John Lutz - Burn

Carver left the Olds unlocked, as he always did in questionable neighborhoods, so car thieves wouldn’t slash the canvas top to gain access, which guaranteed a major expense if the vehicle was later recovered. He waited for a dusty black pickup truck to rattle and rumble its way down Graystone, then he crossed the street and passed through the dappled light beneath the oleander tree and approached the door with the fan-shaped transom.

The vestibule was mostly pink marble with a gray vein, crisscrossed with fine cracks that suggested antiquity. According to Desoto, Marla Cloy had lived in apartment 3-B. Carver checked the names above the mailboxes and saw that a D. Thatcher lived there now.

The building didn’t have an elevator. Steel stairs, painted beige, that probably had replaced the original wood stairs, angled upward toward brilliant light streaming through a window on an upper-floor landing.

As he set his cane’s tip and began climbing, Carver decided to leave D. Thatcher for last. It was the neighboring apartments that interested him most.

He was in excellent physical condition except for his permanently locked left knee. But the higher he climbed, the more stifling the building became. Ascending toward the pure, blinding light made going up the stairs seem like a near-death experience. He hoped it wasn’t.

By the time he reached the third floor, he was slightly short of breath and perspiring.

After waiting a minute until he’d cooled down, he made his way to apartment 3-C, directly across the hall from Marla Cloy’s old apartment.

He knocked, got no answer, and moved across the hall to 3-A. He could hear a radio or TV playing inside, so he rapped loudly with the crook of his cane.

The muffled music and voices inside were suddenly quiet, as if Carver had surprised transgressors at play.

The door opened, the smell of onions cooking emerged, and a stooped, gray-haired woman in her sixties cocked her head and stared inquisitively at Carver.

“I’m looking for Marla Cloy,” he said. “I was told she lived at this address, but I’m not sure which apartment’s hers.”

“Her name downstairs on the mailboxes?” the woman asked.

“Couldn’t find it.”

“Then you probably got the wrong address. I couldn’t help you much, anyways. Only lived here two months. But I never heard of any Norma Cloy.”

“Marla,” Carver corrected, and apologized for disturbing her.

He got similar results from the occupants of 3-D and 3-G. Apparently the building had a rapid tenant turnover rate. Not unusual in this kind of neighborhood.

When he knocked on the door to 3-B, Marla’s old apartment, he heard movement inside almost immediately.

He’d expected D. Thatcher to be a woman, using her initial to disguise her gender for safety’s sake. But the door was opened by a tall, blond man wearing pleated gray slacks and a tight blue pullover shirt that showed off his weightlifter’s build.

He stood with his feet spread wide and his arms at his sides, hands turned palms backward, elbows crooked so they rode far out from his waist. It was the way people stood underwater.

When Carver asked him about Marla Cloy, he nodded. “Sure, I remember Marla. I used to talk to her now and then down in the laundry room. I wash stuff pretty often because I work out regularly. She was always down there doing a load, too. Must be one clean woman.”

“She lived in this apartment, didn’t she?”

“Right. There was a fire about three months ago. Burned hell outa this end of the building. She moved out, and when the place got fixed up, I gave up my old apartment on the second floor and moved in here. Another thirty a month in rent, but it’s worth it. Everything’s practically brand-new.”

It occurred to Carver why the other third-floor tenants he’d talked to hadn’t lived at the address very long. They’d all moved into newly renovated apartments after the fire. “Was anybody hurt?”

“Yeah. Three people died. It was a big fire, in the papers, on TV news. The apartments on this floor all had smoke damage, and a couple of ’em were totaled.”

“What about this one?”

“Mostly smoke damage, but the kitchen was wiped out. The fire started in the basement and raced up the ductwork to the apartment right beneath this one. Then it spread through the rest of the place. Not much damage on the second floor other than to that apartment, but the flames came right up the ducts and between the walls and did a job on this floor. Firemen said that’s not unusual.”

“Who lived in the first-floor apartment directly above where the fire started?”

“Guy named Bill Swarthmore. People right across the hall, the Kerns, died in their sleep from smoke inhalation. Woman next to them, Gail Rogers, was found dead right inside her door. They say she suffocated, too.”

“That’s a shame. But Swarthmore survived?”

“Yeah. He was in Colorado skiing, or he probably would have died just like the others.”

“Lucky break. Do they know how the fire started?”

“Not exactly. Last word I heard on it was somebody left some paintbrushes soaking in a can of thinner or gasoline, and it caught fire somehow.”

“Do you know where I can find Marla Cloy now?” Carver asked, fishing.

“Nope. She kept pretty much to herself. Some kinda writer, is what she said she was. You know how they are. Good-looking gal, though, especially when she dressed up. I tried to date her a few times, but she always spun me right around. She was the smile-and-hello type, but didn’t have any close friends I know of in the building. Well, wait a minute. She was friendly with Gail Rogers, I think, what with Gail living right across the hall. But that’s not much help to you, I guess, Gail being dead.”

“Did you know her at all?”

“Gail? Not really. Just to say hello to. I saw her and Marla walking together downtown once, so I’m sure they were friends.”

“What kind of reputation did Gail Rogers have?”

“Reputation? Heck, I don’t know. Never heard anything bad about her.” Thatcher absently adjusted a shirtsleeve, creating ripples in the tight musculature of his arm. Carver figured he worked out a lot, and probably with a fanatic’s dedication.

“Did you ever try to date her?”

Thatcher looked at him curiously, letting him know he was getting too personal. “Gail wasn’t my type. Kinda plain. Seemed nice enough, though. Why do you ask?”

“If I can’t find Marla Cloy any other way, I thought maybe Gail Rogers’s friends or family might know where she is.”

“Could be, but I don’t know how you’d get in touch with them.”

“During the brief contact you had with Marla, did you notice anything unusual in the way she behaved?”

“Can’t say I did. She was standoffish, but not like she was a snob or anything like that. Distant, is all. She acted like a lady who’d maybe been hurt and was healing inside, in her mind.”

“Hurt how?”

“That I couldn’t tell you. I might even be wrong about it.”

A woman’s impatient voice called, “Don? Honey?” from somewhere inside the apartment. Thatcher scratched his flat stomach beneath his taut shirt and smiled at Carver. A conspiratorial, us-men-of-the-world kind of smile.

“I’m interrupting you,” Carver said.

“Sorta.”

He thanked Thatcher for talking with him, then gave him his card and asked him to call if he thought of anything else.

“Hey, you’re a confidential investigator,” Thatcher said, squinting at the card. “That’s neat. A private eye.”

“Shamus,” Carver said with a smile. “But Marla’s not in any kind of trouble.”

“She inherit money or something?”

Why did they always ask that? “No,” Carver said, “people who inherit money are usually easy to find.”