by Sue Grafton
I shook my head apologetically. I was beginning to feel I’d never done anything. No Scarsdale, no therapy.
“No alcohol,” he said. “That’s the hard part. On the maintenance diet, you can have like a small glass of white wine now and then, but that’s it. I figure the first fifty pounds I lost was from that. Giving up booze. You’d be surprised how much weight that adds.”
“Sounds a lot better for you,” I said.
“I feel good about myself,” he said. “That’s the important thing. So. Enough of that. What do you want to know about Libby Glass? The receptionist says you came about her.”
I explained what I was up to and how I came to be involved in the matter of her death. He took it all in, asking occasional questions. “What can I tell you?” he said, finally.
“How long had she handled Laurence Fife’s account?”
“I’m glad you asked me that because that’s one thing I looked up when I knew you were coming over. We handled his personal finances first for about a year. The law firm of Fife and Scorsoni had only been with us six months. Actually a little less. We were just putting in our own computer system and Libby was trying to get all the records straightened out for the changeover. She was a very good accountant by the way. Real conscientious and real smart.”
“Were you a good friend of hers?”
“Pretty good. I was El Blimpo back then but I had a crush on her and we kind of had this brother-sister relationship, platonic. We didn’t date. Just had lunch together once a week, something like that. Sometimes a drink after work.”
“How many accounts did she handle?”
“All together? I’d say twenty-five, maybe thirty. She was a very ambitious girl and she really knocked herself out… for all the good it did.”
“Meaning what?”
He got up and closed the door to his office, pointing significantly to the wall of the office next door.
“Listen, old man Haycraft was a petty tyrant, the original male chauvinist pig. Libby thought if she worked hard, she’d get a promotion and a raise, but no such thing. And these guys aren’t much better. You want to know how I get a raise? I threaten to quit. Libby didn’t even do that.”
“How much was she paid?”
“I don’t know. I could maybe look that up. Not enough to suit her, I can tell you that. Fife and Scorsoni was a big account not the biggest, but big. She didn’t feel it was fair.”
“She did more work for Fife than Scorsoni, I assume.”
“At first. After that, it was half and half. A lot of the purpose of our taking over their business management was to keep track of all the estate work. That was a big part of their ongoing business from what she said. The dead guy, Fife, did a lot of messy divorce work, which paid big fees but didn’t require that much in the way of bookkeeping. Also, we did accounts receivable for them, paid their office bills, kept track of profits from the firm, and made suggestions about investments. Well, at that point, we weren’t doing much in the way of investment counseling because they hadn’t been with us that long but that was the object of the exercise eventually. We like to hold off some until we see where our clients stand. Anyway, I can’t go into details on that but I can probably answer any other general questions you might have.”
“Do you know anything about where the money from the Fife’s estate went?”
“The kids. It was divided equally among them. I never saw the will but I helped settle the estate in terms of disbursements after probate.”
“You don’t happen to represent Scorsoni’s new law firm, do you?”
“Nope,” Garry said. “I met him a couple of times after Fife died. He seemed like a nice man.”
“Is there any way I could look at the old books?”
“Nope,” he said. “You could do it if I had Scorsoni’s written permission but I don’t know what good that would do you anyway unless you’re an accountant yourself. Our system isn’t that complicated, but I don’t think it’d make sense to you.”
“Probably not,” I said, trying to think what else I wanted to ask him about.
“You want coffee? I’m sorry, I should have asked you sooner.”
“No thanks. I’m fine,” I said. “What about Libby’s personal affairs. Is there any chance that she was sleeping with Laurence Fife?”
Garry laughed. “Now that I don’t know. She’d been going with some creepy little guy ever since high school, and I knew she’d broken up with him. On my advice, I might add.
“How come?”
“He came in to apply for a job here. I was in charge of screening all applicants. He was just supposed to messenger stuff back and forth but he didn’t even look that smart. He was belligerent, too, and if you want my honest opinion, he was high.”
“You wouldn’t still have his application on file, would you?” I asked, feeling a faint surge of excitement.
Garry looked at me. “We’re not having this conversation, am I right?”
“Right.
“I’ll see what I can find,” he said promptly. “It wouldn’t be here. It’d be over in the warehouse. We have all the old records stored there. Accountants are real pack rats. We never throw anything away and everything gets written down.”
“Thanks, Garry,” I said. “I can’t tell you how much I appreciate this.”
He smiled happily “And maybe I’ll look for the old Fife files as long as I’m over there. It won’t hurt to take a peek. And to answer your question about Libby, my guess would be no. I don’t think she was having an affair with Laurence Fife.” He glanced at his watch. “I got a meeting.”
I shook his hand across the desk, feeling good. “Thanks again,” I said.
“No problem. Stop by again. Anytime.”
I got back to my hotel room at 3:30. I put a pillow on the plastic chair, set my typewriter up on the wobbly desk, and spent an hour and a half typing up my notes. It had been a long time since I sat down to do paperwork but it had to be caught up. By the time I pecked my way through the last paragraph, I had a pain in my lower back and another one right between my shoulder blades. I changed into my running clothes, my body heat resurrecting the smell of old sweat and car fumes. I was going to have to find a Laundromat soon. I jogged south on Wilshire, just for variety, cutting across to San Vicente at Twenty-sixth Street. Once I got on the wide grassy divider, I could feel myself hit stride. Running always hurts ��� I don’t care what they say ��� but it does acquaint one with all of one’s body parts. This time I could feel my thighs protest and I noticed a mild aching in my shins, which I ignored, plodding on gamely. For my bravery, I netted a few rude remarks from two guys in a pickup truck. When I got back to the motel, I showered and got back into my jeans and then I stopped by McDonald’s and had a Quarter Pounder with cheese, fries, and a medium Coke. By then, it was 6:45. I filled up the car with gas and headed over the hill into Sherman Oaks.
Chapter 17
*
Mrs. Glass answered the door after half a buzz. This time the living room had been picked up to some extent, her sewing confined now to a neatly folded pile of fabric on the arm of the couch. Raymond was nowhere in sight.
“He had a bad day,” she said to me. “Lyle stopped by on his way home from work and we put him to bed.”
Even the television set was turned off, and I wondered what she did with herself in the evenings.
“Elizabeth’s things are in the basement,” she murmured. “I’ll just get the key to the storage bin.”
She returned a moment later and I followed her out into the corridor. We turned left, past the stairway back to the basement door which was set into the righthand wall. The door was locked and after she opened it, she flipped the light switch at the top of the stairs. I could already smell the dry musty scent of old window screens and half-empty cans of latex paint. I was about two steps behind her as we made our way down the narrow passageway, wooden stairs taking a sharp righthand turn. At the landing, I caught a glimpse of concrete
floor with bins of wooden lathing reaching to the low ceiling. Something wasn’t right but the oddity didn’t really register before the blast rang out. The light bulb on the landing shattered, spraying us both with thin flakes of glass and the basement was instantly blanketed in darkness. Grace shrieked and I grabbed her, pulling her back up the stairs. I lost my balance and she stumbled over me. There must have been an outside exit because I heard a wrenching of wood, a bang, and then someone taking the concrete steps outside two at a time. I struggled out from under Grace, jerking her up the stairs with me and then I left her in the corridor, racing out through the front and around the side of the building. Someone had left an old power mower in the driveway and I tripped in the darkness, sprawling forward on my hands and knees, cursing savagely as I scrambled back to my feet again. I reached the rear of the building, keeping low, my heart pounding in my ears. It was black-dark, my eyes just beginning to adjust. A vehicle started up one street over and I could hear it chirp out with a quick shift of gears. I ducked back, leaning against the building then, hearing nothing but the fading roar of a vehicle being driven away at high speed. My mouth was dry. I was drenched in sweat and belatedly I felt a shudder go through me. Both my palms stung where the gravel had bitten into the flesh. I trotted back to my car and got out my flashlight, tucking the little automatic into my windbreaker pocket. I didn’t think there was anyone left to shoot but I was tired of being surprised.
Grace was sitting on the doorsill, her head hanging down between her knees. She was shaking from head to foot and she’d started to weep. I helped her to her feet, easing open the apartment door.
“Lyle knew I was picking the stuff up, right?” I snapped at her. She gave me a haunted, pleading look.
“It couldn’t have been him. He wouldn’t have done that to me,” she whimpered.
“Your faith is touching,” I said. “Now sit. I’ll be back in a minute.”
I went back to the basement stairs. The beam from the flashlight cut through the blackness. There was a second bulb at the bottom of the stairs and I pulled the chain. A flat dull light from the swinging bulb threw out a yellow arc that slowed to a halt. I turned off the flashlight. I knew which bin belonged to Mrs. Glass. It had been smashed open, the padlock dangling ineffectually where the lathing had been broken through. Cardboard boxes had been torn open, the contents strewn about in haste, forming an ankle-deep mess through which I picked my way. The emptied boxes all bore the name “Elizabeth,” obligingly rendered in bold Magic Marker strokes. I wondered if we’d interrupted the intruder before or after he’d found what he was looking for. I heard a sound behind me and I whirled, raising the flashlight instantly like a club.
A man stood there staring at me with bewilderment.
“Got a problem down here?”
“Oh fuck. Who are you?”
He was middle-aged, hands in his pockets, his expression sheepish. “Frank Isenberg from apartment three,” he said apologetically. “Did somebody break in? You want me to call the police?”
“No, don’t do that yet. Let me check upstairs with Grace. This looks like the only bin that’s been damaged. Maybe it was just kids,” I said, heart still thudding. “You didn’t have to sneak up on me.”
“Sorry. I just thought you might need some help.”
” Yeah, well thanks anyway. I’ll let you know if I need anything.”
He stood there surveying the chaos for a moment and then he shrugged and went back upstairs.
I checked the basement door at the rear. The glass had been broken out and someone had pulled back the bolt by reaching through. The door was wide open of course. I shut it, pushing the bolt back into place. When I turned around, Grace was creeping timidly down the stairs, her face still pale. She clung to the railing. “Elizabeth’s things,” she whispered. “They spoiled all of her boxes, all the things I saved.”
She sank down on the steps, rubbing her temples. Her large dark eyes looked injured, perplexed, with a touch of something else that I could have sworn was guilt.
“Maybe we should call the police,” I said, feeling mean, wondering just how protective of Lyle she intended to be.
“Do you really think?” she said. Her gaze flitted back and forth indecisively and she took out a handkerchief, pressing it against her forehead as though to remove beads of sweat. “Nothing might be missing,” she said hopefully. “Maybe nothing’s gone.”
“Or maybe we won’t know the difference,” I said.
She pulled herself up and moved over to the bin, taking in the disastrous piles of papers, stuffed animals, cosmetics, underwear. She stopped, picking up papers randomly, trying to make stacks. Her hands still trembled but I didn’t think she was afraid. Startled perhaps, and thinking rapidly.
“I take it Raymond is still asleep,” I said.
She nodded, tears welling up as the extent of the vandalism became more and more apparent. I could feel myself relent.
Even if Lyle had done it, it was mean-spirited, a violation of something precious to Grace. She had already suffered enough without this. I set the flashlight aside and began to pile papers back into the boxes: costume jewelry, lingerie, old issues of Seventeen and Vogue, patterns for clothing that Libby had probably never made. “Do you mind if I take these boxes with me and go through them tonight?” I asked. “I can have them back to you by morning.”
“All right. I suppose. I can’t see what harm it would do now anyway,” she murmured, not looking at me.
It seemed hopeless to me. In this jumble, who knew what might be missing? I’d have to go through the boxes and see if I could spot anything, but the chances weren’t good. Lyle couldn’t have been down there long ��� if it had been him. He knew I was coming back for the stuff and when he’d been there earlier, Grace probably told him exactly what time I expected to arrive. He’d had to wait until dark and he probably thought we’d spend more time upstairs before coming down. Still, he was cutting it close ��� unless he simply didn’t care. And why didn’t he break in during the three days I was gone? I thought back to his insolence and I suspected that he might take a certain satisfaction in thwarting me, even if he was caught at it.
Grace helped me cart the boxes to the car, six of them. I should have taken the stuff the first time I was there, I thought, but I couldn’t picture driving to Vegas with the entire backseat filled with cardboard boxes. Still, the boxes would have been intact. It was my own damn fault, I thought sourly.
I told Grace I’d be back first thing in the morning and then I pulled out. It was going to be a long night.
I bought two containers of black coffee across the street, locked the door to my motel room, and closed the drapes. I emptied the first carton onto the bed and then I started making stacks. School papers in one pile. Personal letters. Magazines. Stuffed animals. Clothing. Cosmetics. Bills and receipts. Grace had apparently saved every article Elizabeth had touched since kindergarten. Report cards. School projects. Really, six cartons seemed modest when I realized how much there was. Blue books from college. Copies of applications for work. Tax returns. The accumulation of an entire life and it was really only so much trash. Who would ever need to refer to any of this again? The original energy and spirit had all seeped away. I did feel for her. I did get some sense of that young girl, whose gropings and triumphs and little failures were piled together now in a drab motel room. I didn’t even know what I was looking for. I flipped through a diary from the fifth grade the handwriting round and dutiful, the entries dull. I tried to imagine myself dead, someone sorting carelessly through my belongings. What was there really of my life? Canceled checks. Reports all typewritten and filed. Everything of value reduced to terse prose. I didn’t keep much myself, didn’t hoard or save. Two divorce decrees. That was about the sum of it for me. I collected more information about other people’s lives than I did about my own, as though, perhaps, in poring over the facts about other people, I could discover something about myself. My own mystery, unplumbed, und
etected, was sorted into files that were neatly labeled but really didn’t say much. I picked through the last of Elizabeth’s boxes but there was nothing of interest. It was 4:00 in the morning when I finished. Nothing. If there had been anything there, it was gone now and I was irritated with myself again, berating myself for my own poor judgment. This was the second time I’d arrived too late, the second time some vital piece of information had slipped away from me.
I began to repack boxes, automatically rechecking as I went, sorting. Clothes in one box, stuffed animals tucked into the spaces along the sides. School papers, diaries, blue books in the next box. Back it all went, neatly catalogued this time, compulsively arranged, as thought I owed Elizabeth Glass some kind of order after I’d pried into the hidden crevices of her abandoned life. I riffed through magazines, held textbooks by the spine, letting the pages fly loose. The stacks on the bed diminished. There weren’t that many personal letters and I felt guilty reading them, but I did. Some from an aunt in Arizona. Some from a girl named Judy whom Libby must have known in high school. No one seemed to refer to anything intimate in her life and I had to conclude that she confided little or else that she had no tales to tell. The disappointment was acute. I was down to the last pile of books, mostly paperbacks. Such taste. Leon Uris and Irving Stone, Victoria Holt, Georgette Heyer, a few more exotic samples that I guessed had been from some literature survey course in college. The letter slipped out of the pages of a dog-eared copy of Pride and Prejudice. I nearly tossed it in the box with the rest of the stuff. The handwriting was a tightly stroked cursive on two sides in dark blue ink. No date. No envelope. No postmark. I picked it up by one comer and read it, feeling a cold pinching sensation begin at the base of my spine.
Darling Elizabeth… I’m writing this so you’ll have something when you get back. I know these separations are hard for you and I wish there were some way I could ease your pain. You are so much more honest than I am, so much more open about what you feel than I allow myself to be, but I do love you and I don’t want you to have any doubts about that. You’re right when you say that I’m conservative. I’m guilty as charged, your Honor, but I’m not immune to suffering and as often as I’ve been accused of being selfish, I’m not as reckless of others as you might think. I would like to take our time about this and be sure that it’s something we both want. What we have now is very dear to me and I’m not saying ��� please believe me ��� that I wouldn’t turn my life around for you if it comes to that. On the other hand, I think we should both be sure that we can survive the day-to-day absurdities of being together. Right now, the intensity dazzles and it seems simple enough for us both to chuck it all and make some kind of life, but we haven’t known each other that long or that well. I can’t afford to risk wife, kids, and career in the heat of the moment though you know it tempts me. Please let’s move slowly on this. I love you more than I can say and I don’t want to lose you which is selfish enough, I suppose, in itself. You’re right to push, but please don’t lose sight of what’s at stake, for you as well as me. Tolerate my caution if you can. I love you.