He was thinking about waking her, holding her, when he fell asleep.
She had coffee ready for him when he struggled out of bed the next morning.
“Figured you’d need this, Fred.” She handed him his cup with the leaping marlin on it.
He needed it, all right. His mind was still webbed with sleep and his body seemed to respond to each of his brain’s commands a few seconds after they were given. He sipped. The coffee was too hot but his tongue was thickly coated and didn’t get scalded. That was how it felt, anyway; maybe he simply hadn’t yet picked up the sensation of pain. “Time’s it?” he asked.
“Nine-thirty. Late for you to be getting up.”
“Got in late last night. I’m getting too old for that kind of thing, stolen wild sex in hotel rooms.”
“Is that why you look so used up this morning?”
“Probably. I feel foggy and deprived.”
“Deprived, huh? We can fix that.”
“Not now,” he said, “or someone would have to fix me.”
“Poor Fred. Voyeurism can be so wearing.” She got the glass pot and topped off his coffee. Maybe she wanted it hot enough to sear his entire intestinal tract. “Gonna have your swim?” she asked, returning the pot to its burner.
“Not this morning.”
“Say, you must have had some workout last night!”
He was getting tired of being punctured by verbal darts. He sipped some more coffee, feeling it burn the roof of his mouth this time, then found his cane and stood up. He made his way into the bathroom and showered and shaved. As he got dressed in the screened-off bedroom area, he smelled bacon frying.
When he returned to the cottage’s main room, he found that Beth had a plate of bacon and eggs on the breakfast counter for him along with a fresh cup of coffee.
“You act very much like a wife sometimes,” he said, sitting on a stool.
She didn’t answer. Instead she carried her coffee outside onto the porch.
By the time he’d finished eating he felt human again. Up to the Bronze Age, anyway. He joined Beth on the porch.
She was sitting in one of the webbed aluminum lounge chairs. She had on some kind of wispy white dress that the wind parted to reveal her calves and a good stretch of thigh. . . . Some workout you didn’t have last night.
Carver sat down in the chair next to hers and propped his good leg up on the porch rail. He stared out at the ocean rolling beyond his moccasin. Clouds were stacked high on the horizon but didn’t seem to be moving.
“What about your night?” he said.
“Same old same old,” Beth told him. “Our redheaded friend spent time with a man in a motel room, then returned to Nightlinks. She was inside the office for about fifteen minutes, probably looking at profiles, then she came out and drove to meet another man at another motel. She was back home by ten o’clock.”
“Looking at profiles?”
“Escort services usually ask a prospective client certain questions, develop a kind of profile of the man-or woman-so they can provide the right escort. But the service and the escorts also use the profiles to screen clients. The redhead is hooking, Fred. My guess is she takes on the late callers, goes into the office sometimes to see what’s acceptable, the least risky. Otherwise she’d do business from home. She probably wants to talk to whoever’s handling the phone at Nightlinks and get their personal impression of the men she might go to meet.”
“Did you get the Johns’ license plate numbers last night?” Carver asked.
“They’re in my notebook on the table with my computer.” She adjusted her dress so it covered her legs, reminding him for an instant of the plump woman working herself out of the Buick last night. “What about your guy?”
“He’s hooking, too,” Carver said.
“Sometimes it seems like the whole world’s hooking, one way or another,” she said.
“Sometimes.” He let his foot drop from the rail to thunk on the plank porch. Reached for his cane. “Gotta make a phone call.”
“Man’s gotta do what he’s gotta do,” Beth said, not moving.
Carver couldn’t quite make out what kind of mood she was in. But he knew that was part of why he loved her, not knowing exactly where he stood or what to expect next. She was a package of surprises, some of them harrowing. Hadn’t she said some men were drawn to dangerous women?
He phoned Desoto and asked him to run the license plate numbers he and Beth had collected during the last two nights. He also told Desoto why he wanted them.
“You give this information to McGregor yet?” Desoto asked.
Carver knew what he was thinking. “Not yet. But don’t worry, I’m not withholding information in a homicide investigation, since McGregor insists the Winships’ deaths were suicide.”
“What about Carl Gretch?”
“That’s murder, but it’s your case, not McGregor’s. That’s why I just gave you this information.”
“And asked for information from me.”
“Sure. But I wouldn’t take for granted there’s any connection between Nightlinks and Carl Gretch’s death.”
“Everything’s connected in some way or other with everything else. Haven’t you noticed?”
“I’ve noticed you’re the second person I’ve met this morning in a philosophical frame of mind.”
“Murder does that to people. To the people who weren’t murdered, anyway. Speaking of murder, what’s going on with the little Oriental destruction machine?”
“Beni Ho? He’s walking with a cane now. Also with revenge in his heart.”
“He’s all the more dangerous crippled.”
“That’s what Beth said.”
“Hm. Listen to Beth on this one. I’ll get back to you soon as I can on the license numbers.”
Carver hung up the phone, then he returned to the porch and sat down again next to Beth. She was still staring straight ahead at the ocean. The sea wind hadn’t budged the clouds stacked on the horizon, but it had parted her dress again, revealing her legs.
“What now?” she asked, not looking at him.
“We wait for Desoto to call back.”
“You ask him to run those plates?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Might be a little while before he calls.”
“Might.”
She finally looked over at him and smiled. It was a smile he knew. “Know how we might pass that time?”
“Not charades?”
“Not charades,” she said.
37
Desoto didn’t phone until noon.
He gave Carver the names and addresses of the Nightlinks clients and escorts who’d apparently engaged in prostitution. Two of the clients were from out of state, driving rental cars.
Desoto had taken so much time to get back to Carver because he had had to check the rental car agencies for names and addresses. Also a woman’s mutilated body had been found in Lake Eola Park, floating out by the fountain near the center of the lake. Some tourists in one of the boats built to resemble swans had discovered it. The experience was nothing like Disney World. Much of Desoto’s morning had been spent taking the sobered tourists’ statements.
After telling Carver what he needed to know, Desoto had to terminate the conversation rapidly. The medical examiner’s preliminary findings on the woman in the lake had arrived. Someone in the background was yelling something about a saw.
Carver hung up the phone and sat staring at the paper on which he’d scrawled the Nightlinks information with a black felt-tip pen. Beth had showered and was dressed in tight slacks and a gray tee shirt lettered SAVE THE MANATEE across the chest. The propagation of the sea beast was a cause with many Floridians, and the sluglike animal appeared on license plates, bumper stickers, and souvenirs up and down the state. Carver wondered why there wasn’t as much enthusiasm to save the human victims of crime in Dade County.
Beth kissed the back of his neck and peered over his shoulder. “That’s our list of bad boys, huh?”
“And girls. The redhead’s name is Mandy Jamison.” He traced his finger down the list. “This is the one that interests me. The driver of the blue ’93 Cadillac.”