Carver absently touched the butt of the holstered Colt beneath his shirt. “Everybody in Florida’s carrying.”
“Gun World,” Desoto said. “Stay careful, my friend.”
Carver thanked him for the call and hung up.
Lifted the receiver again and called Hattie Evans.
“Luridus-X,” he said. “Is that what Jerome was taking?”
“That does sound familiar,” Hattie told him.
“It was on the list I showed you.”
“But hearing it instead of reading it makes a difference. Jerome might have mentioned it. But I can’t be positive. I’ll keep searching for the bottle.”
“Let me know as soon as you find it.”
“Mightn’t the medical center still have a record of Jerome’s medication?”
“Don’t contact them,” Carver said. “They might be part of the problem.”
She didn’t say anything for a while. Then: “When I collected my mail this morning, I found another note stating Jerome had been murdered. It looks just like the first one. Same color ink, same printing. Quite brief and to the point.”
“What exactly does it say?”
“Simply ‘Your husband was murdered. Don’t give up.’ ”
“Was it in a stamped and postmarked envelope?”
“No, it wasn’t even in an envelope. Just a piece of white notepaper folded once lengthwise.”
“Save it,” Carver said. “I’ll want to look at it.” But he was sure the note would be exactly as Hattie described and would offer little new. He said, “Has Beth Jackson been by to see you?”
“No. Should she have?”
“Not necessarily,” Carver said. “I’m trying to locate her.”
“You sound worried.”
Carver realized that he’d asked about Beth because he was worried. She’d left no message saying where she was going, and the death of the man in bib overalls had him spooked. “I’m worried about you insisting on staying in that house, Hattie.”
“If I weren’t here, Mr. Carver, I could hardly be searching for Jerome’s medication.”
Faultless schoolmarm logic.
Carver cautioned her again to keep her doors locked, then hung up.
It was still warm in the room, and he felt overheated except for his forehead and bare forearms. They felt cool and were coated with perspiration.
Slumped on the edge of the mattress, his bad leg extended with its heel dug into the carpet, he called Beth’s room.
After ten rings he hung up.
He told himself she was plenty capable of looking out for herself, and she was simply gone somewhere attending to business.
Nevertheless, he limped down to her room, stood in the merciless sun, and knocked on her door.
Got no reply.
He considered trying to slip the lock and examine the room for clues to her whereabouts, even fought an impulse to kick the door open and storm inside.
Then he turned his back on the door. Beth’s unoccupied room would almost surely tell him nothing, and he’d be running the risk of being seen breaking in.
He wondered why he’d thought circumstances warranted that kind of drastic action.
The heat, he decided.
33
Carver limped back to his room and called Clive Jones at the Burrow offices in Del Moray. Jones, who, as publisher and editor of the pesky little newspaper, should know, assured Carver that Beth’s absence meant nothing ominous. While Beth hadn’t checked in with the paper that day, and Jones didn’t know precisely where she was or what she was doing, that situation wasn’t unusual. Once Burrow assigned a writer to a story, complete freedom was allowed, and Beth was a top-notch journalist who took full advantage of that freedom. Jones added wryly that she might not have notified Carver of her intentions or whereabouts because she thought he might disapprove. Jones’s tone implied his own disapproval of Carver interfering with one of his ace journalists.
“That makes me feel loads better,” Carver said. He liked the free-spirited and altruistic Jones, but the man could be a pain in the ass, like so many thoroughly candid people who casually tossed around barbs of truth.
“I mean,” Jones went on, “maybe she took time out to have her nails done, or went shopping for a flannel nightgown. That sort of thing.”
“Is that tact you’re attempting?” Carver asked.
“Sure. I’m not always disarmingly blunt, only when I’m harassing crooked politicians and lesser liars. Fact is, Carver, Beth’s smart and physically capable. I worry less about her out in the field, or in a hostile environment, than I do most of my other reporters.” He waited a beat. “Is it a hostile environment?”
“Not unless you count murder.”
“Huh?” Jones sounded interested enough to crawl through the phone line. “Who was murdered? Where and why? You mean the old guy, Jerome Evans? You manage to get proof?”
“Beth should be the one to tell you all that,” Carver said, “if you can locate her. She’s the journalist. So maybe you should try to find her.”
“But I don’t know where she is.”
“So you mentioned.” Carver believed him.
“Carver. Er, Fred-”
Carver gently hung up on Jones, not without pleasure.
He’d decided to stay out of Hattie’s way while she searched for Jerome’s medication, but he could drive into Solartown and cruise around, possibly see Beth’s white LeBaron convertible parked somewhere. Maybe in the medical center lot.
It nagged him that maybe they hadn’t been careful enough. He recalled the lipstick stain on Beth’s Styrofoam coffee cup. Even something as trivial as that might have tipped Beed to the fact there was another player in the game.
Leaving the air-conditioner thermostat at its coldest setting, he limped out into the afternoon glare and crossed the parking lot to the Ford, feeling individual pieces of gravel probe through the heat-softened soles of his moccasins.
Less than a mile from the motel, he saw the motor home in his rearview mirror.
It moved in closer, its cumbersome, boxy shape casting a stark rectangular shadow that traveled beside it and somehow made it seem even more oversize and awkward. Carver glanced at the Ford’s speedometer and saw the needle hovering near sixty, but the motor home was gaining. To the eye, it seemed not to be moving at all, too large and square to cut the wind on its inset, dwarfed tires, yet its image in the mirror was becoming larger.
He could see what kind it was now, a Winnebago. There were probably thousands of them roaming the Florida highways. Some canvas- and plastic-wrapped objects were lashed to the roof rack; the wind was whipping loose plastic like proud black pennants. Glare on the tinted windshield kept Carver from seeing the motor home’s driver clearly, and the front passenger seat looked unoccupied.
A vacationing family in a rush, Carver thought. Running late to Disney World. Mickey Mouse waited for no man. Kept to his schedule. Had a wristwatch.
The Winnebago had closed to within fifty feet of the Ford, and he expected it to pull into the other lane and pass. The highway was flat and there were no other vehicles in sight.
The hulking vehicle picked up speed, but it didn’t veer. It was almost on the Ford’s rear bumper. Carver’s eyes flicked to the speedometer needle, now at sixty-five. To the rearview mirror. So close was the motor home that it filled the mirror and he could see minor chips and dents in the dusty, bug-spotted cream surface of its flat, fiberglass snout.
He could hear it, too. Its engine didn’t sound like that of other motor homes; above a ferocious roar it was emitting a throaty high-pitched whine, as if souped up and equipped with a turbocharger.
He glanced again at the smashed bugs on the wide surface. The motor home suddenly yowled and grew in the mirror. It was shocking to see something so ponderous move so quickly, fooling the eye in the way of a huge express locomotive. Carver’s head snapped back as the Ford’s rear bumper was crunched.