It was locked.
He hobbled to a front window and peered inside. He could see through dimness to the sliding glass door that looked out on the ocean. The cottage appeared to be empty. He straightened up and watched a large bird that looked like a blue heron flap overhead toward the sea, gaining grace as it gained speed.
Carver got in the Olds, started the engine, and eased the big car over in the shady parking spot previously occupied by the black Stanza. He lowered the canvas top and sat in the faint sea breeze, waiting for Maggie to return. Probably she’d be back soon, he told himself. Maybe she’d run out for a loaf of bread or more sun block, or a good mystery novel in which to lose her grief.
She didn’t return. Occasionally a car would approach out of sight on the coast highway and seem to slow as it neared her driveway, and Carver would reach for his cane leaning on the seat. Then the car would speed past.
When it was almost noon, and getting hotter by the second, he backhanded sweat from his forehead and climbed out of the Olds. Secluded as the cottage was, he didn’t consider it much of a risk to see if he could slip the lock.
He went back over to the front door and tried to slide his Visa card between latch and doorjamb. When he’d succeeded, the door still didn’t open. Apparently the deadbolt above the simple knob lock was holding it firm. He wasn’t surprised. Failure was the usual result of the credit card technique. A set of lockpicks wasn’t much more efficient unless in expert hands, and he wasn’t an expert.
Carver gave up on the front door and went around to the back of the cottage and the sliding glass door overlooking the beach. He saw immediately that there was a sawed-off broomstick resting in its metal track, preventing it from sliding even an inch. The most effective way to lock a sliding glass door.
Leaving the exposed, ocean end of the cottage, he tried the two windows on the south wall to see if they were locked. The second one wasn’t. He managed to slide the window open, then held gauzy lime-green curtains aside and leaned in.
He was looking at a bedroom with pale green walls and furnished with white wicker furniture. Even the ceiling fan was wicker. The bed wasn’t, though. It was a white-enameled four-poster with a fringed canopy and sheer white curtains that draped gracefully to the floor to surround the mattress and act as mosquito netting.
Carver drew in his breath. Someone appeared to be sleeping behind the gauzy white material.
He leaned his cane carefully against the inside wall, then used his powerful arms to work his body far enough inside for him to touch the floor. Walking out away from the window with his arms, he dragged his body across the sill, using his good leg to break his fall so he dropped silently to his hands and good knee on the deep green carpet.
After waiting a few minutes, staring at the still figure in the bed, he levered himself to his feet with the cane. He stood still for a while, then moved quietly to the bed.
He edged closer and extended his free hand to move aside the diaphanous white curtain.
It took a few seconds for him to realize what he was looking at. Pillows and the white sheet had been arranged to make it appear there was someone lying on the bed. There was a hank of auburn hair visible on the one pillow that was resting crosswise on the bed, but there was simply no room for a head beneath the sheet that had been pulled halfway up the pillow.
Holding his breath, Carver clutched the sheet and slowly peeled it down toward the foot of the bed.
A rubber, flesh-colored doll about ten inches long was resting on the pillow. A child’s doll. It had auburn hair like Maggie’s, even had wide gray eyes like Maggie’s. It looked as Maggie might have looked as a child. At a glance the doll seemed to be in one piece, but a closer look revealed that its limbs and head had been neatly severed and carefully placed within a quarter inch of the torso. Carver nudged it with a finger and it cried once, mechanically and pitifully.
There was something else about it. It was one of those anatomically correct dolls, and a long nail had been inserted in its vagina.
Carver backed away, leaving the doll as he’d found it, and moved to examine the rest of the cottage, bracing himself for what he might encounter.
He didn’t find the doll’s human counterpart, as he’d feared. He was the only human alive or otherwise in the place.
Now that his fear had left him, he realized it was hot in the cottage; none of the window units was running. He went back into the bedroom and examined the closet. Half a dozen simple but expensive dresses were draped on hangers. The dresser drawers contained panties, bras, folded blouses. There was a pair of well-worn Reebok jogging shoes in a corner near the dresser, white sweat socks balled nearby on the carpet.
He checked the bathroom next. The tub and walls of the shower stall were damp, and there was a mushy bar of soap near the drain. A turquoise towel on a brass rack was damp. A one-piece black swimming suit tied by its straps to another towel rack was dry. On the tub’s edge was a green plastic bottle of shampoo without a cap.
When Carver opened the vanity drawers, he found an electric hair drier and bottles of makeup and nail polish, an emery board, a large red comb, and an unopened box of tampons. On the washbasin was a clear glass tumbler containing a red toothbrush and a tube of Colgate toothpaste. He ran a finger across the toothbrush’s bristles and found they were soft and damp. He sniffed them and smelled toothpaste.
He went to the phone he’d noticed in the cottage’s main room. It was a gimmick one that looked like a tennis shoe, complete with untied laces. He picked it up and pressed the heel to his ear. After Information gave him the number of Burnair and Crosley, he called it and asked to speak with Maggie Rourke.
He hadn’t really expected her to be there and was slightly surprised when he was put on hold. The Muzak was Mozart. Class. How could anyone lose money at a place that played Mozart?
“I thought you were taking time off work,” he said, when Maggie had come to the phone and abruptly stopped Mozart so commerce might commence.
She thought he might be a client. Carver told her he wasn’t interested in commerce.
“Who is this?” Her voice had an edge to it. Fear?
“Fred Carver. Remember? We talked yesterday about Donna and Mark Winship. That’s when you told me you were taking your vacation time.”
“I remember. I changed my mind about using my vacation days. The solitude at the cottage was getting on my nerves, making me feel things more deeply. Things I didn’t want to feel.”
“What about the shooting?”
“Shooting?”
“Beni Ho, the Oriental man I asked you about yesterday, needed to be shot.”
After a static-filled pause, she said, “That’s a curious way to phrase it.”
“He’s a curious kind of guy.”
“So are you. Who shot him?”
“I did,” Carver said. “Outside your cottage. But only in the leg.”
“I think I should call the police.”
“I’ve already been to see them.”
“What was this Ho person doing at the cottage? Did he follow you there?”
“Seems so.”
“Why did you call me, Mr. Carver?”
That was a tough one. He wasn’t exactly sure of the answer. “I wondered if anyone had told you about the shooting. You were sunbathing down on the beach and didn’t hear it over the sound of the surf, and Ho and I both drove away afterward.”
“If he could drive, you must not have hurt him very bad.”
“Bad enough, only he was even badder. Didn’t you notice the blood on the ground near where you park your car?”
“I noticed it. I assumed a cat or dog had caught and killed a small animal, maybe a squirrel. There are a lot of squirrels around there.”
Carver considered asking about the dismembered doll on her bed, but she wouldn’t like the idea of his nosing around inside the cottage. He said, “I think you and I should talk some more.”