John Lutz - Lightning

Carver saw Freel standing on the sidewalk with one of the uniformed cops from the cruiser. Both men had their fists propped on their hips and seemed to be talking calmly. The cop removed his cap for a moment and wiped perspiration from his forehead with a handkerchief.

After awhile, Freel walked over to one of the demonstrators, a middle-aged man wearing a blue muscle shirt, and said something. A young woman carrying a bloody-fetus sign joined them and they moved away from the other demonstrators and talked for a few minutes. Then they hugged each other good-bye and Freel returned to the Caddy. As he started the engine, he smiled and waved to the cop he’d been talking to earlier, who was still standing fists on hips and somberly observing the demonstrators.

Freel drove back toward Orlando.

This time Carver followed him to a cable TV station. Freel went inside and was there for more than an hour, probably taping his weekly sermon for Sunday.

When he came out, a woman was with him. Carver, who by now was sweating and impatient in the hot confines of the car, perked up.

Freel had his arm strapped around the woman’s shoulder. She was wearing a long blue dress and high heels. She might have been attractive, but Carver couldn’t be sure. She had on oversize sunglasses, and he was parked too far away to make out her features. He noticed the color of her dress matched the Caddy as she got in. Freel walked sprightly around to the driver’s side.

“Maybe we’ve got something going here,” Carver said aloud to himself as he waited for the Caddy to pass, then fell in behind it.

The Caddy made its way to downtown Orlando, wove through the crowded streets for a few minutes, then parked in front of a restaurant on Amelia.

When Freel walked around the car and opened the driver’s side door like a gentleman, and the woman in the blue dress climbed out, smoothed her skirt with her hands, and stood up straight, she removed her tinted glasses. Belinda Lee Freel. As they walked away from the Cadillac, the reverend seemed to glance toward where Carver was parked, for only an instant, and he might have smiled. It was the same smile he’d given the uniformed cop just before driving away from the demonstration on the Orange Blossom Trail.

Carver swallowed his frustration and let out a long breath. He saw no reason to sit outside the restaurant in the stifling car. The Freels would doubtless linger over dinner in cool and pleasant surroundings, then drive home.

He decided to do that himself.

It was dark when he parked beside Beth’s car outside the cottage. He had stopped for chili and a beer, and his stomach was in minor rebellion. The evening had cooled and he’d driven with the top down, smoking a Swisher Sweet cigar. He could still taste chili and tobacco as he raised the top.

The weather forecast he’d heard on the car radio had hinted hopefully at rain. Probably it was only another futile prediction and the storm clouds that blew in periodically from the Gulf would soar over Florida to vent their moisture in the Atlantic, but Carver didn’t want to take a chance on getting the old car’s interior soaked. Though it seemed impossible now, sooner or later it would rain again in sun-punished central Florida; what was summer without steam?

It took him awhile to get the top fastened down and the windows cranked up. The sky had become darker and the breeze was rattling the palm fronds. Maybe tonight was the night. He was acting wisely here, battening down the hatches on the rusty old land yacht.

Beth wasn’t in the cottage. Neither was Al.

Carver opened a can of Budweiser, then went out onto the porch and stood leaning on the wooden railing, looking toward the ocean. Lightning fractured the sky far out at sea, the promise of an off-shore storm, and he was sure he saw the forms of Beth and the dog walking along the beach.

He wiped moisture from the beer can off his fingers onto his shirt, got a firm grip on the crook of his cane, and went to join them.

Beth smiled at him through wind-whipped strands of hair when he approached. She didn’t have to adjust her pace to his as he fell in beside her; she was already walking slowly. Al ignored Carver and ran through the surf, picked up something in his mouth, then dropped it as a wave broke late and bowled him over.

“He likes the surf,” Carver noted. The breeze grabbed his voice and tried to whisk it away, but he was sure Beth had heard him.

She looked over at Al as he leaped into an oncoming wall of foam. “He even likes to swim,” she said. “Maybe he’ll go out with you some morning.”

Carver wasn’t sure what he thought of that idea. He stared at the damp sand, careful about where he placed the tip of his cane. “I talked with Jefferson Brama today.” He had to raise his voice above the breeze and surf.

“He assure you of Norton’s innocence?”

“Not so much Norton’s as Freel’s. In his lawyerly way, he warned me not to delve any further into a possible romance between Freel and Adelle Grimm.”

Beth paused, picked up a lumpy piece of driftwood, then hurled it into the sea for Al to retrieve. “He might be right about Freel’s innocence,” she said, “but not about Adelle’s.”

Here was something new. Carver stood next to her and watched Al fling himself into the surf and search fruitlessly for the chunk of driftwood.

“I had Adelle’s house staked out as usual tonight and I saw a man enter,” Beth said. “He approached the house on foot and was inside almost before I knew he was there.”

Carver continued watching the dog. “Freel?”

“I don’t know. I think so. But he seemed larger than Freel.”

“Was he let in?”

“Yes, I’m sure of that. He was inside so fast, he wouldn’t have had time to use a key. A light came on in the rear of the house, and I saw that the drapes weren’t closed all the way in one of the windows. I got out of the car and moved onto the property, sure I could sneak a peek inside.” She started walking slowly again along the surf line, keeping her bare feet on the firm, wet sand. “Then Al barked.”

“Barked at what?”

“I don’t know, a squirrel or something. Maybe the breeze blowing a leaf. Or maybe something else. I thought I heard somebody moving in the bushes, saw someone’s shadow, but I can’t be sure. I know I was spooked. I ran. We ran. Back to the car. When I was halfway there, I heard an engine and turned around and saw that big black car of Adelle’s come roaring out of the garage and tear away down the street. I’m sure there were two people in it, and a man was driving. There was no time to follow. They were out of sight even before the automatic garage door lowered, and I saw that all the lights in the house were off.”

“Blue,” Carver said.

“What?”

“Adelle’s car is dark blue.”

Al was barking now, standing and staring out at the ocean, angry that it had appropriated his driftwood. Lightning made the sky glow yellow again out over the sea, and thunder rolled softly like low celestial laughter, nature putting on quite a show to taunt the simmering land.

“What did you mean about Freel being innocent and Adelle guilty?” Carver asked.

“I’ve been making contact with people, asking about Adelle Grimm. Her maiden name was Neehaus. She came from a wealthy family in Philadelphia who more or less disowned her after she stole some money and was thrown out of Vassar. She went through half a dozen jobs before she married Harold Grimm, who was already practicing medicine at the time, and regained financial solvency.”

“How did you find out about this?”

“By modem.”

Carver, who was barely computer literate, must have looked puzzled.

“Using the Internet. Someone even faxed me a copy of the fourteen-year-old newspaper item about the embezzlement from the university. Adelle claimed she stole the money out of love for one of her professors. He was a married man and denied any involvement. She was convicted and given probation. Even after that, she came close to going to prison because she continued her claims on the professor and almost destroyed his marriage.”