The interior was dusky, with just a little natural light outlining the drawn front drapes and another wedge of it coming through a doorway opposite the window. In the air was a faint, spicy-sweet smell—potpourri. My mother kept the stuff around and it was a childhood scent I'd never forgotten. I shut the door, felt along the wall until I located a light switch. It lit up two lamps, one on an end table and the other atop a writing desk. I stood looking around, getting a feel of the place.
The living room was tastefully furnished, though in a style that didn't appeal to me. White wicker and light maplewood furniture. Wallpaper and drapery in little flower patterns. Some hanging ferns in wicker baskets; a couple of other plants, already in need of water and sunlight, on wicker stands. A big pottery bowl full of the potpourri. An even bigger stuffed toy duck, patterned in the same fabric as the drapery, with a fluffy bow tied around its neck. All done in pink and light blues and dominant white. Everything arranged just so, in such harmonious accord that I wondered if she'd had a decorator do it. Probably not; from what I'd learned about her so far, she was not the decorator type.
The carpet was white pile, very clean. It made me want to check my back trail for dirty footprints as I crossed it. In the dining area the floor was bare parquet, partially covered by a rag rug in pinks and blues. Maplewood table and chairs, maple breakfront with a display of old-fashioned flower-patterned plates on bent-wire stands. Nothing else.
Kitchen. A smaller rag rug on the floor. Pottery bowls, copper pots, decorative baskets, two more hanging ferns. The sink and all the fixtures gleamed as brightly as if they had been polished with some kind of shine-enhancer.
Bathroom. Still another rag rug, a hanging fuschia. And the same gleam on the fixtures. Even the shelves inside the medicine cabinet sparkled, the items on them set in precise rows.
Bedroom, the last of the apartment's rooms. Window edged with frilly white curtains and overlooking a small rear garden. Brass bed with an organdy spread and throw pillows trimmed in lace, cherrywood rocker, cherrywood cabinet hiding the blind eye of a TV set, matching dresser and night-stands. A low brass bookcase sat next to an open mirror-doored closet, the topmost of its shelves filled with a set of books in red leatherette bindings—the complete works of Steinbeck. The other two shelves held paperbacks and a few hardcovers, all of which were either historical fiction or biographies of historical figures. Like me, Grady Haas seemed more comfortable with the past than with the present or future.
Arranged on the dresser were another bowl of potpourri, a white satin jewelry box, and a few assorted perfume and cologne bottles. On one of the nightstands was a hardcover book—John Jakes's California Gold—from which protruded a fat cardboard bookmark shaped like a duck; on the other night-stand were two ornately framed photographs, one of her father and the other of a thin, dark woman I recognized from the photos in her father's house. Her mother.
On the way back to the living room I thought: Somebody's been here since she left. Somebody else who doesn't belong.
It was not any one thing; it was the cumulative effect of several little things. Grady Haas was a meticulous housekeeper, and meticulous in her personal habits as well. A place for everything and everything in its place. Except that everything wasn't in its place. That could have been the result of haste in quitting here last Friday, but I didn't think so. Meticulous people are meticulous even in times of hurry and stress; it's an automatic response with them. She would not have taken the time to pack a bag, as she had obviously done, and then gone away leaving her home in its present state.
In the living room papers were strewn over the surface of the maple writing desk; a few others were on the floor underneath. Two of the desk drawers were open a few inches. A drawer was open in the breakfront in the dining area, and so were drawers in one of the bedroom nightstands and the dresser. Inside the bedroom closet, a storage box that had been lifted off an upper shelf sat on the floor, its lid off, its contents disarranged. The clincher was the photographs of her mother and father. Both had been lying flat instead of upright, and the cardboard backs were loose in the frames—worked free to see if anything was hidden there or if there was writing on the backs of the photos.
Somebody hunting for something, I thought. A room-by-room search by a person who had his emotions under control but who didn't really care if Grady came back and realized he'd been there.
Why? Looking for what?
I scanned through the papers on the desk. This year's paid bills, receipts, cancelled checks. No personal correspondence of any kind. I inventoried each of the drawers without finding anything of interest—and without finding either a Rolodex or an address book, even though the desk was where she kept her telephone. The searcher might have taken one or the other. More likely, there hadn't been one to take. A person who has no friends, who shuns social activities, would keep in her head or in a little book in her purse what few addresses and telephone numbers she needed.
I searched the rest of the room, even going so far as to lift cushions and get down on all fours to probe under furniture. Nothing. Nothing for me, either, in the dining area or kitchen. The storage box in the bedroom closet was filled with older papers, envelopes containing Grady's income-tax records for the past two years, and a packet of Christmas and birthday cards tied with a pink ribbon. All but two of the cards were signed "Your Dad" and "Love, Mary Ellen"; the other two— one birthday, one Christmas—bore the words "With everything good and sweet, always, Todd" in a careful hand. Apparently Grady had a small sentimental streak. And yet, I'd seen nothing else here that linked her to her roots in the Salinas Valley. No other photos, no school yearbooks, no childhood mementoes. If she'd kept any such things, they were probably still in San Bernado; she had limited space here. Or was the reason that she shunned reminders of a youth that was painful to her?
The remainder of the closet was in order, except that a few of the articles of clothing on hangers were rumpled, as if the searcher had been feeling through pockets. Grady's taste in clothes matched her taste in interior design: prints and pastels, mostly, with a few plain whites mixed in. The dresser held no revelations; neither did the nightstand on which the photographs lay. The drawer in the other nightstand contained a half-empty package of Trojan condoms. The condoms surprised me a little, more than they should have. Hell, she was thirty-one years old; did I expect her to be a virgin just because she lived a solitary life and preferred the past to the present? I examined the package, but there was no way of telling how long ago it had been bought. Back when she was dating Todd Bellin, maybe. Or last month or last week.
Frustrated, I returned to the living room. There was nothing here to explain Grady's run home, or why someone had come to search the apartment. Or to indicate if the searcher had found whatever it was he was looking for. Or to tell me if Grady had taken something with her when she left.
I poked my head out into the lobby; still empty, the building still quiet. Then I got down on one knee to examine the locking mechanism on the door. It was a deadbolt, which meant that forcing it would have required effort and would have left telltale marks. There were no marks. The searcher had to have a key, then. Given to him by Grady, recently or sometime in the past? Stolen from her?
I set the deadbolt, went out into the lobby and closed the door and tested it to make sure it was locked. Behind the staircase, I noticed then, was an unmarked door that I hadn't seen on the way in. Grady's apartment key opened that one too. More stairs, this set leading into the basement. I found a light switch and descended.
Musty and gloomy, like all basements, it was concrete-floored. At the back end, another door led into the garden. Against the wall opposite the stairs, three screened and gated storage cages held the tenants' larger personal belongings.
Each of the cages was numbered and padlocked. But the padlock on number one wouldn't keep anybody out. One of its staples had been neatly sawn through with a hacksaw blade, then set back in place through its hasp. You had to step up close to see the damage.
There was not much inside. A Schwinn bicycle, a large leather suitcase that looked to be part of a set, two extra chairs and a table leaf for Grady's dining room set, a folding cot that had been bought new and seldom used since. And half a dozen storage cartons, the tops open or loosely closed on all of them, the contents pawed through. One contained more old files dating back several years, another softcover books, a third extra bedding, a fourth dishes, a fifth pots and pans, and the sixth figurines and pewter items and other gewgaws that had once been carefully wrapped in tissue. The box of files had received the most thorough going-over. But if there'd been anything to find, the searcher had made off with it.
I replaced the sawn padlock on the cage door, went back up into the lobby. I had an urge to search Grady's apartment again, but it was an urge born of frustration and I didn't give in to it. Instead I walked out into the vestibule and looked at the names on the other two mailboxes.
The second-floor apartment was occupied by M. Norman and C. Tagliozzi; the third-floor tenant, or tenants, was named Voorhees. Maybe one of them could tell me something. But when I rang first one bell and then the other, I got no response. I'd been alone in the building the whole time.
Chapter 5
The office was locked up tight, the steam heat still turned off: Eberhardt hadn't put in an appearance yet, even though it was past ten-thirty. He was a chronic latecomer, and since his wedding madness he'd been even more erratic. The backlog of work on his desk had grown to alarming proportions; I would have to farm some of it out while he was away on his fancy Hawaiian honeymoon.
Irritated, I put the heat on and made coffee and checked for messages. Then I called Arlo Haas. He said things were the same there. I asked him where Grady did her banking. Bank of America, he said, just as she always had, but he wasn't sure which branch. He could find out quickly, though; she'd already gone off into the hills and she hadn't taken her purse with her.
He called back within fifteen minutes. Her bank was the Kearney Street branch, in the Financial District, near where Intercoastal Insurance had its offices. Haas wanted to know if I was getting anywhere yet, if I'd gone to her apartment— asking the questions reluctantly, as though he didn't want to be pushy, but asking them anyway because he couldn't restrain himself. I told him, gently, that I'd contact him as soon as I had any information to relate. To his credit, he let it go at that.
I got B of A's Kearney Street branch number out of the directory. The woman who answered my call sounded young and out of breath, as if she'd had to run a long distance to get to the phone. I said, "Good morning. Can you tell me, please, if you have a Mr. Todd Bellin employed there?"
"Yes. Yes we do."
"In what capacity?"
"He's one of our tellers. But he isn't in today."
"Oh? How come?"
"The flu or something. He didn't come in yesterday either. May I take a message?"
I told her no, no message, and rang off. So Bellin was off work this week too. Coincidence? Or was there some connection between his absence and Grady's sudden flight?
I looked up Bellin's name in the directory. He was listed; the address was Twenty-first Street, and from the number, I judged the location to be at the southern edge of the Mission District, only a couple of miles from here. I was making a note of the address, and of the telephone number in case I needed it, when Eberhardt blew in.
He wore a half-frazzled, half-preoccupied expression, and his appearance was even more rumpled than usual. His suit needed pressing, his shirt needed washing, his tie needed to go to Goodwill. He'd given himself a patchy shave this morning, missing an entire little thicket of stubble on the left side of his jaw. And he'd only combed about three-quarters of his hair; a hunk of it stood straight up in back, flapping when he moved like a tattered gray pennant.
"Somebody break your alarm clock?" I asked him.
"Don't start in on me. I got a lot of things on my mind."
"None of which have to do with work."
"I said don't start on me. You pick up your tux yet?"
"Now you're starting on me."
"Did you or didn't you?"
"Not yet. I'll get it before I go home tonight."
He grunted something unintelligible and went to pour himself some of the coffee I'd made. Then he said, "Rehearsal, Friday night at the church. Eight sharp. For Chrissake don't forget."
"Eb, will you ease off a little? Give yourself a break, and the rest of us too."
"I don't know what you're talking about."
"The hell you don't."
"You think a wedding like this just happens by itself? Somebody's got to make sure everything gets done."
"Sure. But not by badgering people and changing details at the last minute. You've changed your mind more often than you change your underwear."
"Very funny. See how hard I'm laughing?"
"It's the truth, my friend, and you know it."
He didn't have an answer for that. But he was glowering as he moved to his desk, and when he sat down he did it agitatedly enough to slosh coffee over some of the papers littering its top. He muttered something angry and turned the glower on me.
"See what you made me do?" he said.
I laughed at him. He didn't like that, but he didn't say anything about it. He pretended to be busy mopping up the coffee spill with his handkerchief.
The mood I was in, I felt like needling him a little. I said, "What color tuxes did you order?"
"Black. Red tie, red cummerbund."
"You sure that's what you want?"
"Sure I'm sure. Why?"
"Well, I thought maybe you'd prefer white. To match the gown you tried to get Bobbie Jean to wear."
Dark silence. Then, "She tell you about that?"
"Doesn't matter who told me. Dumb ideas get around fast."
"It's not a dumb idea. Brides are supposed to wear white."
"Virgin brides."
"Virgins don't have a monopoly on white," he said defensively. "You sound like Bobbie Jean. A suggestion, that's all it was, and you two make a federal case out of it."
"You got any other brilliant suggestions lurking in that fertile brain of yours?"
"Just one," he said. "How about you stick your head up your ass and whistle 'Yankee Doodle'?"
"You know what I like most about you, Eb? Your dignity. Even when the heat's on, you're a paragon of poise, erudition, and devastating wit."
"Fuck you," he said.
I laughed at him so hard this time he got up, stormed out of the office, and slammed the door behind him.
* * * * *
Todd Bellin's address turned out to be one of two flats in an old wood-frame building half a block off Potrero Avenue, directly opposite San Francisco General Hospital. Fringe of the Mission, all right—a downscale, mixed-bag neighborhood dominated by Latins, with a sprinkling of Lebanese and Asian merchants and a spray of Anglo pensioners, old-line blue-collar families, and low-salaried young couples and singles. Some of the more solid Victorians in the area had been refurbished and attractively repainted; too many of the other structures were being allowed to decay. Bellin's was one of the latter, though not so long ago some misguided soul had attempted to spruce up its sagging facade with a coat of paint. The effect—a sort of pink with turd-brown trim—was the same as if you slapped too much rouge and mascara on a doddery harridan: an embarrassment and an eyesore.
I parked among some wind-gathered litter across the street and went over into its narrow vestibule. There were no mailboxes; each of the two doors had a mail slot cut in it and a different street number painted above. From the arrangement of the doors I judged that Bellin's was the upstairs flat, the one with both its fronting windows blinded by heavy muslin drapes. I prodded the bell button alongside his door, setting off a defective set of chimes—one squeaky discordant note in the middle and another at the end.
The door stayed shut. After thirty seconds I rang the squeaky chimes a second time; waited another thirty sec
onds and tried once more. Nobody home. Which didn't have to mean anything significant. Maybe he was just playing hooky from his job this week; people do that all the time. Even me, every now and then.
I turned out of the vestibule, started across the street. And as I did I happened to glance back at the building, the way you do—just in time to see a pale face peering out between a slit in one set of drapes upstairs. An instant later the face was gone and the drapes were tightly joined again.
I got into my car, thinking: So he's home after all. Just not dealing with visitors . . . or maybe it's strangers he's not dealing with.
Well?
* * * * *
The San Francisco offices of Intercoastal Insurance were housed on four floors of a newish high-rise on Kearney Street. Their damage claims department, according to the lobby directory, was located on the lowest of the four. An ultrafast elevator disgorged me into a Spartan reception area— four chairs, one table, one asymmetrical desk with telephone intercom system, one receptionist—done up in shimmery pale-green hues that made me feel as though I had stepped into an underwater enclosure instead of one fifteen stories in the air. The receptionist spoiled the aquatic illusion, though. He was about twenty-two, had a face like a blond rhino without its horn, and lisped when he talked.
I gave him my name and one of my business cards and asked to see Lisa Fisher on a business matter concerning Grady Haas. Yes, I knew Ms. Haas was on vacation; it was Ms. Fisher I wanted to see. No, I didn't have an appointment. Yes, it was a matter of some importance. He told me to have a seat and he would see if Ms. Fisher was available. I had a seat. Ms. Fisher was available, it turned out, but by the clock on one wall eight minutes had passed before she appeared through an inner door.
She was not much older than the lisping rhino; thin, pale, with lusterless brown hair sitting astride her narrow skull in a tidy pile. She wore granny glasses and a dark blue suit that emphasized the angular planes of her body. When I handed her another of my cards she stared at it for five seconds before she said, with her lips pulled into a little moue, "Are you here on company business?"
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