Three Complete Novels: A Is for Alibi / B Is for Burglar / C Is for Corpse

by Sue Grafton

  I placed him in his eighties, an age I’d considered elderly once upon a time. I’ve since come to realize how widely the aging process varies. My landlord is eighty-seven, the baby of his family, with siblings whose ages range as high as ninety-six. All five of them are lively, intelligent, adventurous, competitive, and given to good-natured squabbling among themselves. Mr. Lafferty, on the other hand, looked as though he’d been old for a good twenty years. He was inordinately thin, with knees as bony as a pair of misplaced elbows. His once sharp features had at least been softened by the passing years. Two small clear plastic tubes had been placed discreetly in his nostrils, tethering him to a stout green oxygen tank on a cart to his left. One side of his jaw was sunken, and a savage red line running across his throat suggested extensive surgery of some vicious sort.

  He studied me with eyes as dark and shiny as dots of brown sealing wax. “I appreciate your coming, Ms. Millhone. I’m Nord Lafferty,” he said, holding out a hand that was knotted with veins. His voice was hoarse, barely a whisper.

  “Nice to meet you,” I murmured, moving forward to shake hands with him. His were pale, a tremor visible in his fingers, which were icy to the touch.

  He motioned to me. “You might want to pull that chair close. I’ve had thyroid surgery a month ago and more recently some polyps removed from my vocal cords. I’ve been left with this rasping noise that passes as speech. Isn’t painful, but it’s irksome. I apologize if I’m difficult to understand.”

  “So far, I’m not having any problem.”

  “Good. Would you like a cup of tea? I can have my housekeeper make a pot, but I’m afraid you’ll have to pour for yourself. These days, her hands aren’t any steadier than mine.”

  “Thanks, but I’m fine.” I pulled the second wing chair closer and took a seat. “When was this house built? It’s really beautiful.”

  “1893. A man named Mueller bought a six-hundred-forty-acre section from the county of Santa Teresa. Of that, seventy acres remain. House took six years to build and the story has it Mueller died the day the workers finally set down their tools. Since then, the occupants have fared poorly…except for me, knock on wood. I bought the property in 1929, just after the crash. Fellow who owned the place lost everything. Drove into town, climbed up to the clock tower, and dived over the rail. Widow needed the cash and I stepped in. I was criticized, of course. Folks claimed I took advantage, but I’d loved the house from the minute I laid eyes on it. Someone would have bought it. Better me than them. I had money for the upkeep, which wasn’t true of many folks back then.”

  “You were lucky.”

  “Indeed. Made my fortune in paper goods in case you’re curious and too polite to inquire.”

  I smiled. “Polite, I don’t know about. I’m always curious.”

  “That’s fortunate, I’d say, given the business you’re in. I’m assuming you’re a busy woman so I’ll get right to the point. Your name was given to me by a friend of yours—fellow I met during this recent hospital stay.”

  “Stacey Oliphant,” I said, the name flashing immediately to mind. I’d worked a case with Stacey, a retired Sheriff’s Department homicide detective, and my old pal Lieutenant Dolan, now retired from the Santa Teresa Police Department. Stacey was battling cancer, but the last I’d heard, he’d been given a reprieve.

  Mr. Lafferty nodded. “He asked me to tell you he’s doing well, by the way. He checked in for a battery of tests, but all of them turned out negative. As it happened, the two of us walked the halls together in the afternoons, and I got chatting about my daughter, Reba.”

  I was already thinking skip trace, missing heir, possibly a background check on a guy if Reba were romantically involved.

  He went on. “I only have the one child and I suppose I’ve spoiled her unmercifully, though that wasn’t my intent. Her mother ran off when she was just a little thing, this high. I was caught up in business and left the day-to-day raising of her to a series of nannies. She’d been a boy I could have sent her off to boarding school the way my parents did me, but I wanted her at home. In retrospect, I see that might’ve been poor judgment on my part, but it didn’t seem so at the time.” He paused and then gestured impatiently toward the floor, as though chiding a dog for leaping up on him. “No matter. It’s too late for regrets. Pointless, anyway. What’s done is done.” He looked at me sharply from under his bony brow. “You probably wonder what I’m driving at.”

  I proffered a slight shrug, waiting to hear what he had to say.

  “Reba’s being paroled on July twentieth. That’s next Monday morning. I need someone to pick her up and bring her home. She’ll be staying with me until she’s on her feet again.”

  “What facility?” I asked, hoping I didn’t sound as startled as I felt.

  “California Institution for Women. Are you familiar with the place?”

  “It’s down in Corona, couple of hundred miles south. I’ve never actually been there, but I know where it is.”

  “Good. I’m hoping you can take time out of your schedule for the trip.”

  “That sounds easy enough, but why me? I charge five hundred dollars a day. You don’t need a private detective to make a run like that. Doesn’t she have friends?”

  “Not anyone I’d ask. Don’t worry about the money. That’s the least of it. My daughter’s difficult. Willful and rebellious. I want you to see to it she keeps the appointment with her parole officer and whatever else is required once she’s been released. I’ll pay you your full rate even if you only work for a part of each day.”

  “What if she doesn’t like the supervision?”

  “It’s not up to her. I’ve told her I’m hiring someone to assist her and she’s agreed. If she likes you, she’ll be cooperative, at least to a point.”

  “May I ask what she did?”

  “Given the time you’ll be spending in her company, you’re entitled to know. She was convicted of embezzling money from the company she worked for. Alan Beckwith and Associates. He does property management, real estate investment and development, things of that type. Do you know the man?”

  “I’ve seen his name in the paper.”

  Nord Lafferty shook his head. “I don’t care for him myself. I’ve known his wife’s family for years. Tracy’s a lovely girl. I can’t understand how she ended up with the likes of him. Alan Beckwith is an upstart. He calls himself an entrepreneur, but I’ve never been entirely clear what he does. Our paths have crossed in public on numerous occasions and I can’t say I’m impressed. Reba seems to think the world of him. I will credit him for this—he spoke up in her behalf before her sentencing. It was a generous gesture on his part and one he didn’t have to make.”

  “How long has she been at CIW?”

  “She’s served twenty-two months of a four-year sentence. She never went to trial. At her arraignment—which I’m sorry to say I missed—she claimed she was indigent, so the court appointed a public defender to handle her case. After consultation with him, she waived her right to a preliminary hearing and entered a plea of guilty.”

  “Just like that?”

  “I’m afraid so.”

  “And her attorney agreed to it?”

  “He argued strenuously against it, but Reba wouldn’t listen.”

  “How much money are we talking?”

  “Three hundred fifty thousand dollars over a two-year period.”

  “How’d they discover the theft?”

  “During a routine audit. Reba was one of a handful of employees with access to the accounts. Naturally, suspicion fell on her. She’s been in trouble before, but nothing of this magnitude.”

  I could feel a protest welling but I bit back my response.

  He leaned forward. “You have something to say, feel free to say it. Stacey tells me you’re outspoken so please don’t hesitate on my account. It may save us a misunderstanding.”

  “I was just wondering why you didn’t step in. A high-powered attorney might have made all the difference
.”

  He dropped his gaze to his hands. “I should have helped her…I know that…but I’d been coming to her rescue for many, many years…all her life, if you want to know the truth. At least that’s what I was being told by friends. They said she had to face the consequences of her behavior or she was never going to learn. They said I’d be enabling, that saving her was the worst possible action under the circumstances.”

  “Who’s this ‘they’ you’re referring to?”

  For the first time, he faltered. “I had a lady friend. Lucinda. We’d been keeping company for years. She’d seen me intercede in Reba’s behalf on countless occasions. She persuaded me to put my foot down and that’s what I did.”

  “And now?”

  “Frankly, I was shocked when Reba was sentenced to four years in state prison. I had no idea the penalty would be so stiff. I thought the judge would suspend sentence or agree to probation, as the public defender suggested. At any rate, Lucinda and I quarreled, bitterly I might add. I broke off the relationship and severed my ties with her. She was much younger than I. In hindsight, I realized she was angling for herself, hoping for marriage. Reba disliked her intensely. Lucinda knew that, of course.”

  “What happened to the money?”

  “Reba gambled it away. She’s always been attracted to card play. Roulette, the slots. She loves to bet the ponies, but she has no head for it.”

  “She’s a problem gambler?”

  “Her problem isn’t the gambling, it’s the losing,” he remarked, with only the weakest of smiles.

  “What about drugs and alcohol?”

  “I’d have to answer yes on both counts. She tends to be reckless. She has a wild streak like her mother. I’m hoping this experience in prison has taught her self-restraint. As for the job itself, we’ll play that by ear. We’re talking two to three days, a week at the most, until she’s reestablished herself. Since your responsibilities are limited, I won’t be requiring a written report. Submit an invoice and I’ll pay your daily rate and all the necessary expenses.”

  “That seems simple enough.”

  “One other item. If there’s any suggestion that she’s backsliding, I want to be informed. Perhaps with sufficient warning, I can head off disaster this time around.”

  “A tall order.”

  “I’m aware of that.”

  Briefly, I considered the proposition. Ordinarily I don’t like serving as a babysitter and potential tattletale, but in this case, his concern didn’t seem out of line. “What time will she be released?”

  2

  On my way back into town, I picked up my dry-cleaning and then cruised through a nearby supermarket, picking up odds and ends, which I intended to drop off at my place before I returned to work. I was hoping to touch base with my landlord before the arrival of his lady visitor later in the day. I was running the errands to provide myself with props to explain my unexpected midafternoon appearance. Henry and I confide in each other on many issues, but his love life isn’t one. If I wanted information, I knew I’d do well to proceed with finesse.

  My studio apartment was originally the single-car garage attached to Henry’s house by way of a now glass-enclosed breezeway. In 1980 he converted the space to the snug studio I’ve been renting ever since. What began as a basic square fifteen feet on a side is now a fully furnished “great room,” which includes a living room, a bump-out galley-style kitchen, a laundry nook and bathroom, with a sleeping loft and a second bathroom up a set of spiral stairs. The space is compact and cleverly designed to exploit every usable inch. Given the pegs and cubbyholes, walls of polished teak and oak, and the occasional porthole window, the studio has the scale and feel of a ship’s interior.

  I found a parking spot two doors away and hauled out my cleaning and the two grocery bags. My timing couldn’t have been more perfect. As I pushed through my squeaky metal gate and followed the walkway around to the rear, Henry was just pulling into his two-car garage. He’d taken his bright yellow five-window Chevy coupe for its annual checkup and it was back now, the exterior polished to a fare-thee-well. The interior was probably not only spotless, but scented with faux pine. He bought the vehicle new in 1932 and he’s taken such good care of it you’d swear it was still under warranty, assuming cars had warranties back then. He has a second vehicle, a station wagon he uses for routine errands and the occasional trip to the Los Angeles airport, ninety-five miles south. The coupe he reserves for special occasions, today being one.

  I have trouble remembering that he’s eighty-seven years old. I also have trouble describing him in terms that aren’t embarrassingly laudatory given our fifty-year age difference. He’s smart, sweet, sexy, trim, handsome, vigorous, and kind. In his working days, he made a living as a commercial baker, and though he’s been retired now for twenty-five years, he still makes the best cinnamon rolls I’ve ever eaten. If I were forced to accord him a fault, I’d probably cite his caution when it comes to affairs of the heart. The only time I’d seen him smitten, he was not only deceived, but nearly taken for every cent he had. Since then, he’s played his cards very close to his chest. Either he hadn’t run into anyone of interest or he’d looked the other way. That is, until Mattie Halstead appeared.

  Mattie was the artist-in-residence on a Caribbean cruise he and his siblings had taken in April. Soon after the cruise ended, she’d stopped in to see him on her way to Los Angeles to deliver paintings to a gallery down there. A month later, he’d made an unprecedented trip to San Francisco, where he spent an evening with her. He’d kept mum on the subject of their relationship, but I noticed he’d spiffed up his wardrobe and started lifting weights. The Pitts family (at least on Henry’s mother’s side) is long-lived, and he and his siblings enjoy remarkably good health. William’s a bit of a hypochondriac and Charlie’s almost entirely deaf, but that aside, they give the appearance of going on forever. Lewis, Charlie, and Nell live in Michigan, but there are visits back and forth, some planned and some not. William and my friend Rosie, who owns the tavern half a block away, would be celebrating their second wedding anniversary on November 28. Now it looked like Henry might be entertaining similar thoughts…or such was my hope. Other people’s romances are so much less hazardous than one’s own. I was looking forward to all the pleasures of true love without suffering the peril.

  Henry paused when he caught sight of me, allowing me to fall into step with him as he proceeded to the house. I noticed his hair had been freshly trimmed, and he wore a blue denim work shirt with his crisply pressed chinos. He’d even traded in his usual flip-flops for a pair of deck shoes with dark socks.

  I said, “Hang on a second while I drop this stuff off.”

  He waited while I unlocked my door and dumped my armload on the floor just inside. Nothing I’d bought would go funky in the next thirty minutes. Rejoining him, I said, “You had your hair trimmed. It looks great.”

  He ran a self-conscious hand across his head. “I was passing the barbershop and realized I was long overdue. You think it’s too short?”

  “Not at all. It shaves years off your age,” I said, thinking Mattie would have to be an idiot if she didn’t understand what a treasure he was. I held open the screen door while he pulled out his keys and unlocked his back door. I followed him inside, watching as he set his groceries on the kitchen counter.

  “Nice that Mattie’s coming down. I’ll bet you’re looking forward to seeing her.”

  “It’s only the one night.”

  “What’s the occasion?”

  “She did a painting on commission for a woman in La Jolla. She’s delivering that one plus a couple more in case the woman doesn’t care for the first.”

  “Well, it’s nice she can manage a visit. When’s she getting in?”

  “She hoped to be here by four, depending on traffic. She said she’d check into the hotel and call once she’s had a chance to freshen up. She agreed to supper here as long as I didn’t go to any trouble. I said I’d keep it simple, but you know me.�
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  He began to unload his sack: a packet wrapped in white butcher’s paper, potatoes, cabbage, green onions, and a big jar of mayonnaise. While I watched, he opened the oven door and checked his crock of soldier beans bubbling away with molasses, mustard, and a chunk of salt pork. I could see two loaves of freshly baked bread resting on a rack on the counter. A chocolate layer cake sat in the middle of the kitchen table with a glass dome over it. There was also a bouquet of flowers from his garden—roses and lavender he’d arranged artfully in a china teapot.

  “Cake looks fabulous.”

  “It’s a twelve-layer torte. I used Nell’s recipe, which was originally our mother’s. We tried it for years, but none of us could duplicate her results. Nell finally managed, but she says it’s a pain. I ended up tossing half a dozen layers before I mastered the thing.”

  “What else are you having?”

  Henry took out a cast-iron skillet and set it on the stove. “Fried chicken, potato salad, coleslaw, and baked beans. I thought we’d have a little picnic on the patio, unless the temperature drops.” He opened his spice cabinet and sorted through the contents, taking down a bottle of dried dill. “Why don’t you join us? She’d love to see you.”

  “Oh please. Socializing is the last thing she needs. After six hours on the road? Give the woman a drink and let her put her feet up.”

  “No need to worry about her. She has energy to spare. She’d be delighted, I’m sure.”

  “Let’s just see how it goes. I’m on my way back to the office, but I’ll check in with you again as soon as I get home.”

  I’d already decided to decline, but I didn’t want to seem rude. In my opinion, they needed time to themselves. I’d pop my head in and say hi, primarily to satisfy my curiosity about her. She was either widowed or divorced, I wasn’t sure which, but during her last visit, I’d noticed she’d made a number of references to her husband. At one point, when Henry was nursing a bum knee, she’d gone hiking alone, taking her watercolors with her so she could paint a spot in the mountains she and her husband had enjoyed for years. Was she still emotionally entrenched? Whether hubby was dead or alive, I didn’t like the idea. Henry, meanwhile, was busy being nonchalant, perhaps in denial of his feelings or in response to covert signals from her. Of course, there was always the possibility that I was imagining all this, but I didn’t think so. At any rate, I intended to have my supper at Rosie’s, resigned to my usual weekly allotment of her bullying and abuse.