I Is for Innocent

by Sue Grafton

  “That’s ludicrous. Absurd! Morley worked on this case for months and he never came up with any information about Tippy and this hit-and-run accident.”

  “Actually, that’s not true. He was pursuing the same lead I was. He’d already taken pictures of her father’s pickup, which was my next step. I showed the photographs to the witness, who’s identified it as the vehicle at the scene.”

  His brow furrowed. “Oh, for God’s sake. So what? After all these years, that doesn’t constitute proof. You’re jeopardizing millions and what’s the point?”

  “The point is I talked to Tippy and she told me she did it.”

  “I don’t see the relevance. Just because David Barney claims he saw her that night? This is bullshit.”

  “You might not see the relevance, but a jury will. Wait until Herb Foss gets hold of it. He’ll play the timing for all it’s worth.”

  “But suppose it was earlier? You can’t be sure about what time it was.”

  “Yes, I can. There’s a corroborating witness and I’ve talked to him.”

  He wiped his face with one hand, palm resting across his mouth briefly. He said, “Jesus. Lonnie’s not going to be happy. Have you talked to him?”

  “He’ll be back tonight. I can talk to him then.”

  “You don’t know how much I have wrapped up in this. It’s cost me thousands of dollars, not to mention all the pain and suffering. You’ve undone all of that. And for what? Some six-year-old hit-and-run accident?”

  “Wait a minute. That pedestrian is just as dead as Isabelle. You think his life doesn’t matter just because he was ninety-two? Talk to his son if you want to discuss pain and suffering.”

  A look of impatience flitted across his face. “I can’t believe the police will press charges. Tippy was a juvenile at the time and she’s led an exemplary life since. I hate to seem callous, but what’s done is done. In Isabelle’s case, you’re talking cold-blooded murder.”

  “I don’t want to argue. Let’s just see what Lonnie says. His point of view may be entirely different. Maybe he’ll come up with a whole new strategy.”

  “You better hope so. Otherwise, David Barney’s going to get away with murder.”

  “You can’t very well ‘get away with’ something if you didn’t do it in the first place.”

  A telephone began to ring in one of the sales offices. Unconsciously, we both paused and looked in that direction, waiting for the machine to pick up. By the fifth ring, Voigt flashed a look of irritation at the rear. “Oh, hell, I must have turned off the answering machine.” He got out and crossed the showroom at a quick clip, snatching up the receiver on the seventh or eighth ring. When it was clear that he’d been caught up in another lengthy conversation, I got out of the Rolls and let myself out the side door.

  I spent the next hour in a Colgate coffee shop. In theory, I was having breakfast, but in truth, I was hiding. I wanted to feel like the old Kinsey again . . . talkin’ trash and kickin’ butt. Being cowed and uncertain was really for the birds.

  The Wynington-Blake mortuary in Colgate is a generic sanctuary designed to serve just about any spiritual inclination you might favor in death. I was given a printed program as I entered the chapel. I found a seat at the rear and spent a few minutes contemplating my surroundings. The construction was vaguely churchlike: a faux apse, a faux nave with a big stained-glass window filled with blocks of rich color. Morley’s closed coffin was visible up in front, flanked by funeral wreaths. There were no religious symbols—no angels, no crosses, no saints, no images of God, Jesus, Muhammad, Brahma, or any other Supreme Being. Instead of an altar, there was a library table. In lieu of a pulpit, there was a lectern with a mike.

  We were seated in pews, but there wasn’t any organ music. The hallowed equivalent of Muzak was being piped in, hushed chords vaguely reminiscent of Sunday school. Despite the secular tones of the environment, everybody was dressed up and looking properly subdued. The place was filled to capacity and most of those gathered were unknown to me. I wondered if the etiquette followed that of weddings—the deceased’s friends on one side, the survivor’s on the other. If Dorothy Shine and her sister were present, they’d be seated in the little family alcove to the right, hidden from public view by a partial wall of glass block.

  There was a quiet stirring to my left and I became aware that two gentlemen had just entered the pew from the side aisle. As soon as they’d been seated, I felt a gentle nudge to my elbow. I glanced to my left and experienced a disorienting moment when I caught sight of Henry and William sitting next to me. William was wearing a somber charcoal suit. Henry had forsaken his usual shorts and T-shirt and was quite respectably attired in a white dress shirt, tie, dark sport coat, and chinos. And tennis shoes.

  “William wanted you to have support in this your hour of need,” Henry murmured to me under his breath.

  I leaned forward. Sure enough, William had a mournful eye fixed on me. “Actually, I could use it, but what made him think of it?”

  “He loves funerals,” Henry was whispering. “This is like Christmas morning for him. He woke up early, all excited—”

  William leaned over and put a finger to his lips.

  I gave Henry a nudge.

  “It’s the truth,” he said. “I couldn’t talk him out of it. He insisted I put on this ridiculous outfit. I think he’s hoping for a really tragic cemetery scene, widow flinging herself into the open grave.”

  There was a rustling sound. At the front of the chapel, a middle-aged man in a white choir robe had appeared at the lectern. Under the robe, you could see he was wearing an electric blue suit that made him look like some kind of television evangelist. He seemed to be organizing his notes in preparation for the service. The microphone was on and the riffling of paper made a great clattering.

  Henry crossed his arms. “The Catholics wouldn’t do it this way. They’d have some boy in a dress swinging a pot of incense like he had a cat by the tail.”

  William frowned significantly, cautioning Henry to silence. He managed to behave himself for the next twenty minutes or so while the officiating pastor went through all of the expected sentiments. It was clear he was some kind of rent-a-reverend, brought in for the day. Twice, he referred to Morley as “Marlon” and some of the virtues he ascribed to him bore no relation to the man I knew. Still, we all tried to be good sports. When you’re dead, you’re dead, and if you can’t have a few lies told about you when you’re in your grave, you’ve just about run out of shots. We stood and we sat. We sang hymns and bowed our heads while prayers were recited. Passages were read from some new version of the Bible with every lyrical image and poetic phrase translated into conversational English.

  “The Lord is my counselor. He encourages me to go birding in the fields. He leads me to quiet pools. He restores my soul and takes me along the right pathways of life. Yes, even if I pass by Death’s dark wood, I won’t be scared. . . .”

  Henry sent me a look of consternation.

  When we were finally liberated, Henry took me by the elbow and we moved toward the door. William lingered behind, filing with a number of others toward the closed casket, where final respects were being paid. As Henry and I passed into the corridor, I glanced back and saw William engaged in an earnest chat with the minister. We went through the front door to the covered porch that ran the width of the building. The crowd had subdivided, half still in the chapel, the other half lighting up cigarettes in the parking lot. The scent of sulfur matches permeated the air. This was funeral weather, the morning chilly and gray. By early afternoon, the cloud cover would probably clear, but in the meantime the sky was dreary.

  I looked to my right, inadvertently catching sight of a departing mourner with a slight limp. “Simone?”

  She turned and looked at me. Now I’m an haute couture ignoramus, but today she was wearing an outfit even I recognized. The two-piece “ensemble” (to use fashion magazine talk) was the work of a designer who’d amassed a fortune making women look i
ll-shapen, overdressed, and foolish. She turned away, her body rocking as she hobbled toward her car.

  I touched Henry’s arm. “I’ll be right back.”

  Simone wasn’t actually running, but it was clear she didn’t want to talk to me. I pursued her at a hard walk, closing down the distance between us. “Simone, would you wait up?”

  She stopped in her tracks, letting me pull abreast.

  “What’s your hurry?”

  She turned on me in cold fury. “I got a call from Rhe Parsons. You’re going to ruin Tippy’s life. I think you’re a shit and I don’t want to talk to you.”

  “Hey, wait a minute. I got news for you. I don’t make up the facts. I’m being paid to investigate—”

  She cut in. “Oh, right. That’s a good one. And who paid you? David Barney, by any chance? He’s good-looking and single. I’m sure he’d be willing to cut you in on the deal.”

  “Of course it wasn’t David. What’s the matter with you? If she committed a crime—”

  “The girl was sixteen years old!”

  “The girl was drunk,” I said. “I don’t care what age she was. She has to take responsibility—”

  “Don’t try that righteous tone on me. I don’t have time for this,” she said and began to walk away. She reached her car and fumbled with her keys. She got in and slammed the door shut.

  “You’re pissed because this gets David Barney off the hook.”

  She rolled the window down. “I’m pissed because David Barney is a horrible man. He’s despicable. I’m pissed because good people have to suffer while the bad people walk away with everything.”

  “You think just because you don’t like some guy it’s okay to see him falsely convicted of murder?”

  “He hated Iz.” She put the key in the ignition, turned the engine over, and released the hand brake.

  “That doesn’t mean he killed her. You were not exactly without a motive yourself.”

  “Me?”

  “The accident you were involved in was her fault, wasn’t it? I heard she was drunk and left the car in the drive without the brake pulled on. Because of her, you lost any hope of having children. That’s a big price to pay when you’d been cleaning up after her for most of your life. It couldn’t have sat well with you—”

  “That’s ridiculous. People don’t murder other people over things like that.”

  “Of course they do. Pick up the newspaper any day of the week.”

  “David Barney’s full of shit. He’d do anything to shift the blame.”

  “This didn’t come from him. It came from someone else.”

  “And who was that?”

  “I’d rather not go into that. . . .”

  “Well, you’re a fool if you believe it.”

  “I didn’t say I believed it, but the point is a good one.”

  “Which is what?”

  “Other people had a motive for wanting her dead. We’ve all been so busy believing David Barney did it, we haven’t looked at anyone else.”

  She seemed momentarily stumped by the thought and then her gaze shifted slyly. “Well, then. Why don’t you look in the right direction?”

  “What are you saying?”

  “I’m saying Yolanda Weidmann. Isabelle wrecked Peter’s business pulling out when she did. He really promoted her career. He put in a lot of time and money when no one else would lift a finger. You have to understand just how crazy Isabelle was. Erratic, self-destructive, all the booze and the dope. She didn’t have a degree. She didn’t have a reputation until Peter took her up. He was her mentor and she shafted him royally. She turned her back on him after all he did. And then, that heart attack of his. That was the finishing touch. In theory, it was brought on by stress and overwork. The truth is, she broke his heart. That’s the long and short of it.”

  “But he didn’t seem bitter when I talked to him.”

  “I didn’t say he was bitter. Yolanda’s the one. She’s really a spider, not a woman you’d want to cross.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “You’ve met the woman. You tell me.”

  I shrugged. “Personally, I couldn’t stand her. I spent half an hour over there and she put him down constantly, all these barbs and zingers, little ha-has at his expense. I’d rather see a knock-down, drag-out fight. At least it’s honest. She seemed . . . I don’t know . . . wily.”

  Simone smiled slightly. “Ah, yes. She’s very cunning. Under it all, I assure you, she’s fiercely protective. She can treat him any way she likes, but you try it and look out! I think it makes her a very good candidate.”

  “But the woman must be sixty-five years old if she’s a day. It’s hard to believe she’d turn to murder.”

  “You don’t know Yolanda. I’m surprised she didn’t do it sooner. As for her age, she’s in better shape than I am.” She broke off eye contact and her manner became brisk. “I have to go. I’m sorry I blew my stack.” She put the car in reverse and backed out of the slot. I stared after her with interest as she pulled away.

  18

  I retraced my steps, moving toward the entrance. I could see Henry heading off across the parking lot toward his car. The first cluster of mourners had dispersed to some extent and those who remained in the chapel were just emerging. William appeared from the cool depths of the funeral home, looking somehow offended and confused. He was holding his fedora, which he placed squarely on his head with a slight adjustment to the brim. “I don’t understand what denomination that was.”

  “I think the service is meant to cover all bets,” I said.

  He looked back over his shoulder at the facade with disapproval. “The building looks like a restaurant.”

  “Well, you know, eating out is close to a religion these days,” I said dryly. “People used to tithe to the church. Now the ten percent goes to the waiter instead.”

  “It wasn’t very satisfactory as funerals go. In Michigan, we conduct these services properly. I understand there’s not even going to be a graveside ceremony. Very disrespectful, if you ask me.”

  “It’s just as well,” I said. “From what I know of Morley, he didn’t have a highly developed spiritual side and he probably wouldn’t have wanted any kind of fuss made about his death. Anyway, his wife is ill and might not have been up for more than this.” I didn’t mention that the body would probably be whisked over to the coroner’s office within the hour.

  “Where did Henry go?” William asked.

  “He’s bringing the car around, I think.”

  “Will you be coming back to the house with us? We’re having a light lunch on the patio and we’d be happy to have you join us. We invited Rosie, hoping to reciprocate her many courtesies.”

  “I wish I could, but I have something to take care of. I’ll stop by a little later and see what you’re up to.”

  Henry pulled up beside us in his five-window coupe. It’s a 1932 Chevrolet that he’s had since it was new. It’s been meticulously maintained, boasting the original paint, headliner, and upholstery. If William were driving it, I suspect the car would seem prissy. With Henry at the wheel, there was something rakish and sexy about the vehicle. You have to keep an eye on Henry as he’s still very appealing to “babes” of all ages, including me. I could see people turning to admire the car, checking him out afterward to see if he was someone famous. Because Santa Teresa is less than two hours away from Hollywood, a number of movie stars live in town. We all know this, but it’s still disconcerting when some guy at the car wash who looks just like John Travolta turns out to be John Travolta. I saw Steve Martin driving through Montebello once and nearly rammed into a tree trying to get a good look at him. He’s Technicolor handsome, in case you’re wondering.

  William got into Henry’s car and the two rumbled off. There was still not a hint about the trap Rosie meant to spring. Whatever her intention, it was still early in the game. William did seem less self-absorbed today. We’d actually made it through a three-minute conversation without reference to
his health.

  I drove back into town, taking the freeway south on 101. I got off at the Missile off-ramp and headed east until I reached State Street, where I hung a right. The Axminster Gallery, where Rhe Parsons’s show would be opening that night, was located in a complex that included the Axminster Theater and numerous small businesses. The gallery itself was located along a walkway that ran behind the shops. I parked on a side street and cut through a public lot. The entrance was marked by a hand-forged iron sign. A panel truck had been backed in close to the door and I could see two guys unloading blocks wrapped in heavily quilted moving pads. The door was standing open and I followed the workmen in.

  The entry was narrow, probably scaled down for effect, because I quickly passed into a large room with a thirty-foot ceiling. The walls were a stark white and light cascaded down through wide skylights, currently cranked open to admit fresh air. A complicated arrangement of canvas, cording, and pulleys was affixed at ceiling height so that the fabric shades could be drawn across the opening if the light needed to be cut. The floors were gray concrete carpeted with Oriental rugs, the walls hung with batiks and framed watercolor abstracts.

  Rhe Parsons was consulting with a woman in a smock, the two of them apparently discussing the placement of two final pieces the workmen were bringing in. I circled the room while the discussion continued. Tippy was perched on a stool near the back wall, commenting on the overall effect from her vantage point. Rhe’s show consisted of sixteen pieces arranged on pedestals of varying heights. She was working in resins, casting large polished pieces—maybe eighteen inches on a side—which at first seemed identical. I inspected five in range of me. I could see that the translucent material was formed into subtly tinted layers, with sometimes an object buried at the heart—a perfectly preserved insect, a safety pin, a locket on a chain, a ring of brass keys. With the light shining through, the effect was of peering through blocks of ice, except that the resin looked solid and indestructible. It wasn’t hard to imagine these totems being dug up at some point in the future, along with bleach bottles, pull tabs, and disposable diapers.