Sue Grafton

by Four Sue Grafton Novels(Q, R, S;T)

  However.

  Ty Eddings had given me one small lead to pursue. If anyone was going to know who once owned a black Chevrolet pickup it would be the man who sold them. I’d talked to Chet Cramer twice and he’d struck me as a nice enough man. He knew his inventory and his customers, and he was passionate about both. What harm would it do to run the question by him? For the second time that afternoon, I picked up my jacket and shoulder bag and went out to my car.

  As I’d anticipated, Cramer was on the premises. In the interest of snagging business, the dealership stayed open until 9:00 every night. Chet told me that at the end of a hard day’s work (and a couple of stiff drinks), many a man found himself in the mood to look at new cars. What better reward for a job well done than to sit in a red-hot Corvette, with a salesman fawning over you, demonstrating all the bells and whistles, offering to cut you a deal. You might pretend you were window-shopping until you realized you could actually drive a new car home.

  Cramer was schmoozing with a married couple when I walked in. He was such an old hand at selling that I doubted they even realized what was happening. He had Winston fetch the keys and he watched with something close to parental pride when Winston went off with them on a test drive. He caught sight of me and greeted me warmly, perhaps thinking I was finally in the mood to buy.

  I said, “I’m here to test your memory. I’m trying to find out who owned a black late-model Chevy pickup truck back in 1953.”

  He smiled. “Half the men in town,” he said. “Let’s go up to my office and I can check.”

  “Glory be. You still have records from that era?”

  “I have records dating back to 1925, the year I got into the business.”

  I climbed the stairs behind him and followed him to his office. He opened a door and led me into a storage area easily as large as his office. File cabinets lined the walls on three sides, each drawer neatly labeled with dates and vehicle types.

  I said, “I don’t believe this.”

  “Well, I’ll tell you why I keep these. Every vehicle I sell represents a future sale. Customer comes in, I can talk about the cars he’s owned and every servicing he’s had. I can compare last year’s model to this year’s, compare this year’s model to the one he was driving six years ago. Good points and bad. He knows he can trust me because I have the facts at my fingertips, and I’ve taken the time to look them up before he walked in the door. Guy dies, I talk to his son, reminisce about the old man, and maybe sell him a car as well.”

  Without mentioning Ty by name or detailing the circumstances, I told him what I knew.

  Cramer regarded me with interest. “So you’re saying this fellow would have recognized the truck because his father had the 1948 model.”

  “Right. And it couldn’t have been later than 1953 because the ’54 models wouldn’t have come out as early as July.”

  “You’re correct on that point. So a span of five years. That shouldn’t be too hard. Have a seat and I’ll pull what I have. There’s a tin of chocolate chip cookies on my desk if you want to help yourself. My wife made them. Caroleena. She’s a fabulous cook.”

  The cookies were incredible, so I treated myself to another while I waited for him. Five minutes later he emerged from the room with an armload of files, saying, “I keep these cross-referenced. Customer’s name with the type of vehicle he’s bought from me before. I don’t go so far as to color code, but I can lay hands on the contract for every vehicle I’ve sold. What I have here is the Advance Design Series, 1949 through 1953.”

  He handed me a scratch pad, pen, and two of the files while he took the other three. We sat and went through them contract by contract, checking the color of the pickup, noting down the names of anyone who’d bought a black one. Twenty-five minutes later, we each had a list, though mine wasn’t at all enlightening. He got up and made copies of both lists and gave them to me.

  I ran my eye down the names on his list. “No one I recognize.”

  He shrugged. “The truck might have been repainted.”

  “In that case, we’d have no way to find the owner.”

  “Another possibility, the fella might have borrowed the truck. In those days, nobody locked their doors, and half the time people left their keys in the ignition.”

  “I’ve heard that before and it actually makes sense. You go out to dig a grave, you don’t want use your own truck complete with California plates. Well. I’m sorry I wasted your time.”

  “I guess every lead you get isn’t going to pay off.”

  “That’s for sure. Mind if I pick your brain about something else?”

  “I’ll help if I can. It’s not like I have total recall of anything much beyond this dealership.”

  “Understood. I’ve been digging and I’ve come up with something quirky.”

  “That being?”

  “Hairl Tanner’s will.” I went on to tell him what I’d discovered about the terms.

  “I hadn’t heard about that. Sounds like the old man had a mad-on about something. Wonder what it was?”

  “I think Jake and Violet had a fling and he found out.”

  Some of the complacency faded from his eyes. “I don’t believe it.”

  “What, that they had a fling or that Tanner found out?”

  “Violet and Jake. I can’t imagine such a thing.”

  “Why not? Jake must have been handsome. I mean, he’s not bad-looking now, and I can just imagine how he must have looked back then. His wife was dying of uterine cancer so his sex life couldn’t have amounted to much. If he ran into Violet at the Moon, what with all the drinking that went down, it wouldn’t be surprising if the two of them stumbled into a relationship. From what I’ve heard, she went after just about every man she saw.” I was so intent on persuading him that I hadn’t paid attention to his reaction. Now I caught a glimpse of his face and I flashed on the fact that he was married to a bloated Violet Sullivan clone. He had access to any number of pickup trucks and I had no idea what he’d been doing with his time in the days before she died. How dumb could I get? Here I sat, about to lay out the evidence I’d gathered, when for all I knew, he was as capable of killing her as anyone else.

  “Go on,” he said.

  I backpedaled. “That’s about it. I don’t have any proof. I was hoping you might’ve heard a rumor to that effect.”

  “I did not and it would grieve me to learn it was true. Mary Hairl was a lovely woman, and if Jake fooled around on her he should be ashamed.”

  “Well. I trust you’ll keep the notion to yourself. It’s pure speculation on my part and I wouldn’t want him to suffer your ill-opinion if he’s innocent.”

  He straightened up abruptly, dismissing me with a wave. “I best get back to work. I’ve got things to do.”

  “Sure. Sorry to keep you. I appreciate your help.” We shook hands across the desk. As I was leaving his office, I glanced back and noticed he hadn’t moved.

  I went down the big staircase to the ground-floor showroom. I wanted to have a conversation with Winston to see if he had any reason to believe there was a link between Violet and Jake. He was in his office but so deeply engrossed in a telephone conversation he didn’t look up. I went out to the parking lot, where I unlocked my car and slid under the wheel. I was reaching for the ignition when the penny finally dropped. For days I’d been convinced I was missing something obvious, but the more I tried to pin it down, the more elusive it became. Now, without warning, I finally got what it was.

  The dog.

  Daisy’s car was in the drive when I arrived at the house. I’d returned the key to its hiding place beneath the flowerpot. Rather than walk in unannounced, I rang the bell politely and waited on the porch until she opened the door. I took one look at her and knew something was wrong. She was still wearing her work clothes. The pallor in her complexion had shifted to the gray end of the spectrum and her eyes were pinched with tension. I didn’t think she’d been weeping, but she’d suffered a shock.

  �
��What is it?”

  She put a hand against her mouth and shook her head. Like a sleepwalker, she crossed to an upholstered chair and sank down on the edge. I closed the front door behind me. I moved to the sofa and sat down with my knees nearly touching hers. “Can you tell me what it is?”

  She nodded, but said nothing. I had to wait her out. Whatever it was, she’d been hit hard. A minute passed and she sighed. Was her father dead?

  Another minute passed.

  When she finally spoke, her voice was so low I had to lean close to hear. “Detective Nichols was here. He left a few minutes ago, and when you rang the bell, I thought he’d come back.”

  “Bad news?”

  She nodded and fell silent again. “They found two brown paper bags filled with my mother’s clothes in the trunk. It’s clear she was leaving us or at least she believed she was.”

  “You must have guessed as much,” I said.

  “That’s not it.”

  I put a hand on her arm. “Take your time. It’s fine. I’m not going anywhere.”

  “He said if there was any way to avoid telling me he would, but he was worried word would leak out and he didn’t want me to hear it from anyone else.”

  I waited.

  “The techs went over the car.”

  I waited.

  She took a deep breath and exhaled with an audible sound. “When the pathologist peeled the curtain away from her body, they realized my mother’s hands were bound behind her back. They think she was alive for some time. It looks like the dog was killed with a shovel they found in the bottom of the hole once they got the car out. It’s possible the guy knocked her out and he put her in the car, thinking she was dead. At some point she must have come to and realized what was going on.”

  She stopped, fumbling in her pocket for a tissue. She blew her nose. “Even tied up, she’d tried to claw her way free. Her fingernails were broken off and some were caught in the upholstery fabric. There were tiny shards of glass embedded in the bones of her heels. She managed to kick out the window, but by then he must have started filling in the hole.”

  She paused, struggling. All I could do was look on, allowing her to take whatever time she needed. The air felt heavy, and I could sense the weight of the darkness Violet must have known. Why scream for help when the silence would have been profound, thick yards of soil muffling any sound? The blackness would have been absolute.

  Daisy went on, addressing her remarks to the crumbled tissue. “I asked him. I asked…what it would have been like for her. How she died. He said carbon dioxide poisoning. I forget some of it…the technical stuff. He said basically, how deeply you breathe is regulated by your arterial oxygen pressure and carbon dioxide tension, some kind of pH that controls the reflexes in your lungs and chest wall. If there’s not enough oxygen in the mix your breathing picks up. Your body has to have oxygen so it’s compelling…this instinctive drive to take in air. Her heart would have started racing and her body heat would have spiked. She’d sweat. She’d be having chest pains that would only get worse. She’d breathe faster and faster, but every breath she took would use up more oxygen and produce more CO2. She’d start hallucinating. He said her systems would shut down, but eventually there might have been a kind of peace…once she resigned herself to her fate.

  “Can you imagine dying like that? All I can think is how scared she must have been, how cold and dark it was, and how hopeless she felt.”

  I found myself veering away from the images, searching for safety. I could understand the bind Nichols had been in. Once he laid out the facts, that’s the picture she’d carry for the rest of her life. But if word ever reached Daisy from an unofficial source, she’d be reeling anyway. Adding his betrayal to the horror would only confound any healing she might hope for in time.

  Daisy blew her nose again and moved on to something else. I could see the shift. There was only so much she could process. Little by little she’d assimilate the information, but it was going to take a very long time. She picked up six round black circles that were lying on the table. She said, “He gave me these.”

  “What are they?”

  “My mother’s bracelets. Sterling silver. I’ll polish them and wear them, the last thing I’ll ever have from her.” She set them back on the table. “I thought you’d be gone by now.”

  “Me too.”

  “Are you finished?”

  “Not quite. Let’s go sit in the yard. We need space.” I’d nearly said “air” but I’d caught myself in time. Daisy must have heard the unspoken word because she winced.

  We sat together on the back patio in the waning light of day while I laid out my reasons for concluding that Foley was in no way connected to her mother’s death.

  “That’s some comfort,” she said.

  “Not much, but it’s the best I can do. The rest of it—what happened to your mother—makes my blood run cold.”

  “Please let’s change the subject. Every time I think about it I feel like I’m suffocating myself. What’s left to do? You said you weren’t quite finished.”

  “I’m wondering where your mother got the dog?”

  The question wasn’t anything she expected. “It was a gift.”

  “From whom?”

  “I never heard. What difference does it make?”

  “Did the dog have papers?”

  “You mean, was she pedigreed? I think so. Why?”

  “Because a purebred Pomeranian must have cost a fair penny, even in those days. I think the guy—the mystery lover—bought her the pup. That’s why she doted on the little bugger, because the dog came from him.”

  She thought about it. “Yes, I can see that. You have anyone in mind?”

  “I’ve got a feeling about Jake sitting in the middle of my gut. We know she took him to small-claims court because a dog of his killed hers.”

  “I remember that. A toy poodle named Poppy. Mom had taken her outside. Jake’s pit bull attacked her and killed her on the spot. Mom was beside herself.”

  “So maybe he thought giving her the new pup was a way of making it up to her.”

  “Are you going to ask him?”

  “I think not. There’s no way I can force him to tell the truth. I’d like to track down the breeder and find out who paid for the dog. I may not have any luck, but I think it’s worth a few calls. There are still lots of people around who were part of the picture back then.”

  “I’ll make supper. We have to eat.”

  While Daisy puttered in the kitchen, I sorted through my file and pulled the photocopies of the Serena Station and Cromwell business listings for 1952. There were no breeders. Damn. Nothing’s easy in this world. I did count two pet hospitals, five veterinarians, and three pet-grooming shops. I hauled out the local phone book and did a second search, coming up this time with still no dog breeders, six pet hospitals, fifteen grooming shops, and twenty-seven veterinarians. By comparing addresses, I could see that none of the earlier pet-related enterprises had survived to the present day. I didn’t picture a grooming shop being passed down tenderly from father to son, but I did think a profitable business might be bought and sold over the years and still retain the original name. Not so here.

  I decided to fold pet stores into the mix, and I started making calls, telling my story until I had it down pat. I couldn’t think of a reason why anyone would want information about the sale of a pedigreed Pomeranian in the spring of ’53, so I was forced to tell the truth. Geez, I hate that. “The dog was killed some years ago and for reasons too complicated to go into, I’m looking for the breeder. This would have been the spring of 1953. Do you know if someone was breeding Pomeranians in the area back then?”

  The responses varied from curt to conversational, long stories of much-loved dogs and how they perished, tales of cats crossing state lines to reconnect with owners after long-distance moves. There were more succinct replies:

  “No clue.”

  “Can’t help.”

  “Sorry, the
boss is gone for the day and I’ve only worked here three weeks.”

  “You might try Dr. Water’s Pet Hospital out on Donovan Road.”

  “I already talked to him, but thanks.”

  “What makes you think it was someone around here. Pomeranians are bred and sold all over the country. The dog could have come from another state.”

  “I’m aware of that. I was thinking along the lines of an impulse buy. You know, you pass a pet store, you glance in the window, and there’s the cutest little pup you’ve ever seen.”

  I chatted with veterinarians and vet’s assistants, pet-store owners, clerks, and dog groomers. I felt as though my tongue were starting to swell. I was on call number twenty-one when the receptionist at a twenty-four-hour emergency facility dropped the first helpful suggestion I’d heard: “If I were you, I’d try Animal Control. They might keep records going back that far, especially if you’re talking about a puppy mill and there was ever a complaint.”

  “Thanks. I’ll do that.”

  As it turned out, Animal Control kept no such files. The man who answered the phone was apologetic, and I thought for a moment that would be the end of it, but he said, “What’s this about?”

  I went through my truncated account at the end of which there was a moment of quiet. “You know who I think you’re looking for? There was a woman who operated a boarding facility about six miles out Highway 166, right where it intersects Robinson Road. I believe she got into breeding Pomeranians in the early fifties, though it didn’t come to much. Rin Tin Tin was the popular dog in that day.”

  “Is she still in business?”