John Lutz - Torch

Carver said, “Has anyone ever told you how beautiful you are when you’re tired?”

“Countless times.”

“Add my observation.”

In a bored voice, she said, “Are you coming on to me, Mr. Carver?”

“No, I don’t think so. Anyway, I suppose you’d say I’m spoken for.” He smiled at her, making it reassuring, letting her know that sure, he found her attractive, but he wasn’t going to be pushy about it, wasn’t in the market.

She stared at him, gnawing hard on her lower lip. He wondered if alcohol had numbed the lip so she couldn’t feel what she was doing.

Sensing she was weakening, he said, “Let’s drive to a restaurant and get some coffee, put off that nap for a while. If you go to sleep now, you’ll wake up at four A.M. and be tired all day tomorrow.”

Wheels seemed to be turning inside her lovely head. Persuasive Carver. She was considering, all right. He was sure of it.

She said, “Fuck off, Mr. Carver,” and slammed the door.

Carver stared at the blank surface of the door for a long moment, then placed the tip of his cane to the side and turned around. More bees droned past him, low to the ground, as if humiliated by the prospect of having to take crap from the queen.

He said, “I know how you feel,” and followed the sun-washed driveway to where the Olds was parked on the gravel shoulder.

He wondered if Maggie had been in her bedroom before answering his knock. She’d given no sign of having found the dismembered doll on her bed.

As he drove away, he decided it might be a good idea to find out who owned the cottage.

A stop at the county courthouse told Carver the cottage where Maggie was staying was deeded to Dredge Industries, Inc. He’d had a go at finding the company’s address, but without luck. Dredge Industries had owned the property for three years.

It was a few minutes past seven when he pulled the Olds into the gravel lot of the Happy Lobster and turned his car over to the same young parking valet who’d been on duty the day of Donna Winship’s death. If he recognized Carver, he showed no sign. He parked a lot of cars for a lot of people. Carver watched him leave the Olds in a space at the edge of the lot, near where Donna had died, then went inside to meet Beth for dinner.

She was seated at a table near the window, two tables down from where Carver had listened to and failed to help Donna. Her hair was tamed by a headband and her strong profile was silhouetted against the wide window and glimmering sea. He stood in the archway leading from bar to restaurant and admired her for a few seconds, then she saw him and smiled.

The restaurant was crowded, and several men stared at him with veiled surprise and envy as he made his way among the tables, kissed her, and sat down. Central Florida wasn’t the easiest place for a white man and a black woman to be in love. It was an area where God and citrus and Mickey Mouse were sometimes worshiped to extremes. Maybe it had to do with the heat.

Three sun-browned, fortyish guys in shorts and identical gray tee shirts with alligators on their chests were still staring at Carver and Beth. They had a pitcher of beer at the table, and two of them were wearing caps lettered GATOR BAITER above the bills. There was hostility in their gazes, and the thin edge of envy Carver had seen in some of the other eyes that had followed him to the table.

Beth said, “Wonder what those swamp turkeys are thinking.”

Carver thought about his bad leg, then Beth’s two beautiful good ones showing beneath her light tan skirt, and said, “Probably they figure I must know some tricks.”

Beth smiled. “You do, Fred, you do.” She turned slightly and aimed her smile at the swamp turkeys, and they looked uncomfortable and concentrated on their drinking. Beth could be intimidating.

Then one of the men grinned and said something to a man at the next table, all the while looking at Beth. Carver knew what he was doing. He’d made a remark to the other man to fish for agreement on whatever he’d said about Beth. Bigots always sought, even sometimes demanded, confirmation of their beliefs. They needed that reassurance. But the man at the adjoining table simply turned away, as if he hadn’t heard.

A pert blond waitress arrived and announced she was their server and rattled off a litany of specials, then asked if she could get them something to drink while they were making up their minds. Beth ordered a martini, Carver a scotch, rocks.

Carver made up his mind right away and set his lobster-shaped menu aside. Beth chewed the inside of her cheek and contemplated.

When she’d finally closed her menu, he told her about his afternoon following Maggie, and what little he’d discovered about ownership of the cottage.

Beth said, “Sounds like Maggie might have a drug problem.”

“I only saw her drinking booze.”

“Same thing, if you can’t control it. Doesn’t matter if it’s booze, tobacco, or cornflakes-if it’s got you instead of the other way around.”

Carver didn’t debate the point. Beth was sensitive on the subject. She saw no real difference between users of illicit recreational drugs and people who drank and smoked uncontrollably; she thought alcohol and tobacco were the latter’s drugs of choice merely because they were legal and readily available. It was, to her way of thinking, an area where only the law defined morality, and with no real concern for the destruction of the addicts.

“A woman grieving the death of a lover might drink only to ease the pain, but she wouldn’t do it in a dump like you described unless she was used to being there.”

“That doesn’t mean she’s got a drinking problem,” Carver said. “Maybe she likes unwashed guys with tattoos.”

“That could be,” Beth said.

He saw she was serious and didn’t answer. The part of her past he didn’t know about bothered him sometimes. It took effort to set it aside and leave it hers alone.

“This Dredge Industries might not be incorporated in Florida,” she said. “If you want, I can find out more about it through Burrow .”

“It might help,” Carver said.

The waitress returned with their drinks and a broad smile. Beth ordered salad and lobster tail, Carver asked for the salmon steak special. The waitress seemed pleased, as if she’d sold him on the special, then sashayed away toward the kitchen.

Carver said, “Cheers,” and sipped his drink and looked out the long curved window at the ocean, still rolling blue-green and vast, unchanged from when he’d sat looking at it and talking with Donna Winship, unchanged by thousands of years. Ships seemed to sit motionless in the haze of heat and distance out near the horizon, as if time were a slower process far out from land.

“You don’t look cheerful,” Beth said. “Did you and Donna sit at this table when you met here?”

“No. Two tables away.”

Beth said, “Won’t do you any good to dwell on it and muck around in a lot of sentimental bullshit, Fred. The past is the past. We live in the present and can try to do something about the future. That’s all there is for any of us.”

“You’re cold.”

“You know better.”

He sighed and smiled at her. “Yeah, I do. What you are is realistic. And probably tougher than I am.”

She raised her glass, not smiling. “I wouldn’t argue either point.”

Carver knew she was right about how futile and destructive it was to dwell on the irrevocable past, but she hadn’t seen Donna Winship walk from the restaurant alive, then seen her minutes later mangled and dead on the pavement. That sort of thing made a vivid and lasting impression, and one that visited in dreams.

Beth put down her glass and bent sideways to reach something on the floor, causing one of her breasts to strain against her blouse. The move drew men’s eyes like laser beams. She said, “Got something for you, lover.”