“With Willis Davis as a partner?”
“They talked about it. The usual slow-salesday gab to pass the time. I’m sure nothing ever came of it. I think they knew nothing would when they were tossing out their grand ideas.”
“You’re the one who phoned the police about Willis’s disappearance,” Carver said.
“Yes.” She told him about going to see Edwina, getting no answer at the front door, then walking around to the veranda and seeing the jacket and shoes at the edge of the drop.
“What went through your mind at the time?” Carver asked.
“There was something about the way he’d neatly folded the jacket and laid it on top of the shoes. Something final. As soon as I saw them near the drop’s edge, I thought he’d jumped.”
“Do you still think so?”
“Yes. I’m sorry about it-for Edwina, for Willis-but that’s what I think, that he’s dead.”
Carver was running out of questions. Sometimes that was when he asked his best ones. “Is there anything in particular about Willis that sticks in your memory?”
Alice considered that one, drawing again on the long filter-tipped cigarette and frowning. “No,” she said at last, slowly, “there’s nothing.” She raised her head slightly. “It was kind of touching, the way Edwina talked about him at times. She often referred to him as a gentle man. Not gentleman, but the two words separated.”
“Considering her past treatment,” Carver said, “that’s not surprising.” He shifted his weight and moved his cane a few inches to the right; he’d been standing too long in one spot and was getting uncomfortable. His good leg was falling asleep. “Are you going to tell Edwina about this conversation?”
Alice stared at him through a haze of exhaled smoke, a pleasant, moon-faced woman who would always seem young at first glance. “No,” she said. “I want to help her get over Willis. I think the way to do that is to keep quiet and help you.”
“I get the feeling Edwina isn’t playing exactly straight with me. Is there anything about her that I don’t know but should?”
“You’d have to ask her about that.”
“Does she confide a great deal in you?”
Alice watched a wisp of cigarette smoke curl in the muted light, then said, “There’s a part of Edwina she keeps private. I respect that and have never pried, and I don’t intend to start now.”
“All right.” Carver braced himself with the cane and moved toward the door.
Alice was standing rigidly with her arms folded, watching him. He paused at the door, turned, and looked around the cavernous bare room.
“Half a million dollars seems a little high,” he said. “Do you suppose they’d dicker?”
Alice smiled. It was a lot like the smiles he’d seen at Sun South. After leaving Alice Hargrove he drove down Palm Street toward the ocean. The morning was heating up. There were a few clouds in the west, blowing in from the gulf, making soft and empty threats of rain. Ahead of Carver, the sky was a flawless blue backdrop for the gulls to soar against. The scent of the sea wafted into the Olds with the increasing humidity.
When Carver saw a phone booth, he stopped, called his home, and listened to the messages on his answering machine. There were only two. The first was a recorded sales pitch promising a free book of tickets to Disney World with an appointment for an estimate on home remodeling; a recorder talking to a recorder. It reminded Carver of the old question about whether a sound was made if a tree fell in the woods when there was no one around to hear it. The second message was Ernie Franks suggesting that he and Carver talk again about Willis Davis. He claimed to have some important information for Carver.
Carver used the back of his hand to wipe perspiration from his forehead. Then he called Franks’s office, made an appointment to see him, and drove in the direction of Sun South.
Above the coast highway, the gulls seemed to soar and circle deliberately in front of the Olds, vying for Carver’s attention with unintelligible screams he could barely hear over the sounds of the motor and the wind.
Screams like shrill warnings.
CHAPTER 8
Carver walked alongside Ernie Franks down some concrete steps leading to a man-made, landscaped plateau below the level of the Sun South towers but above the level of the beach. They strolled slowly along a walkway above the beach, through brilliant sunlight and stark shadow. Beyond the protective metal railing bordering the walk, Carver could see half a dozen sunbathers lounging on the pale sand. The heads of a few adventuresome swimmers bobbed out beyond where the waves began to rise for their rush and break onto the beach. Farther out, a small boat with a canvas-topped flying bridge lazily trolled for deep-sea fish. The strip of ground where Carver and Franks walked was grassy and dotted with small palm trees whose trunks had been painted white halfway up. At random between the palms, lush and colorful tropical flowers, like bright exotic birds perched on stems, swayed in the warm ocean breeze.
Sunk in the side of the hill was a sign, the words Sun South lettered with seashells that had been artistically and elaborately set in concrete. As he walked past the sign, Franks absently extended his hand and let his fingertips brush the shell-letters. In so large and powerful a man, the gesture seemed oddly gentle and pathetically possessive.
“I talked to Lieutenant Desoto about you,” he said. “And I did some checking into your background.”
Carver said nothing, watched the white surf rage beneath them on the beach.
“You were a good cop. And you’re an honest private cop now. Bad luck about the injury.”
“It’s the sort of thing that happens to good cops,” Carver said, not without a touch of bitterness. Edwina would arch an eyebrow at him if she were there. Cynical Carver. Pessimist. Maybe she was right. It took a while to get over a bullet. Catching one wasn’t like catching a cold.
He watched a teen-age boy hop up from where he’d been stretched out on a towel and run to dive with splashing abandon into the surf. Carver thought about how he had to enter the water. How he had to crawl.
Then he thought about how he might be dead now, how the kid at the grocery store might have aimed higher with the junk revolver. The jasmine scent of the flowers became sharper, sweeter.
Franks stopped walking, leaned on the iron rail, and gazed out over the beach and ocean, his domain on the edge of the world. Disney didn’t have a monopoly on magic kingdoms in Florida; they were dotted up and down the coasts. “There’s something I didn’t tell the police when they asked me about Willis,” he said. “I’ve decided to confide in you.”
“Why me?”
“Practicality. My sources tell me you can be trusted, and you’re already into this thing, already searching for Willis.”
“Then you don’t think he’s dead either?”
“I’m not sure,” Franks said, “but my bet would be on him being alive. Your earlier visit helped me to decide that. I think he knew it was time to get out, so he faked his suicide and went into hiding.”
“Time to get out of what?” Carver asked.
Franks straightened up from the railing. Still looking seaward, he lit a cigar, shielding the flame of his gold lighter expertly with a pale, cupped hand. He exhaled heavily; the breeze shredded the smoke and whisked it away. There was pain on his seamed, congenial salesman features. The gray, suave guy was suffering; this wasn’t going to be easy for him. “For each Sun South unit there are, of course, only a maximum of fifty-two potential buyers, one for each week of the year. I discovered that Willis was selling some of the units more than fifty-two times, writing contracts to different customers for time shares for the same prime weeks. He’d collect their down payment or earnest money, in some cases a large percentage of the time-share price, and deposit the money in a secret Sun South bank account that operated on his signature.”