She was, nonetheless, wearing a swimsuit when he arrived at the house that afternoon. She expected him, he had called first. In fact, she had told him on the phone that she’d probably be out back. Matthew rang the front doorbell. When he got no answer, he started around back, past a garden lush with red bougainvillea and yellow hibiscus. As he came around the corner of the house, Carla rose from a lounge chair and walked toward him with her hand extended.
The swimsuit was a black bikini, a bit more than nothing in its bra top, its black panty bottom snugly brief below her angular hips. She looked tall and leggy, her skin very white against the patches of black, the whiteness totally unexpected here in Florida, a stark paleness of flesh that caused her to appear somehow fragile and vulnerable and inexplicably sexy. He had not supposed she would look more exciting with her clothes off than she had with them on. With most women, in fact, the opposite was usually the case. But undeniably sexy she was, in spite of her virtually adolescent figure, the angular hips and collarbones, a coltish look — well, boyish to be more exact — dark hair cut close to her narrow face, eyes hidden behind overly large sunglasses, no lipstick on her generous mouth, lips wide in a smile now as she came closer.
“Mr. Hope,” she said, “how nice to see you.”
Her voice was somewhat husky, a cigarette-smoker’s voice, or a drinker’s, he couldn’t tell which.
She took his hand.
“I hope this isn’t a bad time for you,” he said.
“No, no, not at all. Well, as you can see, I was just sitting here reading.” She released his hand and gestured languidly to the lounge chair she had just vacated, and to the magazines strewn on the table beside it. A pitcher of lemonade and an ice bucket were on the table. Two empty glasses, both upside down, rested on a tray beside the bucket.
“Some lemonade?” she asked.
“Please,” he said.
She filled both glasses with ice cubes. She poured lemonade. All angles in the sun. Black and white and yellow in the yellow sunshine. His shirt and jacket were sticking to him. She handed him one of the glasses. He waited for her to fill her own glass.
“Please sit down,” she said.
He sat on the chaise beside hers. They sipped at the lemonade. A pelican swooped in low over the mangroves, settled on the water. The pool was a rippled blue under a patchy blue sky, the patio and pool ending at the line of mangroves, the bayou water beyond that a grayish green. In the distance, the storm clouds were closer. There was the smell of rain in the air. But the sun was lingering, if tentatively, for yet a little while. She crossed one ankle over the other, white on white.
“So,” she said, “has your man learned anything?”
All business now. She had not known the name of the private investigator he’d hired; she had come to him specifically to avoid personal contact with such a scurrilous breed. Ergo, she did not know that the man he’d hired was dead, the victim of gunshot wounds inflicted on a hot summer night, though the eighth day of June couldn’t be considered summertime except in the state of Florida. In the state of Florida, summertime sometimes came at the end of April. In the state of Florida, violent death sometimes came, too, and it had come on Sunday night to a nice guy named Otto Samalson who smoked too damn much, and coughed a lot, but who did a good job. “Your man,” she had called him. Matthew wasn’t so sure Otto would have enjoyed being called anybody’s man. If nothing else, Otto was his own man.
“My man,” Matthew said, “is dead.”
“What?” she said, and took off the sunglasses.
She’d been wearing sunglasses on the day she came to the office, hadn’t taken the glasses off during her entire visit. Her face had looked long and sorrowful, the glasses adding a further dimension of mournfulness, black against her pale white skin, as impenetrable as a crypt. On the day of her visit, she had told Matthew that her husband was forty-five years old, and he had assumed she was in her mid- to late-thirties. Her eyes, revealed now, were a glade green, youthful and alive with intelligence, easily her best feature. Without the glasses, she seemed a decade younger. The adolescent body now seemed entirely appropriate.
“He was shot to death on the Tamiami Trail,” Matthew said. A blank stare from her. “This past Sunday night,” he said. “A man named Otto Samalson.” The green gaze unwavering. “You may have read about it in the papers. Or seen it on television.”
“No,” she said.
“In any event, he’s dead,” Matthew said.
“I’m sorry to hear that,” she said, and then, almost at once, “Does this mean I’ll have to find another detective?”
Me, me, me, Matthew thought, how does this affect me? Does Otto Samalson’s untimely and inconsiderate demise mean I will now have to seek the services of another private detective, equally faceless and anonymous?
He almost sighed.
“If you feel you still want one,” he said.
“Well, if the man is dead...”
“He is dead, yes, Mrs. Nettington.”
“Then how can we continue...?”
“I’d already had a report from him, Mrs. Nettington. And yesterday I heard a tape that—”
“Why didn’t you tell me this?” she said. “When did you have this report?”
“Late Friday afternoon.”
“And you didn’t call me?”
“Otto was making a duplicate copy of the tape. I thought I’d wait till—”
“What tape? What do you mean?”
“Otto was able to plant a recorder...”
“Who is she?” Carla said at once. “Who’s the woman?”
“Someone named Rita Kirkman.”
The same blank green-eyed stare again. The name meant nothing to her.
“She lives in Harbor Acres,” Matthew said. “That’s where the tape was made. In her home there.”
“Where is it?” Carla said. “I want to hear it.”
“The tape? In Otto’s office. The police—”
“You don’t have it with you?”
“No, I don’t. The police are investigating a homicide, Mrs. Nettington—”
“You mean the police will be listening to that tape?”
“There’s a good possibility of that, yes.”
“Oh God,” she said. “What’s on it?”
“Everything you wanted,” Matthew said.
“When can I hear it?”
“I’ll check with the police. I’m sure—”
“I wish the goddamn police weren’t in this,” she said.
“Yes, it’s unfortunate that Otto was killed,” Matthew said dryly.
She looked at him, uncertain whether sarcasm had been intended.
“Was your husband home on Sunday night?” he asked.
She hesitated.
“Mrs. Nettington?”
She put the sunglasses on.
“I don’t know,” she said. “I was out myself. I went to a movie with a girlfriend.”
“You didn’t call home at any time Sunday night? From the theater? Or anyplace else?”
“No.”
“Then you don’t know whether your husband was here or not?”
“I’m sorry. I don’t.”
“What time did you get home, Mrs. Nettington?”
“At a little past midnight. We stopped for a drink.”
“You didn’t try calling your husband from where you were, did you? The bar, or the restaurant, or wherever.”
“We were at Marina Lou’s. No, I didn’t.”
“Was your husband here when you got home?”
“Yes, he was in bed. Asleep.”
“But you have no idea if he was here all night or if he—”
“No.”
“What movie did you see?”
“Dr. Zhivago. For the fifth time,” she said, and smiled. “They’re showing it again at the Festival.”