B is for BURGLAR

by Sue Grafton

  Lily reached over and place her hand on his. “They were married twenty-two years.”

  “Good years too,” he said, his tone almost argumentative. “We never went to bed mad. That was a rule we made early. Anytime we had a quarrel, we got it settled. She was a fine woman. Smarter than me and I’m not ashamed to admit it.”

  Tears glittered in his eyes, but I felt oddly removed, like the only sober person at a party full of drunks.

  “Did the police mention any possibility of witnesses? Someone who might have seen or heard something that night?”

  He shook his head, mopping at his eyes. “No. I don’t think so. I never heard that.”

  “Possibly someone in the building next door?” I suggested. “Or someone passing by? I understand you’ve got people across the street from you too. You’d think someone would have noticed something.”

  He blew his nose, recovering his composure. “I don’t think so. Police never said anything to us.”

  “Well, I’ve taken up enough of your time and I’m sorry I’ve caused you so much distress. I’d like to go through the house and assess the fire damage if you don’t mind. One of our adjusters has already been through, but I’ll need to see for myself so I can make my report.”

  He nodded. “My neighbor has a key. Orris Snyder right next door. You go knock on his door and tell him I said it was all right.”

  I got up and held my hand out to him. “Thanks for talking to me.”

  Leonard got to his feet automatically and shook my hand. His grip was solid, his flesh almost feverishly hot.

  “By the way,” I said as if it had just occurred to me, “have you heard from Elaine Boldt lately?”

  He focused on me, apparently perplexed by the reference.

  “Elaine? No, why?”

  “I was trying to get in touch with her on another matter and I realized she lived in that condominium right next door,” I replied with ease. “Someone mentioned that she was a friend of yours.”

  “That’s right. We used to play bridge together before Marty died. I haven’t talked to her for months. She’s usually in Florida this time of year, I believe.”

  “Oh, that’s right. I think somebody else mentioned that. Well, maybe she’ll call when she gets back,” I said. “Thanks again.”

  By the time I got back out to my car again, both my armpits were ringed with sweat.

  Chapter 10

  *

  It was now nearly three o’clock and I was feeling frazzled. I’d been up since two A.M. with just a brief time-out for sleep at dawn before the long-distance call from Mrs. Ochsner had wakened me. I couldn’t face the office again, so I headed for my apartment and changed into my running clothes. I use the word apartment here in its loosest sense. Actually I live in a converted one-car garage, maybe fifteen feet square, tricked out as living room, bedroom, kitchen, bathroom, closet, and laundry facility. I’ve always liked living in small spaces. For months as a child, just after my parents were killed, I spent my spare time in a cardboard box that I filled with pillows and pretended was a sailing vessel on its way to some new land. It doesn’t take an analyst to interpret this excursion on my part, but it’s carried over into my adult life, manifesting itself now in all sorts of things. I drive small cars and I favor “littleness” in any form, so this place suits me exactly. For two hundred dollars a month I have everything I want, including a debonair eighty-one-year-old landlord named Henry Pitts.

  I peered in his back window on my way out, and spotted him in the kitchen rolling out puff pastry dough. He’s a former commercial baker who supplements his social security these days doing up breads and sweets, which he sells to or trades with local merchants. I tapped on the glass and he motioned me in. Henry is what I like to think of as an octogenarian “hunk,” tall and lean with close-cropped white hair and eyes that are periwinkle blue, full of curiosity. Age has boiled him down to a concentrate, all male, compassionate and prudent and wry. I can’t say that the years have invested him with spirituality, or infused him with any special wisdom, second sight, profundity, or depth. I mean, let’s not overstate the case here. He was smart enough when he first started out and age hasn’t diminished that a whit. Despite the fifty years’ difference in our ages, there’s nothing of the pundit in his attitude toward me, and nothing (I hope) of the postulant in my attitude toward him. We simply eye one another across that half a century with a lively and considerable sexual interest that neither of us would dream of acting out.

  That afternoon, he was wearing a red rag around his head pirate-style, his tanned forearms bare and powdered with flour, his fingers as long and nimble as a monkey’s as he gathered the dough and turned it halfway. He was using a length of chilled pipe as a rolling pin and he paused to flour it while he worked, coaxing the pastry into a rectangle.

  I perched up on a wooden stool and retied my shoes. “You making napoleons?”

  He nodded. “I’m catering a tea for someone up the street. What are you up to, besides a run?”

  I filled him in briefly on my search for Elaine Boldt while he folded the dough in thirds and wrapped it, returning it to the refrigerator. When I got to the part about Marty Grice, I saw his brows shoot up.

  “Stay away from it. Take my advice and leave it to the homicide detectives. You’re a fool if you get involved in that end of it.”

  “But what if she saw who killed Marty? What if that’s why she took off?”

  “Then let her come forward with the information. It’s not up to you. If Lieutenant Dolan catches you messing around with his case, he’ll have your rear end.”

  “Actually, that’s true,” I said ruefully. “But how can I back off? I’m running out of places to look.”

  “Who says she’s lost? What makes you think she’s not down in Sarasota someplace lapping up gin and tonic on the beach?”

  “Because somebody would have heard from her. I mean, I don’t know if she’s up to something or maybe in big trouble herself, but until she shows up I’m going to beat the bushes and bang on pans and see if I can run her to ground.”

  “Make-work,” he said. “You’re chasing your own tail.”

  “Well, that’s probably true, but I gotta do something.”

  Henry gave me a skeptical look. He opened a bag of sugar and weighed out a mound. “You need a dog.”

  “No, I don’t. And what’s that got to do with it? I hate dogs.”

  “You need protection. That business at the beach would never have happened if you’d had a Doberman.”

  That again. God, even my recent brush with death had taken place in a garbage bin… someplace small and cozy with me sobbing like a kid.

  “I was thinking about that stuff today and you want to know the truth? All this talk about women being nurturing is crap. We’re being sold a bill of goods so we can be kept in line by men. If someone came after me today, I’d do it again, only this time I don’t think I’d hesitate.”

  Henry didn’t seem impressed. “I’m sorry to hear that. I hope you haven’t started a trend.”

  “I mean it. I’m tired of feeling helpless and afraid,” I said.

  Henry puffed his cheeks up and blew a raspberry, giving me a bored look. Big talk, his face said, but you don’t fool me a bit. He cracked an egg on the counter and opened it up with one hand, letting the white slip through his fingers into a cup. He put the yolk in a bowl and took up another egg, repeating the process with his eyes pinned on me.

  He said, “So defend yourself. Who’s arguing with that? But you can drop the rhetoric. It’s bullshit. Killing is killing and you better take a look at what you did.”

  “I know,” I said, with less energy. The look in his eyes was making me squirm and I wasn’t all that crazy about his tone. “Look, maybe I haven’t really dealt with that. I just don’t want to be a victim anymore. I’m sick of it.”

  Henry cradled the bowl in his arms, whisking the eggs with a practiced ease. When I do that, the eggs always slop out the side.
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  He said, “When were you ever a victim? You don’t have to justify yourself to me. You did what you did. Just don’t try to turn it into a philosophical statement, because it doesn’t ring true. It’s not as if you made a rational decision after months contemplating the facts. You killed somebody in the heat of the moment. It’s not a platform for a political campaign and it’s not a turning point in your intellectual life.”

  I smiled at him tentatively. “I’m still a good person, aren’t I?” I didn’t like the wistful tone. I meant to show him I was a grown-up, coping with the truth. Until the words came out of my mouth, I hadn’t even known I felt so unsure.

  He didn’t smile back. His eyes rested on my face for a moment and then dropped back to the eggs. “What happened to you doesn’t change that, Kinsey, but you have to keep it straight. Blow somebody’s brains out and you don’t brush that off. And you don’t try to turn it into an intellectual stance.”

  “No, you don’t,” I said uneasily. I had a quick flash of the face that peered into the garbage bin just before I fired. By some remarkable distortion, I could have sworn I saw how the first bullet stretched the flesh like elastic before smashing through. I shook the image away and hopped down. “I have to run,” I said, feeling anxious.

  I left the kitchen without glancing back, but I know what the look was on Henry’s face. Caution and sorrow and pain.

  Once outside, I had to put it out of my mind again. Back the subject went, into its own little box. I did a quick stretch, concentrating on my hamstrings. I don’t run fast enough or far enough to justify much of a warm-up. Other joggers, I know, would argue with that, citing injuries that result from insufficient stretching before a run, but I find exercise loathsome enough without adding contortions up front. For a time, I tried it, dutifully lying on my back in the grass with one leg straight out and the other cocked sideways toward my waist as though broken at the hip. I could never get up afterward unless I flopped about like a bug and I finally decided it was worth a possible groin-muscle pull to avoid the indignity. I’ve never been injured running anyway. I’ve never thrilled to it either. I’m still waiting for the rumored “euphoria” that apparently infuses everyone but me. I headed over to the boulevard at a brisk walk, keeping my mind blank.

  I generally do three miles, jogging along the bicycle path that borders the beach. The walkway is stenciled with odd cartoons at intervals and I watch for those, counting off the quarter-miles. The tracks of some improbable bird, the mark of a single fat tire that crosses the concrete and disappears into the sand. There are usually tramps on the beach; some who camp there permanently, others in transit, their sleeping bags arranged under the palm trees like large green larvae or the skins shed by some night-stirring beast.

  That afternoon the air seemed heavy and chill, the ocean sluggish. The cloud cover was beginning to break up, but the visible sky was a pale washed-out blue and there was no real sign of sun. Out on the water a speedboat ran a course parallel to the beach and the path of the wake was like a spinning ribbon of silver winding along behind. On the landward side, the mountains were dark green. At this distance, the low-growing vegetation looked like soft suede, with rock face showing through along the ridges as though the nap had worn away from hard use.

  I did the turnaround at East Beach and ran the mile and a half back, then walked the block to my apartment as a cool-down. I’m big on cool-downs. I showered and dressed again and then hopped in my car and headed up to Pam Sharkey’s office on Chapel. Pam was the insurance agent who’d written up the policies for Leonard Grice and I wanted to probe that issue before I set it aside. I trust Vera, but I don’t like taking people’s word for things. Maybe Grice had taken out a massive policy from some other company. How did I know?

  The Valdez Building is located at the corner of Chapel and Feria, a Spanish word meaning “fair.” I only know that because I looked it up. I’ve been thinking I should take a Spanish class one of these days, but I haven’t gotten around to it yet. I can say taco and gracias but I’m real short on verbs. The Valdez is typical of the architecture in this town: two stories of white stucco with a red tile roof, big arches, windows faced with wrought-iron gratings. There are azure blue awnings and the landscaping consists of small plots of perfect grass. Palm trees grace the courtyard and there’s a fountain capped by a small naked boy doing something wicked with a fish.

  Pam Sharkey’s office is on the first floor and sports the same network of cubicles I’d seen at California Fidelity. Nothing architecturally innovative for the insurance game these days. It must be like doing business in a series of playpens. The company she works for, Lambeth and Creek, is an independent agency that writes policies for a number of companies, CFI being one. I’d only dealt with Pam once, when I was bird-dogging an errant husband. His wife, my client, was in the process of divorcing him and was hoping for evidence of his philandering as a negotiating tool when it came down to the settlement. Pam had taken offense, not because I’d uncovered her affair with the man, but because I’d turned up two other women involved with him at the same time. None of this was ever brought up in court, of course, but her name was prominent in my report. She had never forgiven me for knowing too much. Santa Teresa is a small town and our paths cross now and then. We’re polite to one another, but the civilities are undercut with spite on her part and sly amusement on mine.

  Pam is petite, a bristly little chihuahua of a human being. She’s the only woman I ever met who claims to be ten years older than she actually is so that everyone will tell her how young she looks. On that basis, she swears she’s thirty-eight. Her face is small, her skin dusky and she applies pancake makeup in varying shades in a vain attempt to add “planes” to her cheeks. I got news for her. There’s no way to disguise the bags under your eyes by the skillful use of “cover.” From most angles anybody with a brain can see the bags sitting right there, only looking phantom white instead of gray. Who’s fooled by this? Why not go for the dark circles and at least look exotic and worldly-wise… Anna Magnani, Jeanne Moreau, Simone Signoret perhaps. Pam had also taken lately to a permanent wave, so her pale brown hair looked frizzy and unkempt, a style apparently billed as “the bedroom look.” That afternoon she was done up in a little hunting outfit: a hacking jacket, brown knickers, pink hose and low heels with buckles. The only hunting she did was in singles bars, bagging one-night stands as though the season were nearly over and her license about to expire. Well, wait a minute here. I can see I’ve been unfair about this. I don’t like Pam any more than she likes me. Every time I see her, it makes me feel petty and mean ��� not my favorite way to experience myself. Maybe she avoids me for the same reason.

  Her cubicle is near the front ��� a status symbol, I think. She caught sight of me and busied herself with papers and files. By the time I’d made my way over to her desk, she was on the phone. She must have been talking to a man because her manner was flirtatious. She touched herself everywhere as she talked, rolling a lock of hair around her finger, checking an earring, stroking the lapel of her jacket. She wore a series of gold necklaces and those got a workout too. Sometimes she’d rub her chin with a loop of gold chain, uttering a carefree, trilling laugh she must have practiced late at night. She glanced at me, feigning surprise, holding up a palm to indicate that I’d have to wait.

  She turned away from me in her swivel chair, completing the telephone exchange with a murmured intimacy of some sort. On top of a stack of files on her desk, I could see a copy of Cosmo, offering articles on the G spot, cosmetic breast surgery, and social rape.

  Pam hung up at long last and swiveled back, all the animation leaving her face. No point in wasting the whole show on me. “Something I can help you with, Kinsey?”

  “I understand you wrote a couple of policies for Leonard and Marty Grice.”

  “That’s right.”

  I smiled slightly. “Could you tell me the status of the paperwork at this point?”

  Pam broke eye contact, goin
g through another quick digital survey: earring, hair, lapel. She took up a loop of gold chain, running her index finger back and forth on it until I worried she’d saw right through the skin. She wanted to tell me Leonard Grice was none of my business, but she knew I did occasional work for California Fidelity. “What’s the problem?”

  “No problem,” I said. “Vera Lipton’s wondering about the claim on the fire loss and I need to know if there were any other policies in effect.”

  “Now, wait a minute. Leonard Grice is a very dear man and he’s been through a terrible six months. If California Fidelity intends to make trouble, Vera better deal directly with me.”

  “Who said anything about trouble? Vera can’t even process the claim until the proof of loss is in.”

  “That goes without saying, Kinsey,” she said. “I still don’t see what this has to do with you.” I could feel my smile begin to set like a pan of fudge. I leaned forward, left hand flat on the desk, right hand resting on my hip. I thought it was time to clarify our relationship. “Not that it’s any of your business, Pam, but I’m in the middle of a big investigation adjunctive to this. You don’t have to cooperate, but I’m just going to turn around and present a court order to the supervisor here and somebody’s going to come down on you like a ton of bricks for all the trouble it’ll cause. Now is that how you want to proceed on this or what?”

  Under the pancake makeup, she began to show signs of sunburn. “I hope you don’t think you can intimidate me,” she said.

  “Absolutely not.” I shut my mouth then and let her assimilate the threat. I thought it sounded pretty good.

  She took up a stack of papers and rapped them on the desk, aligning the edges. “Leonard Grice was insured through California Fidelity Life and California Fidelity Casualty Insurance. He collected twenty-five hundred dollars for the life insurance and he’ll get twenty-five thousand for the structural damage to the house. The contents were uninsured.”