She must have heard them drive up; she was waiting for them on the front porch. Verna was barefoot, as she’d been on Carver’s first visit, only this time she hadn’t yet dressed and was wearing a faded blue robe. Her dark hair was mussed, and her eyes were intent and red-rimmed, as if from lack of sleep. She was carrying the shotgun this time, too, cradling it gently beneath her breasts, almost as if it were an infant.
“Just there’s about right,” she said, shifting the long shotgun so that her finger was on the trigger and the twin barrels swung like bleak fate toward Carver and Edwina.
Carver reached over and touched Edwina’s arm. They simultaneously stopped, then stood motionless on the bare earth in front of the porch. The huge sun pulsated above, its heat weighting them down.
Carver probed the ground with the tip of his cane, found it as hard as it had been the day before, and set the cane and leaned on it.
“We have to talk,” he said.
“I do doubt that.”
Carver was sweating miserably. The humidity had risen. Despite the relentless sun, black clouds loomed high and heavy in the west; a storm gusting in off the gulf. Distant thunder rolled across the shadowed swamp, like the rumbling of dinosaurs roaming where they had lived forever.
“I’m no more interested in what you have to say today than I was the first time you came poking around out here,” Verna said.
“You’ll be interested if you take the time to listen,” Carver said. “Is Willis inside?”
“Willis?” Her voice took on a hollow quality; she was no good at deception. She tightened her grip on the shotgun. Carver watched her right forefinger caress the trigger guard with an odd kind of affection.
“Willis Eiler,” he said. “He’s your husband, Mrs. Eiler.”
Beside him, Edwina took an involuntary step back and to the side, as if Carver’s words had struck her with solid force. Then she moved forward again, beside Carver.
Verna stood quietly, considering. Carver and Edwina stood just as quietly and waited. Insects buzzed and chirped frantically around them in the swamp, sensing the coming storm. The birds that had been singing were silent, as if they’d already taken shelter.
“How’d you find out we was man and wife?” Verna asked.
“Checked the real-estate records at city hall. I wanted to know if you’d really sold your property. There hadn’t been a sale, but the property had been retitled in the names of Willis Eiler and his wife Verna.”
“Why was you interested in my property changing hands?”
“I thought your leaving town might be pertinent to a narcotics case, but I was wrong. About almost everything. I was being led. Now I understand. The object of the game was never drugs, it was real estate. Land. Willis stole money to purchase your property through his partner, Sam Cahill. When you wouldn’t sell to Cahill, Willis courted and married you to get the land.” It probably had been simple for Willis, Carver thought, looking at Verna. Lonely, more easily understood than she imagined, she was easy prey for a handsome, experienced con man with a hundred-thousand-dollar bankroll.
None of this made much sense to Verna. “Is Willis why you’re here?” she asked softly.
“Partly,” Carver said. “But I’m also here because there’s something you should know, Willis or no Willis. The Disney corporation is interested in using this area to create a theme park they’d call Everglades Kingdom, an expansion of Disney World into southern Florida. They’re keeping their intentions as quiet as possible to prevent land prices from soaring. Willis Eiler found out about the project when he was going through his boss’s desk in Del Moray, where he was selling time shares that didn’t exist, and came across some Florida Real-Estate Commission correspondence. Disney plans to drain some of the land here, build up roads, create a scenic waterway and a monorail system serving luxury hotels and tourist attractions.”
Verna seemed vaguely disbelieving of what Carver was telling her. “Tourist attractions, monorails, luxury hotels… here?”
“We’re standing right in the middle of the proposed area,” Carver told her. “Your property. Land Disney will pay a fortune to acquire because they must have it.”
Verna’s jaw set firmly and something cold moved into her eyes. Her hair was brushed down and forward to conceal her disfigurement, but Carver saw the lower half of the scar flush bright crimson. A breeze danced through the leaves, parted the folds of her robe for a moment to reveal one of her fine, bare legs halfway up her thigh.
She knew how to get to the point: “You saying Willis married me for my swampland and this tumbledown place?”
“He knows what it’s really worth,” Carver said. Let her put the pieces in place, figure it out for herself. It didn’t take Sherlock Holmes, just someone with the proper slant. Even Watson might have managed it.
“We was keeping our romance and marriage a secret until we’d moved away, because Willis said we could expect trouble from his ex-wife.” Verna motioned smoothly toward Edwina with the shotgun barrels. “This her?”
“No,” Carver said. In the corner of his vision he saw Edwina straighten and stand tensely. “This is a woman he was living with, another woman he took advantage of to get what he wanted. He served prison time for cheating a widow out of her property in Missouri. You’re the latest in a succession of women in Willis’s life, Verna. He uses women then throws them away. He’s using you.”
“He was gonna sell the place and get outa here,” Verna said, “away from Solarville. Sam Cahill was going to handle the deal for us.”
“I told you Cahill is Willis’s partner. He did try to buy this place from you, didn’t he?”
Verna nodded. “Tried every way he could. I wouldn’t sell at any price, though. I couldn’t. I’d have had no place to go then. All alone.”
“And when Cahill couldn’t convince you to sell to him, Willis came here to charm you into marriage and get the property that way. Isn’t that the way it was, Verna?”
There was a faint noise from inside the cabin, like someone walking with a heavy tread.
Carver knew who it was; it would have been unwise to stir from cover so soon after the night before, with so many law enforcement officers still in the area.
The door opened and Willis stepped out onto the porch.
He let the screen door slam shut behind him; the sound was like a rifle shot that resonated briefly and then was absorbed by the calm swamp.
Carver stared at the man, the myth brought down to life-size. Willis was like his photograph, handsome in an ordinary, even-featured way that served him well in his illicit work. He was wearing faded Levi’s, a white dress shirt with the sleeves rolled up, and, incongruously, dusty black wingtip shoes. The dandy adapting to his new and temporary environment; evolution in the swamp. Willis didn’t look directly at Edwina. Carver was aware of tension flowing from her like an electric force.
“Any of this true?” Verna asked.
“Some of it,” Willis said. “Not the part that means I don’t love you.”
Carver watched Verna as her mind grappled with yet another disillusionment. Life was like that: illusion, delusion, deception, self-deception, worlds and castles constructed of our personal perceptions, masquerading as reality until something interfered. Verna’s magic kingdom had been built here before Disney’s, and now Carver was tugging at the cornerstone of her castle.
Willis reached out for the shotgun, then withdrew his hand as two more cars flashed into view through the palmetto trees and parked at the end of the gravel drive.
Chief Armont and a uniformed cop got out of one of the cars. Another uniformed cop, the going-to-fat young one who’d stopped Carver on the road the night before, climbed out of the other. He looked more puzzled than official today.
Verna raised the shotgun, aimed it directly at Carver. “You folks stay right there by your cars,” she said. “Somebody dies otherwise.”
Armont stood still. He floated a hand upward to signal his men to do the same.
Verna nodded toward Edwina. “This your former wife, Willis?”
“Of course not. She’s a woman who used to work where I worked. She thought she was in love with me.” He barked a sharp, incredulous laugh, as if he were amazed at the audacity of those two people who had turned up there where they didn’t belong. “I never loved her. I never lived with her.”
“He speaking the truth?” Verna asked Edwina.
Edwina said nothing. The front of her blouse was trembling, rising and falling rapidly.
“He’s murdered to try to get this land,” Carver said to Verna. “He’s even murdered on this land-a naturalist called Mackenzie who was cataloging wildlife for the Disney corporation.”
Willis shook his head, almost in amusement. “Another lie.”
Carver blinked perspiration from his eyes. Even the breeze was warm and fetid, the swamp breathing.
Willis began shifting his weight from leg to leg. He was getting nervous; his mind must have been darting around like a wasp in a jar, searching for openings, angles that might lead to escape. Carver wondered if Willis, there in the cabin, had heard or seen any of what had gone on in the swamp the night before. The lights might have been visible through the trees, and the wail of the siren must have carried for miles. But then it wouldn’t have mattered much to him; none of it actually involved him. They’d only thought it had. Just as he’d planned.
Chief Armont’s voice boomed out. “I think you oughta put the gun down, Verna, and we can talk.”
She ignored him.
“Verna!”
She moved the shotgun barrel almost imperceptibly to take in Armont and his men. The message got across. She was capable and willing. Armont knew her; he kept quiet, waiting for it all to play out. The sky darkened, and the insects in the swamp became silent. A few drops of rain fell.
“The law want you, Willis?” Verna asked, not looking away from Carver and Edwina.
“The law wants me,” Willis said. “But not for what Carver says. What he says is a lie.”
“This isn’t your former wife? You ain’t just using me?”
“No, no! For Christ’s sake, no, Verna!”
A good actor, Carver thought. A great actor.
“He’s the one who’s lying,” Carver said to Verna. “He doesn’t love you.” He knew he didn’t sound nearly as convincing as Willis.
“He’s a gimpy private eye who peeks through keyholes,” Willis said, pointing at Carver, managing disdain in the gesture.
“And her?” Verna asked, moving the shotgun’s twin barrels in the direction of Edwina.
“She’d say whatever he told her.”
The low thunder was rolling closer now. Carver watched the raindrops spot the bare ground in light patterns determined by breezes high above. They made a faint pattering sound on the leaves and hard earth.
Verna raised the shotgun a few inches and held it with fresh purpose. She’d made up her mind: Willis. His luck ran on.
“Go on back along the path behind the house,” she said to Willis, not looking at him. “You’ll come to a big live oak with lots of old hatchet marks in the trunk, cuts I made when I was a girl. Make a right turn there, just the other side of the tree, and go through the swamp. In about a hundred feet you’ll be on an overgrown dirt road that poachers used to travel. You wait right there and I’ll pick you up in the truck.” She moved her head toward the rusty vintage Ford pickup. “I want to talk some to Chief Armont.”
Willis looked at the truck. “I couldn’t get it started yesterday. Will it run?”
“It’ll run. And I’ll see they don’t follow us.”
Willis obviously didn’t fancy the idea. But he did like the notion of getting away from there as quickly as possible. He leaned close to Verna, whispered something in her ear, then jumped down off the porch and jogged around behind the cabin. He had a loose-jointed, athletic way of running. Boyish.
Verna said nothing, swept the long shotgun slowly from side to side to make it clear she might fire at anyone who moved. The rain, still light, picked up a bit. Lightning played among the clouds in the west, getting closer.
“Time to talk some sense now, Verna…” Armont began, urging her to speak to him.
But she didn’t have anything to say, and a quick, chopping motion with the shotgun’s twin barrels told Armont he didn’t have anything to say, either. Verna waggled the barrels from side to side. No one was to speak.
When several minutes had passed, Willis began to shout.
At first Carver couldn’t understand what he was screaming. Then, when he did understand, he lifted his cane from the ground, reset it, and took a step forward.
Verna tightened her grip on the shotgun. Carver stopped and stood still again. Armont and his men were poised tensely, but they hadn’t moved.
The screams became louder, higher-pitched, like a woman’s screams.
Verna stared at Edwina, who stared back. Their stoic expressions revealed nothing, but Carver knew something was happening between them; he could actually feel its subtle vibrancy. It was like an understanding beyond words, between sisters. Maybe it could have passed between them only there, in the deep swamp.
Willis began screaming Verna’s name. Then Edwina’s.
The two last, maimed women in his life stood motionless and unfeeling, statues in the rain.
Carver shivered. He held tight to the crook of his cane with both hands and bore his weight down on it to steady himself.
Willis screamed Edwina’s name last.
Three times.
Pleading.
In tearing, banshee wails of horror.
Then suddenly he was quiet. Sunk beneath the quicksand where Verna had directed him. The abrupt silence rolled from the swamp and settled heavily over the clearing.
Verna slowly lowered the shotgun and bowed her head.
Carver heard footsteps behind him, then Armont and his men passed him at a fast walk, moving in on Verna.
Armont gently removed the gun from her hands, then held her arm tenderly, like a concerned lover, and led her into the house.
The rainfall became heavy, steady.