Tropical Heat Read Free Page A

he’d be safe, and then ran.”
    “Ran why?”
    “I don’t know. Gambling debts, trouble with someone from his past. It could be any of a hundred reasons.”
    “You must have some specific idea, among that hundred.”
    “Well, there’s something I didn’t mention to the police,” Edwina said in a measured voice, “because I didn’t want to risk getting Willis into any more trouble than he might already be in. There was some money. I saw it the week before he disappeared, in a shoe box in his dresser drawer.”
    “How much money?”
    “I don’t know. There were hundred-dollar bills on top, several of them. I don’t know what was down deeper in the box. I just got a glimpse of it as he was putting the lid on before he pushed the drawer shut.”
    “Did you ask Willis about the money?”
    “Yes. He said he’d cashed some bonds at the bank. To loan the money to a friend.”
    “What bank? What friend?”
    “He didn’t say.”
    “Do you think the money is connected to his disappearance?”
    “No,” she said, “but I can’t be sure. I do know that the money, shoe box and all, is gone now. Willis is a kind and considerate person, not the sort to get into trouble. But he likes to help people, more than he should. I think he inadvertently got mixed up with the wrong people. He’s running from them now, and when—if—they find him, they might . . .” She swallowed hard. Holding back tears? “You have to find him before whoever is after him does.”
    “Do you know what wrong people might be after him?” Carver asked.
    “No, I don’t. Honestly.”
    He didn’t know if he believed her. She’d do almost anything to make sure he took the case. He wasn’t all that impressed by this money story, didn’t know if he believed even that. She might be throwing it at him as added incentive to believe Willis was alive and to find him.
    “I only know he isn’t dead,” she said. “He didn’t kill himself. He’s still alive somewhere. In danger.” Her voice almost broke. “Maybe terrible danger.”
    “I’m not sure the facts indicate that, Edwina.”
    “I told you the way Willis made love to me the night before he left, as if he knew it might be the last time, as if he were saying good-bye. I’ve been told good-bye that way before. I recognize it. I know Willis didn’t commit a sudden-impulse suicide. But how do I convince the police?”
    How indeed? Carver thought, picturing Lieutenant Desoto’s handsome, somber face as the lieutenant listened to a hunch based on passion. It wasn’t the sort of evidence to convince a coroner’s inquest. It wasn’t evidence at all.
    “Why are the Orlando police involved?” Carver asked. “You live in Del Moray.”
    “When Willis moved in with me he kept his apartment in Orlando because he couldn’t get out of his year’s lease. His official address is still Orlando. I tried to get the police there to list him as a missing person, but they wouldn’t.”
    “Desoto is in Homicide,” Carver noted.
    “Missing Persons had me talk with him. Willis left no note, nothing. Though Willis is missing, the police see his disappearance as a possible murder officially, only what they really believe is that he committed suicide and the current carried him out to sea. So they’re not investigating a murder, and they’re not searching for a missing person. They’re doing nothing.”
    “They’re officially keeping the case open,” Carver said, “and unofficially closing it. Leaving it in limbo in the wrong department—if it is the wrong department. If Willis was a suicide, they don’t have a worry. If it turns out he might have been a murder victim, the department’s ass is covered; it’s a pending case.” For a moment his expression was one of distaste. “Bureaucracy,” he said. He poured the rest of his beer down the sink drain, watching it foam and swirl and disappear.
    “Your friend Desoto doesn’t strike me as a bureaucrat.”
    “He is, though, in his