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with the top up and all the windows down. Key Montaigne was hot, but there was a wind off the sea that might be more or less constant, like farther south in Key West. Outlying reefs prevented incoming waves from breaking into surf, leaving the offshore waters calm. And there didn’t seem to be any beach, except for a stretch of public beach that a sign proclaimed was built with sand trucked down from the north. A few sunbathers were lounging on the beach, and two sailboats leaned into the wind not far from shore. In the brilliant sunlight the transplanted sand appeared almost white and looked unnatural in its setting.
    It was easy enough to find Shoreline Road, and just a few minutes on it brought Carver to a narrow driveway meandering off through palm trees and undergrowth toward what a rural mailbox proclaimed to be Henry Tiller’s cottage.
    Gravel crunched beneath the Olds’s big tires as Carver followed the driveway to the sea and a small weathered structure with a screened front porch and an almost flat roof. He recognized it as the sort of building Key Westers called Conch houses, solid homes built by nineteenth-century ship’s carpenters to withstand hurricane-force winds. Modest but enduring structures that ignored time.
    Carver parked the Olds beside the cottage, climbed out and set the tip of his cane in the sandy soil. He squinted out at the Gulf, which was undulating and glittering with silver sparks in the glaring sunlight. To his left the shoreline curved and he could see, some distance away, a manicured stretch of green land sloping gradually to a dock where a large white-hulled private yacht rested as if posing for a postcard. Carver figured it must be the Miss Behavin’, Walter Rainer’s boat.
    A mosquito droned close to his ear, and he raised a hand and brushed at it. He hadn’t seen it, but if volume was any indication, it was large enough to fly mail. He wiped the back of his wrist across his perspiring forehead, hoisted his scuffed leather suitcase from the trunk of the Olds, and limped up the wooden steps to the cottage’s front porch. Behind him the cooling metal of the Olds’s engine ticked like a bomb.
    The screen door was unlocked. He opened it partway, then shoved it wider open with a corner of the suitcase and stepped up onto the shaded and noticeably cooler porch. The plank floor creaked beneath his weight. There was a green AstroTurf carpet on part of the porch, and a chipped yellow-enameled metal glider. Instead of a porchlight, there was a paddle fan mounted on the rough wood ceiling. Carver used Henry Tiller’s key on the front door and went into the cottage.
    The interior was small but neat, with matching white wicker furniture that looked as old and serviceable as the cottage. There was a multicolored braided oval rug on the floor, a bulky old air conditioner mounted in a side window. On the cream-colored walls were oil paintings that were probably done by local artists —a flower arrangement, a stormy seascape, three domestic cats posing in tall grass as if they were a pride of lions. Carver liked that last one. He could see into the tiny kitchen with its dated white appliances. A door led to what he assumed was the bedroom. Another door, half open, was to the bathroom. The air in the cottage was hot and still and smelled like lemon furniture polish. It took the fun out of breathing.
    He limped across the braided rug to the air conditioner and switched it on High. It screamed shrilly and went Thunka! Thunka! before the compressor kicked in, then it settled into a steady hum and emitted at stream of moderately cool air he could only hope would grow colder.
    He lugged his suitcase into the bedroom and tossed it onto the double bed with its tufted white spread. The bedroom was small, with only a dresser and nightstand in addition to the bed. The walls were the same off-white as the walls in the rest of the cottage. One of them had a dark smear on it where an insect had been swatted.