Beverly Denton was easy enough to find. It was only 11:30 and the park was almost unoccupied except for two preteen boys climbing around on a jungle gym at the far end. She was sitting on one of the concrete benches and gazing out at the traffic passing on Atlantic Drive.
As Carver approached her he saw curiosity become decision in her eyes, which were dark brown like her short-cropped, boyish hair. She had lean features made to look even thinner by large gold hoop earrings. When she stood up and smoothed the skirt of her green dress, he noted that she was slender but shapely, a trim, neat woman who looked worried.
“Mr. Carver?”
He said he was and suggested they sit down on the bench, which they did, at opposite ends and angled to face each other. Like a couple of shy teenagers who’d just been introduced by a best friend. Beverly crossed her legs so tightly they seemed welded together. Her body language suggested that even if he was the most handsome man in the park, she didn’t care; she wasn’t in the mood.
He tried his smile on her, which he knew made his fierce features surprisingly amiable. She didn’t seem reassured. He said, “You were a friend of Donna Winship.” Telling her, not asking.
“I was a friend to both Donna and Mark,” she said in a soft, steady voice, “but I wouldn’t say a close friend of either.” She stared for a moment at her short, red fingernails. “What’s your interest in the Winships?”
“Donna thought something might be wrong in her life and hired me to investigate. I’m still investigating.”
“Why?”
He decided to give her the short answer and not mention that he had been the last person to talk to Donna, that he had been her last hope and might have said something that confirmed her despair and prompted her sudden impulse to end her life, that now he wanted to make up for it to assuage a guilt that maybe he shouldn’t feel but most definitely did.
“Because I was paid,” he said.
That seemed to satisfy her; coin of the realm was her job. She said, “Mark and I worked together. There across the street.” She tilted her head in the direction of Burnair and Crosley. One of the hoop earrings caught the sun. “Mark was a financial consultant, as I am. When his client list became too large, he referred business to me. We became friends, and that’s how I met Donna.”
“What was your opinion of her?”
“She was nice.”
The same word Ellen Pfitzer had used to describe Donna Winship. “Can you be more specific?”
Beverly raised her hands in a faint, futile gesture. “They seemed happily married.”
“I’m told they weren’t so happy the past several months.”
“That could be. When I became engaged to Warren I didn’t see them much anymore. The four of us went out for dinner a few times, but Warren and Mark didn’t really hit it off, so we drifted apart.”
“Warren’s the fella who refurbishes yachts?”
She smiled. “You are an investigator.”
“What about Mark? I assume you liked him.”
“He was nice, too.”
Carver looked out at the traffic, becoming aware that exhaust fumes were heavy in the park. “Nice, huh? Beverly, you could have told me this on the phone. Why did you agree to a face-to-face meeting?”
“Because it doesn’t seem logical to me that the Winships killed themselves. I guess I can’t quite believe it.” She gnawed her lower lip and squirmed slightly on the hard bench.
Carver waited, knowing there was more. A squirrel chattered nearby, then scampered up the trunk of the nearest palm tree.
“What about you?” she asked. “Do you think they were really both suicides?”
“There isn’t much doubt,” he said, “but there’s some.”
“How often does that happen, a husband and wife committing suicide only a day apart?”
“I don’t know,” Carver said. “They don’t keep statistics.”
“There had to be a hell of a reason for it,” Beverly said. “That’s why I thought it’d be a good idea if we talked, because I feel their deaths should be investigated, and the police won’t do it since officially they were suicides.” She let out a long breath. “The last five or six months, Mark Winship was involved with another Burnair and Crosley employee, a woman named Maggie Rourke.”
“He told you that?”
“No. He didn’t have to. Maggie confided it to me about two months ago when she realized I’d noticed how they acted together when they thought they were alone one day in a file room. I figured it was none of my business, and Warren and I never saw the Winships again, so I didn’t mention it to Mark or anyone else.”
“Except for me, now.”
“Because the Winships are dead, and that should be looked into.”
“Tell me about Maggie Rourke. Something other than that she’s nice.”
Beverly smiled. “Okay, I’ll try to be more insightful. Maggie’s a financial consultant, too. She’s in her early thirties and divorced, a focused career woman. It kind of surprised me that she’d let herself become involved with someone at work. But once she did tell me and I knew for sure, I began watching the two of them together, how they exchanged glances, fond touches. They acted like a couple too much in love to hide it. The thing is, after Donna died, Mark surely would have talked to Maggie. That means she might know something important.”
Carver thought she might indeed. “Is Maggie at work now?”
“No. After Mark’s death she took her vacation time, I’m sure so she could mourn him in private. She left an address and phone number where she could be reached, though. She said it was a beach cottage south of town off the coast highway.” Beverly felt around in her large black leather purse and withdrew a folded sheet of white paper. Carver could see the sharp impressions of typing on the side folded in. “The address and number are on here,” she said, handing the paper to him. “Do me a favor and don’t mention where you got them.”
“I don’t know where this will lead,” he said. “At some point I might have to mention it.”
“Well, if it comes to that, so be it. I’m not doing anything wrong.” She stared at him as if for confirmation.
“You’re doing something right,” Carver assured her, and tucked the paper into his shirt pocket.
As he exited the sunny park, leaving Beverly to her thoughts, he watched the kids hanging by their knees on the jungle gym and wished he could play free that way just one more time.
12
The first thing Carver noticed about Maggie Rourke was that she was knockdown beautiful. It was the second, third, and fourth thing he noticed, too. It was hard to get around the way she looked and think of her in politically correct terms.
She was on the beach, beyond a small wooden cottage built on thick piering and with a cantilevered screened-in porch. There was an outcropping of rock to her left, and the beach tapered off to rough pebble and sea oat to her right, so she was more or less alone except for occasional glimpses of swimmers or sunbathers beyond the rock. She lay on her back like an offering, in a lounge chair adjusted almost to horizontal, a folded white towel for a pillow and backdrop for her thick and tousled long auburn hair. Her tanned body was slender and flawless in a white string bikini. As Carver approached, the goddess peeled off her sunglasses and peered up at him. Her eyes were gray and curious and maybe the slightest bit afraid.
She said, “Are you a friend of Mac’s?”
“Who’s Mac?” Carver asked.
“The man who owns this place.”
“He a friend of yours?”
“Uh-huh.”
Carver told her who he was and that he wanted to talk to her about the Winships.