by Sue Grafton
"This Quinn girl I mentioned was a ward of the court. A social worker placed her with the Sanders."
Ruel turned and stared at Stacey. "That who you mean? Well, I'll be; I hadn't thought of her in years. Quinn. That sounds right. You should have said so in the first place."
"We heard her name for the first time yesterday. How well did you know her?"
"I knew her to speak to, but not otherwise. Cornell said she fooled around with any boy she met. 'Free with her favors' is how he put it. She'd take 'em up to the Tuley-Belle and misbehave."
"The Tuley-Belle?"
"Construction site outside town. Big condominium complex some fellas started building in 1968. Leon Tuley and Maurice P. Belle. Got it half-done and went bankrupt so the place's sat there since. Kids like it because in parts there's a roof overhead and the walls are up. Plumbing and electrical are tom out, but given what they're up to, I guess you don't need that."
"Wilbur Sanders ever say anything to you about the Quinn girl?"
"I didn't know him well, except as Justine's dad. Cornell was dating her and the families would get together every now and then. Medora wasn't often sober. I felt sorry for Justine. She'd sit there trying to cover up her shame and embarrassment. Meanwhile, Wilbur would excuse himself, come out here, and bend my ear about his sexual exploits. Ask me, he should have paid more attention to his wife."
"And Charisse?"
"I don't know anything about that. Hear Wilbur tell it, he was too much the gent to mention names. Minute they arrived, he'd make excuses and head out here. Always brought a flask of dark rum and we'd smoke our cigarettes. Once he got talking, you could hardly shut him up. Best of my knowledge, he kept his escapades to Palm Springs so Medora wouldn't get wind."
"If she was drinking so much, would she have cared?" I asked.
"Of course she'd have cared! Infidelity doesn't sit well with the ladies. They're apt to tear your head off."
I heard a car pull into the driveway and I turned in time to see Cornell park his white pickup. As he came through the back gate, his three daughters made a run at him and piled into his legs, the pup bouncing along behind them like a basketball. Much squealing and hugging, punctuated by the dog's shrill barks. Cornell extracted himself and headed in our direction, combing his hair with his fingers, tucking in the tail of his shirt where the girls had pulled it loose. He said, "Hey, Dad," with some enthusiasm. To me, he said hi in a tone as flat as a tumbler of two-day-old Coke.
I introduced him to Stacey and the two men shook hands. Stacey said, "We've just been chatting with your dad about Charisse."
Cornell seemed embarrassed by the subject. "Justine told me about that. I was sorry to hear."
"Was she a friend of yours ?"
"Well, no, but I'd see her at school. This was before she got kicked out and went over to Lockaby."
"Did she have a boyfriend?"
"She never went steady with anyone I knew. She dated quite a few guys, various classmates of mine."
"Who would you say offhand?"
Cornell thought about it briefly. "I guess Toby Hecht and George Baum. You might start with them."
Stacey made a note of the names while Cornell peered over his shoulder and pointed. "That's B-A-U-M, not B-O-M-B."
"Got it. And how could I go about getting in touch with these birds? They still around somewhere?"
"George is your best bet. He sells new and used cars over in Blythe. Toby, I don't know about. I haven't talked to him in years."
Ruel had been following the conversation, but now he rose to his feet. "You fellers will excuse me, I got to go see a man about a dog. Nice talkin' to you."
"Same here," Stacey said, touching his head as though tipping his hat.
Ruel took off across the grass, heading for the house while Stacey was saying to Cornell, "How about Wilbur Sanders? You ever see her with him?"
Cornell shifted his weight. He reached in his shirt pocket and took out a pack of cigarettes. He shook one loose and lit it, glancing back to make sure neither Edna nor Ruel was watching him. "I'm sorry, but I don't want to say anything bad about my wife's dad."
Stacey said, "We're not asking you to tell tales. I'm sure he's a fine man."
Cornell didn't seem prepared to go that far. "All I know is she doesn't want to think ill of the man even if he's gone."
"Good point. She doesn't want to think what, that Wilbur cheated on her mom?"
"Now I never said that. He put up with a lot."
"You're talking about Medora's drinking? That'll certainly throw a family into disarray. At the same time, people have been telling us Charisse was so interested in men, we can't help but wonder was she interested in him?"
"I think I've said enough. If I were you, I wouldn't mention this to Justine. She gets touchy on the subject."
After that, Cornell stubbed out his cigarette, resisting any further attempts to probe. I watched Stacey come at the matter from a number of directions, but, try as he might, he couldn't weasel anything more out of him.
Later, with Stacey at the wheel of the rental car, I said, "What was that about? Talk about resistance."
Stacey shook his head. "I can't decide if he was lying about something and doing a piss-poor job, or trying not to tattle and making a sore botch of that."
"How could he be lying? He didn't say anything."
"Maybe you should talk to Justine – you know, woman to woman."
I rolled my eyes. "Oh yeah, right. Like she'd break down and confide in me."
"Well, she might. Meanwhile, I think we better go by the hospital and see Con. First day without a smoke, he'll be climbing the walls."
"What about you? I haven't seen you light your pipe since you arrived."
"I gave it up; part of the deal I made, hanging on to life."
The CCU nurse we'd been dealing with the night before was off duty and wouldn't be back on the floor until 3:00. Winsome as we were, the current charge nurse, Meredith Snow, couldn't be persuaded to let us break the rules. I sat in the waiting area, with its bare end table and four upholstered chairs, while Stacey went in to Dolan's room for the requisite ten-minute visit. In the absence of magazines, I amused myself by cleaning all the woofies, loose hair, and tatty tissues from the bottom of my shoulder bag. In the process, I came across the Quorum phone book that I'd been toting around for days. I sat and thought about the tarp, wondering how to figure out where Ruel bought his. As the entire phone book, white and yellow pages combined, was about the thickness of a modest paperback, I tried the obvious, looking under "Tarpaulins" first. There were two subheadings: "Renting" and "Retail." I wasn't sure anyone would rent a tarpaulin to wrap up a corpse, but I suppose stranger things have happened. Dolan's theory about the killer involved haste and improvisation, so it was always possible a rented tarp was the closest at hand. Ruel didn't rent his, but someone else might.
"Tarpaulins – Renting" referred me to "Rental Service Stores" and "Yards." Of the seven companies listed, four offered heavy equipment: lifts, loaders, backhoes, hand tools, paint sprayers, scaffolding, generators, air compressors, and related items. The remaining three companies were devoted to party supplies, including canopies and tents. I turned a corner of the page down, thinking I might check into them later.
Under "Tarpaulins – Retail" there was one company listed, Diamond Custom Canvas. The boxed advertisement went on at some length in the teeniest print imaginable, listing their products, which included: asphalt, lumber, lumite, mesh, polyethylene, steel haulers, vinyl-coated polyester, vinyl laminates, tarps, welding curtains, screens, blankets, roll systems, and drop cloths. The address was on Roberts, one block over from Main. I was still staring at the ad when Stacey reappeared.
I tucked my finger in the book to mark my place. "You were in there ten minutes? It didn't seem that long."
"Lady came in with a tray to draw blood so I hightailed it out of there." He noticed the phone book. "Good reading."
"Actually, it is," I said.
"Are you going back in?"
"Nah, he's grouchy as all get out. I knew he'd turn sour if he didn't get his fix. I think I'll take a little trip to Blythe and see if I can find this Baum fellow. Shouldn't take long; it's twelve miles. You want to come along?"
"Nah, I'm going to try something else. Why don't you drop me at the motel and I'll pick up Dolan's car? If you're finished by noon, we can hit the Burger King in town and pig out on Whoppers."
"Sounds like a good plan to me."
Diamond Custom Canvas was part of a block of two-story brick buildings, constructed with shared walls, that ran between Twenty-third and Twenty-fourth. There were several warehouses, an abandoned furniture wholesaler, and a discount clothing outlet. Some of the businesses were padlocked shut and the few that were open looked as though they'd fallen on hard times. Diamond was the single exception. Though the location wasn't a magnet for the walk-in trade, both phones were busy. I stood at one end of the counter, listening idly to one of the two clerks, who was engaged in a lengthy discussion about the volume discount on a shipment of lumite asphalt solid tarps. The second clerk finished her conversation, got up, and disappeared through a side door. While I waited for assistance, I took a visual tour of the place.
The interior was one vast, gloomy room, twice as long as it was wide. The pressed-tin ceiling was two stories high, with long banks of hanging fluorescent lights. On the left, an ornate wooden stairway, painted an odd shade of turquoise, curved upward to the second floor. Across the back wall, two courses of glass blocks let in a muted light. I could see water marks streaking down the wall, some long-ago plumbing leak or possibly a hole in the roof.
I picked up and studied a pamphlet that listed the part numbers, cut size, UPC codes, and weights of various twelve-ounce olive-drab tarpaulins. The twenty-by-thirty weighed seventy-nine pounds-tough to tote around, I thought. The tan ten-ounce tarps seemed to be lighter, but I was already worried they wouldn't hold up as well.
The second clerk came out of the back room. Glancing up, she spotted me and crossed to the counter. "May I help you?"
She was probably in her fifties, with heavy eye makeup and dyed black hair that she'd pulled up in a swirl on top. She wore jeans, a sweatshirt, and a pair of black spike-heel boots. Her fingernails were long, perfect ovals, painted dark red with a thin white stripe across each. I was reminded briefly of Iona and I wondered if she'd developed an expertise in nail art.
I said, "I know this is a weird request, but I hope you'll bear with me." I told her about Jane Doe and the tarp that was found when the body came to light. I did a quick summary of our reasons for believing the victim was local and our suspicion that the murder and/or abduction might have taken place down here. "I keep thinking if we could find out about the tarp, we might get a line on the guy."
"You mean what kind of work he did?"
"Something like that. If he did painting or drywall..."
"Not drywall," she said. "Those guys usually use a big roll of paper."
It would help if I knew the material the tarp was made of. Are you talking about duck, cotton, acrylic, or a blend?"
"Well, I don't really know and that's the point. Looking at this brochure, I can see you make hundreds of tarps, so the question's probably absurd."
"Not really. Many of our products fall into other categories, like cargo control-lumber tarps and steel haulers. I don't think you'd mistake either for a painter's drop cloth. They're too big. Too bad you don't have it with you. At least I could tell you if it's one of ours."
"Sorry. They've got it in the property room up north, under lock and key."
"In that case, let's think how else we might help. Most drop cloths are standard, though we do make two grades – eight-or ten-ounce natural. If I showed you, do you think you'd recognize the difference?"
"I could try."
"My name's Elfreida."
"I'm Kinsey. I appreciate your time."
I followed as she came out from behind the counter and clip-clopped across the bare concrete floor to a big worktable where two stacks of folded canvas tarps were sitting side by side. She grabbed a tarp from each stack and opened both across the tabletop, flapping them like bedsheets to shake the folds loose. "Look familiar?"
"It's that one, I think," I said, pointing to the lighter of the two.
"Here's the trick," she said. She held up one edge, showing me the red stitched seam with a tiny square of red in the comer. "This is not a trademark per se, but we use it on everything."
"Oh, wow. I remember that red square from the tarp we have."
Chapter 20
* * *
After I left Diamond's, I returned to the motel. The housecleaning cart was parked on the walk outside my room. The maid had stripped off my sheets and she was using the pile of soiled linens to prop the door open while she went about her work. I peered in, trying to get a sense of where she was in the process. My plastic-covered mattress was bare and a flat stack of clean sheets rested at the foot of the bed. I could hear her in the bathroom with her portable radio tuned to a Spanish-language station. On the night table the message light was blinking on my phone. I heard the toilet flush and the maid emerged with my damp towel across her arm. She toted her carryall of cleaning products.
I said, "Oh, hi. Sorry to interrupt. How much longer will you be?" She smiled broadly and nodded, saying, "Hokay. Sí. Una momenta."
"I'll come back," I said. I trotted across the parking lot to the office and went in.
The desk clerk was perched on her swivel stool, still chewing bubble gum, her skirt hiked up, swinging one foot while she read the inner pages of the National Enquirer.
"My message light's blinking. Can you tell me who called?"
"How should I know? Pick up the phone and dial 6."
"The maid's in my room so I'm here to ask you."
The look she gave me said she was feeling put-upon. "What room?"
"125."
With exaggerated patience, she set the paper aside, swiveled her stool to face her computer, tapped on the keyboard, and read from the screen. She chewed her gum briefly and then her face brightened. "Oh, yeah. I remember now. You got a call from a dentist, Dr. Spears. What's the problem with your teeth?"
"Did he leave a number?"
She blew a bubble and curled it back into her mouth on the end of her tongue, waiting to pop it after she'd closed her lips. "He did, but I didn't bother to write it down. It's in the book."
"When you first took this job, did they train you?"
She stopped chewing. "To do what?"
"Simple clerical skills, phone etiquette, manners – anything like that ?"
"Nah. Know what I'm paid? Minimum wage. Three dollars and thirty-five cents an hour. Besides, I don't need manners. My uncle , owns the place. My name's Geraldine, in case you feel like filing a complaint."
I let the matter drop.
I went out the office door and turned right, moving to the bank of pay phones I'd seen near the ice machine. I opened my bag and fished out the Quorum phone book and a handful of change. I looked up the dentist's number and dialed, receiver tucked between my shoulder and my tilted head while I put the directory back in my bag.
When Mrs. Gary picked up, I said, "Hi, Mrs. Gary. Kinsey Millhone here. I can't believe I caught you in the office on a Saturday."
"I'm just catching up on insurance claims. This is about the only time I have."
"Dr. Spears left me a message. Is he there by any chance?"
"He's off playing golf, but I can tell you why he called. He found the chart you asked about. I've got it sitting on my desk."
"Tell him I'm in love."
"He'll be thrilled to death," she said.
I laughed. "Could you do me a favor? Could you slip it in a manila envelope and mail it to Sergeant Detective Joe Mandel at the Santa Teresa County Sheriffs Department? He'll talk to the forensic odontologist and they'll handle it from there." I gave her the address, adding my copious thanks to her and
to Dr. Spears. I hung up the phone, offering up small, fervent prayers.
I had to believe that a comparison of his records with the Jane Doe maxilla and mandible would confirm Charisse Quinn's identity. At the same time, I knew reliance on such records could prove inconclusive. A chart might contain errors, or it might be incomplete if details of previous or subsequent dental work had been omitted for some reason. A positive ill might take weeks, but once it was confirmed, the guys could chase down the paperwork on Charisse's birth parents through Riverside County Social Services. In the meantime, I was feeling good. We seemed to be making progress in spite of the odds.
When I returned to my room, my door was closed and the maid's cart was halfway down the corridor. I let myself in and tossed my purse and jacket on the bed. I retrieved my duffel from the closet and took it over to the desk, digging deep to the bottom, where I'd stashed my copy of the murder book. I sat and went through it page by page. I knew what I was looking for, but not where it was. Twenty pages in, I came across the report, dated August 1, 1969, detailing the arrest of Frankie Miracle, who'd given the deputy his home address in Blythe, California. No mention of Venice, where the murder had taken place. Under occupation, he'd classified himself as a handyman/helper. For his employer, he'd listed Lennie Root, R&R Painting, with an address and phone number in Hazelwood Springs. I turned down a corner of the page and moved on. I was curious about the purported call from Charisse's mother that Stacey'd mentioned earlier.
Fifty pages further on, I found the follow-up report, dated 8-9-69/ Approx. 1400 hrs., in which Deputy Joe Mandel had entered information about a call he received from the Riverside County Sheriffs substation in Quorum. A Detective Orbison had contacted the Lompoc substation in response to the teletype regarding the Jane Doe homicide victim whose description matched that of a missing juvenile named Charisse Quinn. She'd left home on July 27. The Riverside County Sheriffs Department noted her DOB as 4-10-52; height: 5'3"; weight: 120 lbs. Blond hair, blue eyes, pierced ears, and extensive dental work. Her foster mother was listed as Medora Sanders, at the address where I'd had my conversation with her. According to Orbison, she'd come in my morning of August 9, to file the missing-persons report.