Tropical Heat Read Online Free PDF

dresser is Willis? Does he favor flashy clothes? Does he wear plaid socks and striped shorts?”
    “He’s a conservative dresser,” Edwina said. “His suits are mostly gray and blue, with vests. He wears white shirts and ties that aren’t loud. His jackets don’t even have patterns in the material.”
    “Expensive clothes?”
    “Some cost a lot, some didn’t. He doesn’t wear thousand-dollar suits, but he mentioned once having a tailor.”
    “You don’t have the tailor’s name, I suppose.”
    “No.”
    “Who are his friends in Orlando?”
    “I never met any of them,” Edwina said. “It wasn’t that long after we met before he moved in with me here. Del Moray is where we spent most of our time together.”
    “Where did Willis work?”
    “At Sun South, just outside of Del Moray. Where I was working when we met. He sold time-share units. Do you know what those are?”
    “I’m from Florida,” Carver said. Time-share projects were big in Florida. The customer bought the privilege of spending one or more weeks every year in an apartment, usually by the ocean. If he bought one week, he was in effect purchasing one fifty-second ownership of the apartment. Two weeks, one twenty-sixth. And so on. Time shares were a popular way to own at least a piece of valuable beachfront property that might continue to appreciate and be sold at a profit. Might.
    “Who was Willis’s boss at Sun South?” Carver asked.
    “Ernie Franks, the developer who built the project. Willis liked and admired him.”
    Carver thought it was convenient to have his questions anticipated. Edwina seemed to be ahead of him; he wondered how far ahead. He stood up, bumping his head on the umbrella, and walked around the pool and onto the veranda.
    Edwina followed him. As if she thought he might stumble and she should be there to catch him. He didn’t like that. She sensed it and fell back.
    Carver stepped over another low wall and walked toward the edge of the drop above the sea.
    “Be careful, Mr. Carver,” Edwina called behind him. She had stayed on the veranda and was staring out at him with what on her stony features passed for alarm.
    “Don’t worry,” Carver tossed back over his shoulder, “I used to be in show business, diving into shallow water from a high platform in the circus.”
    “Really?”
    “No.” Carver inched nearer the edge of the outcropping of land and looked down. Diving experience wouldn’t help him here anyway; the sea foamed around unevenly piled jagged rocks directly below, and the water didn’t appear to be more than a few feet deep. His stomach took the plunge, beckoning Carver to follow. He declined and dizzily moved back from the drop, then turned to face Edwina. “Where were Willis’s jacket and shoes found?”
    She pointed to a spot on the ground a few feet to Carver’s left.
    The bare, rocky soil told him nothing. He started back to the veranda. By the time he got there, Edwina was seated in one of the webbed chairs at the table, waiting for him.
    “Where are the shoes and jacket?” he asked.
    “The police kept them.”
    Carver sat down in one of the other chairs. He saw that his pants were dirty from when he’d struggled over the low walls around the veranda. He brushed at the loose earth and it fell away. “What else can you tell me about Willis?” he asked.
    “He loved me.”
    “You’re sure of that?”
    “Is it important to you?”
    “Yes.”
    “I’m sure. One other man loved me in my life. It was the same way it was with Willis. I don’t want the result to be the same.”
    Carver stared at her, sensed pain. There was something pertinent she wasn’t telling him. “Okay,” he said. He stood up, bumping his head on that umbrella as he had on the one by the pool. It felt about the same.
    Edwina removed her sunglasses and looked up at him, appraising him with a pawnbroker’s squint. She had a way of seeming to see to the center of things.
    “You look better than when we met at your