Tropical Heat by John Lutz

a time share or two.
    “Mr. Carver?”
    He turned from the view outside to see a tall blonde in a navy blue dress smiling at him. Standing well behind her, still smiling but looking a bit uncertain, was Chris. Everyone seemed to smile a lot at Sun South, as if the air were tinged with cheer.
    “Mr. Franks will see you,” the blonde said.
    Carver nodded and followed her toward the hall between the partitions. She walked slowly so he could keep up, which in this case was fortunate, because the spongy green carpeting made walking with a cane a chore.
    Franks’s office was large and plush, furnished in pale wood and fabric, and decorated in shades of gray. Franks was large and done in shades of gray himself. He was six feet tall, prosperous-looking and fiftyish, and his expensive gray suit couldn’t quite hide his stomach paunch. He had flawlessly groomed wavy grayish hair, gray eyes, and a rather unhealthy-looking grayish complexion. This was an aging, handsome man who spurned the sun. He was the only person Carver had seen at Sun South who wasn’t smiling.
    Franks waited for his secretary to leave before he spoke.
    “Sit down, please, Mr. Carver.” He did manage a good old Sun South smile as he motioned toward a chair near his desk, then sat down in his gray, executive’s chair behind the desk. Behind the chair was a window that bathed the visitor in light but silhouetted and to some degree concealed the features of Franks where he sat facing Carver. A cheap and obvious trick to gain advantage in interviews. Carver resented it; too many of these half-ass, big-money entrepreneurs had their offices arranged this way.
    Easy, he cautioned himself, don’t be cynical.
    But he was cynical. He knew it. Couldn’t help himself.
    The office was soundproofed, private to the point of defensive isolation; only the soft sigh of cooled air rolling through the ceiling vents, and the ocean view out the window, gave evidence of an outside world.
    “You wanted to talk about Willis Davis?” Franks asked. His voice seemed muffled by the silence, yet still managed to convey an amiable but unmistakable authority.
    “Actually, I wanted you to talk about him,” Carver said. “I’m a private investigator, hired to look into his suicide.” He leaned forward and showed Franks his P.I. license.
    A flicker of alarm seemed to dance for just an instant over Franks’s distinguished gray features. “Hired by whom?”
    “I’d have to get my client’s permission to reveal that,” Carver said. “Professional ethics.”
    “Oh? You have those?”
    Carver nodded.
    “One doesn’t associate the profession of private detective with ethics,” Franks said.
    “One is wrong.”
    Franks raised a manicured hand that looked as if it had never known manual labor. “I didn’t mean offense.”
    “Tell me about Davis,” Carver said.
    “Willis was quiet for a salesman, but he knew how to close a deal. He could smell blood, sense vulnerability. I liked him.”
    “Would you peg him as the type to commit suicide?”
    Franks looked thoughtful. “No, but I’m not sure there is a specific suicidal type.” He leaned back, gazed for a moment at his fingertips resting lightly on the desk. Outside the double-pane window, the ocean rolled soundlessly, as if its power had been tamed. “Are you working with the police?”
    “Yes. With Lieutenant Desoto of Orlando.”
    Franks touched his fingers together, then pressed them with springy persistence back and forth against each other, and digested that semi-accurate information silently.
    “Was Willis Davis happy with his job here?” Carver asked.
    “Of course. Oh, he’d get restless now and then, talk about moving on, getting financing and starting some development of his own. But his kind talk that way, think that way. I understand that; I came up through sales myself.”
    Carver just bet he had. So smooth. “How did Davis behave in the weeks before his suicide?”
    “I would say normally, for him. He