Carver had been chastised. He felt like bowing his head. “Was there anything else?”
“When we vacuumed the coat we got lint, several strands of brown hair that matched those on the comb, two strands of medium-length wavy black hair, and some dirt on the cuff that matched the dirt where the coat was found.”
“Are you sure the dirt matches?” Carver asked.
Marillo glared at him. “It contains precisely the same nitrogen content. And the minerals-”
“I’ll take your word it’s the same dirt,” Carver interrupted.
“The shoes are size ten lace-up dress shoes,” Marillo said. “About fifty dollars a pair. The jacket is a Coast Trendsetter, mass-produced but neatly altered as if it’s been to a tailor. It was bought fairly recently, maybe a year ago at most.”
“Maybe?”
“Sorry,” Marillo said. “Finding its origin is your job.”
“Used to be my job,” Carver corrected. He doubted if finding out where Davis had bought the coat or had had it altered would help much. That hair that wasn’t the color of Edwina’s could be something or nothing. “Exactly how long were the two strands of wavy black hair you found on the jacket?”
“Five and three-fourths inches and four inches, respectively,” Marillo said. “The hairs are fine, broken off.”
“Male or female?”
“Could be either. They have a perm solution on them to make them wave, but that doesn’t necessarily indicate the sex. Lots of men are getting permanents these days.” Marillo’s eyes darted to Carver’s gleaming pate. “And hair transplants.”
Carver ignored the remark; he knew that Marillo’s work had imbued him with a protective insensitivity, and the particular, precise lab man actually didn’t suspect that he might step on sensibilities while stating facts. It would be interesting if the hairs were female, if Willis Davis wasn’t as deeply in love with Edwina Talbot as she thought and was stepping out on her. Might he have left Edwina to be with his other lover? Carver doubted that. A fake suicide was a troublesome and complicated way to break off a relationship. Probably someone with wavy black hair had simply brushed up against Davis, or perhaps hung a jacket on a hook next to his.
“How old would you say Davis’s shoes are?” Carver asked, noting the worn condition of the soles and heels through the transparent plastic bag. He used the tip of his cane to poke and shift the bag so he could see the shoes more clearly.
“Judging by the condition of the leather, I’d say at least three years.”
“Have they been resoled or heeled?”
“No.”
“Would you say a skillful tailor altered the sport jacket?”
“No. But it’s still a better job than most department-store tailors do. And more extensive.”
“More extensive how?”
“The jacket’s a forty-two regular. The sleeves were shortened slightly, and the coat was taken in at the sides-not tucked, the way cheaper tailors might do it, but sewn in tighter all the way down each side seam so the coat wouldn’t bell out.”
“That pretty well covers everything about the coat,” Carver said, impressed.
“Not quite. There was an approximately half-inch-diameter ketchup stain on the left lapel.”
“So Davis likes or liked ketchup and is or was an average-sized man with short arms. And a little on the thin side.”
“Maybe not thin,” Marillo said. “Maybe just particular about the way his clothes fit. I have my own coats altered almost the way his was. And the sleeves aren’t all that short. It’s possible, too, that he’s a meticulous dresser and wants his shirt cuffs to show well below the sleeve.”
Carver made a mental note to check with Edwina about Davis’s sleeve length. He must have left some shirts at her home along with his other clothes. Carver stepped closer for a better look at the jacket. It told him nothing; it looked as if it might fit him, Carver, without further alterations. It wouldn’t hurt to ask Edwina about all of Davis’s clothes sizes. Or look himself. A romp through Davis’s closet might prove revealing.
“Anything else you want to know?” Marillo asked. It was his way of saying that Carver had learned all the shoes and the coat and its contents could tell him, and Marillo was yearning to return to his true love-work.
“What’s your favorite flavor of ice cream?” Carver asked.
The question surprised Marillo. “Vanilla. Why?”
Carver stabbed his cane at the tile floor in disappointment. “Just curious. Thanks for the help in my quest for Willis Davis.”
“ Have I helped you?”
“Sure. I’ve narrowed it down to planet Earth.” Carver started to leave.
“ French vanilla,” Marillo said behind him. “I like crushed pecans and Kahlua liqueur over it.”
“Ah,” Carver said, brightening, “a secret life.”
“Huh?”
Carver didn’t answer. He left Marillo with this small piece of the day that didn’t fit, and walked from the lab.
On his way out of the building, he stopped at a public phone in the hall and used the directory to find the address of Sun South, where, until recently, a man was employed who walked with his left toe pointed out and liked ketchup.
CHAPTER 5
The drive to Sun South took Carver a little less than an hour. He put the top down on the Olds and let the wind dispel the heat of the sun. He was already tanned dark from his therapeutic swims; no need to worry about sunburn. The past few months had toughened him in and out, created a man not only stronger where he had been broken, but stronger everywhere. If he wasn’t careful, he might find himself getting fond of adversity.
The Sun South time-sharing complex consisted of over a hundred apartments stacked in half a dozen circular, pale concrete-and-glass towers, stuck in the sand like so many sawed-off tubes. They were nestled together like uncomfortable aliens stranded on the flat beach. As Carver wound the Olds along the highway and got closer, he saw some smaller buildings clustered around the towers’ bases: a clubhouse, golf course, and swimming pool, tennis courts, and what appeared to be a restaurant and small shopping mall. Everything for wealthy vacationers gone to a southern respite of sand and sea, and a sun they usually too late learned to avoid. There was plenty of money here, Carver noted; Sun South had been costly to build and the time shares it sold would be expensive.
Carver parked the Olds next to a dusty Winnebago motor home on the lot that had a visitors sign hung on chains at its entrance. He got out and made his way along a sidewalk toward the tinted-glass panels of the nearest building. The concrete walk gave way to different-colored stepping-stones and strategically led prospective buyers through a small tropical garden. For several steps nothing was visible beyond the low palms except for beach and rolling blue sea. Carver slowed his pace and breathed in deeply, giving himself to the scent and salty weight of the sea air, a heavier scent that overpowered the sweet fragrance of the garden’s wildly colored blossoms. The surf pounded regularly like a great immortal heartbeat. The suggestion of eternity was there on the edge of the vast ocean, if not eternity itself.
The sales office was in one of the towers. It was a spacious, circular room carpeted in pale green. There were color photographs and artists’ renderings of Sun South units on the even paler green walls, and in the center of the room was a scale model of the time-share project, displayed under glass and complete with plastic model cars, trees, and pedestrians. Carver studied the models, noticed that the pedestrians were all smiling, the cars were all Porsches and Cadillacs.
“Can I help?” a slim, attractive redheaded woman in a brown business suit asked. She was smiling like one of the miniature Sun South residents under the glass, the kind of smile they taught in sales seminars, glossy and bright, with a painted-on kind of sincerity that would dissolve only upon a direct insult or a slap.
Carver looked beyond her to the row of multicolored cubical offices from which she’d emerged, work space created by arranging pastel panels of some kind of rough-textured plastic. “I’d like to see Mr. Franks,” he said. “My name is Carver.”