by Sue Grafton
“What kind of trade?”
“Just give me time to clear this stuff out before you tell anyone. I was about to lay off anyway because the narcs have some undercover agents at our school and I thought I’d cool it ‘til the pressure’s off.”
We’re not talking permanent reform here, folks. We’re talking simple expediency, but at least the kid wasn’t trying to con me… too much.
We looked at each other and something shifted. I knew I could rail and stomp and threaten him. I knew I could be pious and moralistic and disapproving and it wouldn’t change a thing. He knew the score as well as I did and what we had to offer each other might not be a bad bet on either side.
“All right, you got it,” I said.
“Let’s go somewhere and talk,” he said. “I’m freezin my nuts off.
It bothered me to realize that I’d started to like him just a little bit.
Chapter 15
*
We went to The Clockworks on State Street; he on his motorcycle, with me following in my car. The place is a teen hangout and looks like something out of a rock video; a long, narrow room painted charcoal gray with a high ceiling and the lighting done in pink and purple neon tubing. The whole of it resembles the interior of a clock in abstract and futuristic forms. There are mobiles looking like big black gears suspended from the ceiling, the smoke in the air moving them in slow circles. There are four small tables near the door and on the left are what look like shelves at chest height in a series of standing-room-only booths where couples can neck while drinking soda pop. The menu posted on the wall is larded with side orders like dinner salad and garlic toast that kids can snack on, paying seventy-five cents for the privilege of taking up table space for hours at a time. You can also buy two kinds of beer and a house chablis if you are old enough and have tangible proof. It was now nearly midnight and there were only two other people in the place, but the owner apparently knew Mike and his gaze slid over to me appraisingly. I tried to look like I was not Mike’s date. I didn’t mind a May/December romance now and then, but a seventeen-year-old is pushing it some. Also I’m not clear on the etiquette of making deals with junior dope peddlers. Who pays for the drinks? I didn’t want his self-image to suffer.
“What do you want?” he asked, moving toward the counter.
“Chablis is fine,” I said. He was already pulling his wallet out so I let him pay. He probably made thirty grand a year selling grass and pills. The owner looked over at me again and I waved my I.D. at him casually, indicating that he could card me, but he’d be wasting a trip across the room.
Mike came back with a plastic glass of white wine for me and a soft drink for himself. He sat down, surveying the place for narcs in disguise. He seemed strangely mature and I was having trouble dealing with the incongruity of a kid who looked like a Boy Scout and behaved like a Mafia management trainee. He turned toward me then, resting both elbows on the table. He’d taken up a sugar packet from the container on the table and he tapped it and turned it restlessly, addressing most of what he had to say to the trivia question printed on the back.
“Okay. Here’s what happened,” he said, “and I’m tellin’ you the truth. For one thing, I didn’t stash at Uncle Leonard and Aunt Marty’s until after she got killed and he moved out. Once the cops got done and everything, it occurred to me the utility shed was perfect so I moved some stuff in. Anyway, I went by the house the night she got killed…”
“Did she know you were coming?”
“Nuh-uh, I’m getting to that. I mean, I knew they went out on Tuesday nights and I thought they’d be gone. Like, you know, if I was hard up and needed some bucks or something, I might cruise by and pick up some loose change. They kept cash around ��� not a lot, but enough. Or sometimes I’d take something I could unload somewhere else. Nothing they’d miss and nobody’d ever said anything about it so I figured they hadn’t tipped to it yet. Anyway what happened was I went over there that night thinking the place would be empty, but when I got there the door was open ���”
“The door was standing open?”
He shook his head. “I just kind of turned the knob and it was unlocked. When I stuck my head in I knew something weird was going on….”
I waited, watching him uneasily.
He cleared his throat, looking over his shoulder at the front entrance. His voice dropped.
“I think the guy was still there, you know? The light was on in the basement and I could hear someone knocking around down there and there was this rug in the hall, like an area rug that had been thrown over something. I saw a hand sticking out with blood on it. Man, I took off.”
“You’re pretty sure she was dead at that point?”
He nodded, hanging his head. He ran a hand along the pink center divider of hair, looking off to one side. “I should’ve called the cops. I knew I should, but the whole thing really freaked me out. I hate that shit. And what was I supposed to do? I couldn’t tell the cops anything and I didn’t want ‘em looking at me, so I just kept my mouth shut. I mean, 1 couldn’t see what difference it made. I didn’t see who did it or anything like that.”
“Do you remember anything else? A car parked out front…”
“I don’t know. I didn’t stay long. I took one look at that shit and I was gone. I could smell all these gasoline fumes or something and…”
He hesitated briefly. “Wait a minute, yeah, there was a brown grocery bag in the hall too. I don’t know what it was doing there. I mean, I didn’t know what the fuck was happening, so I just backed away real quiet and came on down here and made sure people saw me.”
I took a sip of wine, running through his story. The chablis tasted like fermented grapefruit juice. “Tell me about the grocery bag. Was it empty, full, crumpled?”
“It had stuff in it, I think. I mean, I didn’t see anything in particular. It was one of those brown paper bags from Alpha Beta, standing just inside the door to the right.”
“Did it look like she’d been shopping? Is that what you’re trying to say?”
He shrugged. “It just looked like junk, I guess. I don’t know. Maybe it belonged to whoever was down in the basement.”
“Too bad you didn’t make an anonymous call to the cops. Maybe they could have gotten there before the place went up in smoke.”
“Yeah, I know. I thought about that later and I was bummed I didn’t do that, but I wasn’t thinking straight.”
He polished off his soft drink and rattled the ice in the cup, tilting a cube into his mouth. I could hear the ice crunching in his teeth. It sounded like a horse chewing on a bit.
“Do you remember anything else?”
“No, I guess that’s it. Once I figured out what was going on, I back out of there and hightailed it down here as fast as I could.”
“You have any idea what time it was?”
“Nuh-un, not exactly. It was quarter of nine when I got here and it probably took me ten minutes on the motorcycle by the time I found a place to park and all like that. I had to walk the sucker for two blocks so nobody would hear me start it up. It was probably eight-thirty or something like that when I left Uncle Leonard’s house.”
I shook my head. “Not eight-thirty. You must mean nine-thirty. She wasn’t killed until after nine.”
He took the cup away from his mouth, looking at me with puzzlement. “She wasn’t?”
“Your uncle and Mrs. Howe both say they talked to her at nine and the cops took a call they think was your aunt at nine-oh-six.”
“Well, maybe I got it wrong then because I thought it was quarter of nine when I got here. I looked at the clock when I walked in and then I turned around and asked this buddy of mine what time it was and he checked his watch.”
“I’ll see if I can check that out,” I said. “By the way, how’s Leonard related to you?”
“My dad and him are brothers. Dad’s the youngest in his family.”
“So Lily Howe is their sister.”
“Some
thing like that.”
The purple neon tubes began to blink out in succession and the pink ones went dark after that. The owner of the place called over to the table. “Closing down in ten minutes, Mike. Sorry to break it up.”
“That’s okay. Thanks, man.”
We got up, moving toward the back entrance. He was not much taller than I and I wondered if we looked like brother and sister or mother and son. I didn’t say anything else until we got to the parking lot.
“You have any theories about who killed your aunt?”
“No, do you?”
I shook my head. “I’d get that shed cleaned out if I were you.”
“Yeah, sure. That was the deal, wasn’t it?”
He got on his cycle and did one of those jumps to start it up. “Hey, you know what? I don’t remember your name.”
I gave him my card, then got in my VW. He waited to make sure I was under way and then he roared off.
I intended to let the case sit for the weekend because I wasn’t sure what else to do. Saturday morning, I went over the police reports again at home, added note cards to my collection up on the bulletin board, but for the time being, I simply had to sit it out. Come Monday, it was possible I’d get a response from the classified ads I’d placed in the Florida papers or maybe I’d hear from the DMV in Tallahassee or Sacramento. I was still waiting for the plane ticket Julia Ochsner had mailed, hoping it would give me information of some kind. If nothing new came to light, I was going to have to start all over again and see if I could develop a few new leads. I still had local vets to check, trying to get a rundown on the cat.
I took a few minutes to do recalls on the three cab companies. The dispatcher I’d talked to at Green Stripe said he hadn’t had a chance to dig through his files yet. The owner of City Cab had looked and found nothing and Ron Coachella at Tip Top wasn’t in yet, but the dispatcher on duty said he’d be in shortly. So much for that.
I went down to the office. I hadn’t meant to, but I couldn’t help myself. I was feeling itchy and restless and dissatisfied. I don’t like not succeeding at things. California Fidelity was closed for the weekend. I unlocked my door and picked up the mail that had been shoved through the slot. There was an envelope with Julia Ochsner’s return address on it. I tossed it on the desk while I checked my messages. There was only one and it had apparently just come in.
“Hello, Kinsey. This is Ron Coachella over at the cab company? I got the information you want. Tip Top did pick up the fare at 2097 Via Madrina… let’s see ��� on January the ninth at ten-fourteen P.M. Driver’s name was Nelson Acquistapace at 555-6317. I told him you’d be in touch. I’ve got the trip sheet down here and you’re welcome to stop by and pick up a copy so he can look at it. Twenty bucks might help his memory, if you know what I mean. Aside from that, just remember… ‘If you want the top ride in town, call Tip Top,’ ” he sang and hung up.
I smiled, making a note of the driver’s name and number. I put on a pot of coffee and opened the note from Julia. Her handwriting was of the old school, surprisingly firm, a clear cursive with grand flourishes and well-formed capital letters. She said she was enclosing the ticket, that the June rains were in full force, and that Charmaine Makowski had given birth to a nine-pound nine-ounce boy the night before and wanted everyone to know that she never expected to sit down again. Charmaine and Roland had not yet named the child but were accepting suggestions. Julia said that most of the appellations proffered so far were not fit to repeat. Julia thought it was a hoot. Warmest regards, said she.
I studied the ticket, which was tucked in a TWA folder. It looked like it had been generated at the Santa Teresa airport, round-trip from Santa Teresa to LAX and from LAX to Miami. All four flight coupons had been removed but the carbon remained. The ticket had been paid for by credit card. Four flight coupons torn out. Now, that was interesting. Had she come back to town at some point? If so, why had the carbon been down in Boca Raton in Pat Usher’s trash? I went back to my list of travel agents, trying to figure out which one Elaine Boldt ordinarily used. I decided on Santa Teresa Travel which has an office within easy walking distance of the condominium on Via Madrina. It was just a guess, but I had to start someplace. I put in a call, but there was no answer and I assumed the agency was shut down for the weekend.
I made a list of leads to pursue on Monday. I checked the ticket again. I didn’t see any indication that she’d had the cat in tow, but I wasn’t sure how that worked. Did kitty cats get tickets like everybody else? I’d have to ask. There were some luggage tags still stapled to the back of the folder, but that doesn’t mean much. At the airport here in town, you can pick up your bags without anybody verifying the tags. I remembered Elaine’s luggage as fairly distinctive anyway, dark red leather with the designer signature writ large on the fabric trim. I’d priced that stuff once and decided to open a Keogh account instead.
I put a call through to Nelson Acquistapace, the Tip Top cab driver. He was home in bed with a head cold, but said Ron had told him what I needed. He had to pause and blow his nose twice. “Why don’t you pick up the trip sheet and bring it over here? I’m on Delgado, just half a block down from Tip Top,” he said. “I’ll be outside around in back.”
I picked up the trip sheet and arrived at his place by 9:35. I found him sitting in the backyard of a white frame bungalow tucked into a jungle of overgrown pittosporum bushes. He was lying on a hammock in a freestanding metal frame in the only patch of sunlight. The rest of the property was in deep shade, rather chilly and uninviting. He looked to be in his sixties, balding, heavyset in a dark green velour bathrobe. He had a square of pink sprigged flannel on his chest and he smelled like Vicks VapoRub. He’d set up a small metal table with his cold remedies, a box of Kleenex, an empty juice glass, and some crossword-puzzle books that I recognized. “I know the guy who writes those puzzles,” I said. “He’s my landlord.”
His eyebrows shot up. “This guy lives in town here? He’s a whiz! He drives me up the wall with these things. Look at this one. Eighteenth-Century English Novelists and he includes all their books and their characters and everything. I had to go read Henry Fielding and Laurence Sterne and people I never even heard about just to get through the thing. It’s better than a college education. I’m tellin’ you. What is he, some kind of professor?”
I shook my head, feeling absurdly proud. You’d have thought Henry was a rock star the way this guy was reacting. “He used to run that little bakery at the corner of State and Purdue. He started doing the crossword puzzles when he retired.”
“Is that right? You sure it’s the same guy? Henry Pitts?”
I laughed. “Sure I’m sure. He tries those things out on me all the time. I don’t think I’ve ever finished one yet.”
“You tell him I want to meet him sometime. He has a very twisted sense of humor, but I like that. He did one all made up of botanical oddities, remember that? I went crazy. I was up all night. I can’t believe the guy lives here in Santa Teresa. I thought he was a full professor at MIT, someplace like that.”
“I’ll tell him you said that. He’ll be thrilled to hear he has a fan.”
“You tell him to stop by here anytime. Tell him Nelson Acquistapace is at his service. He needs a cab, just call Tip Top and ask for me.”
“I’ll do that,” I said.
“You got the trip sheet? Ron said you were looking for some lady who disappeared. Is that right?”
I took the trip sheet out of my purse and passed it over to him.
“Don’t get too close, sweetheart,” he said. He took a handkerchief out of his robe pocket and dusted his nose with it, honking into it before he put it back. He unfolded the sheet, holding it at arm’s length to look at it. “I left my glasses inside. Which one?”
I pointed to the Via Madrina address.
“Yeah, I remember her, I think. I took her to the airport and dropped her off. I remember she was picking up that last flight from here to L.A. Where was she going, I forget n
ow.”
“Miami, Florida.”
“Yeah, that’s right. I remember now.”
He was studying the trip sheet as though it were a pack of Tarot cards in some tricky configuration. “You know what this is?” He was tapping the paper. “You want to know why this fare is so high? Look at that. Sixteen bucks. It doesn’t cost that much to go from Via Madrina to the airport. She made a stop and had me wait maybe fifteen minutes with the meter running. An intermediate stop. Now, just let me think where it was. Not far. Some place on Chapel. Okay, yeah, I got it now. That clinic down near the freeway.”
“A clinic?” That took me by surprise.
“Yeah, you know. An emergency facility. For the cat. She dropped him off for some kind of emergency treatment and then she got back in the cab and we took off.”
“I don’t suppose you actually saw her get on the plane, did you?”
“Sure. I was done for the night. You can see for yourself from the trip sheet. She was my last fare so I went upstairs to the airport bar and had a couple of beers out on the patio. I told her I was gonna be up there so she even turned around and waved at me when she was walkin’ out to the plane.”
“Was she alone?”
“As far as I could tell.”
“Had you ever picked her up before?”
“Not me. I just moved up here from L.A. in November last year. This is paradise. I love this town.”
“Well,” I said, “I appreciate your help. At least, we know she got on the plane. I guess now the question is, did she ever reach Boca Raton?”