by Sue Grafton
Days whipped across the screen in a blur, like a cinematic device. Now and men, I’d halt the process, checking to see how far we’d gone. April 22. May 14. June 3. I slowed the machine. Finally, June 30 crept into view. The big earthquake had occurred at 6:42 a.m. on June 29. According to the paper, the severity of the quake was such that the concrete pavement buckled and street signs were snapped as if they were threads. The reservoir broke and sent a flood of mud and water into Montebello. Gas and electric power were shut off immediately and in consequence, there was only one fire, easily contained. Many buildings downtown were badly damaged, the streetcar track was snapped, the asphalt pavement sank six inches in places. Residents slept outside that night and many cars were reported on the highway heading south. In all, there were thirteen fatalities. Both the dead and injured were listed. Sometimes ages and occupations were specified, along with home addresses if they were known. None among the dead seemed remotely related to the tale Agnes Grey had told me.
I was hand-cranking the machine by then, stopping the film at intervals so that we could scan each column. A prominent widow had been crushed to death when the walls of a hotel toppled in on her. The body of a dentist was removed from the ruins of his office building. There was no mention of anyone named Emily. “What do you think?” I said to Dietz.
He made a thumbs-down gesture. I rewound the microfilm and took it off the spindle. We returned the box of film to the main counter, consulting in low tones, trying to figure out what to try next, if anything. Dietz said, “What year was Agnes born?”
“Nineteen hundred, as nearly as we can tell… though there’s some question. It might have been nineteen thirteen.”
“So she would have been somewhere between twelve and twenty-five in nineteen twenty-five. If you figure her sister was in a five – or six – year age range of her, she could have been any age from six to thirty.”
“We didn’t see a female earthquake victim even close to that,” I said.
Dietz lifted his brow. “For all we know, Emily was the family dog.”
The librarian approached, smiling politely. “Find what you were looking for?”
“Not really,” I said. “Would you have anything else?”
He took up his field guide with patient interest in our plight. “Let’s see here. Well… it looks like there was an aftershock to that nineteen twenty-five earthquake. Here… June twenty-nine, nineteen twenty-six… exactly one year later to the day. One fatality. The only other earthquake of note would have been November four, nineteen twenty-seven, but there were no fatalities recorded in that one. Would you like to take a look at the one in ‘twenty-six?”
“Sure.”
We went back to the same machine, repeating the process of threading the film. Again, we flew through the calendar, time flashing by in a whir of gray. As we reached the end of the reel, I slowed the machine, hand-cranking my way from day to day, scanning one column at a time. Dietz was leaning over my shoulder, making sure I didn’t miss anything. I was losing hope. I thought it was a good theory – hell, it was my only theory. If this didn’t pay off, we were out of luck.
I read about Babe Ruth, who’d just hit his twenty-sixth homer of the season back in Philadelphia. I read about some woman whose six-year marriage was annulled when she found out her former spouse was still alive. I read about Aimee Semple McPherson’s stout defense of her alleged kidnapping at the hands of strangers…
“There it is,” Dietz said. He put a finger on the screen.
I let out a yelp and laughed. Six library patrons turned around and looked at me. I put a hand across my mouth sheepishly. I peered at the machine. It was like a gift – such an unexpected pleasure – lines leaping off the page. The article was brief and the style faintly antique, but the facts were clear and it all seemed to fit.
WOMAN KILLED AS BRICKS FALL
Chimney Crushes Out the Life of Local Resident
Emily Bronfen, 29-year-old bookkeeper employed by Brookfield, McClintock and Gaskell, met death yesterday afternoon when bricks fell from a chimney at the family home, 1107 Sumner Street, and crushed her during an earth tremor at 3:20 p.m. The body was taken to the Donovan Brothers funeral parlor and will be cremated today at 4:00.
The Associated Press reported that the shock, which swung doors at Pasadena and swayed hanging electric light drops at Santa Monica, was also felt in Los Angeles, where occupants of office buildings noticed their swivel chairs doing a wild shimmy along the floor.
Venture reported two separate shocks lasting about four or five seconds each. Santa Monica reported a second shock shortly after 7:00 last night.
L. L. Pope, Santa Teresa City Building Inspector, made the rounds of the city yesterday afternoon and reported that he found no damage to any building erected under provisions of the new building code. “There was very little structural damage of any kind,” he declared. “It was virtually all confined to old fire walls, some of which were fractured in the earthquake of one year ago…”
I turned and looked up at Dietz. We locked eyes for a moment and his mouth came down on mine. I’d reached a hand up, closing my fist in his hair. He reached a hand down my shirt and rubbed his fingertips across my left breast.
“Print it,” he said hoarsely.
“Oh God,” I breathed.
At the counter, the librarian pulled his glasses down and peered at us over the rims.
Blushing, I straightened my collar and adjusted my shirt. I pressed the button. We picked up an invoice for the photocopy at the desk when we turned in the microfilm. We left the periodicals room without further reference to the two librarians, who seemed to be conversing together about some terribly amusing subject.
“Bronfen. I like that. It’s close enough to Bronte,” I said as I followed him up the stairs. “The parents must have been big on Victorian literature.”
“Possibly,” Dietz said. “I don’t know what it proves at this point.”
On the main floor, we checked back through various city directories. The 1926 edition showed a Maude Bronfen (occupation, widow) at the address listed in the paper. “Shoot,” I said. “I was hoping we’d find Anne.”
Dietz said, “Maude was probably their mother. What now?”
“Let’s try the Hall of Records. It’s just across the street. Maybe we can track down Irene’s birth certificate.”
We paid for the photocopy, left the library, and headed over to the courthouse, crossing the one-way street. Dietz had taken me by the elbow, his gaze divided equally among cars approaching from the left, pedestrians in the general vicinity, and possible vantage points in the event Mark Messinger had chosen this location to pick me off. “So what’s the operating theory here?” I asked.
He considered that for a moment. “Well, if I were altering a document like that, I’d try to keep the changes to a minimum. There’s less chance of screwing up.”
“You think Irene’s first name is real then?”
“Probably. I’d guess the attending physician, date, and time of birth are okay, too, along with the filing date and the name of the registrar or deputy.”
“Why would Agnes change her age? That seems peculiar.”
“Who knows? Maybe she was older than the guy and too vain to have it part of the public record. As long as you’re altering reality, you might as well eliminate anything that doesn’t suit.”
The recorder division of the county clerk’s office is in an annex to the Santa Teresa Courthouse, a ground-floor office in the northwest corner of the building. We cut across the big square of side lawn to the entrance, pushing through the fifteen-foot wood-and-glass door. The ulterior was comprised of an outer office with a counter running along our left, a glossy red tile floor, a table and chairs available for those filling out forms, and on the right, glass display cases mounted on the wall, filled with samples of foreign currency. Behind the counter was a large, open office space broken up by the ubiquitous “action stations” that seem to
characterize every other office I’ve seen of late.
There was one couple at the counter ahead of us, apparently picking up a marriage license. The husband-to-be was one of those skinny guys with a narrow butt and tattoos all up and down his arms. The bride was twice his size and so pregnant she was already into her Lamaze. She clung to the counter, her face damp with perspiration, panting heavily while the clerk completed all the papers in haste.
“You sure you’re okay? We can probably get a wheelchair from someplace,” she said. The clerk was in her sixties and didn’t seem anxious so much as intent on efficiency. Visions of lawsuits were probably dancing in her head. Also, she might not have been certified in midwifery. I wondered if Dietz had any experience in delivery.
The bride, at the pinnacle of a contraction, shook her head mutely. “I’m… fine… unh… I’m fine…” She had a gardenia pinned in her hair. I tried to picture the wedding announcement in the papers. “The bride, in a peau-de-soie maternity smock, was accompanied by her obstetrician…”
“Judge Hopper’s waiting for us upstairs,” the husband said. He smelled of Brylcreem and cigarettes, his blue jeans pleated up around his waist with a length of rope.
The clerk handed over the certificate. “Why don’t I have June get the judge on the phone and have him come down here?”
A second clerk, her eyes rolling, picked up the telephone and made a quick call while the bride crept haltingly toward the door. She seemed to be singing to herself. “Uh… uh… unh…”
The groom didn’t seem that distressed. He simply matched his pace to hers, his gaze pinned on her shuffling feet. “You’re not breathing right,” he said crossly.
The clerk turned to us. “What can I do for you folks?”
Dietz was still staring off at the departing couple with a look of uneasiness.
I held out the copy of the birth certificate. “I wonder if you can help us,” I said. “We suspect maybe this birth certificate’s been tampered with and we’d like to check for the original in Sacramento. Is there any way you can do that? I notice there are some file numbers.”
The clerk held the paper at arm’s length, her thumbnail moving from point to point across the document. “Well, here’s your first problem right here. You see that district number? That’s incorrect. This says Brawley on the face of it, but the district number’s off. Imperial County would be thirteen something. This fifty-nine fifty indicates Santa Teresa County.”
“It does? That’s great,” I said. “You mean you’ll have a copy of it here?”
“Oh sure. That little two in the margin tells you the book number and this number here is the page. Just a minute and I’ll have someone pull the microfilm. Machines are right through there. You just have a seat and someone will be with you directly.”
We waited maybe five minutes and then the second clerk, June, appeared with a microfilm cartridge, which she loaded into the machine.
Once we located the page, it didn’t take us long to find Irene’s name. Dietz was right. The date and time of birth and the physician’s name were the same on both documents. Irene’s name, the ages of both parents, and her mother’s occupation were also the same. Everything else had been altered.
Her father’s name was Patrick Bronfen, his occupation car salesman. Her mother’s first name was Sheila, maiden name Farfell.
“Who the hell is this?” I said with disbelief. “I thought her mother’s name would be Anne.”
“Isn’t Sheila the name Agnes mentioned to the cop who brought her into emergency?”
I turned around and stared at him. “That’s right. I’d forgotten.”
“If it’s true, it might imply that Agnes and Sheila are the same person.”
I made a face. “Sure shoots our Bronte theory. But hey, check this.” I pointed to the screen. The address listed was the same one given for Emily Bronfen, whose death had occurred ten years before Irene’s birth – fourteen years before the tea set had been packed away in the box. I found myself squinting, trying to make sense of it. Dietz seemed equally mystified. What the hell was this?
Chapter 24
*
We paid eleven dollars and waited another ten minutes for a certified copy of Irene’s birth certificate. I didn’t think she’d believe us unless she saw it for herself. As we left the Hall of Records, I paused briefly at the counter, where the clerk who had helped us was sorting through a pile of computer forms.
“Do you have a city map?” I asked.
She shook her head. “The docent might have one at the information booth around the corner on the first floor,” she said. “What street are you looking for? Maybe I can help.”
I showed her the address on the birth certificate. “This says eleven oh-seven Sumner, but I’ve never heard of it. Is there such a street?”
“Well, yes, but the name was changed years ago. Now it’s Concorde.”
“Concorde used to be Sumner?” I said, repeating the information blankly. News to me, I thought. And then I got it. I lowered my head for a moment. “Dietz, that’s what Agnes was talking about in the emergency room. She didn’t say ‘it used to be summer.’ She was saying ‘Sumner.’ That’s where the nursing home is. She knew the street.”
“Sounds good,” Dietz said. He took me by the elbow and we pushed through the double doors, heading back to the public garage where his car was parked.
We were getting close to the answer and I was beginning to fly. I could feel my brain cells doing a little tap dance of delight. I was half-skipping, excitement bubbling out of me as we crossed the street. “I love information. I love information. Isn’t this great? God, it’s fun…”
Dietz was frowning in concentration as he scanned the walkway between the library and the parking structure, unwilling to be distracted from his assessment of the situation. We reached the three-story garage and started climbing the outside stairs.
“What do you think the story is?” he finally asked as we passed the second landing. I was straggling behind him, working hard to keep up. For a man who’d only quit smoking four days before, he was in remarkable shape.
“I don’t know yet,” I said. “Patrick could have been a brother. They lived at the same address. The point is, Emily did die in the earthquake just like Agnes said. Or at least that’s how it looked…”
“But what’s it got to do with Irene Gersh? She wasn’t even born then.”
“I haven’t figured that part out yet, but it has to fit. I think she witnessed an act of violence. It just wasn’t Emily. Let’s go to eleven oh-seven Concorde and see who lives there. Maybe we can get a line on this Bronfen guy.”
“Don’t you want to go talk to Irene about it first?”
“No way. She’s too stressed out. We can fill her in afterwards.”
I arrived at the top level of the structure, heart pounding, out of breath. One of these days, I was going to have to start jogging again. Amazing how quickly the body tends to backslide. When we reached the car, I shifted impatiently from foot to foot while Dietz went through his inspection routine with the Porsche, checking the doors first for any signs of a booby trap, peering at the engine, the underside of the chassis, and up along the wheel mounts. Finally, he unlocked the door on my side and ushered me in. I leaned across the driver’s seat and unlocked his door for him.
He got in and started up the engine. “Lay you dollars to doughnuts, there’s nobody left. If this traumatic event took place in January nineteen forty, you’re talking more than forty years ago. Whatever happened, all the principal players would be a hundred and ten… if any were alive.”
I held my hand out. “Five bucks says you’re wrong.”
He looked at me with surprise and then we shook hands on the bet. He glanced at his watch. “Whatever we do, let’s be quick about it. Rochelle Messinger’s due up here in an hour.”
Pulling out of the parking structure, he cut over one block and headed left on Santa Teresa Street. Concorde was only nine blocks north of
the courthouse, the same quiet tree-lined avenue Clyde Gersh and I had walked yesterday in our search for Agnes. Unless I was completely off, this had to be an area she recognized. Certainly, it was the address given for Emily Bronfen at the time of her death. It was also the house where Irene’s parents resided at the time of her birth ten years later.
Dietz turned right onto Concorde. The nursing home was visible above the treetops, half a block away. I was watching house numbers march upward toward the eleven-hundred mark, my gut churning with a mixture of anticipation and dread. Please let it be there, I thought. Please let us get to the bottom of this…
Dietz slowed and pulled into the curb. He turned the engine off while I stared at the house. It was right next door to the place where Mark Messinger had caught up with me and sprayed the porch with gunfire.
I held a hand out to Dietz without even looking at him. “Pay up,” I said, gaze still pinned on the three-story clapboard house. “I met Bronfen yesterday. I just figured out how I know him. He turned the place into a board-and-care. I met him once before when a friend of mine was looking for a facility for her sister in a wheelchair.” I saw a face appear briefly at a second-floor window. I opened the car door and grabbed my handbag. “Come on. I don’t want the guy to scurry out the back way.”
Dietz was right behind me as we pushed through the shrieking iron gate and went up the front walk, taking the porch steps two at a tune. “I’ll jump in if you need me,” he murmured. “Otherwise, you’re the boss.”
“You may be the only man I ever met who’d concede that without a fight.”
“I can’t wait to see how you do this.”
“You and me both.” I rang the bell. The owner took his sweet time about answering. I really hadn’t even formulated what I meant to say to him. I could hardly pretend to be doing a marketing survey.