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the base of his spine was beginning to ache, so he set the tip of the cane in the Berber weave carpet and stood up from the uncomfortable chair. “I’d like to ask Dr. Sam some of the same questions,” he said. “When will he be back?”
    “When he gets back,” Millicent said. Her Adam’s apple bobbed in her long throat. “I mean, he doesn’t keep to a regular schedule when he goes on buying trips.” She moved toward the door. He noticed that she had almost no breasts, but an elegant lower body. “If you don’t mind, Mr. Carver, I’ve got a great deal of work to do.”
    “I didn’t think you worked.”
    “I do the bookkeeping for the center.”
    “I see.” He limped toward the door. She was alongside him, then ahead of him, holding it open. Warm air rolled in from outside. “When your husband returns,” he said, “would you or he phone me at Henry Tiller’s cottage?”
    “Certainly, but I don’t know when that’ll be.”
    Carver smiled and said, “Whenever. Thanks for seeing me, Mrs. Bing.”
    She didn’t answer. Her mind seemed to be far away as he stepped out onto the porch and she closed the door behind him.
    A bee followed him as he limped back to the Olds. He used his cane to bat it like a baseball, and didn’t see where it went, so he hurriedly got into the car.
    He was sure Millicent Bing was watching him from the window behind the bougainvillea-strewn trellis as he backed out of the driveway onto Shoreline.
    She was obviously nervous about something, maybe even afraid, but it wasn’t necessarily connected with Henry Tiller or Walter Rainer. Carver cautioned himself not to see something sinister where there was no proof. Fear could become habit, then personality. As with a lot of people, Millicent Bing’s unease might be about something relatively innocent that had ingrained itself as dread, maybe even something that could be traced back to her childhood.
    The Easter Bunny?

11
    C ARVER DROVE BACK to the cottage and called Henry Tiller at Faith United in Miami. Henry answered the phone on the third ring. He sounded weak.
    “How’re you making it, Henry?” Carver asked.
    “They got inside me with their knives, took out some of this, some of that, sewed me up where I was tore. What there’s left of me’s gonna be okay, I think. They gave me a CAT scan yesterday and now they say I got a head injury. Hell, that’s just what I need, the way people think of me already.”
    “They’re gonna have to start taking you more seriously, Henry.”
    “Ah! You’re on to the bastards?”
    Carver filled Henry in on what had occurred since his arrival on Key Montaigne. He tried not to make it sound as if they had enough to send Walter Rainer to the gas chamber.
    When he was finished, Henry sounded stronger, exhilarated. He said, “Gotta be that shit-bum Davy tried to run you off the road, Carver.”
    “Wicke thinks so, too, I’m sure, only he won’t admit it.”
    “Wicke’d be a good cop if he wasn’t running so scared of his job. But the fact is, his position’s a political appointment, so he kisses ass to keep it. And Walter Rainer’s ass is one of the kissed. I up and told Wicke that one time. Got him irritated, I think.”
    Carver smiled. He could imagine.
    “I figure it was Davy in a rented car tried to do me in, too,” Henry said.
    “Wouldn’t doubt it,” Carver told him. “Proving it’s the hard part. You know police work.”
    “Sure as hell do. From years in the department in Milwaukee, then later in Lauderdale. You give me a call when you learn anything else, you hear?”
    “I hear,” Carver said.
    “I think you oughta find out about that dead boy, too. The one washed up on the beach. Did I tell you there was traces of cocaine found in his blood?”
    “You told me.”
    “Something like that happens, and that ass-kisser Wicke’s got the nerve to tell me there ain’t no drug trafficking to speak of on Key Montaigne.”
    “Effie seems to agree with him,” Carver