“Come off it, Carver, the cook isn’t a murderer because he boiled my lobster alive. And I’m not a ghoul for eating the carcass. And there’s nothing wrong with me because I haven’t developed the callousness to eat raw oysters. The damned things can make you sick, anyway. The cook and I don’t need any protective delusions.”
“You’re missing the point,” Carver said. “We’re the lobsters. It might behoove us to understand the cook.”
Edwina stuck the tines of her fork into a bite of lobster meat and held the fork still. She tilted her head to the side and stared at Carver. “What are you trying to tell me with your seafood-soup philosophy?”
Carver took a slow sip of his martini, then rattled the ice in the glass. “Maybe Willis Davis dropped you alive into hot water, used you somehow, and you can’t or won’t believe it.”
She put down her fork and looked out at a distant ship making its way inexorably toward a hazy horizon. Or was the ship really moving? From here it was impossible to tell. “I’m forty-one years old, Carver, and I’ve been fooled by more than one man. And I’ve fooled a few; I’ve been the cook. The thing is, I’ve played the game both ways and won and lost. It’s wised me up. Willis isn’t conning me. He loved me. I know enough to know that.”
“Maybe it’s a new kind of game,” Carver said. “Maybe you never met a Willis before.”
“I’ve known a few Willises. I’m not sure if I’ve ever met another Carver.”
“That could be a compliment.”
“There goes that protective layer of delusion. What I mean is that your job, your injury, your life, what you were born with-all or some of them have made you tough and cynical.”
“I know. I’m working to improve.”
“Then accept this: I love Willis, he loves me, something happened to him, I want to know what. I want him back. Simple as that.”
Carver grinned at her. “Okay. I’ll approach my job under that assumption.”
“Good. What next?”
“Dessert?”
“No, I mean in the investigation.”
“I want to go home with you.”
She dabbed at her lips with her napkin and frowned. He was always surprising her; it wasn’t fair.
“I’d like to examine what Willis left behind when he disappeared,” Carver said. “Clothing, accessories, whatever.”
“He didn’t leave much,” Edwina said. “It’s all in one closet. The only thing of interest was his attache case, but the police and I have already examined its contents. There’s nothing in it other than ordinary papers connected with his job.”
“I still might find something pertinent.”
“You harbor ego as well as cynicism,” Edwina said. “Do you think you’re smarter than the police?”
“I’m more interested,” Carver said. “They get paid whether they find something or not. Incidentally, did you know Sam Cahill at Sun South?”
“Yes. He was friendly with Willis. We saw him socially a couple of times.”
“What did you think of him?”
“Not much one way or the other. He was maybe too much of an operator, but then a lot of salespeople have that fault.”
“Do you know where Cahill went after he left Sun South?”
“No. He quit, Ernie Franks said, but there were rumors that he’d actually been fired. I heard he went someplace in southern Florida.”
Carver summoned the waitress. As he reached for his wallet, Edwina held up a hand palm-out. “I’ll buy,” she said. “When you bill me, you’ll put it on the expense account anyway.”
Only his own lunch, Carver thought, but he kept silent. Edwina was assuming again; now she was thinking of him as the opportunistic private eye who jockeyed for every advantage as a way of life and had a code of ethics slightly higher than Richard Nixon’s. Or maybe Carver was the one kidding himself; maybe he fit the stereotype.
After Edwina had smitten the bill with her American Express card, he walked with her from the restaurant.
“I’ll meet you at my house,” she said, as their soles crunched on the gravel parking lot, “but I’m sure you won’t find anything revealing.”
“Maybe not, but it’s a base that ought to be touched,” Carver said, with proper professional arrogance.
She nodded. The warm sunlight on her face lent it a healthy, youthful kind of radiance made beautifully ironic by the faintly crinkled flesh at the corners of her eyes and lips. Her gray eyes caught gold flecks of the sun.
He couldn’t help standing for a moment, staring after her, as they parted to walk to where their cars were parked.
The inside of Edwina’s house looked as if it had been furnished by a good interior decorator. Everything was in subdued blues and grays, with tasteful accents of red.
“Very nice,” Carver said, limping to the center of the living room and making an all-encompassing sweep with his cane, as if he were a visiting potentate bestowing a blessing with his scepter.
“A friend and I designed it,” Edwina told him. “You learn a lot about interior decorating while you’re showing customers through furnished display houses.”
“Is the friend a professional decorator?”
“She used to be. Alice sells real estate now for Quill.”
“Is this the Alice who discovered Willis’s jacket and shoes at the edge of the drop and phoned the police?”
“Yes. Alice Hargrove.” Edwina tossed her purse onto a modern blue chair and walked across the deep carpet, past Carver. “Come on, I’ll show you the bedroom.”
He limped after her. He felt like using the crook of his cane to trip her by the ankle so he could bolt past her down the short hall.
The bedroom was also done in blues and grays; maybe Alice was a Civil War buff. The furniture was light-grained oak. The bed was king-sized and had a padded blue headboard whose subdued print matched the drapes. It was probably the most restful room Carver had ever been in. One of the windows was open; the sea was whispering not to worry, kick off your shoes and stretch out on the bed, few things are forever.
There was no sign that a man had slept there. No comb or electric razor on the dresser, no tie draped over a doorknob, no worn copies of Playboy. A woman’s comb-and-brush set lay on the small dresser, which was equipped with a mirror. There was a white push-button phone, and a note pad and pen, next to a reading lamp on a small table by the bed. On a chair in a corner lay an outdated real-estate-listing book. By the chair was a bookshelf containing a single book, a collection of short stories by Stanley Ellin.
Carver looked at the room, then at Edwina. He wondered about Willis Davis’s sanity, if Davis had willingly walked away from this.
One end of the room was all closet. Edwina slid open one of four floor-to-ceiling doors. Even the soft rumble of the rollers in their track made a restful sound.
“Almost everything Willis left, I put in here,” Edwina said, stepping aside to give Carver a clear view and access to the closet.
Five suits, two blue and three gray, hung neatly on wooden hangers. Next to them on the closet rod hung several white and pale blue dress shirts with button-down collars; also half a dozen striped ties. The shirts’ sleeve lengths were 34, not so short; almost Carver’s size. On the floor a pair of black wingtip shoes gleamed dully, the kind with thick soles and heels.
Carver leaned against the edge of the open closet door and used both hands to rummage through the pockets of the hanging clothes. They were all empty. He straightened and leaned on his cane. “What about socks and underwear?” he asked Edwina.
She opened the top drawer of a large dresser. Inside were stacks of neatly folded white Jockey shorts and undershirts, along with black socks and two coiled black belts. In the drawer beneath that one were a folded pair of worn jeans and some pullover shirts. Also in that drawer was a flat black-leather attache case with brass latches.