Tropical Heat Read Free

said. “I told you, neither of us has anyone else.”
    The ocean sighed again, like a huge thing breathing.
    Edwina walked to a high-backed wooden chair and sat down, gracefully crossing legs whose curvaceousness even the severe skirt couldn’t tame. “One night a week ago, Mr. Carver, Willis made love to me as he never had before. So intensely.” One of her hands began absently caressing the top of her thigh. “Even desperately. The next morning, I went to show a piece of property and he stayed behind. He was sitting on the veranda drinking coffee when I drove away.” She suddenly realized she was about to rub a hole in her skirt, and the naughty hand joined the nice hand in her lap and they knitted fingers to stay out of mischief. “When I came back that afternoon, the police were there.”
    She paused and chewed on her lower lip. Carver waited, wondering if she’d draw blood.
    She hadn’t. He was disappointed.
    “A friend of mine,” she continued, “another salesperson, had come by my house to see me on business earlier that afternoon. When she got no answer at the door, she walked around to see if I was outside on the veranda. She was about to leave, when she spotted Willis’s sport jacket and shoes on the edge of the drop.”
    “Drop?” Carver asked.
    “Where the Army Corps of Engineers graded the land to rise well above sea level,” Edwina said. “They placed rocks about sixty feet below to keep the beach from eroding.”
    Carver was getting the idea. “Was it your friend who called the police?” he asked.
    “Yes. Alice phoned them from my house. The back door was unlocked. Willis had poured another cup of coffee, apparently. It was on the veranda table, cool and full to the brim. There was a glass of grapefruit juice, untouched, and on a plate was a sweet roll with only one bite out of it. And, most important, there wasn’t a body on the rocks at the foot of the drop.”
    “It might have washed away, out to sea. Bodies do that.”
    “That’s what the police say.”
    “The police know bodies and water.”
    “I’m reminded of that every time I go to headquarters,” Edwina said.
    So Willis had decided to commit suicide in the middle of breakfast, Carver thought. What an impulsive guy. He’d suddenly put down his sweet roll and walked to the edge of the drop, then removed his shoes and jacket and dived onto the rocks. Then the sea had pulled his body out to the depths, maybe claiming it for the rest of recorded time. Well, it could have happened that way. The shoes and jacket didn’t bother Carver; suicides often prepared methodically for death, as if in the hereafter they might be graded for neatness.
    “Was the jacket folded?” he asked.
    Edwina nodded. “It was resting on top of the shoes so it wouldn’t get dirty. As if Willis expected to return for it.”
    “Was anything in the pockets?”
    “Willis’s wallet, with all his credit cards and over a hundred dollars in it. Also a few other things: a comb, two ticket stubs.”
    Carver took another sip of beer, noticing that it was getting warm from the heat of his hand on the can. “Miss Talbot . . . Edwina . . . I have to tell you that Willis’s behavior isn’t inconsistent with suicide.”
    She raised her eyebrows as if annoyed that Carver had jumped to a conclusion, irritated by a world in general that wouldn’t hear her out before passing judgment. “I thought it was suicide myself, until I began to think about how Willis had acted with me that last night we were together. I can’t simply close my mind to that.”
    Carver tried the beer again. It was too warm for his taste. Foamy. Edwina was gazing with unblinking beautiful gray eyes at him.
    He matched her stare, trying not to get lost in those eyes. “What do you hypothesize?” he asked. “What really happened?”
    “I think Willis is still alive. He knew someone was after him, coming for him; he was afraid. He was taken by whoever came. Or he faked his own death, so