“Come here, dummy,” she said.
He stood alongside her by the door and she said, “If you were a housekey, where would you hide?”
Trace said, “Under the doormat.”
“There is no doormat.”
“In the milkbox, then,” he said.
“Ditto the milk box.”
“All right, no milk box. Then over the door. Definitely over the door.”
“Reach up there and see for yourself,” she said.
He ran his hand along the top of the door frame.
No key.
“That’s the dumbest thing you’ve ever had me do,” he said. “All I got were dirty fingers.”
“Your whole thinking is rooted in the past,” she said. “Today people don’t keep keys under the mat or over the door.”
“Where do they keep them?” he asked.
“They keep them in little artificial rocks. Voilà.”
She pulled her hand from behind her back. It held a gray stone just like the other gray stones that bordered some of the bushes that grew in front of the house. She turned the stone over in her mind. Underneath it was a thin circle of fiberglass, mounted at one end by a screw that was embedded in the stone.
She slid the fiberglass plate back to reveal a house key.
“Pretty smart,” Trace said.
“Thank you.” She handed him the key. “Go ahead. You break in. If neighbors call the cops, I don’t want to be involved.”
“You think you’re so smart about the law?” Trace said. “You’ll still be an accomplice.”
“I’ll claim you abducted me. I was just at a little convention and you made me come with you. You said if I didn’t come with you, you’d take it out on poor Mr. Nishimoto.”
Trace pushed the front door open and called inside, “Anybody to home?”
There was no answer.
“Yoohoo. It’s the Welcome Wagon. Anybody to home?”
“Nobody’s to home,” he told Chico as they went inside.
The front door opened directly into a small living room, which was easily the messiest room Trace had ever seen. Newspapers were strewn everywhere. Half-filled coffeecups sat on end tables, corroding. A single ashtray was overflowing with cigarette butts. Dust balls were clumped in the corners, the couch cushions were askew; the rear windows through which the afternoon sun shone dimly looked as if they had never been washed.
“Take a good look, Trace,” Chico said. “This is how you’ll be living if I ever decide to move out.”
“Not bloody likely,” he said. “I’ll get me another neat roommate.”
“Dog,” she said.
To the right of the living room were two small bedrooms; the door to the left opened into a large eat-in kitchen, with a bathroom in the far corner.
The kitchen was just as dirty as the living room. Dishes were piled in the sink and on the table. Pots on the stove looked as if they had been used repeatedly but never washed.
Chico took a sponge, wet it under the faucet, and began wiping as she walked around the room.
Trace went back to the living room. Behind him, he heard Chico grumbling that there wasn’t much food in the house. Then she poked her head into the doorway between the rooms.
“Are you getting hungry?” she asked.
“Are you hungry again?”
“I haven’t eaten since…”
“Since lunch. Two hours ago. Don’t you ever stop?” he asked.
“Maybe just a nibble. Think he’d mind if I cooked up something?”
“No. What the hell. We’re looking for him. If he shows up, he’ll have more to talk about than the fact that you killed off his last can of pork and beans.”
“Good thinking, Trace.”
Trace looked through the dirty rear windows out over the land. He saw the small utility shed to the left and then the trees growing, from wherever the seeds fell, over the property. There were no fences and no indication where this property stopped and the next owner’s land began.
The only two houses visible were widely separated and at least five hundred yards away.
Trace thought the living room looked like a roach motel, only not so neat. There could have been a body buried under all those newspapers, for all he knew.
He pushed things aside, straightening up a little as he went, but found nothing under the surface layer dirt and disorder other than old newspapers and magazines.
The first bedroom’s bed was unmade. The closet held only a single pair of jeans, man’s size Calvin Kleins, Trace noticed with disgust. The dresser was empty except for some men’s underwear and a few basic gray sweatshirts.
The other bedroom had been set up as a small office. There was a plain wooden desk, small, the type often used in children’s rooms. Atop it was a telephone that worked. Inside the desk drawers, he found only usual office supplies, ballpoint pens, pads, a stapler, a box of paper clips, four real-estate manuals.
In the back of the desk, underneath a newspaper, he found a Rolodex and he flipped it open to the Ms. No Mandy. He carefully went through all the listings, but there were only about two dozen names, all of them apparently real-estate brokers and attorneys and all strictly business.
It looked, simply, like an office away from home for Thomas Collins. Yet something seemed missing, though Trace couldn’t remember what.
He went back into the living room and heard Chico puttering around the kitchen, humming softly. She always seemed happiest, Trace thought, when eating or preparing food. If she developed enough good karma, when she came back in the next life, she might come back as a praying mantis, consuming ten times her own weight in food every day and eating nonstop from morning till night.
Being a woman was a pretty good deal, all in all, he thought. Just worry about food and ignore the really big questions of truth, justice, budget deficits, and morality. Maybe when he came back he would come back as a woman.
Maybe his ex-wife would too, he thought.
“Lunch will be ready in a minute,” Chico called.
“You’re not making a mess in that kitchen, are you?”
“You’ll never recognize the place,” he heard her say.
The hot tub. That’s what it was. The note from Mandy had mentioned the hot tub at the farm, but where was there room for a hot tub in this mess?
He opened the door from the living room to the rear of the house and found the redwood tub off on the side, built into a little platform and surrounded by high shrubbery. In the east, they tended to use fiberglass; in California, nothing but a big organic tub out of organic wood would do. The tub was sealed off with a wooden cover like an oversized sewer plate. He slid it aside. The water was still and clear and, when he dipped a finger into it, cold.
He found the controls in a weatherproof circuit box alongside a bench on the small platform and turned the tub on. It started immediately to whoosh heavy streams of water from three different outlets inside the tub, and Trace thought, What the hell, why not?
Back inside, he roared, “Woman, is there any vodka in this house?”
“How would I know? I’m into stealing food, not liquor.”
After fruitlessly searching the cabinets and getting in Chico’s way, Trace found the liquor hidden under the sink. Another mark against Thomas Collins. Liquor should be displayed proudly, as a totem of the civilized man leading the civilized life. People who put liquor under the sink were dirty little pernicious drinkers who thought of alcohol as something basically shameful. Drano belonged under the sink; liquor belonged on the counter, in full view.
Strike two against Thomas Collins. He had no vodka. He had a bottle of cheap rum, cheaper Scotch, and rye that was so off-brand that Trace was surprised it was still brown.
He started on the Scotch, mixing it with water from the tap and adding a few ice cubes from the tiny old refrigerator’s freezer tray, which was barely large enough to hold a carton of cigarettes.
The kitchen was already on its way to clean. The worst
of the litter had been moved aside; dishes were stacked neatly on the sink, and the small kitchen table had been washed clean and set with two plates, silverware, and paper napkins. Chico had used paper towels for placemats. There was a bowl of something green and steamy in the center of the table.
“Sit and eat,” Chico said as she sat down. “I’m starving. Cooking always makes me hungry.”
He sat facing her, Scotch in hand, and watched unenthusiastically as she put some of the food onto his plate. She drank from a large glass of water, as she always did with meals.
“Yum, yum,” Trace said. “What is this gruel?”
“It’s a special Japanese dish,” she said.
“Where’s the raw fish?”
“No raw fish. This is reftovers. Chicken bits and frozen vegetables, all in a special sauce of my own design.”
“I can’t eat this slop,” he said.
“Good. More for me.”
He ate a few forkfuls of the food, finished his drink, and went to the counter to make another. When he turned back, Chico had switched plates and was eating his food. Her empty plate was in front of his seat.
“I figured you were done,” she mumbled through a full mouth.
He leaned against the sink and watched her eat. It was like watching time lapse photography—thousands of years compressed into a few seconds—of something like the Colorado River cutting through hundreds of feet of rock to create the Grand Canyon. There was something equally inexorable about Chico eating. It was like a force of nature.
“You eat like somebody who grew up with fourteen siblings,” he said.
She mumbled agreement.
“In a poverty ward,” he said.
She nodded agreeably, chewing all the while.
“If Dickens had known you, he would have written a book about you. You’d be a star. You’d have a TV movie. The Thing That Ate the World.”
She finally gulped and swallowed and stood up. “Get out of here and go play detective. I want to do these dishes.”
The water in the hot tub had already warmed perceptibly, so Trace took his clothes off, tossed them in a pile on the small bench near the tub, and sat in the warming water. He reached over and hit one of the switches inside the junction box and the aerator started bubbling hot water up through jets in the bottom of the tub. The motor pumping the air-water mix sounded like a vacuum cleaner sucking tacks. It wasn’t long until Chico came out of the house looking for the source of the sound.
She pushed her head between bushes and saw him in the tub.
“Come on in, the water’s fine,” he said.
“Well, aren’t you a perv?” she said.
“You already knew that. Come on in.”
She snatched the Scotch glass from his hand and walked away. When she came back onto the deck a few minutes later, she was naked, holding a fresh drink in her hand.
“The way I like you best,” Trace said as Chico handed him the glass and slid down beneath the bubbling warm waters. “Without clothes and without pretensions, serving your man.”
“You wish,” she said. “I hope this guy doesn’t have herpes.”
“Trust you to find a way to ruin this romantic moment,” Trace said.
“Vell now, Mr. Tracy, now zat you are relaxed here at Ze Touchie-Feelie California Therapy Institute, suppose you tell me vot iss der problem?” Chico said.
“I’m perfectly normal.”
“The first rule of Ze Touchie-Feelie Therapy Institute is dot no vun iss perfectly normal. Everybody iss a sickie. Ozervise vy did God invent California? Vy are you not married?”
“I was married but it didn’t work.”
“Vy not?”
“My wife wanted me to sleep with her.”
“And you don’t like sex?”
“I didn’t like my wife,” Trace said. “She had this disconcerting habit of getting pregnant.”
“So you haff children?”
“Ach. I mean, yes. Two children, What’s-his-name and the girl.”
“What is your relationship with them?”
“It’s very good,” Trace said.
“Tell me about it.”
“I haven’t seen them in four years.”
“How can you consider dat a good relationship?”
“How can you consider it anything less than perfect?” Trace asked.
“And your life since divorcing them all has been happy?”
“No, it’s been miserable,” Trace said. “I went from accountant to gambler and from gambles to addict. You see, I got hooked on this crazed Eurasian woman who is sapping my vital juices. And if that’s not degrading enough, I have to fence at least three stolen televisions a day just to keep her in food.”
“Der diagnosis iss very clear,” Chico said. “Very clear indeed.”
“Yes? What can I do, Doctor?”
“Have you ever heard of taking the pipe?” Chico said.
“You know, Chico, you’re better than most therapists. You’ve recommended suicide in just the first visit. Think of all the money you’d save your patients.”
“We aim to please,” she said. She looked up at a flock of birds that were noisily flapping their way overhead. A soft breeze rustled through the shrubbery surrounding the hot tub. “You really do feel sorry for yourself, don’t you?” she said.
“I feel sorrier for other people.”
“Like who?”
“Women bodybuilders,” Trace said.
“How’s that?”
“They all start bodybuilding to make their tits bigger, and when they’re done, they’ve got big ugly biceps and they still don’t have any tits. Now that’s worth feeling sorry for. That, and an empty glass.” He showed her his glass, stood up in the tub, and walked wet-footed into the house.
11
Dressed again, Chico was sitting on the sofa, idly thumbing through a pile of magazines and newspapers on the dingy old coffee table.
“Hey, Trace,” she said. “You want to get your pipes cleaned?”
“This isn’t even my house,” Trace said.
“Tell that to Monica. She’s got an ad in here for cleaning your pipes and hauling your ashes.”
She turned a page and Trace was able to see that she was reading a sex tabloid that had been on the table under the pile of magazines. “Hey, here’s one if you want to get off over the phone.”
“I wouldn’t do that,” Trace said.
“Why not?”
“It leaves the phone sticky for the next person,” Trace said. “I’m going out to the barn.”
Trace looked through a window into the small utility building behind the house. There was no tractor. A few tools were hung on the far wall, opposite the window. A large pile of leaf cuttings and grass cuttings occupied the middle of the floor.
Trace removed the locking pin, and the shed’s wooden door, twice the size of a regular house door, swung open easily and quietly.
A sharp smell jumped from the building into his nose, and for a moment he gagged and turned away. He had an idea what the smell was because, once smelled, it was never forgotten.
He took a deep breath of fresh outside air, cleared his lungs, then took another deep breath, held it, and went back inside to the pile of grass on the floor. He touched it with the toe of his shoe and moved some of it aside. He pushed his foot farther and his toe hit something unyielding. He kicked the grass aside and saw a man’s trouser leg.
Trace went outside to breathe again, held another deep breath, went back inside, and used his shoe to move the grass away.
A dead man was under the pile of grass, lying on his back, blackened dried blood caked along the side of his head. He was wearing a white shirt, jeans, and ornately tooled cowboy boots. His thinning white hair was too long and stood out in poofs on both sides of his neck. It was Thomas Collins.
Trace turned when he heard a sound behind him and saw Chico at the doorway to the barn. He hurried until he was outside in the fresh air and gasped deeply.
“You don’t want to go in there,” he said.
“Why not? What’s the smell?” she asked. She was holding her tabloid newspaper in her hand.
“It’s Thomas Collins.”
“What’s he wearing?” Chico asked.
“Mostly flies and maggots. What do you mean what’s he wearing?”
“How did he die? Can you tell?”
“The side of his head is laid open,” Trace said. “I think he got clubbed.”
“Maybe a fall? Maybe he hit his head?” she offered.
“I didn’t get a real chance to look around, but I don’t think so. It doesn’t look like there’s anything in there to hit your head on.”
“I guess we should call the police,” Chico said.
“Let’s not rush into things,” said Trace. He closed the barn door but did not relock it. He saw Chico shaking her head.
“Trust you,” she said. “I take you away on vacation and what is it, another murder. I’m getting tired of being involved in murders every time I go anywhere with you.”
“I think it’s getting old myself,” Trace said. “All I want to do is go back to San Francisco and get the next lecture on The Future of Japanese Life Insurance in a Changing World. Why do you have that paper?”
“Oh.” She handed it to Trace. An advertisement was circled with red magic marker. It read: “Live out your sexual fantasies. Spend a night with Mandy.” It gave a San Francisco telephone number.
“Why’d you circle it in red?” Trace asked.
“I didn’t,” Chico said. “It was circled when I found it.”
Trace dialed the number in San Francisco.
A woman answered, her voice soft and breathy.
“Hello. I hope I can do something for you.”
“Hello,” Trace said. “This is Thomas Collins.” He stopped and waited.
Finally the woman said, “And?”
“Is this Mandy?”
“Yes, it is.”
“This is Thomas Collins,” Trace said again.
The woman chuckled. “I don’t need your name, honey. Just your bank balance. What can I do for you?”
“I wanted to tell you that I got the cuff link back.”
Pigs Get Fat (Trace 4) Page 8