“I’ve got no answers,” Beth Jackson said after Carver had told her about Brant’s visit to his office.
They’d finished lunch in his beach cottage north of town, and now they sat in the shade on the plank porch, gazing out at the sea and drinking expensive gourmet coffee that smelled good to Carver but tasted like ordinary coffee.
Beth was wearing a white halter and yellow shorts and headband. The colors looked strikingly pale against her dark skin. Her long, bare legs were crossed and a white leather sandal dangled precariously from the big toe of her right foot. Carver’s cane was resting against the arm of his chair, and his bad leg was propped up on the porch rail. Beyond the rail and the tan crescent of beach, the sea rolled and gulls screamed and circled gracefully above something dark and indefinable floating a long way from shore.
“I think I believe his story,” Carver said.
“You would, being a man.”
Carver didn’t like her saying that. He wasn’t a knee-jerk male chauvinist. Not anymore. “It’s not impossible that a woman would take advantage of the political climate and falsely accuse a man of stalking her.”
“Why would she do that?”
“Could be a lot of motives.”
“Brant said she doesn’t even know him.”
“No,” Carver corrected, “he said he didn’t know her.”
“A difference without a distinction,” Beth said. “He told you he thought they were strangers.” She stared out at the ocean, the sun highlighting her prominent cheekbones, her dark features that hinted at nobility. Crow’s-feet had formed faintly around the corners of her brown eyes. She looked like a high-fashion model put out of work by character lines.
Carver took a sip of coffee, savoring what the package said was its chocolate-cinnamon aroma. “Your reaction might be exactly what Marla Cloy is counting on. She wants to be seen as the typical helpless female victim being threatened and stalked by the typical compulsive male sexual psychopath.”
“There are a lot of female victims and male psychopaths out there, Fred.”
Carver couldn’t deny that. “What would you do if a strange man was stalking you?” he asked.
She glanced over at him with a dark ferocity that let him know she understood the game he was playing. She didn’t view herself as a victim and she didn’t see why so many women cast themselves in that role. She’d said so and written it in Burrow, the local alternative-press newspaper that employed her. Carver was on dangerous ground, using her own words to snare her.
“I’d swiftly deball the bastard,” she said calmly. “But then, maybe this Marla Cloy is an old-fashioned girl who doesn’t like the sight of blood.”
Carver thought he’d change the subject. “What are you working on?” he asked. She’d been sitting on the porch, hunched over her Toshiba laptop computer, when he’d parked beside the cottage.
“Story about how the Everglades is going all to hell ecologically, and the rest of Florida’s going with it if we don’t do something soon.”
“Plenty of interest in that,” Carver said.
“Gonna be one giant Disney World if people don’t act.”
“Good for tourism.” Carver couldn’t resist the jab.
“So long as the tourists don’t mind bringing bottled water.”
“Was the Everglades article Jeff Smith’s idea?” Smith was Beth’s editor at Burrow.
“Smith’s been fired,” she said. “Clive’s doing most of the editing himself these days.” Clive was Clive Jones, Burrow’s publisher and managing editor. “Burrow is downsizing, as Clive puts it.” Beth tossed the remains of her coffee out over the porch rail. The sun caught it in the instant before it was claimed by gravity and transformed it into a glistening amber arc that hung in the air as if time were momentarily suspended. Splash! “That doesn’t keep him from spending half the day riding around on his Yamaha motorcycle, though.”
“He’s the boss,” Carver said. “That’s life.”
“Humph!” Beth said. “Life’s what happens to you while you’re making plans.” She stood up slowly, a tall, tall woman against the blue ocean. “There’s some chance I’m gonna be downsized, Fred.”
“Hard to imagine.”
Whatever the gulls had been circling had disappeared, and they’d flown in to shore to strut in the fringes of the foamy white wash of the surf.
“I could use what comes out of this Brant investigation,” Beth said. “A story like that might make the difference in whether I keep drawing a steady paycheck or become a freelance.”
“Every other time Jones has threatened to fire you, you’ve dared him to go ahead and do it. Why are you so afraid of losing your job this time?”
“I think he might mean it this time.”
Carver figured there had to be something more to it. Beth had been on and off Jones’s hit list several times since she’d been at Burrow. It had never seemed to make a dent in her serenity. But he knew when not to press.
“What if it turns out that Brant’s the one being victimized?” he asked.
She shrugged. “Then that’s the way I write it. It’s a good story either way it breaks.”
“I admire your journalistic integrity,” he said. “I’ll keep you clued in.”
She smiled, suddenly sweeter than the heady aroma of the chocolate-cinnamon coffee. “Do more than that. Make me part of the investigation, Fred.” She really did want this story, no matter who was being victimized.
When he didn’t answer immediately she bent low and kissed him on the forehead, then the lips. He felt the warm flick of her tongue, and the brush of her fingers on his shoulder.
“Maybe there is something you can do,” he said, feeling like a victim.