Free Torch by John Lutz

divorce yet. When she asked him if he wanted one, he wouldn’t give her an honest answer. She thought he was stalling, even though he seemed to have made up his mind she was no longer going to be a part of his life. He’d dismissed her from his existence. She told me she felt like a ghost when she was in the house with him.”
    Carver looked out the window at the sunbathers on the beach. Beyond the pavilion’s thatched roof, he could see a few of the luxury cruisers docked at the club’s private marina, their white hulls bobbing in the gentle, sheltered water, their navigational antennae and painted brightwork gleaming in the sun. Everything and everyone at the club was bright and clean and rich.
    “Was Donna a good tennis player?” Carver asked.
    “Not really. She was too timid, didn’t seem to mind if she lost. Yet for some reason she’d occasionally become ferocious and go to the net more than anyone. She’d still lose, but you had to watch out or she’d take your head off with one of her forehands.”
    He showed Beth’s list to Ellen. “Who else should I talk to on here?”
    She pointed to the name beneath her own, then sat back. “To tell you the truth,” she said, “I think I knew Donna as well as anyone. We shared . . . you know, women’s confidences.”
    “What about the name below yours? Beverly Denton?”
    “Yeah, Donna mentioned her. I think she’s a friend of Mark’s, really. The three of them used to spend time together, but Donna said she and Beverly never saw each other anymore, what with the way Mark had been acting. I doubt if she’d be of much help.”
    “What about the possibility of Mark and Beverly having been romantically involved?”
    “Anything’s possible. But I think Donna told me not long ago that Beverly was engaged to some guy who refurbishes yachts.” Ellen brushed back a strand of blond hair that had fallen over one eye; it had to bother her playing tennis. “Anyway, like I said, Donna and I shared confidences. If she’d thought Mark and Beverly had a thing going, she’d have told me.”
    Wishing Donna had shared even more confidences with Ellen, Carver thanked her and stood up.
    She glanced at his cane. “That a temporary thing?”
    “As temporary as I am.”
    “Well, there are worse things in life than a stiff leg. You seem to do okay for yourself.”
    “I haven’t curled into a ball and cried for a long time.”
    “Me, either. Not since last night.” She smiled in a way that suggested she wouldn’t mind if he sat back down.
    He laid one of his business cards on the table. “If you hear anything more about Enrico Thomas,” he said, “call me and let me know.”
    “So that’s his last name. Thomas.”
    “No,” Carver said, “I was getting to that. His real name is Carl Gretch, and he seems to have disappeared.”
    Ellen looked surprised. “Donna was going with a guy who used an alias?”
    “And a knife,” Carver said. “See, she didn’t share as many confidences with you as you thought.”
    “It makes me wonder,” Ellen said, sounding a little mystified, “what else she didn’t tell me.”
    As Carver left the rarefied, moneyed atmosphere of the club lounge, he tried to imagine Carl Gretch there and couldn’t.
    What had nice Donna Winship been thinking?

10
    C ARVER SAT AT a table in the shade of a tilted umbrella and ate a taco. After leaving the country club, he realized he hadn’t had lunch and was hungry, so he drove to a taco stand he liked near the public marina, on Magellan about half a mile from his office. It was a pleasant place to think and get indigestion.
    He leaned over the table as he bit into the brittle taco shell, careful not to drip sauce on his shirt or pants. It relaxed him to sit and watch the boats bobbing at their moorings or putting in or out of the marina. As he wiped grease from his fingers and leaned back in his plastic chair, a large sailboat with its canvas down glided on alternate motor power parallel to the