by Sue Grafton
But not quite.
falling off the roof
IT WAS SIX A.M. and I was jogging on the bike path at the beach, trotting three miles in behalf of my sagging rear end. I’m thirty-two years old, five-six, weighing in at 118, so you wouldn’t think I’d have to concern myself with such things, but I’m a private eye by trade, and I’m single on top of that. Sometimes I end up running for my life, so it will never do to get out of shape.
I had just hit my stride. My breathing was audible but not labored, my shoes chunking rhythmically as the asphalt sped away underneath my feet. What worried me was the sound of someone running behind me, and gaining too. I glanced back casually and felt adrenaline shoot through my heart, jolting it into a jackhammer pace. A man in a black sweat suit was closing ground. I picked up speed, quickly assessing the situation. There wasn’t another soul in sight. No other joggers. None of the usual bums sleeping on the grass.
I veered off toward the street, figuring that with luck a car would pass.
“Hey!” the man said sharply.
I ran on, mentally rehearsing every self-defense move I’d ever been taught.
“Wait up,” he called. “Aren’t you Kinsey Millhone?”
I slowed my pace. “That’s right. Who are you?”
His stride was longer than mine, and it didn’t take him long to catch up. “Harry Grissom,” he said. “I need a private detective.”
“Most people try me at the office first,” I snapped. “You scared me half to death!”
“Sorry. The kid at the skate-rental shack told me I could find you out here. This seemed like a good place to talk.”
I knew Gus from a case I’d worked, and I liked him a lot. I could feel myself become more charitable. “How do you know Gus?”
“I own some property on Granita. He rents a cottage.”
“Why do you need me?”
“My brother Don was killed in a fall from his roof. The police said it was an accident, but I think he was pushed.”
“Oh, really? By whom?”
“My sister-in-law.”
By now we were jogging side by side at a healthy clip. He was a good-looking fellow, maybe thirty-five, with dark, bushy hair, a dark mustache, and a runner’s body, long and lean. He said he was a chiropractor by profession, with a passion for skiing and a modest talent as a painter. I think he told me all this to persuade me of his solid character and the sincerity of his concern about his brother’s fatal accident.
“When was he killed?” I asked.
“Six months ago.”
“How long had they been married?”
“Thirteen years. Don and Susie met at college, Don’s junior year. They were wrong for each other, but you couldn’t tell them that. They had a stormy two-year courtship. Finally they ran off and got married. It was all downhill from there.”
“What was the problem?”
“For starters, they had nothing in common. On top of that, both of them were hotheaded, stubborn, immature.”
“Any kids?” I asked.
“Amy, who’s eight, and a little boy, Todd, who’s five.”
“Go on.”
“Well, the two of them fought like cats and dogs, and then suddenly things smoothed out. Susie was a doll and everything seemed fine. Don and I talked about it a couple of times. He wasn’t sure what was going on, but of course he was pleased. He thought their troubles were over.”
“And you agreed?”
Harry shrugged. “Well, yeah. On the surface, everything seemed fine. I had my doubts. It wasn’t like she got into therapy or was ‘born again.’ There was definitely a change, but it didn’t seem attached to anything. I thought she might be having an affair, but I never said so to him. Nobody really wants to hear that stuff, and I didn’t have any proof.”
“What are you saying? That she took a lover and then arranged an ‘accident’ to get her husband out of the way?”
“Sure, why not?”
“Divorce isn’t that hard to come by in California. Murder seems like a radical way to get rid of an unwanted spouse.”
“Divorce doesn’t pay benefits.”
“He was well insured?”
“A hundred and twenty-five thousand in whole life, with a double-indemnity clause in case of accidental death. The lady netted herself a quarter million bucks. Plus she gets all that sympathy. Divorced, she’d have had a fight on her hands and probably come out a loser. Believe me, I’m single. Half the women I date are divorced, and they all tell the same tale. Divorce is the pits. Why should Susie go through the hassle when all she had to do was give him a push?”
“Had she been physically abusive to him over the years?”
“Well, no, but she did threaten him.”
“Really,” I said. “When was this?”
“Late June. July. Sometime in there, when the conflict was at its worst. I can’t even remember now what they were arguing about, but she said she’d kill him. I was standing right there. Next thing I knew, sure enough, he was dead.”
“Come on, Harry. Lots of people say things like that in the heat of an argument. It doesn’t make them killers.”
“In this case it does.”
“I need more than your word for it, but tell me what you want.”
The gaze he turned on me was cold, his tone dead. “Find a way to nail her. I’ll pay you anything you ask.”
I agreed to check into it—not for the money but for the look on his face. The man was in pain.
That afternoon he stopped by my office, signed a standard contract, and gave me a fifteen-hundred-dollar advance.
The next day I went to work.
He’d given me the few newspaper clippings about Don Grissom’s death: SANTA TERESA RESIDENT DIES IN FALL FROM ROOF. According to the paper, Don had climbed up to inspect for leaks after a heavy rain had sent water pouring through the ceiling in the guest bathroom. The accompanying copy of the police report indicated that to all appearances, Mr. Grissom had lost his footing on the rain-slick red tile and tumbled two stories in a fall that broke his neck. The coroner had determined that the death was accidental. Harry Grissom said the coroner was a fool.
I made a note of the Grissoms’ address and presented myself at the doorstep with a clipboard in hand. While a cop is required by statute to identify herself (or himself) as a law-enforcement officer, a private investigator is free to impersonate anyone, which is what makes my job so much fun. I’m a law-abiding little bun in most instances, but I’ve been known to tell lies at the drop of a hat. The fib I cooked up for Susie Grissom wasn’t far from the truth, and I sounded so sincere that I half believed it myself.
“Mrs. Grissom?” I said when she opened the door.
“Yes, that’s right,” she said cautiously. She was in her early thirties, with mild brown hair pulled up in a clip, brown eyes, freckles, no makeup, dressed in jeans and a T-shirt.
I held up the clipboard. “I’m from California Fidelity Insurance,” I said. Now that much was true. I had worked for CF once upon a time and did occasional investigations for them now in exchange for downtown office space.
“Yes?”
I could tell from the look on her face that “insurance” was the magic word. If what Harry said was true and she’d just collected two hundred and fifty thousand dollars, I could see how the subject might still fascinate. “Your husband had a policy with us,” I said. “Our regional office just informed us that he’s . . . uh, deceased.”
Her face clouded properly. “That’s right. He died September fourth in a fall from the roof. What sort of policy?”
“I don’t have the details, but it was probably coverage he converted from a plan at work. Was he employed at some point by a large company?”
I could see a spark of recognition. Almost everybody has worked for a large company at some point.
“Well, he did work for Raytheon briefly in 1981, but I thought he let that policy drop.”
“Apparently not,” I said. “I’ll need some data, if
you don’t object. Just so we can process the claim.”
“Claim?”
“Automatic payment in the case of accidental death.”
She invited me in.
Now, it’s not like I’m psychic, but I have to say this: From the moment I set eyes on this lady, I knew she was guilty. I’ve seen enough widows and orphans in my day to know what real grief looks like, and this wasn’t it. This was pseudo-grief, counterfeit grief, or some reasonable facsimile, but it wasn’t real sorrow.
We sat in the living room and I quizzed her at length. Once I mentioned the face value of the policy—let’s be generous, I thought, fifty grand—she was as cooperative as she could be. I sat and took notes and cooed and mewed. She played her part to perfection—tears in her eyes, nose all red.
“That must have been terrible,” I murmured. “You were out that day and came home to find him dead?”
She nodded mutely, then blew her nose. “I’d been to a meeting of my mystery book club,” she said. “I couldn’t think what was going on at the house. Police cars out front. An ambulance and everything. Then I found out he was dead. . . .”
“Awful,” I said. “What a shock for the kids. How are they taking this?”
“They don’t really understand much. I’ve done the best I could.”
I was wondering how I could corroborate her alibi. I assumed the cops had done that, but I wasn’t sure. “I think this is all I need for now.” I got up, and she walked me to the door. “Actually,” I added, “I’m a mystery fan myself.”
“Oh, really?” she said, her manner brightening some. “Which authors do you like?”
Oh, shoot. Faked out, I thought. “Oh, golly, so many. Uh, Smith, and White . . .”
“Teri? Oh, she’s wonderful. As a matter of fact, we’re doing women writers this month. Would you like to come?”
“I’d love it,” I said. “What a treat.”
Which is how I ended up at a meeting of the Santa Teresa Mystery Readers—STMR as they called themselves. I was wearing my all-purpose dress with low heels and panty hose, thinking that’s what suburban housewives probably wore. For the first and only time in my life, I found myself overdressed, though everyone was very nice and pretended not to notice. We had tea and cookies and laughed and chatted about writers I’d never heard of. I kept saying things like “Oh, the ending on that one scared me half to death!” or “I thought the plot line was a bit convoluted, didn’t you?” I lied so well, I worried I’d be elected to office, but all that happened was that I was invited back the next month.
“I’ll have Jenny give you the program for the year,” Susie said. “In case you want to catch up.”
The club secretary rustled up a copy of the calendar for me, listing dates and places of meetings and the books that had been discussed. We sat and sipped our tea while I tried a casual imitation of the women I could see. I’m not good at this stuff. I don’t bake or do civic work. I don’t know how to make small talk or sit with my legs crossed. I studied the program. As soon as Susie stepped away, I lowered my voice, leaning toward Jenny, who was probably fifty-five. She wore a matching tweedy skirt and sweater and a strand of real pearls. “This September meeting. Isn’t that when Susie’s husband was killed?”
She nodded. “We felt awful,” the woman said. “She was in charge of refreshments that day.”
“You were at the meeting?”
“Oh, yes. We had a guest speaker from the police department, and Susie had such a nice time talking to him. Afterward, of course, I worked with her in the kitchen while she was putting cookies out. All the time he was dead and she had no idea.”
I shook my head. “God, I bet she fell apart. Were they very close?”
“Well, of course,” she said, looking at me with interest. “How did you meet Susie? Have you known her long?”
“Well, no, but I feel I know her pretty well,” I said modestly.
The woman sitting to my left had apparently been listening, and she broke in. “What sort of work do you do, Kinsey?”
“Insurance,” I replied.
“Is that right? Well, the name just seems so familiar somehow. Did I see it in the news by any chance?”
“Oh, heavens. Not me,” I said. I’d only been mentioned about six weeks before in connection with a homicide. “Is there a little-girls’ room around here?”
I saw the two women exchange a look. Maybe I’d gotten the vocabulary wrong. “A powder room?” I amended.
“Of course. Right down the hall.”
I lingered until I heard the group breaking up, and then I slipped away. The next day I canvassed Susie’s neighbors.
The first was a woman in her forties, overweight, prematurely graying hair, a Mrs. Hill, according to the information I’d picked up from the city directory. “I’m from California Fidelity,” I said. “We’re checking into a claim for Mrs. Grissom next door. Could you answer some questions? She’s authorized this.” I held up a form with Susie’s signature, which I’d recently faked.
“I suppose so,” Mrs. Hill said reluctantly. “What exactly did you want?”
I went through a series of questions. How well did she know the Grissoms? Was she home on the day of his accident? She was singularly uninformative, the sort who answered each query without editorial comment. When it was clear she had nothing to offer, I thanked her and excused myself, moving on.
The house on the other side of the Grissoms’ was dark.
I scanned the area, and on impulse tried the house directly behind the Grissoms’, across an alleyway. The woman who answered the door was in her eighties and anxious for company.
“I’m from an insurance company here in town. I’m doing a report about your neighbors, the Grissoms. Your name is?”
“Mrs. Peterson. He crossed over, you know, in a fall from the roof. Not that she gives a hoot.”
“Is that right,” I said. Before I got my first question out, she was telling everything she knew.
“Well, you know, they quarreled so frightfully,” she said, and rolled her eyes, hand against her cheek in a comic imitation of scandalized sensibilities.
“Nooo. I had no idea,” I said in disbelief. “Did you happen to be home at the time he fell?”
“Oh, honey, I’m always home. I don’t go anywhere now that Teddy’s dead.”
“Your husband?”
“My dog. I just seemed to lose heart once he passed away. At any rate, I was sitting in my little den upstairs, by the window where the light is good. I was doing cross-stitch, which can ruin your eyesight, even with glasses as good as these new bifocals of mine. . . .” She took them off and held them to the light, then put them back on again.
“You have a view of the Grissoms’ house from up there?” I cut in, trying to keep her on track.
“Oh, yes. The view is perfect. Come on upstairs and you can see for yourself.”
I shrugged to myself and followed her dutifully, wondering if this was going to be another dead end. People who spend too much time alone will sometimes talk your ear off. She seemed all right, alert and well oriented. For all I knew, though, she might be the neighborhood crackpot. We reached a small den at the rear of the house, and she showed me the window, which looked right out at the Grissoms’ house at a distance of perhaps one hundred yards.
“Did you happen to notice him working on the roof?” I asked.
“Certainly. I watched him for an hour,” she replied matter-of-factly.
I held my breath, almost afraid to prompt her.
She frowned. “I thought it was real odd he’d get up there in the rain,” she remarked. “Why would anybody do that?”
“I heard there was a leak,” I said.
“But that doesn’t explain what that redheaded woman was doing up there too.”
I could feel the hair rise on the back of my neck. “What redhead?”
“Well, I don’t know who she was.”
“But she was actually on the roof?”
“Sh
e crawled right out the attic window,” she said comfortably.
“Mrs. Peterson, did you mention this to the police?”
“They never asked. I didn’t want to cause trouble, so I kept my mouth shut. I thought if they were curious, they’d come around just like you. Now, you know, the whole thing’s died down, and I don’t think anybody even suspects.”
“Suspects what?”
“That she pushed him.”
“Mrs. Grissom did?”
“Not her. The redhead. She slipped around the far side of the chimney, where he was removing the tile. She gave him a push, and off he tumbled. Never made a sound. Too surprised, I guess.”
“And you saw all this?”
“As plain as day.”
“Across both yards with the sky overcast?” I said skeptically.
“Yes, indeed. I had my little opera glasses trained on the roof.”
“Opera glasses?” I felt like I was suffering from echolalia, but I was so astonished, I couldn’t manage much else.
“I watch everybody with those,” she said, as if I should have known. She showed me the binoculars and I had a peep myself. Wow, the chimney looked like it was two feet away.
“What happened then?”
“Well, the woman crawled back in the window and drove off. She had a little white Mercedes with a scratch down the side. She was parked in the alley right out back. That’s the last I saw of her.”
“Did you catch the license number?”
“Not from this angle. I’m up too high.”
“Why didn’t you call the police at the time?”
“Oh, no. Not me. No, ma’am. If that woman had any idea what I’d seen, I’d be next on the list. I may be old, but I’m not dumb! And don’t think I’ll repeat this story to the police, because I won’t. They should have asked me all this when it happened. I’d have told ’em then. I’m not going to do it now that she’s feeling safe and has her story down pat. Absolutely not.”
At that point she decided she’d said enough, and I couldn’t get another word out of her, coax as I might.
I went straight over to the police station and had a chat with Lieutenant Dolan in Homicide. He listened attentively, but his attitude was plain. He was not unwilling to reopen the matter, if I’d just bring him a shred of proof. The cops in Santa Teresa take a dim view of hearsay evidence, especially in a case where they’ve already decided no crime was committed. Proving murder, and then proving insurance was the motive, is exceedingly difficult. If I could give him corroborating evidence, he’d see what he could do. Otherwise all we had was Mrs. Peterson’s word for what went on, and at this point she might well deny everything. It was frustrating, but there was nothing he could do.