John Lutz: Burn

He didn’t use his cane when he had fixtures or furniture to hold on to for balance. It had been hooked over the bathroom doorknob. He used it now to cross to the cottage’s screened-off sleeping area, smelling coffee. Beth must have gotten the Braun brewer going.

After sitting on the bed and working his way into underwear and gray slacks, he put on gray socks, black leather moccasins he didn’t have to contort himself to lace, and a dark green pullover shirt with a collar and pockets. He didn’t like shirts without pockets. He thought they should all be discounted as factory seconds.

Beth was perched on a stool, leaning with an elbow on the breakfast bar, when Carver limped into the cottage’s main area. She was eating buttered toast and had a cup of coffee poured for him. While he was swimming, she’d showered and dressed. Her hair, straightened long enough ago to have regained much of its curl, was parted neatly on the side and combed back to fall almost to her shoulders. She was wearing a long, baggy white T-shirt with shoulder pads and lettering, too faded to read, on the chest. She had large, firm breasts for such a thin woman, and it was obvious she was braless beneath the shirt. On her feet were the same white leather sandals she had worn yesterday, and presumably she was wearing shorts that were concealed by the length of the shirt. Before her was her oversize coffee mug with newspaper-caption bloopers printed on it. JERK INJURES NECK, WINS AWARD was visible to Carver as he sat on the stool across from her, on the kitchen side of the butcher-block counter.

“Want toast?” Beth asked.

“Maybe later. Just coffee now.”

She sipped. Her motion of lifting and tilting the mug rotated it to read RHODE ISLAND SECRETARY EXCITES FURNITURE EXPERTS. “So tell me about last night,” she said.

“It was wonderful, as usual.”

“Think back a few hours before that, Fred.”

He related his evening following Marla Cloy, then he got up and poured another cup of coffee. It was ordinary coffee this morning, not the chocolate-cinnamon gourmet stuff. He was glad.

“How’d Marla Cloy strike you personally?” Beth asked.

“Not at all. Didn’t lay a hand on me.”

She stared at him. A warning to get serious.

Carver placed his cup on the breakfast bar before getting back on his stool. “She’s not beautiful enough to storm beauty pageants, but she’s attractive.”

“Looks don’t always play a part in it when a dangerous sexual psychopath develops a fixation on a woman. Was there anything unusual in her behavior?”

“Not unless you find going to McDonald’s and reading a paperback novel unusual.”

“What about her going to the bar?”

“Well, it’s not the norm for a woman to sit alone and drink in a place like Willet’s Bullet.”

“But it’s OK for a man to do it?”

“I didn’t say it wasn’t OK or never happened. But most women stay home to drink alone. If they’re at a bar, they’re usually with friends. Dare I say they’re more convivial than us guys?”

“Maybe she’s got a drinking problem.”

“Bernie doesn’t think so.”

“Bernie?”

“An old guy who was nattering at me at the bar. He says she acts as if she just wants to step off the world, unwind, and be left alone for a while. Bernie’s the sort who’s had experience at that kind of thing; he’d know.”

Beth buttered another piece of whole-wheat toast. She took a bite, chewed, and swallowed. “Want the other half of this?”

“Sure.”

She slid the small plate with the half-piece of buttered toast to his side of the counter. “I did some checking, talked to Jeff Mehling.” Mehling was the computer genius at Burrow. “Marla Cloy really is a freelance writer. She even sold a small piece to Burrow last year on the preservation of the manatee. I had Jeff fax me a copy. It’s nothing original; there’ve been hundreds of articles during the past few years in Florida papers about trying to save the manatee. But it’s competent. Filler for page six.”

“Hmm. Professional jealousy showing?”

Beth gave him a look that would have made a lesser man scurry for shelter. “Not at all,” she said. “I only wanted to establish for you that the woman’s not faking it. She really is a freelance writer of professional caliber. She’s genuine.”

“She didn’t act particularly afraid that Brant might be following her,” Carver said.

“What do you want her to do, wear a bulletproof vest?”

“Maybe.”

“Maybe she had one on. Or maybe she got her order of protection from the court.” Beth had finished her toast. Now she picked up the slice she’d pledged to Carver and took a large bite out of it. Probably she was still thinking about that professional-jealousy remark. “You do realize,” she said, “that what Marla Cloy has butted up against is typical male reaction. She says she’s being threatened, and the police, and apparently you, think she’s merely another hysterical woman.”

“I’m not sure what she is. Neither is my client. That’s why I’m trying hard to find out. I’m not some stereotype male Bubba who thinks that because a man has a grudge against a woman, she probably deserves it.”

“But you do make the assumption Brant’s story is fact.”

“He is my client.”

“So rather than see Marla Cloy as a victim, you see her as an aggressor.”

“She might be.”

Beth finished Carver’s toast and licked butter off her finger. “Well, we could go round again, but I doubt if it would change anything. We’re simply viewing this matter from two different perspectives.”

“I’m trying to get at the truth,” Carver said. “I don’t have any preconceived notions.”

She smiled. “Everybody has those, Fred. The truth nobody wants to face is that we all carry around our own ideas of the truth. We hardly ever know the real truth-or even if there is one. Life’s an ambiguous experience, lover, so don’t be too sure of anything.”

“Found that out long ago,” Carver said, gripping his cane and sliding off his stool.

“Keep finding it out,” Beth advised. “Where are you going now?”

“I’ve got an appointment to meet with Brant at ten o’clock, to let him know what’s going on.”

“Doesn’t sound as if you’ve accomplished much.”

“If Marla happens to claim he harassed her last night,” Carver said, “I’ll know otherwise.”

“There you go assuming her guilt again, even though she’s the one being stalked.”

“Maybe you’re assuming her innocence because of what you two have in common.”

“Our gender?”

“And you’re both journalists. She wants to save the manatee, you want to save the Everglades.”

“More than that,” Beth said, “I want to save Marla Cloy.”

Brant was waiting in his car with the engine and air conditioner running when Carver turned off Magellan into the strip shopping center parking lot where his office was located. The car was a black Stealth sports car, sleek, powerful, and expensive. And possibly bought with his dead wife’s life-insurance money.

Beth would suggest that, anyway.

By the time Carver had parked and climbed out of the Olds, Brant was out of the Stealth and leaning against the polished black door with his arms crossed. As Carver approached, he pushed away from the car, smiled, and walked toward him with his hand extended. “So detectives keep bankers’ hours.”

Carver shook his hand. “Not bankers’ money, though.”

He invited Brant inside, then unlocked the office door and stood aside for him to pass. The temperature outside was already in the mid-eighties, and the inside temperature was catching up fast. Carver moved the thermostat down enough for the air conditioner to start humming, then closed the drapes partway to block the morning sun from pouring in and warming the place. It didn’t help much. The sun was sparking silver off the ocean visible between the buildings across the street, its rays entering through the window at a low angle. He leaned his cane against the wall and sat down behind the desk. “Hot this morning,” he said.