by Sue Grafton
I did a quick circuit of the house. His answering machine was blinking, but I figured he could pick up any messages as soon as he came in. I went into his cleaning closet and hauled out the vacuum cleaner, a dust mop, a sponge mop, and some rags. I made a second circuit of the house, dusting and vacuuming. All I needed were the singing mice to keep me company. After that, I scrubbed the kitchen and bathroom sinks and ran the sponge mop across the kitchen floor until it gleamed. Then I went home and took a serious world-class nap.
I woke at 5:25, at first reluctant to leave the cozy swaddling quilt in which I’d wrapped myself. It was still light outside. The spring days were getting longer, and we’d soon have the equivalent of an extra half-day at our disposal. People getting off work still had time to walk the dog or to sit on the front porch with a drink before supper. Mom could take a moment to read the paper. Dad could mow the lawn or wash the family car.
I pushed the covers back and moved into the bathroom, where I peered out the window, angling my face so I could catch a glimpse of Henry’s back door. The kitchen light was on and I was energized by the idea that he was home. I put on my shoes, washed my face, tidied my bed, and trotted down the spiral stairs. I went out, locking the door behind me, noting with satisfaction that Henry’s station wagon was now sitting in the drive where I’d parked the day before yesterday.
He had his back door open, the screen door latched but unlocked. There was no immediate sign of him, but I knocked on the frame and heard his “Yoo hoo” coming at me from the hall. He appeared half a second later in his usual T-shirt, shorts, and flip-flops. Before he could get the door open, his wall phone rang. He motioned me in and then snatched up the receiver. He had the briefest of conversations and then said, “Let me switch to the other phone. Hang on a minute. Don’t go away.” He held out the handset and whispered, “Be right back. Help yourself to a glass of wine.”
I took the phone, waiting while he went into the bedroom and picked up in there. As soon as I knew he was on the line, I replaced the handset in the wall-mounted cradle. He’d already opened a bottle of Chardonnay, which sat in a frosty cooler with a stemmed glass close by. I poured myself half a glass of wine. I could smell chicken baking and I peered through the oven window. The plump hen I’d bought was already turning brown, surrounded by onions, carrots, and rosy new potatoes. He’d set the kitchen table for four, and I knew it wouldn’t be long before William and Rosie popped in. It’d take them a day or two to get the tavern up and running. I wondered if Rosie’s Hungarian dishes would take on the flavors of the Caribbean. I tried to imagine her pork stew gussied up with coconut, pineapple, and plantains.
Henry returned to the kitchen moments later and poured a drink of his own. He looked tanned and fit, his cheeks wind-burned, his eyes a lustrous blue. William and Rosie arrived at that point, William in a straw boater, Rosie with a tote made of woven fibers that looked like a cross between corn husks and grass. William was two years Henry’s senior and blessed with the same silky white hair and the same lean frame. To my mind, he isn’t quite as handsome as Henry, but he looks good nonetheless. William is a recovering hypochondriac who still can’t resist a good story about inexplicable illness and sudden death. Rosie, by way of contrast, is stocky and solid, bossy, opinionated, insecure, humorless, and generous at heart. The tropical sun had rendered her dyed red hair a singular salmon hue, but she was otherwise unchanged. While Henry took out lettuce and tomatoes, I asked the newlyweds how they’d liked the cruise.
Rosie made a face. “I din’t like the food. Too blend. No taste and what there was is no good.”
William poured them each a glass of wine. “You ate more than I did! You were gluttonous.”
“But I din’t enjoy. That’s what I’m say. Is forgettable. I don’t remember nothing I ate.”
“You forgot that pineapple pie? Delicious! Extraordinary. You said so yourself.”
“I make twice as good if I want, which I don’t.”
“Well, I can’t argue with that, but you were there to be pampered. The point of the whole vacation was not having to cook.”
“What about activities? What’d you do with yourselves all day?”
William pulled out a chair for Rosie and then took a seat at the table. “It was terrific. Wonderful. We docked at various ports, maybe seven in all. When we weren’t off seeing the sights, we had lectures and movies, swimming, shuffleboard, aerobics—you name it. They even had a bowling alley. At night, there was gambling and ballroom dancing. Bridge, chess tournaments. Never an idle moment. We had a ball.”
“Good for you. That sounds great. How about the other sibs? Did they enjoy it?”
William said, “Well, let’s see now. Charlie finally got his hearing aids adjusted and he’s a changed man. You can hardly shut him up. Used to be he kept to himself since he never had a clue what anyone was saying to him. He and Nell played bridge and beat the socks off their opponents.”
“And Lewis?”
“You put him around a bunch of women and he’s happy as a clam. Men were outnumbered ten to one. He was the cock of the walk.”
Rosie held up an index finger. “Not quite.” She gave Henry a sly smile. “Tell what you did.”
“No, no. Unimportant. Enough about us. What about you, Kinsey? What are you working on? Something interesting I’m sure.”
“Come on, Henry. You haven’t finished telling me about the trip. I’ve never been on a cruise. I really want to know what it was like.”
“Just what William said. Little bit of everything. It was nice,” he said, busy with oil and vinegar and his whisk.
Rosie leaned forward, her tone confidential. “He’s pose for calendar and now all the old womens calling him night and day.”
“Don’t be silly,” he said over his shoulder to her.
“What kind of calendar?”
“Oh, you know, the usual. The crew thought it’d be a good way to commemorate the trip. They do this all the time. It’s nothing. Just a joke.”
Rosie nodded, lifting one brown-penciled brow. “The ‘nothing’ I agree. Is what he’s wearing. Our Mr. February, Kings of Heart.”
“He wasn’t wearing nothing,” William said. “You make it sound like he was nude when he was no such thing.”
She reached in her tote and pulled out a glossy calendar filled with color photographs. “I heve right here. You take a look and see for yourself. The man’s got no clothes. Only underpents.” She flipped to the month of February and turned the page so I could see it. The candid shot showed Henry on the upper deck, leaning against the rail with his back to the ocean. A distant palm-dotted island was visible to his right. He wore red shorts, no shoes, a white dress shirt hanging loose and unbuttoned down the front. A captain’s hat was tilted forward at an angle. His grin was unaffected, showing a flash of white teeth against the tan of his face. The effect was rakish, the perfect combination of charisma and sex appeal. Henry, in the kitchen with us, blushed from ear to ear.
“Ooo, I love this. I have to have a copy of my own,” I said.
“Is yours. You keep. I heve more for ladies in the neighborhood.”
“Thanks.” I flipped through the pages, checking the other entrants. While some of the photographs showed moderately attractive men—all octogenarians, by the look—not one was as dashing as Henry. I laughed with pleasure. “I never knew you were so photogenic. No wonder the phone’s ringing. You look fabulous.”
“The phone’s not ringing,” he said.
At that moment, the phone did, in fact, ring.
“I get,” Rosie said, heaving herself to her feet.
“No, you won’t. That’s what machines are for.”
We waited out the three additional rings until Henry’s answering machine kicked in. From the other room, we heard the outgoing message, followed by the usual beep. “Henry? This is Bella, ‘ma petite belle.’ Remember me? I promised I’d call you so here I am. I just wanted to say how disappointed I was we didn’t have a chance to vi
sit again before you left the ship. You bad boy. When you have a chance, you can reach me at…”
Dinner was punctuated by two additional calls, which Henry ignored. He kept his eyes on his plate, cutting his chicken with a concentration he rarely lavished on his food. The third time the phone rang, he left the table and went into the living room, where he turned off the ringer and lowered the volume on the answering machine. None of us said a word, but Rosie and William exchanged a look as she smirked at her plate. I could see her shoulders shake, though she pretended to cough, a napkin pressed to her lips.
“It’s not funny,” Henry snapped.
9
With Stacey back in the hospital for a second time in five days, I volunteered to take the Monday interview with Lorenzo Rickman. Dolan had offered to do it, but I knew he was eager to be on hand when the doctors talked to Stacey about this latest round of tests. As it turned out, my chat with Rickman was brief and unproductive. We stood in the service bay of an import repair shop that smelled of gasoline fumes, motor oil, and new tires. The floor, work benches, and all available countertops were littered with a jumble of tools and equipment, parts, manuals, blackened spark plugs, cracked cylinder heads, valves, fan belts, drive shafts, alternators, and exhaust manifolds.
Rickman was in his late thirties with an angular face and a neck that appeared too thin to hold his head upright. His dark hair was receding, a few feathers combed down on his forehead to form a fringe of sparse bangs. A beard, closely trimmed, ran along the line of his jaw, and he stroked it reflexively with fingers blackened by oil. His uniform probably wasn’t any different than the outfits he’d worn in prison, except for the machine-embroidered name above his left shirt pocket. He made a show of being cooperative, but he had no memory of incarceration with Frankie Miracle.
He shook his head. “Can’t help. Name doesn’t ring a bell. I was only in jail the one night. First thing the next morning, a friend of mine bailed me out, but only after I promised to join AA. I’ve been on the wagon—well, more or less—ever since.” He smiled briefly while he smoothed his hair toward his forehead. “I still get in trouble with the law, but at least I’m clean and sober—condition of my parole. Right now, I do, you know, five, six meetings a week. Not that I like hanging out with dudes hyped up on coffee and cigarettes, but it sure beats incarceration.” He put his hands in his back pockets and then changed his mind and crossed his arms, fingers drifting back to his beard, which he stroked with his thumb.
“What about the other guys in the cell that night? You remember anything about them?”
“Nope. Sorry. I was eighteen years old, drunk and stoned the night they picked me up. My second or third blackout, I forget which. Third, I think. I could’ve been in with Charlie Manson and you couldn’t prove it by me.”
I tried priming the pump, claiming we had a witness who was there at the same time and said Frankie’d bragged about a killing. This generated no response. I handed him the packet of photographs, which he shuffled through carelessly. He shook his head and handed them back. “Look like a bunch of thugs.”
I tucked the photos in my bag. “I know this is none of my business, but what’d you do to warrant a prison sentence?”
His fingers became still and then he pulled at a thatch of beard growing under his chin. “What makes you ask?”
“No reason. I’m just curious.”
“I don’t really care to say.”
“Ah. My fault. Sorry. It’s your business, of course. I didn’t mean to step on your toes.” I gave him my card, offering the standard line. “Thanks for your time. If you think of anything, will you let us know?”
“Sure.”
“Can I ask one more thing? You think you’re out for good?”
He considered my question and then smiled to himself. “I doubt it.”
I stopped off at the hospital on my way into town. Stacey was back on 6 Central, in another private room located down the hall from the room he’d had before. When I glanced in, his bed was empty. Beside it, a wide window looked out on a view of the ocean, maybe two miles away, across the shaggy treetops. An occasional glimpse of a red-tile roof punctuated the thick expanse of green. The room was airy; spacious enough to accommodate a forty-eight-inch round table and four captain’s chairs, where I found Dolan sitting with a tattered copy of Road & Track.
“Oh, hi. Where’s Stace?”
“In X-ray. He should be back in a bit.”
“How’s he doing?”
“Don’t know yet. What’d Rickman say?”
“Regrettably, not much.” I filled him in on my conversation. “I think we can safely write him off. Probably Pudgie as well. He’s cagey, but dumb, and I don’t trust the combination. So now what?”
Dolan set his magazine aside. He wore a dark blue windbreaker and a Dodgers baseball cap. “Stacey never got a chance to call Joe Mandel to see if he can lay hands on Jane Doe’s effects. Soon as he’s got a minute, he’s going to do that. Meantime, we thought you might have a phone chat with this C. K. Vogel fellow that Arne was talking about. You might try Directory Assistance—”
“Dolan, this is what I do for a living.”
“Oh, right. Sorry.”
“I’ll go down to the lobby and find a public phone. You want anything while I’m there?”
“I don’t suppose they sell Camels in the gift shop.”
“I don’t suppose they do.” When I got to the door, I hesitated. “What was Rickman in prison for?”
Lieutenant Dolan picked up his magazine and wet his index finger. He turned the page, paying close attention to a full-page ad for a fuel additive that required the presence of a blonde in a bathing suit. “Well, let’s see. Molestation, sodomy, oral copulation, lewd and lascivious acts with a child. I’m surprised he wasn’t killed in prison. As a rule, inmates don’t have a lot of tolerance for guys like that.”
Geez, I’d been picturing a bit of B&E.
I took the elevator down and made my way through the maze of corridors to the lobby. I found a bank of public phone kiosks outside the front entrance, sheltered by a marquee that extended from the lobby door to the passenger loading ramp. While I looked on, a young nurse’s aide helped a new mother out of a wheelchair and into a waiting van. I couldn’t see the baby’s face, but the bundle wasn’t much bigger than a loaf of bread. I scrounged around in the bottom of my bag and came up with a handful of coins. Lompoc was in the same area code as Santa Teresa, so I knew it wasn’t going to require much. I dialed Directory Assistance while the young husband loaded flower arrangements into the back of the van, along with a cluster of bobbing pink and silver helium balloons.
I got C. K. Vogel’s number and made a note of it before I dialed. When he picked up on his end, I identified myself. Judging from the sound of his voice, he was in his eighties and possibly in the midst of an afternoon nap. I said, “Sorry to disturb you.”
“No, no. Don’t worry about that. Arne called on Friday and said someone might be in touch. You want to know about the van I saw, is that correct?”
“Yes, sir. It is.”
“Tell you the truth, I didn’t say much at the time. I had a brother-in-law worked for the Sheriff’s Department—this was my sister Madge’s husband, fella named Melvin Galloway. He’s since died. Two of us never did get along. He’s a damn know-it-all. Had an opinion about everything and hear him tell it, he’s always right. I couldn’t abide the man. Might not sound Christian, but it’s the truth. I told him twice about that van, but he pooh-poohed the idea, said if he stopped to track down every half-assed theory the John Q. Public volunteered, he wouldn’t get anything else done. Not that he did much to begin with. He’s the laziest son of a gun I ever came across. After ’while, I figured I’d done what I could and said to hell with him. What struck me afterward was not the hippie van so much as that other car I saw. Snappy-looking red convertible with Arizona plates.”
“Arne mentioned the red car, but I got the impression it was the van you thought
was suspicious. Did I get that wrong?”
“No, ma’am. I noticed the van on account of the paint job—peace symbols and that sort, in the wildest colors imaginable. It was parked right there in that fork in the road when I first became aware of it.”
“I know the location.”
“Reason the other car caught my attention was because I later read in the paper they recovered a stolen car matching that description.”
“You remember the make?”
“I don’t, but I saw that car on three occasions. First time near the quarry, just a little piece down the road, and the second time over town. I was driving to the doctor’s office to have a cyst removed and passed the wrecker pulling it up out of the ravine, all banged up. Looked like whoever took the car let the handbrake loose and pushed it down a hill into a bunch of brush. Must have hit a goodly number of trees on the way, judging from all the scratches and dents. Wasn’t spotted for a week, but the fella where I take my car for repairs was the one the Sheriff’s Department called when they needed it towed. I saw it at the repair shop the next day when I was having work done on my carburetor. That was the third time. Never saw it again after that.”
“I remember mention of a stolen car. Was there anybody in it when you saw it the first time?”
“No, ma’am. It was setting on the side of the road just inside the entrance to your grandma’s property. Top down, sun beating hard on those fine black leather seats. I slowed as I went by because I wondered if someone’d had engine trouble and had wandered off to get help. I didn’t see a note on the windshield so I drove on. Next time I passed, the car was gone.”