John Lutz - Scorcher

Carver snooped around but found no camera. He limped over to the closet, lifting the cane high between steps in the deep-pile blue carpet. He slid open one of the heavy mirrored doors. It glided smoothly and made a politely soft rumble on its rollers.

There were more clothes in there than Carver had owned in the past ten years. Most of them were casual: blue jeans and pullover shirts. Dozens of shoes of all kinds. The jackets, slacks, and suits were light-colored and conservative. Paul’s taste ran to blues and grays. On the closet’s top shelf were two stacks of more oceanography magazines, bound tightly with thick dark twine.

“He take any clothes with him when he disappeared?” Carver asked.

“We’re not sure. If he did take time to pack, he left much of his wardrobe behind.”

“What about money?”

“Paul had his own bank account. As you no doubt know from the police, he withdrew several thousand dollars from his savings the day of his disappearance.”

Carver hadn’t known; he’d have to check with McGregor about things like that, remind the lieutenant that knowledge about Paul Kave was supposed to flow both ways.

“Paul left in his own Lincoln,” Carver said, and paused for confirmation or denial.

“Yes. Paul was in love with that car. It’s a beauty. The police found it abandoned in Fort Lauderdale. I don’t imagine we’ll see it for a while, the police being what they are. I suppose Paul had no choice but to leave it somewhere, under the circumstances.” Adam seemed almost more upset over the temporary loss of the Lincoln than the likely permanent loss of Paul. Priorities. It was Paul who concerned Carver, though not in the way Adam Kave had been led to believe.

“Anyone see him leave?”

“No. Nadine must have been out with Joel Dewitt. I was engrossed in business most of that evening-our new barbecue-sauerkraut hot dog.”

Yee-uk! Carver thought.

“And Elana was in her room as usual,” Adam went on. He set his jaw muscles quivering and stared hard at Carver with his intense magnified dark eyes. “There’s, uh, something you should know about Elana, Carver. It will make you realize why I’m hiring you, and why she shouldn’t be burdened with any. . negative information you uncover.”

Carver leaned with both hands on his cane and waited.

“My wife is terminally ill with cancer of the spleen. She won’t live more than another year. The strain of what’s happened might cut short even that small amount of time she has left. That’s why I want this situation resolved and left behind us as quickly as possible. I want every precious, irreplaceable moment of life for her-for us. I want Paul found.”

“I do too, Mr. Kave. I’m sorry about your wife.”

Adam squared his shoulders in a manner that somehow made him appear helpless. He was facing a tragedy his money couldn’t buy him or Elana out of, and his iron will might as well be cardboard; it was frustrating. Carver did pity him, as well as the fragile, reclusive woman upstairs. “Do Paul and Nadine know?”

“No. Only I and Elana and the doctors.”

“Maybe it would be best if you took your wife somewhere she’s always wanted to go,” Carver said, “until this is over.”

“I suggested that,” Adam said. “She told me she wanted our lives to continue as they normally would for as long as possible. At her request, we don’t even talk about her illness.”

There was a lot this family didn’t talk about, Carver thought. He looked around again at the sterile, expensively furnished room, half expecting to see a complimentary mint on the pillow, hotel stationery on the bare desk. He glanced once more at the batlike manta ray hovering menacingly among the underwater plant life and unsuspecting fish. Management would take down the print and put up one of flowers in a vase, or of colorful food to stimulate guests’ appetites and requests for room service.

“Not much to see,” Adam said. “Just an ordinary room.”

But not that of an ordinary man, Carver thought. The Kave family itself hardly seemed ordinary. Or was there such a thing as an ordinary family?

“Do you have a good photo of Paul I can have?”

Adam nodded. He pulled a snapshot from his shirt pocket and handed it to Carver. “I anticipated your request.”

Carver studied the likeness of a young blond man who had oddly dreamy eyes and a trace of the strong Kave jaw, wearing jeans and a light jacket and standing hands-on-hips near a large, round boulder. He tried to fathom the meaning in those eyes and the set of the features, as if he might sense the mechanism of thought from nothing but a photograph. Then he gave up. He thanked Adam and slipped the snapshot into his own pocket.

“He’s a good-looking boy,” Adam said. “Better-looking than in those fuzzy old newspaper photos.”

The Del Moray Gazette-Dispatch had run a copy of Paul’s high-school yearbook photograph. It had indeed been so fuzzy that Carver had stared at it and decided it might be of any high-school student. It hadn’t looked much like the face in the current snapshot. “I can see family resemblance,” Carver said, thinking he should comment. Polite thing to do.

As they were leaving Paul’s room, Carver said, “Why does your wife object so strongly to Nadine’s marriage to this Joel Dewitt?”

“She seems unwilling to pinpoint her reasons,” Adam answered. “My guess is she thinks Joel’s dishonest.”

“Why would she? There are honest car dealers.”

“Oh, I don’t think it’s his profession she objects to. She gets feelings about people. Has instincts.”

“Accurate instincts?”

“Usually.”

“Maybe you should ask her about the barbecue-sauerkraut hot dog,” Carver said. “That sounds awful.”

Adam smiled. “You’d be surprised.”

Carver decided not to dispute the point. Adam Kave was the last man on earth to argue with about wieners. Like taking on the Colonel or his heirs about chickens.

He saw Carver out. They didn’t shake hands when they parted.

Waiting for the zebra-striped barrier to lift and release the rumbling Olds back onto the highway, Carver wondered what Elana Kave’s instincts had told her about him.

After leaving the Kaves, Carver stopped at a pay phone just outside Pompano Beach and called Fort Lauderdale police headquarters. He gave his name. McGregor was in but was busy, he was told. Did he care to wait? He cared to.

He tried not to touch any part of the sunbaked metal booth as he marked time till McGregor came to the phone. Cars hissed past twenty feet away on A1A, most of them with their windows cranked up and the people inside coolly ensconced in air-conditioning. Carver watched station wagons, vans, big luxury cars, miniature foreign cars-all to be found here on the edge of the sea in summer. A busy combination of fun and commerce. A gigantic, dusty tractor-trailer roared past, its tires singing. Its exhaust fumes drifted over to Carver in its hot wake of low, rolling air. Commerce.

“Carver,” McGregor’s voice finally said over the line, “I’m up to my ass in work here. You got something important to say?” Polite bastard.

“Better put what you’re doing aside for a minute,” Carver said, “pay attention to your big career gamble.”

“Hell, that’s why I’m taking time out and talking to you. But I’d rather be doing some listening.”

“The Kave family hired me.”

“Told you. This is all gonna go like grease through a goose, Carver. We’ll both get what we’re after, which really is the same thing even if we’re operating for slightly different reasons.”

“Why didn’t you tell me Paul Kave drew several thousand dollars from his bank account before he disappeared?”