Free Scorcher by John Lutz Page A

supposed whoever tended the grounds regarded the vines as ornamental; long nails had been driven into the stucco to aid the green tendrils on their upward quest. The nails were rusty, the higher ones waiting patiently for the vines to reach them before metal crumbled in the salt sea air.
    Adam Kave stood aside and let Carver take the steps first with the cane. Carver could feel the presence of Kave close behind him as he climbed, as if Adam were telling him he wished they could go faster. The hard walnut cane made hollow clanking sounds on the steel.
    On the landing, Adam edged around Carver, unlocked a heavy wooden door, and pushed it open. Heat and silence rolled out. Carver limped inside the lab.
    It was dim; only minimal light filtered in through curtains pulled closed over narrow windows. Dust swirled in diffused sunbeams. A fly droned through the dappled light. Carver expected the acrid scent of chemicals, but the air was stale and musty and smelled like attics everywhere. He remembered the heat and buzzing beneath the eaves of his father’s house, decades ago.
    He heard the click of a wall switch, and an overhead fluorescent fixture sent out intermittent signals of pale, flickering light, then fought its way to steadiness.
    Adam examined his hand as if the switch might have soiled his forefinger. “Paul wasn’t one to keep this place clean,” he said, “and he’d never let the maid from town come in here. It was his refuge from his problems, I suppose.”
    Partitioning walls had been removed so that the area above the garage was one large room. The floor was unfinished plank. The plumbing that had served bath and kitchenette was extended in copper pipe to the dry-walled ceiling and run to the east wall, then down to a long sink and workbench. Brown-tinted vials lined a shelf above the workbench. A crudely drawn skull-and-crossbones poison warning on lined notepaper was taped to the edge of the shelf. On the bench sat a Bunsen burner, an expensive and elaborate microscope, a series of glass beakers and slides, and an opened and apparently empty Pepsi can. There was a cot against the opposite wall, and near it a bentwood chair on which was piled diving equipment: swim fins, a snorkel, and what looked like the wadded top of a black rubber wetsuit. The only other evidence of Paul’s interest in the ocean was a large aquarium tank, empty, with colored pebbles and a miniature chambered castle on the bottom. There seemed to be dust over everything, as if no one had been in the place for a while, but that could be deceptive. An ancient air-conditioner was mounted in one of the windows. The sloping ceiling was insulated, but it was getting uncomfortable in the crude lab, and Carver felt like limping over and switching on the unit.
    “The police spent considerable time up here,” Adam said. “They removed a few items. I’m not sure what.”
    Carver nodded. He thumped across the floor with his cane and examined the chemical vials on the long shelf. He discerned nothing from the polysyllabic Latin labels. A brilliant teen-age boy might have learned to concoct anything from explosives to aphrodisiacs with the stuff. “Did Paul spend a lot of time here?”
    “I don’t think he did in the past year or so,” Adam said, “though I couldn’t swear to it. He was increasingly fond of swimming, of the ocean and the creatures in it, and that took up most of his time. Now and then he’d come up here to closely examine something he’d found in the sea, but he wouldn’t spend days at a stretch here alone as he did when he was a boy.”
    “He ever share the things he found? I mean, talk about them with friends or family?”
    “No.”
    “Not even Nadine?”
    “Possibly Nadine.”
    Carver looked at the cot, with its light blanket and sheet folded at its foot. “Looks as if he slept up here sometimes.”
    “Maybe he did. I never kept that close a watch on his activities. Though Adam’s Inns has a national vice-president