Free Scorcher by John Lutz Page B

as well as district managers, I oversee my business from here, from an office in the house, Mr. Carver. I spend a great deal of time on the phone. If you accused me of neglecting Paul, I wouldn’t deny it. At the same time, the boy’s gone out of his way to cause quite a bit of trouble.”
    Adam was talking as if burning people were merely another of his son’s boyhood peccadilloes. And maybe he figured to use his influence so the resultant punishment turned out to be on a par with the consequences of wrecking one of the family Porsches. It was easy to forget, standing here in the stifling garage laboratory, the extent of Kave’s wealth and power. What was a little thing like homicide between friends with money and clout? Carver had seen it before; it made him nauseated. He felt that way now, standing there in the heat.
    “I’d like to see Paul’s room,” he said.
    “Sure.” Adam stepped aside again so Carver could cross to the door and negotiate the steel landing and stairs first.
    The outside air felt cool to Carver, though the temperature was pushing ninety. He heard the light switch click off as he balanced himself between cane and handrail and started down the steep steps.
    At the bottom of the stairs, he glanced in a window as he waited for Adam to finish locking up and join him. No Porsches. The garage had several windows, so there was enough light to see a late-model gray Cadillac, a low-slung red Datsun sports car, and a white Chevrolet sedan. There was plenty of room for more cars. Or a tea or a coming-out party.
    “The police impounded Paul’s Lincoln,” Adam said, clanging down the stairs on his two good legs and noticing Carver’s interest in the garage’s interior.
    “Yeah, I was told.” Carver probed with the tip of his cane until he found a hard spot in the sandy earth and moved away from the window.
    “Do you know Lieutenant McGregor well?”
    “We’re old friends,” Carver said, and walked ahead of Adam back along the winding stone path to the house. The sweet scent of the flowers was cloying and added to his nausea.
    Paul might not be the model of neatness in his lab, but his room looked like the executive suite of a plush hotel just before check-in time. The king-size bed was made up with the spread tucked in at the corners. Other than some oceanography magazines neatly fanned on a low table, there were no incidental objects on the dresser or writing desk. On the wall by the desk hung a large, framed, underwater color photo of what looked like a manta ray lurking among gracefully swaying, colorful undersea foliage while a school of small, bright fish swam past. There was something distinctly ominous about the enlarged print.
    “Did Paul do underwater photography?” Carver asked.
    Adam shrugged his blocky shoulders in an I-don’t-know gesture. Paul hadn’t been of much concern to him until lately. He didn’t know much about his son the murderer.
    Carver snooped around but found no camera. He limped over to the closet, lifting the cane high between steps in the deep-pile blue carpet. He slid open one of the heavy mirrored doors. It glided smoothly and made a politely soft rumble on its rollers.
    There were more clothes in there than Carver had owned in the past ten years. Most of them were casual: blue jeans and pullover shirts. Dozens of shoes of all kinds. The jackets, slacks, and suits were light-colored and conservative. Paul’s taste ran to blues and grays. On the closet’s top shelf were two stacks of more oceanography magazines, bound tightly with thick dark twine.
    “He take any clothes with him when he disappeared?” Carver asked.
    “We’re not sure. If he did take time to pack, he left much of his wardrobe behind.”
    “What about money?”
    “Paul had his own bank account. As you no doubt know from the police, he withdrew several thousand dollars from his savings the day of his disappearance.”
    Carver hadn’t known; he’d have to check with McGregor about