“Willis Davis’s.”
“But he committed suicide.”
“Some people, including the police, think he might have been murdered. Or that he might still be alive.”
“Faked his suicide, you mean?” That possibility seemed to interest Franks.
“Maybe,” Carver said. “A phony death. A sales job. Maybe he had a reason.”
“What kind of reason?”
“Hiding from somebody who was out to harm him, perhaps.”
Franks drew a gold ballpoint pen from his shirt pocket, as if he might make a note of something. But he simply rotated the pen a few times between his fingers, then replaced it in the pocket, carefully securing it with its clip. “What do you think?” he asked.
“I’m not sure,” Carver said. “I’m trying to find out.”
A Lucite button on the desk phone began to blink. Franks lifted the receiver and pressed it to his ear, said, “I’ll take care of it,” and hung up. Then he stood up.
“Do you have a card, Mr. Carver?”
“Time for a magic trick?”
“Ah, you like to joke.” No Sun South smile. “I meant a business card, of course.”
Carver gripped the curve of his cane, leaned forward, and straightened up from the chair. He gave Franks one of his cards.
Franks glanced at it, then laid it with a neat little snap on the corner of his desk, as if he were a poker player finishing the deal. The interview was over.
“Thanks for your time, Mr. Franks,” Carver told him, meaning it.
“If you find out anything,” Franks said, “about Willis Davis, will you let me know?”
“I’m doing that for my client,” Carver said.
Franks looked embarrassed, irritated, as if he’d revealed a weakness in himself. “Of course. Afternoon, Mr. Carver.”
“Afternoon,” Carver said, and limped from the office.
His good leg had stiffened up somewhat as he’d sat talking, but he didn’t pay much attention to it as he made his way across the sales-area carpet toward the exit. He was thinking about Franks. Something was bothering the developer, something he hadn’t told the police. Carver was sure of it. The uneasy thing that had looked out through the eyes of so many victims Carver had talked with over the years was alive in Franks. Alive and gnawing on him.
Chris was talking to a prospective customer near the sales display, doing her damnedest to sell time shares. She glanced over at Carver and he waved good-bye.
She smiled at him as he left. Not the Sun South smile. A different sort of smile altogether. Time shares. Weren’t they what all of us dealt in?
CHAPTER 6
Carver drove inland to a phone booth on Regent Street and called Edwina Talbot at Quill Realty. He was told by a syrup-voiced receptionist that Edwina was out showing property and would be back in about an hour. Carver was disappointed. He needed to talk to her and thought it might as well be over lunch.
After hanging up the phone, he noticed a McDonald’s across the street. Even the wealthy residents of Del Moray needed a hamburger fix now and then. He waited for a break in traffic, then deliberately jaywalked and was almost run down by a van laden with teen-agers. He was pleased to find that when really inspired he could move faster with the cane than he’d anticipated.
He ate too many Chicken McNuggets and drank too much diet cola, then walked back to his car. This time he crossed at the corner; he had nothing to prove. On a whim, before getting into the Olds, he stepped into the sun-heated phone booth and tried Edwina again at Quill. He was surprised when he was told she was in.
“Mr. Carver,” she said, “have you learned anything about Willis?”
“Not much,” Carver said, “but I can pose more questions about him. I think we should meet and talk. And call me Carver without the ‘mister’ or we won’t get along.” He’d sounded grouchier than he intended. Too much time spent alone.
“You’ve grown a protective shell, there by the sea, Carver.”
“I’m not by the sea, I’m on Regent Street.”
“Maybe we can talk during lunch,” she said. “Or have you already had lunch?”
“No, I’m starving.”
“Do you know The Happy Lobster?”
“Sure, a fellow crustacean.”
“I mean-”
“I know. The circular glassed-in restaurant on the coast highway.”
“If that’s all right with you, I’ll leave now to meet you there.”
“Fine,” Carver said. “I’ll race you.”
“You seem to have recovered your zest for life, Carver.”
“It comes and goes,” Carver said, and hung up. He patted his full stomach, got in the Olds, and tried not to think about lobsters. Even on an empty stomach, he didn’t like eating them or watching people eat them; they looked too much like big spiders.
He started the engine and drove toward the coast highway.
“Where does this leave us?” Edwina asked Carver, after he’d described his visit with Ernie Franks at Sun South.
Carver looked out the curved window of The Happy Lobster at the vast blue sea and chewed the olive from his martini. “I’m not sure,” he said, swallowing. “The more I try to learn about Willis, the more lost I am. You worked for a while at Sun South; what do you think about Franks?”
“Ernie is a high-priced hustler, but an honest man. And a mush-hearted one. He found religion somewhere along the line. He prides himself on his fairness and his ability as a big-time developer. Maybe at one time he was the kind of semi-confidence man you find in these kinds of real-estate projects, but he isn’t now. Maybe simply because he’s reached the age and bank balance where he doesn’t have to be. Or maybe he really is born again, like the rest of us yearn to be in one way or another.”
“What is his religion?”
“I’m not sure. It’s nothing crazy. He doesn’t speak in tongues unexpectedly or dress funny on weekends.”
“Is he a worrier?”
“No. He’s a juggler of things to do and the time to do them in, but he doesn’t fret over his decisions either before or after he makes them. He’s often preoccupied, energetic and in a hurry, but I wouldn’t describe him as a worrier. Usually he’s cheerful, full of pep talk.”
“He’s worried now.”
“About what happened to Willis?”
“About something concerning Willis. I don’t know what, and Franks isn’t talking.”
Edwina worked studiously at freeing a strand of meat from one of the lobster tails on her plate. She seemed to be concentrating entirely on the task at hand. Then she gazed out the window, a pained, lost expression on her face.
“You okay?” Carver asked.
She turned back. “Yes. I just miss Willis. I miss him all the time. Did you ever feel that way about someone who was gone?”
“Why do you love Willis so much?” he asked her bluntly, without answering her question.
She thought for a moment, a desolate cast to her composed features. “You’re asking for a reason for something that doesn’t rest on a foundation of reason,” she told him. “Love simply is, and then it becomes what it will. We don’t have much choice in the matter.”
“I think we do,” he said.
“Sometimes, maybe.”
“Is there anything you’re not telling me about you and Willis?”
“There’s a lot I’m not telling you. Some of it you wouldn’t understand; some of it is none of your business.” There was no rancor in her tone; she was merely stating facts, keeping the door closed on the intimacy shared by lovers. Not unreasonable.
Yet Carver felt that there might be more to it than that.
She took a bite of lobster meat and watched as he forked another raw oyster from its half shell, dipped it into hot sauce, and popped it into his mouth. Carver had decided he was hungrier than he’d thought, and was on a second plate of oysters. This and two martinis were going to be his second lunch of the day.
“How can you eat something so almost alive?” Edwina asked, wincing in distaste as he let the oyster slide down his throat.
“There is no ‘almost alive,’ ” Carver told her. “There’s only alive and dead. There’s no difference between these oysters and your lobster and somebody else’s steak. We kill, then we eat the dead. But we don’t think about it in that light because of mental conditioning. Without all of our carefully developed protective delusions, we’d be in trouble. Me, I never developed the necessary protective layer of delusion about lobsters that have been dropped alive into boiling water.”