by Sue Grafton
I removed the flashlight from the glove compartment and got out of my car, picking my way carefully through the tall grass growing by the road. It was thick and wet, soaking my tennis shoes and the legs of my jeans.
I reached the driveway. There wasn’t any name on the mailbox, but I noted the numbers. I could always stop by my office and check my crisscross directory if I needed to. I had gone about halfway up the drive when I heard a dog barking at the house. I had no idea what kind it was, but it sounded big-one of those dogs that knows how to bark from its balls-deep, businesslike barks, suggestive of sharp teeth and a bad attitude. Furthermore, that sucker had picked up my scent and was anxious to make contact. There was no way I could creep any closer without alerting the occupants of the house. They were probably already wondering what was making Old Dog Tray wet himself with excitement. For all I knew, they’d release him from his three-eighths-inch chain and send him flying down the driveway after me, toenails scratching along the blacktop. I’ve been chased by dogs before and it’s not that much fun. I reversed my course and got back in the car. Common sense is no disgrace in the private-eye trade. I watched the house for an hour, but there was no sign of activity. I was getting tired and this felt like a waste of time. Finally, I started the engine and eased the car into gear, not flipping on my headlights until I was out through the gate again.
By the time I got home, I was exhausted. I made a few quick notes and packed it in for the night. It was nearly one o’clock when I finally turned out the light. I got up at six and did a three-mile run just to get my head on straight. Then I sped through my morning ablutions, grabbed an apple, and arrived at the office by seven. It was Tuesday and I was thankful I wasn’t scheduled for physical therapy that day. Now that I thought about it, my arm was feeling pretty good, or maybe the fact that I was involved in an investigation distracted me from whatever pain or immobility remained.
There were no messages on my answering machine and no mail that needed dealing with from the day before. I hauled out my crisscross and checked the house numbers on Los Piratas. Well, well. I should have guessed. Fraker, James and Nola. I wondered which of them Sufi had gone to see and why the rush. It was possible, of course, that she’d consulted with both, but I couldn’t quite picture that. Could Nola be the woman Bobby’d fallen in love with? I couldn’t see how Dr. Fraker tied into this, but something was sure going on.
I took out Bobby’s address book and tried the number for Blackman. I got a recorded message from that woman who sounds like the fairy godmother in a Walt Disney cartoon. “We’re sorry, but the number you’ve dialed cannot be connected in the eight-oh-five area code. Please check the number and dial again. Thank you.” I tried the codes for surrounding areas. No luck. I spent a long time looking through the other entries in the book. If all else failed, I’d have to sit here and contact each person in turn, but it seemed like a tiresome prospect and not necessarily productive. In the meantime, what?
It was too early in the morning to make house calls, but it occurred to me that a visit to Kitty might make sense. She was still at St. Terry’s and, given hospital routine, she’d probably been rousted out of bed at dawn. I hadn’t seen her for days anyway and she might be of help.
The chill of the day before was gone. The air was clear and the sun was already intense. I slid my VW into the last available space in the visitors’ lot and went around to the front entrance. The information desk in the lobby was deserted but the hospital itself was in full swing. The coffee shop was jammed, the scent of cholesterol and caffeine wafting irresistibly through the open doorway. Lights were on in the gift shop. The cashiers office was busy, filled with young female clerks preparing final bills as if this were some grand hotel nearing check-out time. There was an aura of excitement ��� medical personnel gearing up for birth and death and complex surgeries, cracked bones and breakdowns and drug overdoses… a hundred life-threatening episodes any given day of the week. And through it all the insidious sexuality that made it the stuff of soaps.
I went up to the third floor, turning left when I got off the elevators near 3 South. The big double doors were locked, as usual, I pushed the buzzer. Alter a moment, a heavyset black woman in jeans and a royal blue T-shirt rattled some keys and opened the door a crack. She wore a nursy no-nonsense watch and those shoes with two-inch crepe soles designed to offset fallen arches and varicose veins. She had startling hazel eyes and a face that radiated competence. Her white plastic tag indicated that her name was Natalie Jacks, LVN. I showed Ms. Jacks the photostat of my license and asked if I could talk to Kitty Wenner, explaining that I was a friend of the family.
She looked my I.D. over carefully and finally stepped back to let me in.
She locked the door behind me and led the way down the corridor to a room near the end. I was sneaking peeks into rooms along the way. I don’t know what I anticipated ��� women writhing and babbling to themselves, men imitating ex-Presidents and jungle beasts. Or the lot of them in a drug-induced stupor that would swell their tongues and make their eyes roll back in their heads. Instead, as I passed each door, I saw faces raised in curiosity toward mine, as if I were a new admission who might shriek or do birdcalls while I tore off my clothes. I couldn’t see any difference between them and me, which I thought was worrisome.
Kitty was up and dressed, her hair still wet from a shower. She was stretched out on her bed, pillows propped up behind her, a breakfast tray on the bed-table next to her. She wore a silk caftan that drooped on her frame as if she were a coat hanger. Her breasts were no bigger than buttons on a couch and her arms were bare bones fleshed out with skin as thin as tissue paper. Her eyes were enormous and haunted, the shape of her skull so pronounced that she looked as if she were seventy. Sally Struthers could have used her picture in an ad for foster parenting.
“You got a visitor,” Natalie said.
Kittys eyes flicked to me, and for a moment, I could see how scared she was. She was dying. She had to know that. The energy was seeping out of her pores like sweat.
Natalie inspected the breakfast tray. “You know they’re going to put you on an I. V. if you don’t do better than this. I thought you had a contract with Dr. Kleinert.”
“I ate some,” Kitty said.
“Well, I’m not supposed to pester you, but he’ll be doing rounds soon. Try picking away at this while you talk to her, O.K.? We’re on your team, baby. Honestly.”
Natalie gave us both a brief smile and left, moving into the room next door, where we could hear her talking to someone else.
Kitty’s face was suffused with pink and she was fighting back tears. She reached for a cigarette and lit it, coughing some against the back of her bony hand. She shook her head, conjuring up a smile that had some sweetness to it. “God, I can’t believe I got myself into this,” she said, and then wistfully, “You think Glen might come see me?”
“I don’t know. I may go over there after I talk to you. I’ll mention it to her if you like.”
“She kicked Daddy out.”
“So I heard.”
“She’ll probably kick me out next.”
I couldn’t look at her anymore. Her longing for Glen was so tangible it hurt me to see it. I studied the breakfast tray: a fresh fruit cup, a blueberry muffin, a carton of strawberry yogurt, granola, orange juice, tea. There was no indication that she’d eaten any of it.
“You want some of that?” she asked.
“No way. You’ll tell Kleinert you ate it.”
Kitty had the good grace to blush, laughing uneasily.
“I don’t understand why you don’t eat,” I said.
She made a face. “Everything just looks so gross. There’s this girl two doors down and she was suffering from anorexia, you know? So they brought her in here and she finally started to eat? Now she looks like she’s pregnant. She’s still thin. She’s just got half a basketball for a stomach. It’s disgusting.”
“So what? She’s alive, isn’t she?”
/> “I don’t want to look like that. Nothing tastes good anyway and it just makes me throw up.”
There was no point in pursuing the subject so I let it go, shifting over to something else instead. “Have you talked to your father since Glen kicked him out?”
Kitty shrugged. “He’s here every day in the afternoon. He’s moved into the Edgewater Hotel until he finds a place.”
“Did he tell you about Bobby’s will?”
“Some. He says Bobby left me all this money. Is that true?” Her tone was one of dismay as much as anything.
“As far as I know, it is.”
“But why would he do that?”
“Maybe he felt like he messed up your life and wanted to do right by you. Derek tells me he left some money to Rick’s parents too. Or maybe he considered it a little incentive for you to get your shit together for a change.”
“I never made any deals with him.”
“I don’t think he meant to make a ‘deal.’”
“Well, I don’t like to feel controlled.”
“Kitty, I think you’ve demonstrated the fact that you can’t be controlled. We’re all getting that message loud and clear. Bobby loved you.”
“Who asked him to? Sometimes I wasn’t even nice to him. And I didn’t exactly have his best interests at heart.”
“Meaning what?”
“Nothing. Skip it. I wish he hadn’t left me anything is all. It makes me feel crummy.”
“I don’t know what to tell you,” I said.
“Well, I never asked him for a thing.” Her tone was argumentative, but I couldn’t understand what her position was.
“What’s bothering you?”
“Nothing.”
“What’s all the fretting about, then?”
“I’m not fretting! God. Why should I fret? He did it so he’d feel good, right? It had nothing to do with me.”
“It had something to do with you or he’d have left the money to someone else.”
She started gnawing on her thumbnail, temporarily abandoning the cigarette, which sat on the lip of the ashtray and sent up a tiny trail of smoke like an Indian signal on a distant mountaintop. Her mood was getting dark. I wasn’t sure why she was so upset at the notion of two million dollars being dumped in her lap, but I didn’t want to alienate her. I wanted information. I shifted the subject again. “What about the insurance your father took out on Bobby’s life? Did he mention that?”
“Yeah. That’s weird. He does stuff like that, and later, he can’t understand why people get upset. He doesn’t see anything wrong with it at all. To him, it just makes sense. Bobby’d cracked up his car once or twice so Daddy just figured if he died, somebody might as well benefit. I guess that’s why Glen threw him out, huh?”
“I think that’s a safe bet. She’d never tolerate his profiting from Bobby’s death. My God, it was the worst possible move he could have made as far as she’s concerned. Besides which, it sets him up as a murder suspect.”
“My father wouldn’t kill anyone!”
“That’s what he says about you.”
“Well, it’s true. I didn’t have any reason to want Bobby dead. Neither of us did. I didn’t even know about the money and I don’t want it anyway.”
“Money might not be the motive,” I said. “It’s an obvious place to start, but it doesn’t necessarily go anywhere.”
“But you don’t think Daddy did it, do you?”
“I haven’t made up my mind about that yet. I’m still trying to figure out what Bobby was up to and I need to fill in some gaps. Something was going on back then and I can’t get a line on it. What was his relationship to Sufi? You have any idea?”
Kitty picked up her cigarette, averting her gaze. She took a moment to tap the ash from the end, and then she took a last, deep drag and put it out. Her nails were bitten down so far the pads of the fingers seemed like little round balls.
She was debating something with herself. I kept my mouth shut and gave her some room. “She was a contact,” she said finally, her voice low. “Bobby was doing this investigation or something for somebody else.”
“Who?”
“I don’t know.”
“It had to be the Frakers, right? I talked to Sufi last night, and the minute I left, she hightailed it over to their place. She was in there so long, I finally had to go home.”
Kitty’s eyes came up to mine. “I don’t know for sure what it was.”
“But how’d he get into it? What was it about?”
“All I know is he told me he was looking for something and he got the job out at the morgue so he could search at night.”
“Medical records? Something stored out there?”
Her face closed down again and she shrugged.
“But Kitty, when you realized someone was trying to kill him, didn’t you figure it was connected to that?”
She was chewing on her thumbnail in earnest by now. I saw her eyes flick and I turned around. Dr. Kleinert was standing in the doorway, staring at her. When he realized I’d seen him, he looked over at me. His smile seemed forced and it was not full of merriment.
“Well. I didn’t know you were entertaining this morning,” he said to her. Then briefly to me, “What brings you in so bright and early?”
“I just stopped by on my way to Glen’s. I’ve been trying to persuade Kitty to eat,” I said.
“No need for that,” he said easily. “This young lady has an agreement with me.” He gave a practiced glance at his watch, adjusting the face of it on his wrist before it disappeared up his cuff again. “I hope you’ll excuse us. I have other patients to see and my time is limited.”
“I’m on my way out,” I said. I glanced at Kitty. “I may give you a call in a little while. I’ll see if Glen can stop in to visit you.”
“Great,” she said. “Thanks.”
I waved and moved out of the room, wondering how long he’d been standing there and how much he’d heard. I was trying to remember what Carrie St. Cloud had said. She’d told me Bobby was involved in some kind of blackmail scheme, but not the usual kind with money changing hands. Something else. “Somebody had something on some friend of his and he was trying to help out,” was the way she’d put it as nearly as I could remember. If it was extortion, why didn’t he go to the police? And why was it up to him to do anything?
I got back in my car and headed out to Glen’s place.
Chapter 21
*
It was just after nine when I pulled into Glen’s driveway. The courtyard was deserted. The fountain sent up a column of water fifteen feet high, cascading back on itself in a tumble of pale green and white. I could hear a power mower whining from one of the terraces in the rear and rainbirds were jetting a fine spray into the giant fern, dappled with sunlight, that bordered the gravel walks. The air seemed tropical, scented with jasmine.
I rang the bell and one of the maids admitted me. I asked for Glen and she murmured something in Spanish, raising her eyes to the second floor. I gathered that Glen was upstairs.
The door to Bobby’s room was open and she was seated in one of his easy chairs, hands in her lap, her face impassive. When she caught sight of me, she smiled almost imperceptibly. She was looking drawn, dark lines etched under her eyes. Her makeup was subtle, but it only seemed to emphasize the pallor in her cheeks. She wore a knit dress in a shade of red too harsh for her. “Hello, Kinsey. Come sit down,” she said.
I sat in the matching plaid chair. “How are you doing?”
“Not that well. I find myself spending much of the day up here. Just sitting. Waiting for Bobby.”
Her eyes strayed to mine. “I don’t mean that literally, of course. I’m far too rational a person to believe the dead return. I keep thinking there’s something more, that it can’t be over yet. Do you know what I mean?”
“No. Not quite.”
She stared at the floor, apparently consulting her inner voices. “Part of it is a feeling of betrayal, I think. I was
brave and I did everything I was supposed to. I was a trouper and now I want the payoff But the only reward that interests me is having Bobby back. So I wait.” Her gaze moved around the room as if she were taking a series of photographs. Her manner seemed very flat to me, despite the emotional content of her speech. It was curious, like talking to a robot. She said human things, but mechanically. “You see that?”
I followed her eyes. Bobby’s footprints were still visible on the white carpeting.
“I won’t let them vacuum in here,” she said. “I know it’s stupid. I don’t want to turn into one of those dreadful women who erect a shrine for the dead, keeping everything just as it was. But I don’t want him erased. I don’t want him wiped out like that. I don’t even want to go through his belongings.”
“There’s no need to do anything yet, is there?”
“No. I guess not. I don’t know what I’ll do with the room anyway. I have dozens and they’re all empty. It’s not like I need to convert it into a sewing room or a studio.”
“Are you taking care of yourself otherwise?”
“Oh, yes. I know enough to do that. I feel like grief is an illness I can’t recover from. What worries me is I notice there’s a certain attraction to the process that’s hard to give up. It’s painful, but at least it allows me to feel close to him. Once in a while, I catch myself thinking of something else and then I feel guilty. It seems disloyal not to hurt, disloyal to forget even for a moment that he’s gone.”
“Don’t get mean with yourself and suffer more than you have to,” I said.
“I know. I’m trying to wean myself. Every day I mourn a little less. Like giving up cigarettes. In the meantime, I pretend to be a whole person, but I’m not. I wish I could think of something that would heal me. Ah, God, I shouldn’t go on and on about it. It’s like someone who’s had a heart attack or major surgery. It’s all I can talk about. So self-centered.”