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was a place where Carver and Edwina Talbot, the previous woman in his life, had often spent time, but that didn’t bother Carver or Beth. Neither was the type to wallow in sentiment.
    Carver ordered the swordfish steak, and Beth devoured a lobster with mannered and precise enthusiasm.
    Over coffee and cheesecake she said, “From what you’ve told me, it seems possible this Henry Tiller’s mind has been affected by age.”
    “Desoto doesn’t think so, and he’s seen more of Tiller than I have.”
    “What do you think?”
    “I’m not so sure, but I trust Desoto enough that I need to go to Key Montaigne and find out.”
    “I’m not as devout a believer as you are in those cop’s instincts you talk about. I’ve seen them wrong plenty of times.” Her dark, dark eyes became serious. “I’ve seen them get cops killed.”
    Carver stared out the wide, curved window at the darkening Atlantic. The horizon was almost indistinguishable from the gray-green sea. So much distance out there, so much emptiness. Anything might be lost in it. Anything.
    Beth took another bite of cheesecake. Chewed, swallowed, then sipped her coffee. She extended her little finger when she sipped from a cup. Where had she learned that? Not in the slums of Chicago, or from Roberto Gomez.
    She placed her cup in its saucer with a faint and delicate clink, then reached across the table and rested her long, graceful fingers on Carver’s bare forearm. She dug in slightly with her painted nails, demanding his full attention. “You need me, you’ll call me. Promise?”
    “I promise,” he said. “But first I better call Henry Tiller and tell him I’m driving down to see him in the morning.”
    But back at the cottage, when Carver punched out the number scrawled on the envelope from his office, it wasn’t Tiller who answered the phone. It was a woman’s voice that uttered a tentative hello.
    “Can I talk to Henry?” Carver asked. Beth was leaning on the breakfast counter, pouring a couple of after-dinner brandies and staring at him.
    “No way. I mean, I’m afraid you can’t do that,” the woman on the phone said. She sounded young now, maybe a teenager.
    “Why not?”
    “He ain’t home. He’s in the hospital.”
    “What hospital?”
    “Faith United, in Miami.”
    “Who is this?” Carver asked.
    “My name’s Effie. Sometimes I come in and clean for Mr. Tiller. You Fred Carver?”
    “I am.”
    “Mr. Tiller said you might call. I was to tell you he’s in Faith United. A car hit him. I think he’s in serious condition.”
    “Car hit him how?” Carver asked.
    “I ain’t sure. All I know is he said he stopped and ate supper in Miami, and he was crossing the street to go back to his car and got run down.”
    “Who was the driver?”
    “I dunno. You could talk to the Miami police, I guess. Or the hospital.”
    “Did Mr. Tiller himself phone you?”
    “Yeah. We’re friends. He trusts me, and he knew I’d be here cleaning up.”
    “I’ll call him at the hospital,” Carver said.
    “I don’t think you can. He told me he was about to be operated on, that’s why he wanted me to let you know where he was and why. He left a message on your office answering machine, he said, but he was afraid you wouldn’t get it. Mr. Tiller don’t trust anything with a microchip in it.”
    “Me, either,” Carver said.
    He thanked Effie the cleaning girl and hung up. Told Beth what had happened.
    “Still driving to Key Montaigne?” she asked, crossing the room and handing him a brandy snifter.
    “First thing tomorrow,” Carver told her, passing the glass beneath his nose and breathing in the sharp alcohol scent, like a head-clearing warning. “With a stopover in Miami.”

4
    F AITH UNITED HOSPITAL was on Hoppington Avenue in west Miami. Its main building was a five-story arrangement of pale concrete and arched windows, but onto this had been added long, three-story wings of pink brick and darkly tinted glass. The architecture clashed,