Carver drove back to Key Montaigne the next morning still wearing his tourist garb’ arid sunglasses, the bridge of his nose painfully sunburned despite the glob of white lotion he’d smeared and left on it. He’d missed a spot. The sun had found it.
No one at the Blue Flamingo even knew who the Evermans were when he’d asked about them. It was a place where questions weren’t welcome, and that included the ones posed by Carver. And Davy hadn’t reappeared in the vicinity of the old art deco hotel. At least not in any way Carver could detect. So much for abnormal psychology.
He hadn’t rushed leaving Miami, figuring why not temper his disappointment with a large and leisurely breakfast, then a cigar.
He’d indulged himself at the Osprey restaurant, overlooking the ocean, and decided he’d return there sometime when he got back to Miami. After breakfast he walked along the beach smoking, even though he’d had more than enough of the sun while staking out the Blue Flamingo. It felt good to be among the hundreds of tourists; his was a lonely line of work, and even this impersonal human closeness helped relieve the pressure of solitude.
By the time he’d driven to Key Montaigne and returned the Ford to Hertz, it was well past noon. Since his sunburned nose still hurt, he drove the Olds with the top up. Beth was sitting on the screened-in porch when he parked in front of the cottage and climbed out of the car in his red and black striped shorts, T-shirt with the flying fish on it, long-billed white cap, and reflector-lens sunglasses. She walked out and stood on the porch steps with the door open, staring at him.
“Been in some kinda accident, Fred?”
“What’s that mean?”
“Nothing. What’s that white gunk on your nose?”
“Sunscreen. Makes it feel better.”
“Oh. I’d ask you how it went up in Miami, but I can tell by your face it didn’t go well.” When he got close enough, hobbling up the steps with his cane, she kissed him on the chin, well below nose level. “Want a beer?”
He nodded and lowered himself into one of the chairs on the porch, then sat tracing idle patterns on the floor with the tip of his cane. It was dim there compared to the brilliant sunlight beyond the dark screen, almost cool.
She returned with two opened cans of Budweiser, gave him one and settled into the metal glider with the other. She had her hair pulled back and tied with a yellow ribbon today. The ribbon matched her shorts. She looked cool as ice cream and twice as-
“Been some news here while you were gone,” she said, interrupting his thoughts, even his plans. “Came over the local radio station this morning. The head of the Oceanography Research Center was found dead. Hanged himself, news said.”
Carver planted the tip of his cane on the floor and pushed himself up straighter in the chair. “Dr. Sam?”
“Yeah. Only the news called him Dr. Bing.”
“Who found him?”
“His assistant-that Katia woman. S’posed to have come in for work around eight this morning to open the aquarium for tourists, and there the good doctor was hanging.”
Carver breathed out and sat still for a moment, digesting what Beth had told him. “They calling it suicide?”
“Sure. According to Chief Wicke, there was no doubt.”
“Bing leave a note?”
She shrugged, sipped Budweiser, wiped a bit of foam from her upper lip. “News didn’t say.”
Carver set his beer can aside and stood up, leaning on the cane.
“Guess I don’t have to ask where you’re going?” Beth said.
“Guess not.”
“Want me to come along?”
Carver stood thinking about that. Beth had a way with distraught members of her own sex. She’d suffered and she understood their suffering, and she might notice something he’d miss in a conversation with Millicent Bing or Katia. “It’d be a good idea,” he said. “You ready to go?”
She didn’t move. “Only on one condition.”
He cocked his head and looked questioningly at her. What had she cranked up to throw at him now?
“You gotta change clothes, Fred, get rid of that white stuff on your nose.”
Easy enough.
He’d expected to see police cars parked at the research center, but the lot was empty. The law had come and gone, shaping death to the brisk, efficient routine of bureaucracy and making it seem comprehensible to the only species that thought about it before it happened. A cardboard sign next to the parking lot entrance, printed crudely in thick black marking pen, informed visitors apologetically that the center was temporarily closed.
With Beth beside him, Carver limped to the tinted glass entrance, hoping someone was still inside. There must be chores here that had to be done, cleaning tanks, feeding sea life, whatever was necessary to maintain a patch of ocean on dry land. He noticed the Fair Wind still at its dock and riding gently on incoming ripples, as if dancing lightly to the music of the wind through its myriad antennae. The breeze off the ocean made the place seem sad and desolate, touched by undeniable mortality. Death itself could haunt.
Carver pounded on the door with the crook of his cane.
“Place feels unoccupied,” Beth said.
But it wasn’t. The door opened about six inches and Katia Marsh peered out. There were deep crescents of grief beneath her eyes; she’d been crying and it hadn’t helped much.
“We’re closed,” she said. “Dr. Sam-”
“I know,” Carver told her. “We heard about it on the news. This is my associate, Beth Jackson. Can we come inside, Katia?”
She hesitated a moment, then stepped back and opened the door wider so they could enter. Before closing the door, she glanced around outside, as if suspecting they might be the advance guard for an army of interlopers. Maybe she feared the news media. Or the police converging on her again.
It was blessedly cool in the research center. The only sound was an air-conditioning unit, or possibly a filtering system, humming away somewhere.
“I was cleaning some of the displays,” Katia said, “trying to keep busy.” With a weak smile she turned and walked to the door leading to the live exhibits. Carver and Beth followed her through the door and down the steel steps. Beth looked at the circling shark behind the glass wall. It looked back at her. She shivered.
Katia picked up some kind of instrument, a screened scoop on the end of a wooden handle, and began listlessly skimming the surface of the shallow water in which a small sea turtle was displayed.
“Is this where you found Dr. Sam?” Carver asked.
The sifter jerked, causing ripples in the shallow water. Beth looked hard at Carver, somewhat the way the shark had looked at her.
“I’m told you were close to the doctor,” she said to Katia. “We’re sorry about what happened. Really.”
Katia dropped the sifter and rubbed her eyes with knuckles still wet from the tank. Carver felt guilty for being cynical enough to wonder if there’d been anything beyond business going on between the late doctor and his attractive young assistant. He said, “I’m sorry about Dr. Sam, and sorry to have to ask you these questions.”
“Why do you have to?” Katia asked, staring at him with red-rimmed eyes.
“Because Dr. Sam’s death might be linked to Henry Tiller’s.”
“Henry Tiller was struck by a hit-and-run driver, and Dr. Sam committed suicide.”
“Henry was murdered,” Carver said.
“Maybe. But I still don’t see the relevance.” The skeptical scientist in her.
“I don’t know that there actually is any,” Carver admitted. “But I’m asking you to understand I need to make sure.”
Katia shrugged, apparently not understanding, but also not wanting to argue. “I found him in there,” she said, motioning with her head toward a closed door. “It’s a storeroom. I unlocked and opened that door to get something, and there-I mean, the first thing that happened was I smelled the stench.” She bowed her head. Carver distinctly saw a glittering tear fall from her cheek to the floor, where it seemed to shatter like crystal. Beth moved close to her and wrapped a long brown arm around her. Carver had seen hangings. He knew the doctor’s sphincter had relaxed during death and his bowels had released. “Then I saw his legs, one stockinged foot, a black silk sock. He’d kicked off one of his shoes when he shoved away the boxes he’d been standing on. He was suspended by a rope around his neck, hanging from one of the steel beams up near the ceiling. I saw his face and backed away. Got out of there.” She buried her face in her hands and sobbed for a minute while Carver and Beth said nothing. Carver felt like hugging the girl himself, assuring her that grief would pass, or at least become tolerable with time. But he knew he couldn’t. Shouldn’t. Felt helpless. He truly hated moments like this. Beth held her tighter, patting her gently and rhythmically on the back.
Finally Katia composed herself, lowering her hands and standing up straight, managing a kind of tear-streaked dignity Carver admired.
“You mentioned the door was locked,” he said.
“It usually is locked, but it must not have been this morning. When I turned my key in the lock, it must have already been unlocked and I didn’t notice. Or maybe it was locked; Dr. Sam might have locked the door from the inside.” She clenched her teeth, making her jaw muscles dance. “God, does it really make any difference? This is like some sick game!”
“Can I have a look at the room?”
Katia nodded, walked to the door and unlocked it with a brass key on a ring of at least half a dozen keys. Instead of opening the door, she shied away from it, returning to her work at the tide pool displays. Beth stood near her, watching her, not looking at Carver.
Carver opened the door. The room wasn’t much larger than a closet, and the smell of human feces still permeated the warm, motionless air. The hum of whatever was running was louder in here. He found the light switch and flipped it upward. A fluorescent ceiling fixture fought through its birth pangs and winked on.
The police were finished with the death scene, and the rope Dr. Sam had used was removed from the steel girder supporting the concrete ceiling. The small room was lined with metal shelving that held cardboard boxes. Two boxes that contained computer paper sat on the concrete floor, probably the boxes Dr. Sam had stood on, then kicked away after slipping the noose over his head.
Carver examined the door and saw that the only way to lock it from the inside was with a key. Interesting. Maybe meaningful. He switched off the light, stepped outside and closed the door, glad to be out of the close, oppressive room. Here the air was cooler and didn’t smell of death.
Carver limped over to where Katia was now sprinkling flakes of food into one of the trays, balanced nutrient, read the label on the otherwise plain white box. “How’s Millicent Bing taking her husband’s death?” he asked, watching the irregular flakes float like debris on the surface, glad he wasn’t a fish.
Katia didn’t look up. “I think she’s still in shock. I offered to go over and stay with her, but she said she’d rather be alone. Said that was how she handled grief.”
“Did Dr. Sam leave a suicide note?” Carver asked.
Katia shook her head no.
Carver thanked her for talking with him, then said, “You gonna be okay here?”
She put down the balanced nutrient and forced a smile. “Yeah, I think so. I’ll stay busy. That’s how I handle my grief.”
“What’ll happen to the research center now?” Beth asked.
“I don’t know,” Katia said. “I haven’t thought about it yet.”
“If you change your mind about how you want to handle your grief,” Beth said, “phone me and I’ll come over.”
This time Katia’s smile was genuine even if fleeting. “Thanks. I appreciate that.”
“We’ll find our way out,” Carver told her. Beth followed him as he limped up the steel stairs to the ground-level exhibit.
Outside in the brilliant sun, Beth said, “The girl thought a lot about her employer.”
“More than she should have?” Carver asked.
“Think there was more than something fishy going on there?” Beth said.
“It was a serious question.”
“Okay, Fred. Bad joke. I didn’t pick up that Katia and the doctor were romantically involved, but it’s not impossible. Might not mean anything even if they did have something going.”
“Far too many mights in this world,” Carver said. He lowered himself into the Olds as Beth walked around and got in on the passenger side.
As soon as he started the engine, he switched the air conditioner on High.
Beth crossed her long bare legs, then stretched the front of her shirt to pat perspiration from her forehead. “Think Dr. Sam really committed suicide?” she asked.
“Might have,” Carver said.