by Sue Grafton
“That’s what we’re here to find out,” he said. “We know it was stolen from here.”
“If it was parked near the quarry, then what?”
“Then we’ll see if we can establish a connection between the car and Jane Doe.”
We got out and crossed the street to the front entrance. Under the big plate glass window, a large concrete planter sat empty except for packed dirt. To the right of the shop there was a lumberyard; to the left, a long-distance hauling company with a lot full of tractor rigs and detached semitrailers. This was a commercial neighborhood made up of businesses that catered to customers in pickups and vans.
The showroom was an extension of the shop area out back. The floor was done in black-and-white vinyl tile. Behind a glass case filled with service manuals, there was a metal desk, metal file cabinets, and a Rolodex. The top surface of the glass case was piled high with sample books showing automobile and marine vinyls, “Performance-rated fabrics for heavy-duty application.” Rear and side camper windows in a variety of styles had been mounted on pegboard and hung on the wall. We picked our way through a cluster of bench and bucket car seats still exhibiting their torn upholstery. A display board was set up to show the leather/vinyl match for Ford, GM, Chrysler-Jeep Eagle, Honda, and Toyota interior upholstery. You could order any number of convertible tops, tonneau covers, floor mats, and glass or plastic window curtains.
An open door led from the showroom into the first of the three connecting bays, where one of the two men looked up. I pegged him in his mid-thirties. He was medium height, clean-shaven, his complexion ruddy. His hair had the kind of blond streaks that women pay money for. He wore it parted in the middle with strands falling loosely on either side of his face. Most of his teeth were good. There were creases around his mouth where his smile had made inroads. His hands were dirty, his nails permanently underlined with black like a lady’s French tip manicure in reverse. Blue-plaid flannel shirt, jeans, desert boots. He was built like a high school football player—which is to say, some guy who’d get creamed if he played football today. I tried to decide whether I’d have been attracted to him when I was sixteen. He looked like the type I’d have had a crush on from a distance. Then again, most guys in high school were like that as far as I was concerned.
He was using a crescent wrench and a pair of pliers to dismantle a car seat that was propped up in front of him. The workbench, which extended the length of the wall behind him, was stacked with bolts of vinyl, hoses, coffee cans, sheets of foam rubber, toolboxes, cans of latex paint, tires. Two fans were blowing, thus circulating the smell of synthetics. Beside him there was a garbage bin full of scraps. A second ripped and cracked auto seat sat on a counter nearby. He was smoking a cigarette, but he put it out casually before he spoke to us. “Help you?”
Dolan put his hands in his pants pockets. “We’re looking for Ruel McPhee.”
“That’s my dad. He’s retired. Who are you?”
“Lieutenant Dolan, Santa Teresa Police Department. This is my colleague, Ms. Millhone. I didn’t catch your name.”
“Cornell McPhee. Are you the one who left the phone message?”
“That’s my partner, Detective Oliphant. As a matter of fact, he left four and says your father never called him back.”
“Sorry. I didn’t realize it was urgent. I gave Dad the messages and he said he’d take care of it. I guess it slipped his mind.”
The second man in the shop was older, possibly in his fifties. He’d returned to his work as soon as he figured out the conversation had nothing to do with him.
“Your dad still in town?”
Cornell put down his crescent wrench and wiped his hands on a rag. “Sure. What’s this about?”
“We’re hoping to track down a vehicle stolen from his shop in 1969.”
Cornell’s brow shifted slightly. “That car was recovered. It belonged to a guy in Arizona.”
Dolan smiled briefly. “We know about him. DMV says the car’s now registered to Ruel McPhee.”
“What brought this up again?”
“We’re looking at the possibility of a link between the car and a homicide back then.”
“A homicide?”
“That’s right,” Dolan said. “We’re taking another run at it.”
“I’m still not clear why you want to talk to him.”
“We have a witness who says he saw a red Mustang in the area shortly before the body was found. We’re wondering if the vehicle’s the same one stolen from his shop.”
“You can ask him if you want. He and Mom live on Fell. 1520. It’s just a few blocks away. You go down two blocks, take a left at Ruby. You’ll find Fell five blocks down. You want me to call and make sure he’s there?”
“That’s fine. We can swing by later if he’s out somewhere,” Dolan said. He indicated the seat Cornell was working on. “How long’s it take to do a job like that?”
“Couple of days. Depends on the condition. You have some work you need done?”
“Might.”
“What kind of car?”
“Chevy. 1979.”
“Leather seat?”
“No, cloth.”
Cornell smiled. “Throw a bedspread over it. You’d be better off.”
“That’s my idea. I just wondered what you’d say. Appreciate your help.”
“Sure, no sweat. I wish you luck.”
The house at 1520 Fell was a redbrick ranch with a detached two-car garage on the right-hand side of the drive. Behind the house, at a distance, I caught sight of the rear of an outbuilding that looked like a large storage shed or second garage. A basketball backboard was still planted in concrete on a wide asphalt apron set aside for guest parking. Cornell probably spent his leisure time in high school practicing his free throws. I imagined him lettering in three sports, elected pep king or treasurer of his senior class. A check of the yellow pages had indicated that McPhee’s was the only game in town, so he must be doing well financially even if his job lacked glamour and pizzazz.
Dolan parked at the curb out in front and we made our way along the walk to the porch, where we rang the bell. The door was opened by a girl who was probably six years old, judging by the number of missing teeth. Her hair was still a white blond that would probably darken over time. She wore glasses with pink plastic frames and a pair of barrettes with a row of pink and blue flowers. Her dress was pink-and-blue plaid with rows of white smocking across the bodice.
Dolan said, “Hey there, young lady. Is your grandpa at home?”
“Just a minute.” She shut the door and a moment later her grandmother opened it, wiping her hands on a kitchen towel. A mild, vanilla-smelling breeze wafted out from behind her. She was heavy-set and wore small rimless glasses and a knee-length striped apron over a loose floral-print housedress. Her gray hair had a fringe of curls around her face while the rest was cut short. “Yes?”
“Good morning. We’re looking for Ruel McPhee. Cornell, over at the shop, gave us this address.”
“Ruel’s out back. Won’t you come in? I’m Edna, his wife.”
She opened the door for us. We did a round of introductions that included the McPhees’ granddaughter, Cissy, who skipped on ahead of us in her Mary Janes. Edna led us through the house, saying, “We’re about to frost cupcakes for Cissy’s birthday. Six years old today. She’s having a little party with her kindergarten class this afternoon.”
Cissy said, “My grammaw made me this dress.”
Dolan said, “Well, that’s real cute. I like that.”
As usual, I played the silent sidekick, prepared to fly into action if Edna or the child suddenly went berserk.
Cissy had climbed onto a kitchen chair and was now perched on her knees, inspecting the baking project. On the table, there were two muffin tins, each containing twelve freshly baked cupcakes in paper liners with little golden-brown domed heads. I could see the yellow-cake mix box on the counter by the sink where the mixing bowl sat.
The room was
decorated in a patriotic flurry of red, white, and blue. The kitchen paper was done in Revolutionary War motif, a repeating pattern of battle scenes, complete with cannons, ships, and soldiers in various heroic poses. The woodwork was white, the counters red, and a window seat built into a side bay was filled with plump pillows and a neatly folded quilt, all in coordinating hues.
Crayon and fingerpaint projects were fixed to the refrigerator with magnets shaped like fruit. There were also school pictures of two additional girls, ages about eight and ten, who might have been Cissy’s sisters. All three had the same blond hair and features reminiscent of Cornell’s. Cissy lowered her face, her nose a mere centimeter from a cupcake.
Edna said, “Cissy, don’t touch. You wait until they’re cool and don’t pick at them. Why don’t you take these nice folks to see Grandpa? I’ll have the frosting ready as soon as you get back.”
That job would be quick. I could see the container of ready-to-use fudge frosting on the table with a photo of a shiny chocolate swirl, like an ocean wave, on the side. As a kid, I’d imagined that’s what real grannies did—sewed and made cakes. Aunt Gin always said, “I’m not the cookie-baking type,” as though that excused her from cooking of any kind. Now I wondered if that’s why I was so bent—because I lacked the homely services she’d so proudly repudiated.
Cissy got down off the chair and took Dolan by the hand. Behind Edna’s back, he shot me a look that said, Help. I trailed after them, crossing a section of grass that butted up against the garages. A side door stood open and Cissy took us that far before scampering back to her post.
Ruel McPhee sat on a wooden desk chair inside the door. A small color TV set had been placed on a crate and plugged into a wall-mounted outlet. He was smoking a cigarette while he watched a game show. Ruel was half the size of his wife, gaunt-faced and sunken-chested, with narrow bony shoulders. He wore a broken-rimmed straw hat pushed back on his head while his bifocals were pulled down on the bridge of his nose. He smelled a teeny, tiny bit like he hadn’t changed his socks this week. Dolan handled the introductions and a quick explanation of why we were there. At the sight of Ruel’s cigarette, Dolan was inspired to take out one of his own.
Ruel was nodding, though his attention was still fixed on the television set. “That was years ago.”
“DMV tells us the vehicle’s registered to you.”
“That’s right. Fella from Arizona brought it over here to have the seats redone. I had it parked behind the shop. Someone must have broken in and hot-wired the ignition because when I came to work Monday morning, it was gone. Don’t know when it was taken. Saw it Friday afternoon, but that’s the last I know. I reported it right off and it wasn’t but a week later someone called from the Sheriff’s Department up north to say it’d been found. This fellow Gant, who owned the car, paid to have it towed back but it was worthless by then. Car looked like it’d been rolled—doors all messed up, front banged in. Gant was pissed as hell.” He flicked me an apologetic look for the use of the word. “I told him to file a claim with his insurance company, but he didn’t want anything more to do with it. He’d already been in a couple fender-benders and the engine froze up once. He was convinced the car was jinxed. I offered him a fair price, but he wouldn’t take a cent. He said good riddance to bad rubbish and signed it over to me.” Ruel’s gaze returned to the screen where contestants were pressing buttons while the prize money they’d racked up was being flashed on monitors. I couldn’t answer even one of the questions they responded to with such speed.
Dolan said, “What happened to the car?”
“Someone pushed it down a ravine is what I heard.”
“I mean, where is it now?”
“Oh. It’s setting right out back. Cornell and I intend to do the restoration as soon as we have time. I guess you met him. He’s married with three girls, and Justine lays claim to any spare time he has. We’ll get to it in due course.”
“Justine’s his wife?”
“Going on fifteen years. She’s difficult to get along with. Edna has more patience with the situation than I do.”
“You have any idea who might have stolen the car?”
“If I did, I’d’ve told the police back then. Joyriders is my guess. Town this size, it’s what the kids do for fun. That and throw paint balloons out the back of their trucks. Not like when I was young. My dad would’ve pounded me bloody and that’d’ve been the end of that.”
“You ever had a car stolen from the shop before?”
“Not before and not since. I put up a fence with concertina wire and that took care of it.” He turned his attention from the TV. “What’s your interest?
Dolan’s expression was bland. “We’re cleaning out our files, doing follow-up on old crime reports. Most of it’s administrative work.”
“I see.” Ruel stepped on his cigarette and then placed the flattened butt in a Miracle Whip jar that was nearly filled to the brim. He held the jar out to Dolan who stepped on his cigarette and added it to the collection. Ruel was saying, “I’m not allowed to smoke inside, especially when the granddaughters visit. Justine thinks it’s bad for their lungs so Edna makes me come out here. Justine can be moody if she doesn’t get her way.”
“Why’d you hang on to the car?”
Ruel drew back and made a face as though Dolan were dense. “That Mustang’s a classic. 1966.”
“Couldn’t have been a classic then. The car was only three years old.”
“I told you I got the car for free,” he said. “Once we finish the restoration, it’ll be worth somewhere in the neighborhood of fourteen thousand dollars. Now I’d call that a profit, wouldn’t you?”
“Mind if we take a look?”
“Help yourself. I got five of them back there; one sweet little GT Coupe, silver frost with the black vinyl top torn up. Doesn’t run yet and the body needs work, but if you’re interested, we could talk money and maybe make a deal.”
“My car’s fine, thanks.”
Dolan lit another cigarette as the two of us trooped through high grass to a rutted dirt lane overgrown with weeds that led to the second of Ruel McPhee’s garages. The entire area had been undercut by gopher tunnels, and my foot occasionally sank into a softly crumbling hole. The garage was positioned so that its backside was to us, its double doors facing a flat field beyond. We could see the faintly defined path where the lane had originally been laid out, possibly in anticipation of a second house on the property. Three additional vehicles were visible in the area immediately in front of us. We checked those cars first, lifting their respective car covers like a series of ladies’ skirts. The two I peeked at were in poor shape, and I didn’t think they’d ever amount to more than yard ornaments. While we made our inspection, I said, “You think someone used the vehicle to drive the body to Lompoc?”
“Hard to say. She could have been alive when she left, assuming she was ever in Quorum at all. Just as likely someone stole the car and picked her up along the way.”
“But what if she was killed here? Why drive the body all the way up there to dump? Seems like it’d be easier to go out in the desert and dig a hole.”
Dolan shrugged. “You might want to put some distance between the body and the crime scene. It’d make sense to take off and go as far as you could. Then you’d have to find a place to pull off and unload, which’s not as easy as you’d think. If the body was in the trunk much more than a day, it’d start to decompose and then you’d have a big problem on your hands. You’d have to figure the car’d been reported stolen, which means you couldn’t risk a traffic stop in case the officer became curious about what you had back there. At least Lompoc’s off the main highway and if you found an isolated spot, you’d dump her while you had the chance.”
“What about the original owner? How do we know he didn’t have a hand in it?”
“It’s always possible,” he said, “though Gant’s been dead the last ten years. Ruptured abdominal aneurysm, according to the information I received.
”
When we reached the garage, Dolan tried the side door, but a combination of warping and old paint had welded it shut. We went around to the double doors in front. Both were closed, but there were no locks in the hasps. Dolan gave the one on the right a hefty yank and the three-section door labored up, trailing spider webs and dead leaves. Sunlight washed in, setting a cloud of dust motes ablaze. The two cars inside were both covered with canvas tarps and the space was crammed with junk. In addition to old cars, McPhee apparently saved empty cans and jars, stacks of newspapers bound with wire, wood crates, boxes, shovels, a pickax, a rusted tire iron, firewood, sawhorses, and lumber. The garage had also been made home to an ancient mower, automotive parts, and dilapidated metal lawn furniture. The air smelled stale and felt dry against my face. Dolan paused to extinguish his cigarette while I raised a corner of the nearest tarp. “This looks a lot like the tarp the body was wrapped in.”
“Sure does. We’ll have to ask McPhee if one was taken the same time the car was.”
I looked down, catching sight of the battered right rear fender of the red Mustang. “Found it.”
Together we removed the car cover and folded it like a flag. To my untutored eye, the car looked as though it hadn’t been touched since the day it was hauled out of the ravine back in ’69. At best, the exterior had been hosed off, but dried dirt still clung to the underbelly of the car with its scraped and dented right side and its banged-in driver’s door. Both sides were rumpled. A portion of tree branch was caught under the left rear fender. Something about it made my heart thump. Dolan took out a handkerchief and gingerly pressed the trunk lock. The lid swung open. Inside, the spare tire was missing from the mount. A couple of dusty cardboard boxes filled with old National Geographic magazines had been shoved into the space. Dolan removed the boxes and set them aside. The exposed matting looked clean except for two large dark smudges and two smaller ones near the back. Dolan peered closer. “I think we better call the local Sheriff’s Department and get the car impounded.”