“Why do you think Elana’s against the marriage?”
Dewitt turned his hands palms up and raised them a few inches in a helpless gesture, or as if he might be trying to levitate the table. “She doesn’t like me. Hell, I don’t know why. Chemistry, maybe. Or maybe she’s got this idea car dealers are all swindlers. You’d be surprised the kind of prejudice there is against some occupations. Or maybe you wouldn’t, being a private detective.”
Carver hadn’t been off the force and in private practice very long, but he’d already been called a keyhole peeper, a sleaze bag, and assorted things even less nice. Joel Dewitt had a point. But Elana didn’t seem the sort to tag people that way. There was a sadness and wisdom to her that suggested understanding gained the hard way and not forgotten.
He gave Dewitt one of his cards and asked him to call if he had anything to say about Paul Kave. Dewitt handed Carver a card with a Fort Lauderdale address and told him he should come in and see if maybe he really was the cycle type. “Never too old,” he said. Carver didn’t care for that, but what the hell, Dewitt might still be in his twenties. Go-getter making it in his youth and about to marry into more of it. Full throttle, kid.
“Tell Nadine I said good-bye,” Carver said. He leaned on his cane and straightened up. The cane had been beneath the table, so Dewitt had to be seeing it for the first time, but there was no change of expression in his eyes. “I’ll go out this way and walk around the side of the house.” Carver limped toward a door in the aluminum screen.
“Remember what I said about that motorcycle,” Dewitt said behind him. “Cane don’t make any difference.”
“Might even be a good thing to use on sharp corners,” Carver said, and went out. The screen door clicked solidly closed behind him; it didn’t slam and reverberate like the one on Carver’s beach cottage. The fit and finish of big money.
When he’d almost reached the Olds, he heard a spat-out oath and saw a lanky young man stalking toward a mud-spattered red Jeep parked in the shade of the portico. His elongated face was creased with anger and his white jogging shoes seemed to want to pause of their own accord and kick pebbles and bits of bark, causing him to lurch. Forces he couldn’t comprehend had control of him.
He spotted Carver and glared; might have been able to burn a hole in paper with that look. “Fuckin’ Dewitt!” he said. “When you see him, you tell him I know he’s a crook!”
This must be Mel Bingham, and he must be connecting Carver and Dewitt because Carver was standing near the car parked next to the Olds, a new, deep blue Jaguar sedan with tinted windows. Bingham probably thought Carver was waiting for Dewitt.
“I might not see him again,” Carver said. “I just met him. You better tell him yourself.”
“Oh, I’ve told him before,” Bingham said. He had flame-red hair to match his temper and his splotchy, freckled complexion. He was wearing jeans and a gray T-shirt with Have a Shitty Day lettered in black across the front. His caved-in chest was trembling and his hands were white-knuckled fists that seemed to want to strike and burrow and pluck out vital organs. He’d followed the advice on his T-shirt and he was mad.
“I’d like to talk to you for a minute,” Carver said, wondering if Bingham could calm down enough for coherent conversation.
Carver wasn’t going to find out today.
“Later!” Bingham snarled. He swung his long body up into the Jeep, fired up the engine, and probably got a lot of satisfaction from the screeching of the knobby tires on the driveway.
Carver watched the Jeep two-wheel it around a corner and out of sight behind some palm trees. He wondered if the automatic barrier at the base of the drive would be triggered soon enough to rise before the Jeep reached it. Bingham was furious enough to drive through the barrier. Through brick walls, maybe.
The Rejected Suitor Blues, Carver figured.
He got into the Olds and started the engine. The vinyl upholstery was searingly hot, and he put the car in Drive immediately to get out of there and enjoy the breeze of motion.
Carver thought he glimpsed Elana’s pale features floating behind a front window as he pulled sharply out onto the driveway and coasted toward the highway. He hoped he wouldn’t see Mel Bingham’s red Jeep twisted around a tree on the way.
Nadine was crazy to prefer Dewitt, he thought. Bingham belonged in this family.
Chapter 14
Carver found Dr. Roland Elsing’s office easily. Paul Kave’s psychiatrist was listed in the phone directory, the detective’s friend. There was more information in phone books than most people thought; they were short-form encyclopedias of cities, revealing economic standing, status, neighborhood, entertainment and industrial trends-the stage setting in which the detective had to play out his or her role.
Elsing’s address meant he was expensive; most of his patients would be affluent if not downright obscenely rich like the Kaves. Carver remembered Emmett’s scathing opinion of psychiatrists, apparently shared by Paul.
The doctor’s office was on the second floor of a newish glass and pale-stone building on Commercial, in the heart of town. Architecturally, it looked a lot like a crypt with a view. Next to Elsing’s office was a broker who dealt in “pre-owned” yachts. There was a glassed-in corkboard in the hall, plastered with photographs and typed information on various boats, some of them big enough to be called ships. Carver looked at a few of the photographs, a few of the prices. Looked away.
He buttoned his powder blue sportcoat, which felt comfortable in the coolly air-conditioned tomb of a building, and pushed through a brass-lettered oak door into Dr. Elsing’s office.
The reception area was carpeted in deep green. The walls were pale green. Most of the Danish furniture was dark green or beige, and the long, curved receptionist’s desk had a greenish tint to its gray wood. Must be true about green being the calming color, Carver thought.
He set sail across the sea of green carpet. It wasn’t easy to stay on his feet, but the softness sure felt good beneath and around his soles. His cane dragged in the plush pile.
The receptionist herself wasn’t green, though she wore a light brown dress with an off-white collar, and went with the decor very nicely. She was attractive in an intellectual way, with probing gray eyes behind round-rimmed glasses, and a prim, lipsticked mouth that looked as if it had never done anything unnatural. Though she was sitting down, it was apparent that she was trim and shapely. There were no sleeves to her dress, and her biceps were firm and smooth: an athlete. Maybe racquetball or Nautilus training on weekends. Body and mind as one, Carver thought. And here was a woman-Beverly, according to her desk plaque-who didn’t look as if she’d neglected either. Could she stay with Nadine at tennis?
There was no one other than Carver and Beverly in the reception room. He approached the desk and she smiled up at him. Great teeth. Was there no flaw in this person? He said, “Does it always smell like spearmint in here?”
“It’s probably my sugarless gum,” she said, holding her perfect smile. “May I help you?”
“I’m a private investigator. I’d like to talk with Dr. Elsing concerning one of his patients.”
Beverly stopped smiling and stared inquisitively at him through her round glasses. Maybe she didn’t believe he was really a private detective even if he did. Could be a common delusion. This was, after all, a psychiatrist’s office. Some of the people who came here probably acted crazy, maybe thought they were Marlowe or Spenser or other dead English poets.
Carver showed her his identification. “Lighten up, Bev. I’m who and what I say.”
She nodded and leaned back in her chair, crossing her creamy arms and thinking about Carver’s request. It was part of her job to protect Dr. Elsing from the sort of people who might wander into a psychiatrist’s office unannounced to sell medical supplies or malpractice insurance. Or to look for trouble instead of help.