“I’m not sure yet. If I touch something, you’ll get it.”
“We should be politicians, Rivers. Okay, we’re a couple of back scratchers. I’m willing to scratch first. What’s on your mind?”
“R. D. Carton.”
Price’s thin lips curled in a silent whistle. “You always manage to jolt big, don’t you? What’s with this Carton bit?”
“You’re scratching.”
He studied me intently. “You know who he was, what happened to him, don’t you?”
“He was rich. He was killed.”
“Like numerous others in Cuba’s seemingly endless history of such occurrences.”
“That was in the papers. I’m more interested in what wasn’t in the papers.”
“Most of it was there. That continually seething Cuban pot happened to boil over on him. He was found guilty of treason. Whether the charge was valid or not, probably only Carton knew for sure. After his death, his holdings in Cuba were confiscated.”
“Was he American?”
“Nope, as Cuban as Garcia or Ochoa. His grandfather was one of the leaders for Cuban independence before the outbreak of the Spanish-American war.”
“His widow got away, didn’t she?”
Price nodded. “Real story-book escape. Villagers hid her, sneaked her over the mountains at night, finally got her to the coast and aboard a small fishing boat.”
“Where’d she land in Florida?”
“Key West.”
“Then she came to Tampa?”
“Why, sure,” Price said. “Where else?”
“You mean — she’s American?”
“Yep.”
“And this is her home?”
“Are you kidding?” Price stared at me. “Twenty-five years ago, she was the most beautiful debutante this town has ever seen. When Emily Braddock married R. D. Carton, Cuban and American flags were flying all over the place. Yachts from the two countries remained at anchor in Tampa Bay and stretched the reception into a week-long party.”
“Braddock...” I said. “Florida cattle.”
“And Louisiana oil,” Price added. “And she’s the end of the string, the last Braddock, the final Carton.”
“She never had children?”
Price shook his head. “Considering what finally happened in Cuba, maybe she’s had moments of being glad. A teenage or grown son might have shared a grave with his father.”
I stood up. “Where is she living now, Price?”
“On an estate up the bayshore. Old family place. You going to see her?”
“I think so.”
“Don’t be disappointed.”
“Why not?”
“I heard she isn’t so pretty nowadays. An old, embittered woman of forty-five.” He lighted a cigarette and squinted at me through the cloud of smoke. “My back itches, Ed.”
“I won’t forget — if I’m able to whittle out a scratcher.” The old Braddock place lay like an immovable slumbering giant surrounded by newer estates in the mere fifty thousand dollar class.
About twenty acres of lawn and an ivy-grown iron fence separated the three story pile of colonial mansion from the boulevard that skirted the bay.
I turned in a sweepingly curved driveway that showed cracks in the concrete. The hedges needed shears like a beatnik needs a barber. There were brown spots in the vast lawn, and bare places where the chinch bugs had feasted unmolested.
The house added a note of gloom to the bright Florida day. Paint was beginning to curl in spots on the tall, white pillars. A loose flagstone rattled under my foot as I mounted the long veranda.
There were flyspecks of corrosion on the heavy brass door knocker.
The knocker made a booming echo inside, as if the house were vacant in its entirety. I got no immediate response.
Then, from a nearby ground floor window, a woman’s brittle voice asked, “What do you want?”
I turned my head. A yellowed lace curtain wafted out of the window, across her face. She brushed the curtain aside.
“I’m not buying anything today,” she said. “Didn’t you see the no soliciting sign beside the driveway?”
I’d seen a small wooden sign with the letters weathered away. “Are you Mrs. Carton?”
“Yes, but—”
“My name is Rivers. I’m not selling anything, and I don’t wish to impose. But it’s important that I talk to you. Very important.”
She was hesitant. Price had been right about one thing. She wasn’t pretty. Her face was fleshless as a mummy’s. The cheeks were drawn in. The eyesockets were huge. Her chin was a sharp cut of bone. Stretched over the bony structure was a glaze of skin like yellowed cellophane. Her hair was a dull gray, thinning and dry, pulled to the back of her head and held with pins.
Yet, as she tilted her head to study me, there was a brief hint for a second of a vanished beauty. There was still a certain liveness in her eyes, and the broad mouth hadn’t gone completely to bitterness.
“I can’t imagine what you wish to see me about, Mr. Rivers. I know of nothing so very important.”
“Does the name Kincaid mean anything to you?” I watched for a change in the socket-hidden eyes. If there was a change, I couldn’t detect it.
“No,” she said. “But if you... Just a moment.”
She withdrew her head. The silence of the house returned. Then a bolt snicked on the other side of the door.
The door opened slowly. She stood aside to let me enter.
I took two steps into a vaulted, gloomy hallway where the air smelled of tropical heat and mildew, and the high crystal chandelier gathered dust.
I wanted to walk right out again. Sitting on his haunches, red tongue lolling, was the largest, blackest German shepherd in the western hemisphere. His head was not much larger than a grizzly bear’s. He had jaws capable of snapping a bone in two. His tongue dripped as he panted against the heat.
Emily Carton had a grip on the dog’s spiked collar. She excused herself and led him to a doorway that opened left off the hallway.
“In, Nino,” she commanded.
Even on all fours, the massive dog was taller than her waist. Toenails snicking on the parquet flooring, he obeyed her order. She closed the door behind him.
She stood erectly before me, her body as resilient as bamboo, trimmed down until her dress hung on her in loose folds.
“I see few people these days, Mr. Rivers. When one has been away for a quarter of a century, one returns to few friends.”
Obliquely, she’d stated that she had nothing here and nothing remaining behind her. For an instant, her eyes held hatred, for her present status, for the way life had treated her.
“I hope I may be your friend, Mrs. Carton.”
“Why? Because I have money?”
“That’s a good reason.”
“At least you’re honest. Who are you, really? Aside from being a Mr. Rivers?”
“A private detective.”
“Whatever on earth...” A smile twisted her mouth. “Are you here to frighten me?”
“Not needlessly, I hope.”
“I’m not easily frightened,” she said quietly. I believed her. Her eyes glinted imperiously as she looked me up and down. I had the feeling that I didn’t impress her very much. I glimpsed the past, which was reduced to a ghost inside of her, of that bearing and attitude of a person accustomed to the lifelong privilege of ordering an army of servants around.
“You mentioned the name Kincaid,” she said finally.
“Do you know him?”
“Is there any reason I should give you an answer?”
I shrugged. “He’s here in Tampa. He seems to have an interest in you.”
“Really?”
“He came with another man, named Henry Smith. He was mixed up in a shooting at a local hotel last night. Smith was killed.”
“I see.” Hands clasped before her, she strolled back and forth a few steps. The vaulted hallway echoed the small sounds made by her flat-heeled sandals. The tomblike house swallowed the sounds as it had swallowed the gay bubbles of laughter and music in another era.