by Sue Grafton
Henry smiled. “She says I’m sitting on a gold mine. I paid ten-five for this place in 1945, convinced it was going to put me in the poor house.”
“Henry’s offered me a tour. I hope you don’t mind if we take a minute for that.”
“Go right ahead. I’ll be fine.”
The two left the kitchen, moving through the dining room to the living room. I could track their progress as he showed her through the place, the conversation becoming largely inaudible when they reached the bedroom he used as a den. He had two other bedrooms, one facing the street, the other looking out onto his garden in the rear. There were two full baths and a half-bath off the entrance. I could tell she was being complimentary, exclaiming in a way that probably had some dollar signs attached.
When they returned to the kitchen, the subject segued from real estate to housing starts and economic trends. She could talk downturns, yields on government bonds, and consumer confidence with the best of them. I was a teeny tiny bit intimidated by her confidence, but that was my problem, not his.
We finished our drinks, and Henry put the empty glasses in the sink while Charlotte excused herself and retreated to the nearest bathroom. He said, “What do you think?”
“I like her. She’s smart.”
“Good. She seems nice and she’s well informed—qualities I appreciate.”
“Me, too,” I said.
When Charlotte returned, her lipstick had been brightened and she had a fresh dusting of blusher on her cheeks. She gathered her handbag and the two of us preceded Henry out the door, allowing him a moment to lock up.
“Could we take a quick look at the studio? Henry told me he designed the space and I’d love to see what he did.”
I made a face. “I should probably tidy up first. I’m a neatnik by nature, but I’ve been gone all day.” In truth, I didn’t want her casing the joint, calculating how much the studio would add to the asking price if she persuaded him to sell.
“How long have you been renting?”
“Seven years. I love the location and Henry’s the perfect landlord. The beach is half a block that way and my office downtown is only ten minutes from here.”
“But if you owned your own home, think of the equity you’d have built up by now.”
“I understand the advantages, but my income is up and down and I don’t want to be saddled with a mortgage. I’m happy to let Henry worry about taxes and upkeep.”
Charlotte gave me a look—too polite to express her skepticism at my shortsightedness.
As I left them, she and Henry had taken up their conversation. She was talking about rental properties, using the equity from his place as leverage for a triplex she’d just listed in Olvidado, where housing wasn’t so expensive. She said the units needed work, but if he made the necessary improvements and then flipped the place, he’d net a tidy profit, which he could then reinvest. I tried not to shriek in alarm, but I sincerely hoped she wasn’t going to talk him into something absurd.
Maybe I didn’t like her quite as much as I thought.
6
Under ordinary circumstances, I’d have walked the half block to Rosie’s Tavern to eat supper that night. She’s Hungarian and cooks accordingly, leaning heavily on sour cream, dumplings, strudels, creamed soups, cheesy noodles, cabbage-related side dishes, plus your choice of beef or pork cubes cooked for hours and served with tangy horseradish sauce. I was hoping she’d know whether Gus Vronsky had relatives in the area and if so, how to make contact. Given my newfound goal of better balanced meals and more wholesome nutrition, I decided to postpone the conversation until after I’d eaten supper.
My evening meal consisted of a peanut-butter-and-pickle sandwich on whole wheat bread with a handful of corn chips, which I’m almost certain could be considered a grain. I grant you peanut butter is nearly 100 percent fat, but it’s still a good source of protein. Further, there was bound to be a culture somewhere that classified a bread-and-butter pickle as a vegetable. For dessert, I treated myself to a handful of grapes. The latter I ate while I lay on my sofa and brooded about Cheney Phillips, whom I’d dated for two months. Longevity has never been my strong suit.
Cheney was adorable, but “cute” isn’t sufficient to sustain a relationship. I’m difficult. I know this. I was raised by a maiden aunt who thought to foster my independence by giving me a dollar every Saturday and Sunday morning, and turning me out on my own. I did learn to ride the bus from one end of town to the other and I could cheat my way into two movies for the price of one, but she wasn’t big on companionship, and because of that, being “close” makes me sweaty and short of breath.
I’d noticed that the longer Cheney and I dated, the more I was entertaining fantasies of Robert Dietz, a man I hadn’t heard from in two years. What that told me was that I preferred to bond with someone who was always out of town. Cheney was a cop. He liked action, a fast pace, and the company of others, where I prefer to be alone. For me, small talk is hard work and groups of any size wear me down.
Cheney was a man who started many projects and finished none. During the time we were together, his floors were perpetually covered with drop cloths and the air smelled of fresh paint though I never saw him lift a brush. The hardware had been removed from all the interior doors, which meant you had to stick your finger through a hole and pull when you passed from room to room. Behind his two-car garage he had a truck up on blocks. It was out of sight and the neighbors had no complaints, but the same crescent wrench had been rained on so often the rust formed a wrench-shaped pattern on the drive.
I like closure. It drives me nuts to see a cabinet door left ajar. I like to plan. I prepare in advance and leave nothing to chance, while Cheney fancies himself a free spirit, taking life on the wing. At the same time, I buy on impulse, and Cheney spends weeks doing market research. He likes thinking aloud whereas I get bored with debates about matters in which I have no vested interest. It wasn’t that his way was any better or worse than mine. We were simply different in areas we couldn’t negotiate. I finally leveled with him in a conversation so painful that it doesn’t bear repeating. I still don’t believe he was as wounded as he led me to believe. On some level, he must have been relieved, because he couldn’t have enjoyed the friction any more than I did. Now that we’d split, what I loved was the sudden quiet in my head, the sense of autonomy, the freedom from social obligations. Best was the pleasure of turning over in bed without bumping into someone else.
At 7:15 I roused myself from the sofa and tossed out the napkin I was using as a dinner plate. I rounded up my shoulder bag and jacket, locked my door, and walked the half block to Rosie’s. Her tavern is a homely mix of restaurant, pub, and neighborhood watering hole. I say “homely” because the rambling space is largely unadorned. The bar looks like every other bar you ever saw in your life—a brass foot rail along the front and liquor bottles against mirrored shelves behind. On the wall above the bar there’s a big stuffed marlin with a jockstrap hanging from its spike. This unsavory garment was tossed there by a sports rowdy in a game of chance that Rosie has since discouraged.
Crude booths line two walls, their plywood sections hammered together and stained a dark sticky hue. The remaining tables and chairs are of garage-sale quality, mismatched Formica and chrome with the occasional short leg. Happily, the lighting is bad, so many of the flaws don’t show. The air smells of beer, sautéed onions, and certain unidentified Hungarian spices. Absent now is the cigarette smoke, which Rosie’d banished the year before.
As this was still early in the week, the drinking population was sparse. Above the bar, the television set was tuned to Wheel of Fortune with the sound on mute. Instead of sitting in my usual booth at the back, I perched on a barstool and waited for Rosie to emerge from the kitchen. Her husband, William, poured me a glass of Chardonnay and set it down in front of me. Like his brother, Henry, he’s tall, but much more formal in his attire, favoring highly polished lace-up shoes while Henry prefers flip-flops.
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nbsp; William had removed his suit jacket and he’d made cuffs out of paper toweling, secured with rubber bands, to save the snow white sleeves of his dress shirt.
I said, “Hey, William. We haven’t chatted in ages. How’re you doing?”
“I’ve a bit of chest congestion, but I’m hoping to avoid a full-blown upper-respiratory infection,” he said. He took a packet from his pants pocket and popped a tablet in his mouth, saying, “Zinc lozenges.”
“Good deal.”
William was a bellwether of minor illnesses, which he took very seriously lest they carry him off. He wasn’t as bad as he’d once been, but he kept a keen eye out for anyone’s imminent demise. “I hear Gus is in a bad way,” he remarked.
“Bruised and battered, but aside from that, he’s fine.”
“Don’t be too sure,” he said. “A fall like that can lead to complications. A fellow might seem fine, but once he’s laid up in bed, pneumonia sets in. Blood clot’s another risk, not to mention a staph infection, which can take you out just like that.”
The snap of William’s fingers put an end to any misplaced optimism on my part. Gus was as good as buried as far as William was concerned. William stood at the ready when it came to death. In large part, Rosie had cured him of his hypochondria in that her culinary zeal generated sufficient indigestion to keep his imaginary ills at bay. He still leaned toward depression and found there was nothing quite like a funeral to provide a temporary emotional boost. Who could fault the man? At his age, he’d be hard-hearted indeed not to experience a little lift at the sight of a newly departed friend.
I said, “I’m more worried about what happens when Gus gets home. He’ll be out of commission for a couple of weeks.”
“If not longer.”
“Right. We were hoping Rosie knew of a family member who’d agree to look after him.”
“I wouldn’t count on relatives. The man is eighty-nine years old.”
“The same age as you, and you’ve got four living siblings, three of them in their nineties.”
“But we’re from hardier stock. Gus Vronsky smoked most of his life. Still does for all we know. Your best bet is a home health care service like the Visiting Nurses Association.”
“You think he has health insurance?”
“I doubt it. He probably didn’t imagine he’d live long enough to enjoy it, but he’ll be covered by Medicaid or Medicare.”
“I suppose so.”
Rosie came out of the kitchen through the swinging door, backside first. She had a dinner plate in each hand, one heaped with pan-fried pork steak and stuffed cabbage rolls, and the other with Hungarian beef stew over egg noodles. She delivered the entrees to the day drinkers at the far end of the bar. I was sure they’d been there since noon and she might well be comping their dinner in hopes of sobering them up before they staggered home.
She joined us at the bar and I filled her in briefly on the nature of our concerns about Gus. “Has a great-niece,” she said, promptly. “She hasn’t seen him in years so she’s very fond of him.”
“Really. That’s great. Does she live here in town?”
“New York.”
“That won’t do him any good. The doctor won’t release him unless he has someone to look after him.”
Rosie waved the notion aside. “Put in nursing home. Is what I did with my sister…”
William leaned forward. “…who died soon afterward.”
Rosie ignored him. “Is a nice place. Where Chapel crosses Missile.”
“What about his niece? Do you have any idea how I might get in touch with her?”
“He has her name in a book he keeps in his desk.”
“Well, that’s a start,” I said.
When the alarm went off Tuesday morning at 6:00, I dragged my sorry butt out of bed and pulled on my Sauconys. I’d slept in my sweats, which saved me one step in my newly inaugurated morning ritual. While I was brushing my teeth, I stared at myself in the mirror with despair. During the night, my errant hair had formed a cone on top that I had to dampen with water and flatten with my palm.
I locked my front door and tied my house key into the lace of one running shoe. As I pushed through the gate, I paused and made a big show of stretching my hamstrings in case anybody cared. Then I headed over to Cabana Boulevard, where I trotted along the bike path for a block with the beach to my right. In the weeks since I’d last jogged, the sun was slower to rise, which made the early morning hour seem even darker. The ocean looked sullen and black, and the waves sounded cold as they pounded on the sand. Some miles out, the channel islands were laid against the horizon in a dark ragged line.
Ordinarily, I’d have given little thought to my route, but when I reached the intersection of Cabana and State Street, I glanced to my left and realized there was something reassuring about the bright band of lights strung out on each side. There was no one else out at that hour and the storefronts were dark, but I followed my instincts and left the beach behind, heading toward downtown Santa Teresa, which was ten blocks north.
Lower State plays host to the train station, a bicycle-rental lot, and a Sea & Surf establishment where boards, bikinis, and snorkeling gear are sold. Half a block up, there was a T-shirt shop and a couple of fleabag hotels. The more upscale of the two, the Paramount, had been the lodging of choice in the forties when the Hollywood darlings journeyed to Santa Teresa by train. It was a short walk from the station to the hotel, which boasted a pool fed by natural hot springs. The pool had been shut down after workers discovered that seepage from an abandoned service station was leaking toxic chemicals into the aquifer. The hotel had changed hands and the new owner was rehabilitating the once-grand facility. The interior work had been completed and a new pool was now under construction. The public was invited to peek through holes in the temporary barrier erected to protect the site. I’d stopped to look myself one morning, but all I could see were piles of rubbish and sections of the old mosaic tile.
I continued running for ten blocks and then turned around, tuning in to my surroundings as a way of taking my mind off my heaving lungs. The chilly predawn air felt good. The sky had turned from charcoal to ashen gray. Nearing the end of my run, I could hear the early morning freight train rumble slowly through town with a muted blast from its horn. Dinging merrily, the signal gates came down. I waited while it passed. I counted six boxcars, a tank car, an empty livestock car, refrigerator car, nine container cars, three hard-top gondolas, a flat car, and finally the caboose. When the train was out of sight I continued at a walk, using the last few blocks to cool down. Mostly, I was happy to have the run out of the way.
I skipped my shower, figuring I might as well stay grungy for the housework to come. I rounded up rubber gloves, sponges, and assorted cleaning products, all of which I tossed in a plastic bucket. I added a roll of paper toweling, rags, laundry soap, and black plastic trash bags. Thus armed, I went out to the patio, where I waited for Henry. There’s nothing like the danger and the glamour of a private eye’s life.
When Henry appeared, we went over to Gus’s place. Henry did a walkabout to assess the situation and then returned to the living room and gathered up the many weeks’ worth of newspapers scattered on the floor. For my part, I stood assessing the furnishings. The drapes were skimpy and the four upholstered pieces (one couch and three easy chairs) were encased in dark brown stretchy slipcovers of the one-size-fits-all variety. The tables were made of a chipped laminate veneer meant to look like mahogany. Just being in the room was discouraging.
My first self-assigned task was to search Gus’s rolltop desk for his address book, which was tucked in the pencil drawer, along with a house key with a round white tag marked PITTS.
I held it up. “What’s this? I didn’t know Gus had a key to your place.”
“Sure. That’s why I have a key to his. Believe it or not, there was a time when he wasn’t such a grouch. He used to bring in the mail and water my plants when I went off to Michigan to visit the sibs.”
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br /> “Will wonders never cease,” I said, and returned to the task at hand while Henry carried the stack of papers to the kitchen and stuffed them in the trash. Gus’s financial dealings were well organized—paid bills in one pigeonhole, the unpaid in another. In a third, I found his checkbook, two savings account books, and his bank statements bound by rubber bands. I couldn’t help but notice the amount of cash he had in his accounts. Well, okay, I studied the numbers carefully, but I didn’t take notes. There was close to two thousand dollars in his checking account, fifteen thousand in one savings account, and twenty-two thousand in another. This might not be the whole of it. He struck me as the sort of fellow who stuck hundred-dollar bills between the pages of his books and kept untouched accounts in a number of different banks. The regular deposits he made were probably Social Security or pension checks. “Hey, Henry? What’d Gus do for a living before he retired?”
Henry stuck his head around the corner from the hallway. “He worked for the railroad back East. Might have been the L&N, but I’m not sure in what capacity. What makes you ask?”
“He’s got a fair amount of money. I mean, the guy’s not rich, but he has the means to live a lot better than this.”
“I don’t think money and cleanliness are connected. Did you find his address book?”
“Right here. The only person living in New York is a Melanie Oberlin, who has to be his niece.”
“Why don’t you go ahead and call?”
“You think?”
“Why not? You might as well put it on his phone bill. Meanwhile, I’ll start on the kitchen. You can take his bedroom and his bath as soon as you’re done.”
I placed the call, but as is usually the case these days, I didn’t talk to a live human being. The woman on the answering machine identified herself as Melanie, no last name, but she wasn’t able to take my call. She sounded pretty cheerful for someone who told me at the same time just how sorry she was. I gave a brief account of her uncle Gus’s fall and then left my name, my home and office numbers, and asked her to return the call. I tucked the address book in my pocket, thinking I’d try again later if I didn’t hear from her.