B is for BURGLAR

by Sue Grafton

  “She’s the agent on it?”

  Vera nodded, taking a drag of her cigarette. She blew the smoke straight up. “The big life-insurance policy lapsed, but there was a little twenty-five-hundred-dollar policy in effect. That’s probably not enough to bury a dog these days. There’s also a homeowner’s for the fire loss, but the guy was desperately underinsured. Pam swears up and down she advised him to upgrade, but he didn’t want to be saddled with the added expense. You know how people get. They try to save six bucks and end up blowing two-three hundred thousand when the bottom drops out.” She tapped the cigarette on the lip of the empty Coke bottle, neatly knocking the ash into it.

  “Why’s the settlement taking so long?”

  Vera’s mouth turned down and she lowered one eyelid ��� a gesture that conveyed the message “big deal,” though I don’t know how. “Who knows?” she said. “The guy’s got a year to file the claim. Pam says he’s been a basket case since his wife died. He can hardly manage to sign his own name.”

  “Did she leave a will?”

  “Not that I heard. The whole thing’s been sitting in probate court for the last five months or so, in any event. What’s your interest in it? Are you looking into her death?”

  “Not really. I’m looking for a woman who lived next door when it happened. She left town a couple of days afterward and hasn’t been seen since then by the people who count. I keep thinking there’s a connection. I was hoping you’d tell me there was a great big policy in effect.”

  “The cops had the same idea. Your buddy Lieutenant Dolan was over here practically sitting in my lap for days. I kept saying, ‘Forget it! The guy’s broke. He’s not going to net a dime.’ I guess I finally convinced him because I haven’t heard from him since. What are you thinking, that Grice and this doll next door were in cahoots?”

  “It did cross my mind. I haven’t met him yet and I have no idea whether there could have been a relationship between them, but it does look suspect. From what I’m told, she left town abruptly and she was upset. My first instinct was that maybe she’d seen something and took off to avoid getting caught up in it.”

  “Maybe so.” Vera sounded dubious.

  “But you don’t believe it.”

  “I’m just looking at his end. If the guy killed his wife for fun and profit, he sure went about it wrong. Why let a policy lapse like that? If he were smart, he’d have jacked the face value up two-three years ago, let enough time pass so it didn’t look too obvious and then… whap, his wife is dead and he collects. If he killed her with no payoff, he’s an idiot.”

  “Unless he just wanted her out of his way. Maybe that was all he cared about. Maybe letting the policy lapse was a ploy.”

  “Hey, listen, what do I know? I’m not a homicide dick.”

  “Me neither. I’m just trying to figure out why this woman disappeared and where she might have gone. Even if you’re right and Grice had nothing to do with it, she still might have witnessed something. This burglar business sounds too tidy for words.”

  Vera smiled cynically. “Hell, maybe she did it herself.”

  “God, you’re more suspicious than I am.”

  “Well, you want Grice’s number? I got it somewhere here.” Vera paused to toss the tag end of her cigarette into the Coke bottle. There was a quick spitting sound as the ember touched the thimbleful of Coke that remained. She extracted a file from the bottom of a stack and found the telephone number and the address.

  “Thanks,” I said.

  She gave me a speculative look. “You interested in an unemployed aerospace engineer? He’s got bucks. He invented some little dingus they use now in all the satellites.”

  “How come you don’t want him?” I asked. Vera tended to offer up her rejects like hostess gifts.

  She made a face. “He was fine for a while, but now he’s on a health kick. Started taking algae pills. I don’t want to kiss a man who eats pond scum. I thought you might not object since you live so clean. Maybe you two could jog together and nibble dried seaweed snacks. If you’re interested, he’s yours.”

  “You’re too good to me,” I said. “I’ll keep an eye out. I might run into someone who’s up for him.”

  “You’re way too picky about men, Kinsey,” she said reprovingly.

  “I’m picky?! What about you?”

  Vera stuck another cigarette between her teeth and I watched her flick a tiny gold lighter into play before she spoke.

  “I figure guys are like Whitman’s Samplers. I like to take a little bite out of each and then move on before the whole box gets stale.”

  Chapter 9

  *

  It was 1:30 by now and as nearly as I could remember, I hadn’t eaten lunch. I pulled into a fast-food restaurant, parked, and went in. I could have hollered my order into a clown’s mouth and eaten in the car as I drove, but I wanted to show I had class. I wolfed down a cheeseburger, fries, and a Coke for a dollar sixty-nine and was back on the streets again in seven minutes flat.

  The house where Leonard Grice was supposedly staying was located in a dingy tract of houses just off the freeway, a neighborhood of winding streets that had been named after states, starting with the East Coast. I rambled down Maine, Massachusetts, New York, and Rhode Island Drives, getting stuck in tricky cul-de-sacs where Vermont and New Jersey turned into dead ends. It looked like the builder had gotten as far as Colorado Avenue before the money ran out or his knowledge of geography failed. There was a long stretch of vacant lots with stakes visible at intervals, each tied with a little white rag to mark off the undeveloped parcels of land.

  Most of the houses had gone up in the fifties. The trees had flourished, overpowering the small lots. The houses were alternately pale pink and pale green stucco, mirror images of one another like a whole tray of loaf cakes on a bakery shelf. All had the same rock-covered roofs, as though some volcano nearby had erupted, raining down a thin debris. The whole tract seemed dominated by wide-mouthed garages and I was subjected to untidy views of lawn equipment and camper shells, toys, tools, dusty luggage, banged-up refrigerators. There were surprisingly few cars visible and the impression I got was of a community abandoned in the wake of some natural disaster. Maybe a plague had passed this way or maybe toxic wastes had risen up through the soil, killing all the dogs and cats and burning holes in children’s feet. At the intersection of Maryland and Virginia, I turned right.

  On Carolina, a few enterprising souls had faced their homes with fieldstone or cedar shingle, and some had opted for an Oriental effect ��� trellises of plywood with geometric cutouts that were meant to look Chinese, the roof corners tilted up for that gala 1950s pagoda look. Compared to more recent tracts on the outskirts of Santa Teresa, these houses were shabby and the evidence of poor construction floated on the surface like chicken fat on homemade soup. There were cracks in the stucco, window shutters askew. The veneer on the front doors was peeling off in strips. Even the drapes were hung crookedly and I could imagine bathroom plaster bulging out in places, faucet handles frozen with rust.

  The Howes had traded their front lawn for a rock garden, apparently burying the scruffy grass under tons of sand, topped with gravel beds in shades of mauve and green. I could still see a strip of black plastic “mulch” peeping out around the edge where some attempt had been made to suppress the weeds. The Bermuda grass had risen to the challenge and it was snaking its way through the gravel at a leisurely pace. There was a birdbath tucked among the succulents and a poured-concrete squirrel seemed to pop up out of the cactus in an attitude of perpetual, stony optimism. I doubted there was a live squirrel within blocks.

  I parked the car and walked up to the house, taking the clipboard I keep in the backseat of my car. The Howes’ garage door was closed, making the place look blank and unoccupied. The long, low line of the porch was obscured with ivy, looking picturesque, but capable, I knew, of lifting the roof right off. The drapes were closed. I rang the bell, but there was no reassuring “ding-dong” with
in. A minute passed. I knocked.

  The woman who came to the door was subdued, her faded blue eyes searching my face hesitantly.

  “Mrs. Howe?”

  “I’m Mrs. Howe,” she said.

  It felt like Lesson One on a foreign-language record. There were dark circles under her eyes and her voice was as flat and dry as a cracker.

  “I understand Leonard Grice is staying here. Is that correct?”

  “Yes.”

  I held my clipboard up. “I’m from the insurance company and I wonder if I might have a word with him.” It’s a marvel God doesn’t reach right down and rip my tongue out by the roots for the lies I tell.

  “Leonard’s taking a rest. Why don’t you come back another time.” She was closing the door.

  “I’ll just take a minute,” I said quickly. I stuck the clipboard into the crack. She’d never get the door shut that way.

  She paused. “The doctor still has him on sedatives.” A non sequitur but the point was clear.

  “I see. Well, of course, I wouldn’t want to disturb him, but I’d really like to see him, as long as I’ve driven all the way out here.” I tried to sound winsome, but apparently failed.

  She stared at me stubbornly and I could see the color rise in her face. She glanced sideways as though she were consulting an invisible companion. Abruptly, she moved back and let me into the house with the attitude of someone using the / word under her breath. Her hair was gray, shoulder-length and thin, turned under in a tight pageboy. She had bangs along her forehead in a hairstyle I hadn’t seen since those June Allyson movies where she was so loving and so long-suffering. Mrs. Howe wore a plain white blouse and a sensible charcoal-gray wool skirt. She was chunky through the waist. What is it about middle age that makes a woman’s body mimic pregnancy?

  “I’ll see if he’ll talk to you,” she said and left the room.

  I waited just inside the front door, taking in with a quick glance the cotton shag carpeting, brick fireplace painted white, an oil painting above it of waves crashing on rocks. She’d apparently used the painting as the focal point of her decorating scheme because the couch and wing chairs were upholstered in the same passionate shade of turquoise, in a fabric that looked faintly damp. I hated this part of my job ��� asserting myself persistently into somebody else’s pain and grief, violating privacy. I felt like a door-to-door salesman, pushing unwanted sets of nature encyclopedias complete with fake walnut case. I also hated myself vaguely for being judgmental. What did I know about hairstyles anyway? What did I know about waves crashing on rocks? Maybe the turquoise said exactly what she’d meant to say about the room.

  When Leonard Grice appeared, I could feel my heart sink. He didn’t look like a man who’d murdered his wife, as much as that theory appealed to me. He was probably in his early fifties, but he moved like an old man. He was not bad-looking, but his face was pallid, cheeks sunken as though he’d recently lost some weight. His manner was vacant and he held his hands in front of him when he walked as though he were blindfolded. He had all the airs of a man who has stumbled painfully over (Something in the dark and wants to be certain he doesn’t get caught by surprise again. It was possible, of course, that he’d killed her and was consumed now by guilt and remorse, but the killers I’ve run into in my brief career are either cheerful or matter-of-fact, like they can’t understand what all the fuss is about.

  Leonard’s sister walked beside him, her hand near his elbow, watching where he placed his feet. She eased him toward a chair and shot me a look, clearly hoping I was satisfied at the trouble I’d caused. I did feel crummy, I’ll confess.

  He sat down. He seemed to be coming to life, reaching automatically for a pack of Camels in his shirt pocket while Mrs. Howe perched on the edge of the couch.

  “Sorry to have to bother you,” I said, “but I’ve just been talking to the adjuster at California Fidelity and there were a few details we wanted to clarify. Do you mind answering some questions for me?”

  “He can hardly afford not to cooperate with the insurance company,” she interjected peevishly.

  Leonard cleared his throat, striking a match twice without effect against a paper matchbook. His hands were trembling and I wasn’t sure he’d ever manage to match the flame to the end of his cigarette even if he could conjure one up. Mrs. Howe reached over, took the packet, and struck the match for him. He inhaled deeply.

  “You’ll have to pardon me,” he said, “the doctor has me on some medicine that does this to me. I’m on disability for my back. What is it exactly that you want?”

  “I’ve just recently been assigned to this case and I thought it might be helpful to hear your own account of what happened that night.”

  “What on earth for!” Mrs. Howe said.

  “That’s all right, Lily,” he broke in, “I don’t mind. I’m sure she’s got her reasons for wanting to know.” His voice was stronger now, dispelling the original impression of feebleness.

  He took a deep drag of his cigarette, letting it rest in the fork between his index and third fingers.

  “My sister’s widowed,” he said, as though that might explain her belligerence. “Mr. Howe died of a heart attack eighteen months ago. After that, Marty and I got in the habit of taking Lil out to dinner every week. Mostly it was a way to keep up with each other and visit back and forth. Well that night, Marty planned to go as usual, but she said she felt like she was coming down with the flu, so at the last minute she decided to stay home. It was Lil’s birthday and Marty was disappointed because she knew we were going to have a little cake brought to the table and waiters singing… you know how they do. She wanted to see the look on Lily’s face. Anyway, she felt if she wasn’t well, she might spoil everybody’s evening so she didn’t go.” He paused, taking a deep drag of his cigarette. He’d accumulated a long ash and Lily pushed an ashtray toward him just as it tumbled.

  “Did you tend to go out the same night of the week each time?” I asked.

  He nodded. “Tuesdays as a rule.”

  I made a note dutifully on the legal pad on my clipboard. I hoped I looked like I had some legitimate reason to be asking all this stuff. I pretended to consult a form or two, flipping back a page. I thought the clipboard was a nice touch. I guess Lily did too. She peered over, wanting to see me write down something she said too. ‘

  “That’s the best night for me,” she ventured. “I get my hair done on Tuesdays and I like to go out when it’s looking nice.”

  “Hair on Tues.,” I wrote. “How many people knew you went out on Tuesday nights?”

  Leonard’s eyes slid over to mine with a curious look. The medication had opened his pupils to the full, perfect black holes that looked like they’d been made with a paper punch.

  “Pardon?”

  “I wondered how many people knew about your nights out. If the intruder was someone you knew, he might have thought she’d be out with you as usual.”

  His expression flickered with uncertainty. “I don’t understand what this has to do with the insurance claim,” he said.

  I had to be careful how I framed my reply because he’d put his finger on the flaw in my charade. My questions had nothing to do with anything except trying to figure out if Elaine could have seen a murder. So far, I didn’t even know what had actually happened that night and I was trying to weasel the information out of him. Lieutenant Dolan wasn’t going to tell me, that was for sure.

  I smiled briefly, keeping my tone light. “Naturally we’re interested in seeing this crime solved,” I said. “We may need a determination on the case before the claim is paid.”

  Lily glanced at Leonard and then back to me, alerted by his wariness. “What kind of ‘determination’?” she asked. “I don’t understand what you mean.”

  Leonard shifted back to his original attitude. “Now, Lil, it can only help,” he said. “The insurance company wants to get to the bottom of this just like we do. The police haven’t done anything on it for months.” He glanced a
t me again. “You’ll have to pardon Lil…”

  She flashed him a look. “Don’t apologize for me when I’m sitting right here,” she snapped. “You’re too trusting, Leonard. That’s what’s wrong with you. Marty was the same way. If she’d been a little more cautious, she might be alive today!”

  She faltered, clamping her mouth shut, then surprised me by filling in some details. “She was on the phone to me that night and someone came to the door. She rang off to see who it was.”

  He chimed in. “The police said it’s possible she knew the person, or it might have been someone off the street. Police said a lot of times a burglar rings the bell if the lights are on. If someone answers the door, he can act like he’s got the wrong address. Nobody answers, he might go ahead and break in.”

  “Were there signs of a struggle?”

  “I don’t think so,” Leonard said. “Not that I ever heard. I went through the house myself, but I couldn’t see anything missing.”

  I looked back at Lily. “What had she called about?” I asked. “Or did you call her?”

  “I called her myself when we got in,” she said. “We got back here a little later than we thought and Leonard didn’t want her to worry.”

  “And she sounded all right when you talked to her?”

  Lily nodded. “She sounded fine. She sounded just like she always did. Leonard talked to her for a bit and then I got back on with her and we were just winding down when she said there was someone at the door and she had to go see who it was. I was going to offer to stay on the line, but we were done anyway so I just said good-bye and hung up.”

  Leonard pulled a handkerchief out of his pants pocket and pressed it to his eyes. His hands had begun to shake badly and there was a tremor in his voice. “I don’t even know what her last moments were like. Police said the guy must have hit her square in the face with a baseball bat, something that size. She must have been terrified ���”

  He broke off.

  I could feel myself squirm, but I didn’t say anything. What actually occurred to me, as tacky as it sounds, is that a baseball bat in the face doesn’t leave time to feel much of anything. Crack! You’re gone. No terror, no pain. Just lights out, home run.