John Lutz - Hot

Carver said, “I sorta lean toward that male menopause theory.”

Wicke said something to him after he’d closed the door and was limping away, but he wasn’t sure what.

Carver had stopped for a few beers at the Key Lime Pie’s bar after leaving Chief Wicke, thinking he might overhear something significant about Dr. Sam’s death. But none of the natives was discussing it. Maybe they’d already talked themselves out on the subject, or maybe everyone knew who Carver was and thought it safest to stay silent, therefore uninvolved and still alive, unlike Dr. Sam.

When he returned to the cottage, he phoned Katia Marsh and asked her if she’d again arrange for him to talk with Millicent Bing.

“You’re too late,” Katia told him. “She’s gone.”

“Gone where?”

“From Key Montaigne, and she’s not coming back. She wouldn’t tell me where she was going. I assume it’s wherever Dr. Sam’s funeral’s going to be. I wanted to go to the funeral, but she told me it’d be better if I didn’t, that Dr. Sam’d want me to stay here and take care of the research center. And of course somebody has to do that; the exhibits require constant care.”

Carver wiped his hand over his perspiring forehead, touching the burned part of his nose with his wrist and causing instantaneous pain. “Don’t you have any idea where Dr. Sam’s going to be buried?”

“Someplace in the Midwest, I think.”

“Ohio?”

“It’d make sense. That’s where he was from. Both he and his wife, in fact. She’s from Columbus and he was from some little farming town. Can’t think of its name. So far from the ocean; maybe that’s why the sea fascinated him.”

“I heard he had a sister.”

“I don’t know. It’s possible. He never talked much about his family or early life. It seemed his life started when he went to college at Ohio State, then did postgrad work at the University of Michigan and Florida State.” Her voice took on a sad tone. “He was a pure scientist, Mr. Carver, a dedicated researcher. Why somebody like that-” Her voice broke, and he thought she was about to break into sobs, but after a moment she said, “Damnit! I’m sorry.”

He told her not to be, he understood. He wondered if he did. The relationship of Dr. Sam and Katia still wasn’t clear to him.

“I went to Millicent’s house to try and comfort her,” Katia said. “She told me good-bye. A truck was there and two men were loading it with boxes of possessions. Millicent said she’d arrange to have the furniture put in storage before listing the house with a real estate agent. She told me she never wanted to see Key Montaigne again.” Another pause, but not to compose herself. “She was grief-stricken, of course, but something else, too. I got the impression she was scared, Mr. Carver.”

“Of what?”

“I have no idea. But she was definitely unwilling to tell me where she was going.”

Carver knew whom Millicent Bing was afraid of, but he wasn’t sure of the reason for her fear. “You gonna be okay?” he asked Katia.

“Me? Sure. Florida State’s been in touch. Some of our grant money flowed through them. They assured me the research center would stay open. I might even be in charge, carry on Dr. Sam’s work with sharks. Nothing would please me more. We were learning so much . . .”

Carver left her to her future and hung up.

He sat by the phone for a while, thinking. If Millicent did travel to Ohio for Dr. Sam’s funeral, her fear might cause her to leave immediately afterward and he might never locate her.

He limped in to where Beth was slouched on the sofa watching the world going to hell on CNN news. “Wanna do something for me?” he asked. On the TV screen a missile screamed into an ancient radio-controlled aircraft and exploded.

She smiled at him and struck a suggestive pose with only the slightest shifting of her lean body, more a change of attitude than position. “I ever turn you down?”

“Comes under the category of work,” he said, watching the debris of the plane flutter down from a lingering cloud of black smoke. The CNN correspondent, a pretty blond woman in combat fatigues, was saying. “. . . Pinpoint accuracy and complete destruction. Smart weapons, Bernie.”

“I only do it for love,” Beth told him with mock disdain.

“Detective work. I need you to find the phone number of a Sandy in Forest, Ohio. Last name might be Bing.”

“Relative of the late Dr. Sam?”

“Sister.”

“Shouldn’t be too hard,” she said, using the remote to switch off the TV. “Forest can’t be a very large place. When I find the number, want me to call it?”

“No, I better do that. But later. Right now I’m going over to Millicent Bing’s house while there’s still plenty of light.” He’d learned how quickly darkness could fall in the Keys.

“I gathered from your phone conversation that she’d left Key Montaigne,” Beth said.

Carver nodded. “Doesn’t matter. I won’t need anyone to show me around.”

Beth was moving toward the phone as he limped from the cottage into the early evening heat.

He parked the Olds as close as possible to the side of the Bing house, so it wouldn’t be noticeable from Shoreline.

The low sun angled beneath the palm fronds to warm the front porch as he brushed away a bee and tried using his honed expired Visa card to slip the lock. The only result was a kink in the plastic card. Carver made his way around to the back of the house, limping through tall grass that found its way beneath his pants cuffs and tickled his ankles. Each of his dragging steps raised a cloud of tiny insects.

One of the back windows was unlocked. He managed to inch it upward enough to get his fingers curled beneath its aluminum frame, then he slid it open far enough for his body to fit through. After dropping his cane inside the house, he draped his arms over the sill and used his powerful upper body to raise his impaired lower self and wriggled through the window to fall onto soft carpet.

He sat there leaning back on his palms, his stiff leg out in front of him.

The air-conditioning was turned off and the house was almost as hot as the sultry evening outside. Silent, too, except for the leaning palm tree’s fronds rattling over the tile roof as the wind blew. It sounded as if someone might be walking around up there with skeleton feet.

Carver levered himself to his own feet with his cane and looked around. He was in a small office: gray metal desk with black leather swivel chair, two-drawer oak file cabinet, table with a small copy machine on it, gray metal stand supporting a gray IBM typewriter, the old-fashioned kind with the manual carriage return. On the wall behind the desk was a framed photograph of Dr. Sam wearing swimming trunks and standing in front of Victor the shark, circling behind him on the other side of the aquarium glass. The camera had picked up very little reflection from the glass, and the photo was striking, almost as if the doctor were casually standing underwater only a few feet from the huge carnivore.

Already sweating, Carver limped over to the desk and opened the drawers. All four of them were empty except for a three-foot strand of soft rope in the left-hand bottom. Carver wondered if it was cut from the length of rope Dr. Sam had used to hang himself. There was a combination phone and answering machine on the desk. Its counter registered no messages. Carver lifted the receiver. The phone was dead. He went to the oak file cabinet and wasn’t surprised to find it as empty as the desk. The contents must have been in the boxes Millicent had shipped north. Carver examined the typewriter and saw that it contained no ribbon. He lifted the rubber flap of the copy machine to make sure nothing had been overlooked there. Sighing, he sat down in Dr. Sam’s desk chair, trying literally to put himself in the late researcher’s place, contemplating death as Dr. Sam himself must have before seeing it as an acceptable option.