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brew’s temperature with his little finger and figured it would have burned the tip off his tongue if he’d been foolish enough to take a sip.
    He carried the Danish and steaming coffee out onto the veranda and sat at the white metal table in the shade of the umbrella that sprouted from its center. The breeze off the sea made the umbrella’s long fringe sway and tangle. It would cool his coffee nicely.
    The Atlantic was sending in large breakers this morning. He could hear the surf crashing on the beach, but he couldn’t see it because the house and brick veranda were built on a rise the developer had calculated would expand the ocean view. That meant Carver had to negotiate steep wooden steps down to the beach almost every morning for his swim, something that had given him difficulty at first. Now he took the steps easily, knowing exactly where and when to plant the tip of his cane.
    On the narrow strip of beach, he’d thrust the cane into the sand like a spear. Then he’d scoot backward into the rushing waves until they lifted him and carried him seaward and the water was deep enough for him to swim. The jutting cane was his marker when he was tired and stroking for shore.
    After about ten minutes, he ate most of the Danish and drank all the coffee. Glanced at the Seiko. It was only nine forty-five, and he wasn’t on a schedule, so he fired up a Swisher Sweet cigar and sat watching a determined sailboat tack into the wind and zigzag its way out to sea. Far beyond it, near the horizon, a grayish, hulking oil tanker, ghostly in the morning haze, moved almost imperceptibly northward.
    The breeze picked up, carrying landward the fish smell of the sea and the real or imagined scent of crude oil. Just off the shore, a pelican, flying low and straight and with almost mechanical wingbeats, flapped across Carver’s line of vision and headed south. The bird was fishing, he knew, watching for movement in the dark, dancing waves. There was a world beneath the surface out there. In here, too.
    He heard a low, sonorous humming, different from the rest of the faint traffic sounds from the highway. Familiar.
    Edwina’s Mercedes.
    The tone changed as she downshifted to turn into the driveway, another shift as she took the curving grade. Tires crunched on gravel as the car rolled to a halt near the garage, out of sight from Carver. The deep rumbling of the engine stopped and silence sang between the drawn-out sighs of the surf.
    Thunk! The car door slamming.
    Edwina walked out onto the veranda. The stiff breeze off the ocean riffled her hair and folded back her unbuttoned blazer to reveal one of her breasts jutting beneath her silky white blouse. She didn’t seem to mind being mussed. Tilted back her head and squinted into the wind as if luxuriating in it.
    Carver propped his cigar in the ceramic ashtray. The breeze snatched the tenuous spiral of smoke and carried it away like a restless spirit.
    “I decided to come back,” she said.
    He said, “I thought you had a condo to sell.”
    She dropped her attaché case in a webbed lounge chair. Swayed across the uneven bricks toward him on her dark high heels. Said, “Screw the condo.”
    He thought, Well, sure.

Chapter 6
    B EACH C OVE COURT WAS nowhere near a beach or cove or the ocean. To reach it, Carver had to drive through the poorer, mostly Hispanic section of west Del Moray, then five miles farther west. The climbing sun blazed through the windshield, heating the steering wheel and softening the vinyl seats. The air conditioner wasn’t working. Carver considered putting down the ancient Oldsmobile convertible’s canvas top, but that would probably make the heat more intense by turning the car into a convection oven. Might bake him like bread.
    The mobile-home court spread for a mile or so north of the main highway. The highway itself seemed to be its southern boundary. Carver steered the Olds in beneath the cypress BEACH COVE COURT sign that dangled on plastic chains from an