“Do you remember what she said about Enrico?”
“She said she was happy only when she was with him, and it was positively eerie how compatible they were, how they loved and hated the same things. You know the phase, when endorphins take the place of reason. She said it almost made her believe in fate or astrology. If it helps you any, I’m sure she was totally hooked on this guy. I wish I’d met him.”
“Be glad you didn’t.”
Her eyes widened over the rim of her glass. “Have you met him?”
“Briefly,” Carver said. “We didn’t get along.”
“Maybe you caught him at a bad time.”
“If I did, he reacted badly. He threatened me with a knife.”
Ellen shook her head. “Well, Donna wouldn’t be the first woman to gravitate toward the wrong man when her marriage was breaking up. Her husband was right for her at one time, when she was thinking straight, but under the strain, with things coming unglued, she might have been temporarily attracted to someone who was more or less his opposite.”
That sounded pretty good to Carver. He was becoming impressed by Ellen Pfitzer.
“But suicide,” Ellen said. She shook her head no as if she’d been asked to throw a tennis match. “That wasn’t like Donna, either.”
“Had she acted strange lately?”
“She was nervous and depressed, but I wouldn’t describe her as suicidal.”
“It was an impulsive thing,” Carver said.
Ellen scowled. “Probably thanks to Enrico.”
“Do you remember anything in particular Donna said about her husband?”
“She mentioned that he’d withdrawn from her, that he’d become cold. She said he acted as if the marriage was already ended and he was just marking time until the divorce. Exactly what you’d expect to hear about a marriage on the rocks, when one of the partners has given up completely.”
“Did he turn cool toward her for a reason?”
“None that she knew. She told me she asked him what was wrong. Begged him to tell her. All he’d say was that he was unhappy. He’d refuse to be specific. They hadn’t really talked about a divorce yet. When she asked him if he wanted one, he wouldn’t give her an honest answer. She thought he was stalling, even though he seemed to have made up his mind she was no longer going to be a part of his life. He’d dismissed her from his existence. She told me she felt like a ghost when she was in the house with him.”
Carver looked out the window at the sunbathers on the beach. Beyond the pavilion’s thatched roof, he could see a few of the luxury cruisers docked at the club’s private marina, their white hulls bobbing in the gentle, sheltered water, their navigational antennae and painted brightwork gleaming in the sun. Everything and everyone at the club was bright and clean and rich.
“Was Donna a good tennis player?” Carver asked.
“Not really. She was too timid, didn’t seem to mind if she lost. Yet for some reason she’d occasionally become ferocious and go to the net more than anyone. She’d still lose, but you had to watch out or she’d take your head off with one of her forehands.”
He showed Beth’s list to Ellen. “Who else should I talk to on here?”
She pointed to the name beneath her own, then sat back. “To tell you the truth,” she said, “I think I knew Donna as well as anyone. We shared . . . you know, women’s confidences.”
“What about the name below yours? Beverly Denton?”
“Yeah, Donna mentioned her. I think she’s a friend of Mark’s, really. The three of them used to spend time together, but Donna said she and Beverly never saw each other anymore, what with the way Mark had been acting. I doubt if she’d be of much help.”
“What about the possibility of Mark and Beverly having been romantically involved?”
“Anything’s possible. But I think Donna told me not long ago that Beverly was engaged to some guy who refurbishes yachts.” Ellen brushed back a strand of blond hair that had fallen over one eye; it had to bother her playing tennis. “Anyway, like I said, Donna and I shared confidences. If she’d thought Mark and Beverly had a thing going, she’d have told me.”
Wishing Donna had shared even more confidences with Ellen, Carver thanked her and stood up.
She glanced at his cane. “That a temporary thing?”
“As temporary as I am.”
“Well, there are worse things in life than a stiff leg. You seem to do okay for yourself.”
“I haven’t curled into a ball and cried for a long time.”
“Me, either. Not since last night.” She smiled in a way that suggested she wouldn’t mind if he sat back down.
He laid one of his business cards on the table. “If you hear anything more about Enrico Thomas,” he said, “call me and let me know.”
“So that’s his last name. Thomas.”
“No,” Carver said, “I was getting to that. His real name is Carl Gretch, and he seems to have disappeared.”
Ellen looked surprised. “Donna was going with a guy who used an alias?”
“And a knife,” Carver said. “See, she didn’t share as many confidences with you as you thought.”
“It makes me wonder,” Ellen said, sounding a little mystified, “what else she didn’t tell me.”
As Carver left the rarefied, moneyed atmosphere of the club lounge, he tried to imagine Carl Gretch there and couldn’t.
What had nice Donna Winship been thinking?
10
Carver sat at a table in the shade of a tilted umbrella and ate a taco. After leaving the country club, he realized he hadn’t had lunch and was hungry, so he drove to a taco stand he liked near the public marina, on Magellan about half a mile from his office. It was a pleasant place to think and get indigestion.
He leaned over the table as he bit into the brittle taco shell, careful not to drip sauce on his shirt or pants. It relaxed him to sit and watch the boats bobbing at their moorings or putting in or out of the marina. As he wiped grease from his fingers and leaned back in his plastic chair, a large sailboat with its canvas down glided on alternate motor power parallel to the shore, then altered course to head toward open water. He sipped his Busch beer and watched its sails being hoisted when it was farther from shore.
It was late enough for him to be the only customer other than two young girls perched on stools at the stand’s counter. He figured no one would be bothered by smoke, so he finished his beer, then fired up a Swisher Sweet cigar. He liked to smoke the small, slender cigars sometimes after meals. A substitute for dessert.
He watched shreds of smoke drift away on the sea breeze and thought that what he knew about the deaths of Donna and Mark Winship had about the same substance and permanence.
By the time the cigar was half gone, the sun had moved enough so that the tilt of the umbrella was wrong and allowed sunlight to lance beneath it and glint off the smooth white table. Carver’s eyes began to ache.
There was an outside public phone near the stand, so he snubbed out what was left of the cigar in a square glass ashtray on the table and got up and deposited his empty beer can, wadded napkin, and the crumpled paper that had held the taco in a trash can. Some of the hot red sauce from the wrapper got on the edge of his hand and he licked it off, then went to the phone.