a step, actually drawing her hand back to fling hot coffee at McGregor. Carver gave her a warning look and she seemed to relax. But only slightly.
“Whatever her reasons,” Carver said, “she left him.”
“So how’s Benedict taking it?”
“He doesn’t like it.”
“He’ll get over it. Doctor making all that loot, some other conniving cunt’ll put the spell on him, maybe maneuver him into marriage, and he’ll probably go through the same financial wringing-out process. That’s how women see guys like Benedict, kinda the way Indians used to look at buffalo, a source for everything they need in life. Only they don’t have to shoot them like buffalo, all they gotta do is marry them and then be set for life whether they stay or go.”
Beth couldn’t remain silent. “Anybody who’d think that has buffalo chips for brains!”
McGregor didn’t bother to turn and look at her, only grinned and probed between his front teeth with the pink tip of his tongue, gratified by her anger, not knowing how close he’d come with the hot coffee.
“If you’re finished with your prairie philosophy,” Carver said, “we were about to have breakfast.”
“Oh? You’re inviting me to join you?”
“Inviting you to leave.”
McGregor got off his stool and stretched his long body. “Okay, I already had breakfast. Couple of guys like you.” He ambled toward the door with his lanky, disjointed stride. Then he turned. “Another interesting thing is Adelle Grimm, the late doctor’s grieving widow. Turns out she’s pregnant.”