AFTER LUNCH, CARVE DROVE into Orlando. He parked near the reverend’s house on Selma Road for a while but saw no one arrive or leave.
Starting the engine and running the air conditioner from time to time wasn’t enough to make the car’s interior bearable. The sun glared through the windows and radiated with thermonuclear might through the canvas top, and everything metal became hot enough to fry food on.
Finally Carver gave up and drove to the urban oasis of a shopping mall, where he had a Diet Pepsi and sat on a bench and cooled off, watching the roaming consumers: retirees in walking shoes, simultaneously exercising and escaping the heat; idle teenagers seeking each other’s support and trying not to “fall into the Gap”; expensively dressed plastic-possessed women from East Del Moray, cruising the more exclusive shops. Malls were as American as Sunday barbecues and Charles Keating.
It was late afternoon, and a few degrees cooler, when he staked out the Clear Connection. He sat in the Olds, watching sunlight glint off the wide areas of glass and make the building seem a delicate crystal creation meant to be a temporary thing of beauty, as ephemeral as life itself. Excessive, for sure, but he had to admit it was appropriate architecture for a church.
Within an hour, Freel’s sky blue Cadillac pulled from the front drive and jounced over the slight incline to the street. Freel was alone in the car and appeared to be smiling.
Carver started the Olds and followed, staying well back, occasionally even using parallel streets as a precaution against being seen. Freel would have talked with Jefferson Brama by now and would be on his guard.
They drove out the Orange Blossom Trail until Carver noticed a parked police car and a crowd of people carrying signs. They were dressed casually to withstand the heat and seemed to be milling in a general circular motion. The Caddy braked, veering right, and parked behind the police cruiser. Carver made a left turn into a restaurant parking lot and found a slot where he could see what was going on across the street without being noticed.
The crowd was picketing a low white building with a door simply stenciled TRAIL CLINIC in blue block letters. White wooden crosses as well as signs were being carried, and Carver recognized some of the pickets. There was the skinny guy with the bullhorn who’d been yelling outside the Benedicts’ house, shirtless and wearing baggy plaid shorts. He was dancing around and yelling through the bullhorn now, whipping up the demonstrators for Freel, but Carver couldn’t understand what he was saying. Cars driving by were slowing, their drivers swiveling their heads to read the pickets’ signs and see what was going on. A few of the drivers honked their horns, either in derision or support. One man shouted something and made an obscene gesture as he drove past.
Carver saw Freel standing on the sidewalk with one of the uniformed cops from the cruiser. Both men had their fists propped on their hips and seemed to be talking calmly. The cop removed his cap for a moment and wiped perspiration from his forehead with a handkerchief.
After awhile, Freel walked over to one of the demonstrators, a middle-aged man wearing a blue muscle shirt, and said something. A young woman carrying a bloody-fetus sign joined them and they moved away from the other demonstrators and talked for a few minutes. Then they hugged each other good-bye and Freel returned to the Caddy. As he started the engine, he smiled and waved to the cop he’d been talking to earlier, who was still standing fists on hips and somberly observing the demonstrators.
Freel drove back toward Orlando.
This time Carver followed him to a cable TV station. Freel went inside and was there for more than an hour, probably taping his weekly sermon for Sunday.
When he came out, a woman was with him. Carver, who by now was sweating and impatient in the hot confines of the car, perked up.
Freel had his arm strapped around the woman’s shoulder. She was wearing a long blue dress and high heels. She might have been attractive, but Carver couldn’t be sure. She had on oversize sunglasses, and he was parked too far away to make out her features. He noticed the color of her dress matched the Caddy as she got in. Freel walked sprightly around to the driver’s side.
“Maybe we’ve got something going here,” Carver said aloud to himself as he waited for the Caddy to pass, then fell in behind it.
The Caddy made its way to downtown Orlando, wove through the crowded streets for a few minutes, then parked in front of a restaurant on Amelia.
When Freel walked around the car and opened the driver’s side door like a gentleman, and the woman in the blue dress climbed out, smoothed her skirt with her hands, and stood up straight, she removed her tinted glasses. Belinda Lee Freel. As they walked away from the Cadillac, the reverend seemed to glance toward where Carver was parked, for only an instant, and he might have smiled. It was the same smile he’d given the uniformed cop just before driving away from the demonstration on the Orange Blossom Trail.
Carver swallowed his frustration and let out a long breath. He saw no reason to sit outside the restaurant in the stifling car. The Freels would doubtless linger over dinner in cool and pleasant surroundings, then drive home.
He decided to do that himself.
It was dark when he parked beside Beth’s car outside the cottage. He had stopped for chili and a beer, and his stomach was in minor rebellion. The evening had cooled and he’d driven with the top down, smoking a Swisher Sweet cigar. He could still taste chili and tobacco as he raised the top.
The weather forecast he’d heard on the car radio had hinted hopefully at rain. Probably it was only another futile prediction and the storm clouds that blew in periodically from the Gulf would soar over Florida to vent their moisture in the Atlantic, but Carver didn’t want to take a chance on getting the old car’s interior soaked. Though it seemed impossible now, sooner or later it would rain again in sun-punished central Florida; what was summer without steam?
It took him awhile to get the top fastened down and the windows cranked up. The sky had become darker and the breeze was rattling the palm fronds. Maybe tonight was the night. He was acting wisely here, battening down the hatches on the rusty old land yacht.
Beth wasn’t in the cottage. Neither was Al.
Carver opened a can of Budweiser, then went out onto the porch and stood leaning on the wooden railing, looking toward the ocean. Lightning fractured the sky far out at sea, the promise of an off-shore storm, and he was sure he saw the forms of Beth and the dog walking along the beach.
He wiped moisture from the beer can off his fingers onto his shirt, got a firm grip on the crook of his cane, and went to join them.
Beth smiled at him through wind-whipped strands of hair when he approached. She didn’t have to adjust her pace to his as he fell in beside her; she was already walking slowly. Al ignored Carver and ran through the surf, picked up something in his mouth, then dropped it as a wave broke late and bowled him over.
“He likes the surf,” Carver noted. The breeze grabbed his voice and tried to whisk it away, but he was sure Beth had heard him.
She looked over at Al as he leaped into an oncoming wall of foam. “He even likes to swim,” she said. “Maybe he’ll go out with you some morning.”
Carver wasn’t sure what he thought of that idea. He stared at the damp sand, careful about where he placed the tip of his cane. “I talked with Jefferson Brama today.” He had to raise his voice above the breeze and surf.
“He assure you of Norton’s innocence?”
“Not so much Norton’s as Freel’s. In his lawyerly way, he warned me not to delve any further into a possible romance between Freel and Adelle Grimm.”
Beth paused, picked up a lumpy piece of driftwood, then hurled it into the sea for Al to retrieve. “He might be right about Freel’s innocence,” she said, “but not about Adelle’s.”
Here was something new. Carver stood next to her and watched Al fling himself into the surf and search fruitlessly for the chunk of driftwood.
“I had Adelle’s house staked out as usual tonight and I saw a man enter,” Beth said. “He approached the house on foot and was inside almost before I knew he was there.”
Carver continued watching the dog. “Freel?”
“I don’t know. I think so. But he seemed larger than Freel.”
“Was he let in?”
“Yes, I’m sure of that. He was inside so fast, he wouldn’t have had time to use a key. A light came on in the rear of the house, and I saw that the drapes weren’t closed all the way in one of the windows. I got out of the car and moved onto the property, sure I could sneak a peek inside.” She started walking slowly again along the surf line, keeping her bare feet on the firm, wet sand. “Then Al barked.”
“Barked at what?”
“I don’t know, a squirrel or something. Maybe the breeze blowing a leaf. Or maybe something else. I thought I heard somebody moving in the bushes, saw someone’s shadow, but I can’t be sure. I know I was spooked. I ran. We ran. Back to the car. When I was halfway there, I heard an engine and turned around and saw that big black car of Adelle’s come roaring out of the garage and tear away down the street. I’m sure there were two people in it, and a man was driving. There was no time to follow. They were out of sight even before the automatic garage door lowered, and I saw that all the lights in the house were off.”
“Blue,” Carver said.
“What?”
“Adelle’s car is dark blue.”
Al was barking now, standing and staring out at the ocean, angry that it had appropriated his driftwood. Lightning made the sky glow yellow again out over the sea, and thunder rolled softly like low celestial laughter, nature putting on quite a show to taunt the simmering land.
“What did you mean about Freel being innocent and Adelle guilty?” Carver asked.
“I’ve been making contact with people, asking about Adelle Grimm. Her maiden name was Neehaus. She came from a wealthy family in Philadelphia who more or less disowned her after she stole some money and was thrown out of Vassar. She went through half a dozen jobs before she married Harold Grimm, who was already practicing medicine at the time, and regained financial solvency.”
“How did you find out about this?”
“By modem.”
Carver, who was barely computer literate, must have looked puzzled.
“Using the Internet. Someone even faxed me a copy of the fourteen-year-old newspaper item about the embezzlement from the university. Adelle claimed she stole the money out of love for one of her professors. He was a married man and denied any involvement. She was convicted and given probation. Even after that, she came close to going to prison because she continued her claims on the professor and almost destroyed his marriage.”
“Fourteen years is a long time ago,” Carver said.
“Maybe, but it provides some insight into Adelle. She can be a possessive woman. I think it’s possible she killed her husband to be with Freel, and Freel might know nothing about it. Now she’s emotionally distraught and financially strapped again, but she isn’t opting for an abortion because it’s Freel’s child she’s carrying and not her dead husband’s.”
“Which would give her considerable leverage over Freel.”
“It would if she needed it.”
“If she was from such a wealthy family, why would she have to embezzle money when she was in college?”
“She was on a meager allowance, and her parents were strict disciplinarians determined not to let their daughter be spoiled by wealth. Adelle didn’t adhere to their philosophy. She’d had trouble before with money.”
“I doubt if she’s poor now. Grimm was doing okay financially, and he probably had life insurance.”
“He did, for two hundred thousand dollars. But that isn’t much to a woman who has roots in obscene wealth and might want to recapture it. Reverend Freel has major-league wealth, and she might be pregnant with his child.”
They reached the rocky area of beach and turned around to walk back the way they’d come. “That’s a lot of conjecture,” Carver said. “You might be making it all too complicated. Seems more likely to me that Freel wanted Adelle and used his band of pro-life fanatics and Norton to kill Grimm and cover his true motive.”
“What about his alibi?”
“Desoto isn’t as sure as Wicker that it’s solid.”
“Adelle had access to the clinic. She could have planted the bomb there anytime, possibly days before it went off.”
“How could she know she’s carrying Freel’s baby and not Grimm’s?”
“The point is, how could Freel know?”
Carver realized Beth had given this hypothesis considerable thought. It was amazing what a labyrinth had to be negotiated to reach the truth. It was so difficult to be sure of anything.
Al trotted up to them and shook his entire body violently, spraying water over Carver and Beth. Carver was irritated, but Beth leaned down and hugged the still-soaked dog, then kissed the top of his nose. What could Carver say. She’d lost a child and gained a pet. It was the sort of trade that wasn’t really a trade, that made him want to cry.
When she straightened up, Carver hugged her to him, then kissed her on the lips. She smiled at him, sad in the faint light, and leaned back away from him, staring at him with her dark eyes.
“You okay?” he asked.
“I’m getting okay, Fred. Isn’t that what life’s all about, getting over things, all the way if you’re lucky, before something else happens?
“Seems that way,” he said.
She stared out at the lightning-illuminated clouds on the horizon. “We’ve all got to learn to do that. Otherwise the past will pull us under.”
He kissed her again. “Not you,” he said.
“No, not me.”
When they returned to the cottage, the phone was chirping. Beth answered it, looked puzzled and concerned, then said simply, “Yes,” and held the receiver out for Carver.
He pressed it to his ear and said hello.
“This is Archie Anderson,” a man’s voice said.
It took Carver a few seconds to realize who was speaking.
“FBI Agent Archie Anderson,” the voice said before Carver could reply. “The agent who had your cottage under surveillance,” Anderson sounded more than tense, almost enraged, as if barely holding himself in check. “You might want to drive out here, Mr. Carver. Oliphant Road, about five miles out of town, a big orange grove with a white rail fence running alongside it.”
“I know where it is,” Carver said. “What’s wrong?”
“Wicker’s here,” Anderson said. “McGregor’s here, too. You’d better come.” Emotion had a grip on Anderson’s throat, choking off his words. Not at all like someone connected with the bureau; lawyers and accountants with guns.
Carver said he’d be there in less than twenty minutes and hung up.
When he told Beth about the conversation, she insisted on going with him.
“All right,” he said reluctantly, already moving toward the door. “But leave the dog. I don’t know what this is.”