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

by Sue Grafton

  The rear door of the shop stood ajar. I approached with care and peered around the corner. Melvin had his back to me, folding children’s clothing into tidy piles that he placed in a cardboard box. Now that I knew where he was, I’d report his location to Lowell Effinger. He’d schedule a date for the deposition and issue a subpoena requiring Downs to appear. I made a note of the address and the contact number printed on the bin and then returned to my car and drove back to my office, where I put in a call to the attorney’s office and told his secretary where Downs could be served.

  “You’ll handle the service?”

  I said, “That’s not a good idea. He knows me on sight, which means I’d be coming in the front door and he’d be flying out the back.”

  “But this is your baby. You should have the satisfaction,” she said. “I’ll let you know when everything’s set up, which shouldn’t take long. By the way, Gladys told Herr Buckwald there was talk of a missing witness and now she’s all over us for his name and address.” I was amused by her fake German accent, which exactly captured Hetty Buckwald’s nature.

  “Good luck,” I said. “Call me when you’re done.”

  “I’m on it, kid.”

  Driving home that afternoon, I became aware of the tension in my neck. I was wary of Solana and hoping to avoid running into her again. She had to be aware I had her in my sights and I didn’t think she’d appreciate the interference. As it turned out, our paths didn’t cross until Saturday night. So I was worrying before it was absolutely necessary.

  I’d been to see a movie and it was close to eleven when I got home. I parked half a block down the street in the only space I could find at that hour. I got out and locked the car. The street was dark and empty. A skittish wind blew, sending a tumble of leaves across my feet like an undulating wave of mice escaping from a cat. The moon was intermittently visible, obscured and then exposed by the erratic movement of the trees. I thought I was the only one out, but as I approached Henry’s gate, I caught sight of Solana standing in the shadows. I secured my shoulder bag and shoved my hands in the pockets of my parka.

  She stepped forward when I was abreast of her, blocking my path.

  I said, “Get away from me.”

  “You put me in hot water with the county. A bad move on your part.”

  “Who’s Cristina Tasinato?”

  “You know who she is. Mr. Vronsky’s conservator of record. She says you paid a visit to her attorney. Did you think I wouldn’t find out?”

  “I don’t give a rat’s ass.”

  “Bad language is unbecoming. I gave you more credit than that.”

  “Or maybe you didn’t give me credit enough.”

  Solana stared at me. “You were in my house. You picked up Mr. Vronksy’s pill bottles to see what medications he’s on. You set the bottles down not quite in the same place so I could tell they’d been moved. I pay attention to such things. You must have thought you were immune from discovery, but you’re not. You took his bankbooks as well.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said, but I wondered if she could hear my heart careen off my chest wall like a handball.

  “You’ve made a serious mistake. People who try getting the best of me are always wrong. They learn the meaning of the word ‘regret,’ but by then it’s too late.”

  “Are you threatening me?”

  “Of course not. I’m offering advice. Leave Mr. Vronsky alone.”

  “Who’s the big goon you have living in the house?”

  “There’s no one living in the house except the two of us. You’re a suspicious young woman. Some would call you paranoid.”

  “Is he the orderly you hired?”

  “There’s an orderly who comes in, if it’s any business of yours. You’re upset. I can understand your hostility. You’re strong willed, used to doing as you please and having everything your way. We’re very much alike, both of us willing to play to the death.”

  She put a hand on my arm and I shook it away. “Cut the melodrama. You can eat shit and die for all I care.”

  “Now it’s you threatening me.”

  “You better believe it,” I said.

  The gate squeaked as I opened it and the sound of the latch catching punctuated the end of the exchange. She was still standing on the walk as I rounded the corner of the studio and let myself into my darkened apartment. I locked the door and shucked my jacket, tossing it on the kitchen counter as I passed. The lights were still off as I moved into the downstairs bathroom and stepped into the shower to check the street outside. By the time I peered out the window, she was gone.

  29

  As I was letting myself into the office Monday morning I heard my phone ring. A bulky package was leaning against the door, left by a courier service. I tucked it under my arm and unlocked the door in haste, stepping over a pile of mail that had been shoved through the slot. I paused to snatch up the lot of it and scampered into the inner office, tossing the mail on my desk while I made a grab for the phone. I caught it on ring five and found Mary Bellflower on the line, sounding remarkably cheerful. “Did you get the documents Lowell Effinger messengered over to you? He sent me the same batch.”

  “Must be the package that was left at my door. I just now walked in and haven’t had a chance to open it. What is it?”

  “The transcript of the deposition he took from the accident expert earlier this week. Call me as soon as you’ve read it.”

  “Sure thing. You sound happy.”

  “I’m curious at any rate. This is good stuff,” she said.

  I shrugged off my jacket and tossed my shoulder bag on the floor beside my desk. Before I opened the packet, I walked down the short hall to my kitchenette and set up a pot of coffee. I’d forgotten to bring in a carton of milk so I was forced to use two flat packets of fake stuff once the coffee had finished dripping into the carafe. I returned to my desk and opened the manila mailer. Then I leaned back in my swivel chair and put my feet on the edge of the desk with the transcript opened on my lap, coffee cup to my right.

  Tilford Brannigan was a biomechanical expert who doubled, in this case, as the accident reconstructionist, wearing two hats at once. The document was neatly typed. The pages were stapled together at the top left corner. Each eight-by-eleven page had been reduced in size and formatted to fit four to the sheet.

  The first page listed correspondence, marked “Plaintiff’s Exhibits #6-A Through 6-H,” and went on down the numbered lines. Included was Brannigan’s curriculum vitae, Gladys Frederickson’s medical summaries, Request for Production of Documents, Plaintiff Response to the Defendant Request for Production of Documents, Supplemental Request for Production of Documents. Dr. Goldfarb’s medical files had been subpoenaed, as had the files of a Dr. Spaulding. There were numerous depositions, summary/medical records marked Plaintiff’s Exhibit #16, along with the police report. Various photographs of the damaged cars and the accident site had been entered as exhibits. I quickly flipped to the last page, just to get a feel for what I was in for. Brannigan’s testimony started on page 6 and continued to page 133. The proceedings had begun at 4:30 P.M. and concluded at 7:15.

  A deposition is, by nature, a less formal proceeding than an appearance in court since it occurs in a lawyer’s office instead of a courtroom. Testimony is given under oath. Both plaintiff’s and defendant’s attorneys and a court reporter are in attendance, but there’s no judge.

  Hetty Buckwald was there representing the Fredricksons, and Lowell Effinger was on hand in Lisa Ray’s behalf, though neither the plaintiffs nor the defendant were present. Years before, I’d looked up Ms. Buckwald’s bona fides, convinced her law degree was from Harvard or Yale. Instead, she’d graduated from one of those Los Angeles law schools that self-promotes by way of big splashy ads pasted on freeway billboards.

  I cruised through the repetitious early pages, where Ms. Buckwald worked to suggest that Brannigan was inexperienced and ill qualified, neither of which was true. Lowell Eff
inger objected at intervals, mostly intoning, “Misstates the prior testimony” or “Asked and answered” in a voice that, even on paper, sounded bored and annoyed. Effinger had tagged certain pages to make sure I didn’t miss the import. The gist of it was that, despite Ms. Buckwald’s persistently snide and wearing questions that cast aspersions on him wherever possible, Tilford Brannigan was steadfast in his insistence that Gladys Fredrickson’s injuries were inconsistent with the dynamics of the collision. There followed fourteen pages of testimony in which Ms. Buckwald picked away at him, trying to get him to yield on whatever minor point she was pursuing. Brannigan held up well, patient and unperturbed. His responses were mild, sometimes amusing, which must have infuriated Ms. Buckwald, who relied on friction and animosity to rattle a witness. If he conceded the smallest detail, she leaped on the admission as though it were a major triumph, completely undermining testimony he’d given before. I wasn’t sure whom she was trying to impress.

  As soon as I’d read the file, I called Mary Bellflower, who said, “So what did you think?”

  “I’m not sure. We know Gladys was injured. We have three inches of medical reports: X-ray results, treatment protocols, ultrasound, MRIs, X-rays. She might fake whiplash or a lower-back pain, but a cracked pelvis and two cracked ribs? Please.”

  “Brannigan didn’t say she wasn’t injured. He’s saying the injuries weren’t sustained in the accident. By the time Millard ran into Lisa Ray pulling out of the parking lot, she was already hurt. Brannigan didn’t say so flat out, but that’s his guess.”

  “What, like Millard beat the crap out of her or something like that?”

  “That’s what we need to find out.”

  “But her injuries were fresh, right? I mean, this wasn’t anything that’d happened weeks before.”

  “Right. It could have happened prior to their getting in the van. Maybe he was taking her to the emergency room and he saw his chance.”

  “Not to be dense about it, but why would he do that?”

  “He had liability insurance, but no collision coverage. They’d dropped their home-owner’s policy because they couldn’t afford the premiums. No catastrophic medical, no long-term disability. They were totally exposed.”

  “So he deliberately rammed into Lisa Ray’s car? That’s risky, isn’t it? What if Lisa had been killed? For that matter, what if his wife had been killed?”

  “He wouldn’t have been any worse off. Might have been better for him actually. He could have sued for wrongful death or negligent homicide, half a dozen things. The point was to blame someone else and collect the dough instead of having to pay it out. He’d been badly injured himself and a jury awarded him $680,000. They’ve probably pissed it all away.”

  “Jesus, that’s cold. What kind of guy is he?”

  “Try desperate. Hetty Buckwald went after Brannigan tooth and nail and couldn’t get him to back down. Lowell said it was all he could do not to bust out laughing. He thinks this is big. Huge. We just have to figure out what it means.”

  “I’ll go up there again. Maybe the neighbors know something we don’t.”

  “Let’s hope.”

  I returned to the Fredricksons’ neighborhood and started with the two neighbors directly across the street. Their knowledge, if any, probably wouldn’t come to much, but at least I could rule them out. At the first house, the middle-aged woman who answered the door was pleasant but professed to know nothing about the Fredricksons. When I explained the situation, she said she’d moved in six months before and preferred to keep her distance from her neighbors. “That way, if I have a problem with any one of them, I can complain without worrying about someone’s feelings being hurt,” she said. “I tend to my affairs and expect them to tend to theirs.”

  “Well, I can see your point. I’ve had good luck with my neighbors until recently.”

  “When neighbors turn on you, there’s nothing worse. Your home is supposed to be a refuge, not a fortified encampment in a war zone.”

  Amen, I thought. I gave her my card and asked her to call me if she heard anything. “Don’t count on it,” she said, as she closed the door.

  I went down her walkway and up the walk leading to the house next door. This time the occupant was a man in his late twenties, thin face, glasses, underslung jaw with a tiny goatee meant to give definition to his weak chin. He wore loose jeans and a T-shirt with horizontal stripes of the sort a mother would select.

  “Kinsey Millhone,” I said, holding out my hand.

  “Julian Frisch. You selling something? Avon, Fuller Brush?”

  “I don’t think they sell door-to-door these days.” Again, I explained who I was and my fact-finding mission with regard to the Fredricksons. “Are you acquainted with them?”

  “Sure. She does my books. You want to come in?”

  “I’d like that.”

  His living room looked like a display for computer sales and service. Some of the equipment I could identify on sight—keyboards and the monitors that looked like clunky television screens. There were eight computers set up, with tangled cables that snaked across the floor connecting them. In addition, there were sealed cartons I assumed contained brand-new computers. The few cranky-looking models sitting in one corner might have come in for repair. I’d heard the terms “floppy disk” and “boot up” but I didn’t have a clue what they meant.

  “I take it you sell or repair computers.”

  “Little bit of both. What do you have?”

  “A portable Smith-Corona.”

  He half-smiled, as if I were making a joke, and then he wagged a finger at me. “Better catch up with reality. You’re missing the boat. Time’s going to come when computers will do everything.”

  “I have trouble believing that. It just seems so unlikely.”

  “You’re not a believer like the rest of us. The day will come when ten-year-olds will master these machines and you’ll be at their mercy.”

  “That’s a depressing thought.”

  “Don’t say I didn’t warn you. At any rate, that’s probably not why you knocked on my door.”

  “True enough,” I said. I redirected my attention and went through my introduction, which I’d just about perfected by then, wrapping up with a reference to the two-car collision on May 28 of the year before. “How long has Gladys Fredrickson handled your books?”

  “The past two or three years. I only know her professionally, not personally. She’s a mess right now, but she does good work.”

  “Did or does?”

  “Oh, she still handles my accounts. She complains about her aches and pains, but she never misses a beat.”

  “She told the insurance company she couldn’t work because she can’t sit for long periods and she can’t concentrate. She said the same thing to me when I took her statement.”

  His expression was pained. “That’s a pile of crap. I see the courier service over there two and three times a week.”

  “Are you sure about that?”

  “I work right here. I got a clear view across the street. I don’t mean to rat her out, but she’s as busy as ever.”

  Maybe I was falling in love. My heart gave the same pitter-patter and my chest felt warm. I put a hand across my forehead to see if I was suffering a fever of sudden onset. “Hang on a minute. This is too good to believe. Would you mind repeating that on tape?”

  “I could do that,” he said. “I was thinking about firing her, anyway. Her whining is getting on my nerves.”

  I sat down on the lone metal folding chair and put my tape recorder on an unopened carton. I took out my clipboard so I could make a written record of the information as well. He didn’t have tons to contribute, but what he offered was pure gold. Gladys Fredrickson’s claims of disability were fraudulent. She hadn’t collected a cent yet, unless she was receiving state disability checks, which was entirely possible. Once he’d gone through his account for the tape recorder, I packed up my gear and shook his hand, thanking him profusely.


  He said, “Not a problem. And if you change your mind about becoming computer literate, you know where I am. I could get you up and running in no time.”

  “How much?”

  “Ten grand.”

  “You lost me there. I don’t want to pay ten grand for something that makes me feel inadequate.” I left thinking, Ten-year-old kids? Get serious.

  The neighbor across the street to the right of the Fredricksons’ was no help at all. The woman never did quite grasp my purpose, thinking I was selling insurance, which she politely declined. I repeated myself twice and then thanked her and moved over to the house on the other side.

  The woman who answered the door was the same woman I’d seen when I arrived at the Fredricksons’ house the first time. Given my experience with elderly persons, namely Gus, Henry, and the sibs, I placed this woman in her early eighties. She was quick and soft-spoken and seemed to have all her faculties about her. She was also as plump as a pincushion and she smelled of Joy perfume. “I’m Lettie Bowers,” she said, as she shook my hand and invited me in.

  Her skin felt delicate and powdery, her palm two or three degrees warmer than my own. I wasn’t sure she should be so trusting, inviting a stranger into her house, but it suited my purposes.

  Her living room was sparsely furnished, frothy curtains at the windows, faded carpet on the floor, faded paper on the walls. The Victorian-style furniture had a vaguely depressing air about it, which suggested it was authentic. The rocker I sat down in had a horsehair seat, which you couldn’t get away with now. To the right of the front door, on the Fredricksons’ side of the house, French double doors opened onto a wood balcony crowded with flowerpots. I explained who I was and that I was working as an investigator on behalf of the insurance company Gladys Fredrickson was suing in the wake of her accident. “Would you mind if I ask you a few questions.”