A is for ALIBI

by Sue Grafton

  “He’d told his wife?”

  “I think so. She was very gracious on the phone. I told her that Greg had asked me to get in touch and she played right along. When she told me that David was dead, I was… I didn’t even know what to say to her but of course, I had to babble right on-how sorry, how sad… like some disinterested bystander making the right noises somehow. It was awful. Terrible.”

  “She didn’t mention your relationship herself?”

  “Oh no. She was much too cool for that, but she did know exactly who I was. Anyway, I’m sorry I didn’t tell you to begin with.”

  “No harm done,” I said.

  “How’s it going otherwise?” she asked.

  I felt myself hesitate. “Bits and pieces. Nothing concrete.”

  “Do you really expect to turn up anything after all this time?”

  I smiled. “You never know. People get careless when they’re feeling safe.”

  “I guess that’s true.”

  We talked briefly about Greg and Diane and my visits with them, which I edited heavily. At 2:50 Gwen glanced at her watch.

  “I’ve got to get back,” she said, fishing in her purse for her billfold. She took out a five-dollar bill. “Will you keep in touch?”

  “Sure,” I said. I took a sip of wine, watching her get up. “When did you last see Colin?”

  She focused abruptly on my face. “Colin?”

  “I just met him Saturday,” I said as though that explained it. “I thought maybe Diane might like to know he’s back. She’s fond of him.”

  “Yes, she is,” Gwen said. “I don’t know when I saw him last myself. Diane’s graduation, I guess. Her junior-high-school graduation. What makes you ask?”

  I shrugged. “Just curious,” I said. I gave her what I hoped was my blandest look. A mild pink patch had appeared on her neck and I wondered if that could be introduced in court as a lie-detecting device. “I’ll take care of the tip,” I said.

  “Let me know how it goes,” she said, all casual again. She tucked the money under her plate and moved off at the same efficient pace that had brought her in. I watched her departure, thinking that something vital had gone unsaid. She could have told me about David Ray on the phone. And I wasn’t entirely convinced she hadn’t known about his death to begin with. Colin popped into my head.

  I walked the two blocks to Charlie’s office. Ruth was typing from a Dictaphone, fingers moving lightly across the keyboard. She was very fast.

  “Is he in?”

  She smiled and nodded me on back, not missing a word, gaze turned inward as she translated sound to paper with no lag time in between.

  I stuck my head into his office. He was sitting at his desk, coat off, a law book open in front of him. Beige shirt, dark brown vest. When he saw me, a slow smile formed and he leaned back, tucking an arm up over the back of his swivel chair. He tossed the pencil on his desk.

  “Are you free for dinner?” I said.

  “What’s up?”

  “Nothing’s up. It’s a proposition,” I said.

  “Six-fifteen.”

  “I’ll be back,” I said and closed his office door again, still thinking about that pale shirt and the dark brown vest. Now that was sexy. A man in a nylon bikini, with that little knot sticking out in front, isn’t half as interesting as a man in a goodlooking business suit. Charlie’s outfit reminded me of a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup with a bite taken out and I wanted the rest.

  I drove out to Nikki’s beach house.

  Chapter 22

  *

  Nikki answered the door in an old gray sweatshirt and a pair of faded jeans. She was barefoot, hair loose, a paintbrush in one hand, her fingers stained the color of pecan shells.

  “Oh hi, Kinsey. Come on in,” she said. She was already moving back toward the deck and I followed her through the house. On the other side of the sliding glass doors, I could see Colin, shirtless, in a pair of bib overalls sitting cross-legged in front of a chest of drawers, which the two were apparently refinishing. The drawers were out, leaning upright along the balcony, hardware removed. The air smelled of stripper and turpentine, which mingled not incompatibly with the smell of eucalyptus bark. Several sheets of fine sandpaper were folded and tossed aside, creases worn white with wood dust, looking soft from hard use. The sun was hot on the railings and newspapers were spread out under the chest to protect the deck.

  Colin glanced up at me and smiled as I came out. His nose and cheeks were faintly pink with sunburn, his eyes green as sea water, bare arms rosy, there wasn’t even a whisper of facial hair yet. He went back to his work.

  “I want to ask Colin something but I thought I’d try it out on you first,” I said to Nikki.

  “Sure, fire away,” she replied. I leaned against the railing while she dipped the tip of her brush back into a small can of stain, easing the excess off along the edge. Colin seemed more interested in the painting than he was in our exchange. I imagined that it was a bit of a strain to try to follow a conversation even if his lip-reading skills were good or maybe he thought adults were a bore.

  “Can you remember offhand if you were out of town for any length of time in the four to six months before Laurence died?”

  Nikki looked at me with surprise and blinked, apparently not expecting that. “I was gone once for a week. My father had a heart attack that June and I flew back to Connecticut,” she said. She paused then and shook her head. “That was the only time, I think. What are you getting at?”

  “I’m not sure. I mean, this is going to seem farfetched, but I’ve been bothered by Colin’s calling Gwen ‘Daddy’s mother.’ Has he mentioned that since?”

  “Nope. Not a word.”

  “Well, I’m wondering if he didn’t have occasion to see Gwen at some point while you were gone. He’s too smart to get her mixed up with his own grandmother unless somebody identified her to him that way.”

  Nikki gave me a skeptical look. “Boy, that is a stretch. He couldn’t have been more than three and a half years old.”

  “Yeah, I know, but a little while ago I asked Gwen when she saw him last and she claims it was at Diane’s junior-high school graduation.”

  “That’s probably true,” Nikki said.

  “Nikki, Colin must have been fourteen months old at the time. I saw those snapshots myself. He was still a babe in arms.”

  “So?”

  “So why did he remember her at all?”

  Nikki applied a band of stain, giving that some thought. “Maybe she saw him in a supermarket or ran into him with Diane. She could have seen him or he could easily have seem her without any particular significance attached to it.”

  “Maybe. But I think Gwen lied to me about it when I asked. If it was no big deal, why not just say so. Why cover up?”

  Nikki gave me a long look. “Maybe she just forgot.”

  “Mind if I ask him?”

  “No, go ahead.”

  “Where’s the album?”

  She gestured over her shoulder and I went back into the living room. The photograph album was sitting on the coffee table and I flipped through until I found the snapshot of Gwen. I slipped it out of the four little comers holding it down and went back out to the deck. I held it out to him.

  “Ask him if he can remember what was happening when he saw her last,” I said.

  Nikki reached over and gave him a tap. He looked at her and then at the snapshot, eyes meeting mine inquisitively Nikki signed the question to him. His face closed up like a day lily when the sun goes down.

  “Colin?”

  He started to paint again, his face averted.

  “The little shit,” she said goodnaturedly. She gave him a nudge and asked him again.

  Colin shrugged her off. I studied his reaction with care.

  “Ask him if she was here.”

  “Who, Gwen? Why would she be here?”

  “I don’t know. That’s why we’re asking him.”

  The look she gave me was half doubt,
half disbelief. Reluctantly, she looked back at him. She signed to him, translating for my benefit. She didn’t seem to like it much.

  “Was Gwen ever here or at the other house?”

  Colin watched her face, his own face a remarkable mirror of uncertainty and something else ��� uneasiness, secrecy, dismay. “I don’t know,” he said aloud. The consonants bluffed together, like ink on a wet page, his tone conveying a sort of stubborn distrust.

  His eyes slid over to me. I thought suddenly of the time in the sixth grade when I first heard the word fuck. One of my classmates told me I should go ask my aunt what it meant. I could sense the trap though I had no idea what it consisted of.

  “Tell him it’s okay,” I said to her. “Tell him it doesn’t matter to you.”

  “Well it certainly does,” she snapped.

  “Oh come on, Nikki. It’s important and what difference does it make after all this time.”

  She got into a short discussion with him then, just the two of them, signing away like mad ��� a digital argument. “He doesn’t want to talk about it,” she said guardedly. “He made a mistake.”

  I didn’t think so and I could feel excitement stir. He was watching us now, trying to get an emotional reading from our interchange.

  “I know this sounds weird,” I said to her tentatively, “but I wonder if Laurence told him that ��� that she was his mother.”

  “Why would he do that?”

  I looked at her. “Maybe Colin caught them embracing or something like that.”

  Nikki’s expression was blank for a moment and then she frowned. Colin waited uncertainly, looking from her to me. Nikki signed to him again. He seemed embarrassed now, head bent. She signed again more earnestly. Colin shook his head but the gesture seemed to come out of caution, not ignorance.

  Nikki’s expression underwent, a change. “I just remembered something,” she said. She blinked rapidly, color mounting in her face. “Laurence did come out here. He told me he brought Colin out the weekend I was back east. Greg and Diane stayed at the house with Mrs. Voss. Both had social plans or something, but Laurence said the two of them, he and Colin, came out to the beach to get away for a bit.”

  “Nice,” I said with irony. “At three and a half, none of it would have made sense to him anyway. Let’s just assume it’s true. Let’s assume she was out here ���”

  “I really don’t care to go on with this.”

  “Just one more,” I said. “Just ask him why he called her ‘Daddy’s mother.’ Ask him why the ‘Daddy’s mother’ bit.”

  She relayed the question to Colin reluctantly but his face brightened with relief. He signed back at once, grabbing his head.

  “She had gray hair,” she reported to me. “She looked like a grandmother to him when she was here.”

  I caught a glint of temper in her voice but she recovered herself, apparently for his sake. She tousled his hair affectionately.

  “I love you,” she said. “It’s fine. It’s okay.”

  Colin seemed to relax but the tension had darkened Nikki’s eyes to a charcoal gray.

  “Laurence hated her,” she said. “He couldn’t have ���”

  “I’m just making an educated guess,” I said. “It might have been completely innocent. Maybe they met for drinks and talked about the kids’ schoolwork. We really don’t know anything for sure.”

  “My ass,” she murmured. Her mood was sour.

  “Don’t get mad at me,” I said. “I’m just trying to put this thing together so it makes some sense.”

  “Well I don’t believe a word of it,” she said tersely.

  “You want to tell me he was too nice a man to do such a thing?”

  She put the paintbrush on the paper and wiped her hands on a rag.

  “Maybe I’d like to have a few illusions left.”

  “I don’t blame you a bit,” I said. “But I don’t understand why it bothers you. Charlotte Mercer was the one who put it into my head. She said he was like a tomcat, always sniffing around the same back porch.”

  “All right, Kinsey. You’ve made your point.”

  “No, I don’t think I have. You paid me five grand to find out what happened. You don’t like the answers, I can give you your money back.”

  “No, never mind. Just skip it. You’re right,” she said.

  “You want me to pursue it or not?”

  “Yes, ” she said flatly, but she didn’t really look at me again. I made my excuses and left soon after that, feeling almost depressed. She still cared about the man and I didn’t a know what to make of that. Except that nothing’s ever cut-and-dried-especially where men and women are concerned. So why did I feel guilty of doing my job?

  I went into Charlie’s office building. He was waiting at the top of the stairs, coat over one shoulder, tie loose.

  “What happened to you,” he said when he saw my face.

  “Don’t ask,” I said. “I’m going to try to get a scholarship to secretarial school. Something simple and nice. Something nine-to-five.”

  I came up level with him, tilting my face slightly to look at him. It was as though I had suddenly entered a magnetic field like those two little dog-magnets when I was a kid ��� one black, one white. At the positive poles, if you held them half an inch apart, they would suck together with a little click. His face was solemn, so close, eyes resting on my mouth as though he might will me forward. For a full ten seconds we seemed caught and then I pulled back slightly, unprepared for the intensity.

  “Jesus,” he said, almost with surprise, and then he chuckled, a sound I knew well.

  “I need a drink,” I said.

  “That’s not all you need,” he said mildly.

  I smiled, ignoring him. “I hope you know how to cook because I don’t.”

  “Hey listen, there is one slight kink,” he said. “I’m housesitting for my partner. He’s out of town and I’ve got his dogs to feed. We can grab a bite to eat out there.

  “Fine with me,” I said.

  He locked the office then and we went down the back stairs to the small parking lot adjacent to his office building. He opened his car door but I was already moving toward mine, which was parked out on the street.

  “Don’t you trust me to drive?”

  “I’m courting a ticket if I stay parked out here. I’ll follow you. I don’t like to be stuck without my own wheels.”

  “‘Wheels’? Like in the sixties, you refer to your car as ‘wheels’?”

  “Yeah, I read that in a book,” I said dryly.

  He rolled his eyes and smiled indulgently, apparently resigned. He got in his car and waited pointedly until I had reached mine. Then he pulled out, driving slowly so that I could follow him without getting lost. Once in a while, I could see him watching me in his rearview mirror.

  “You sexy bastard,” I said to him under my breath and then I shivered involuntarily. He had that effect.

  We proceeded to John Powers’s house at the beach, Charlie driving at a leisurely pace. As usual, he was operating at half speed. The road began to wind and finally his car slowed and he turned left down a steep drive, a place not far from Nikki’s beach house, if my calculations were correct. I pulled my car in beside his, nose down, hoping my handbrake would hold. Powers’s house was tucked up against the hill to the right, with a carport dead ahead and parking space for two cars. The carport itself had a white picket fence across it, the two halves forming a gate, locked shut, with what I guessed to be his car parked inside.

  Charlie got out, waiting as I came around the front of my car. As with Nikki’s property, this was up on the bluff, probably sixty or seventy feet above the beach. Through the carport, I could see a patchy apron of grass, a crescent of yard. We went along a narrow walkway behind the house and Charlie let us into the kitchen. John Powers’s two dogs were of the kind I hate: the jumping, barking, slavering sort with toenails like sharks’ teeth. They reeked of bad breath. One was black and the other was the
color of moldering whale washed up on the beach for a month. Both were large and insisted on standing up on their hind legs to stare into my face. I kept my head back, lips shut lest wet, sloppy kisses be forthcoming.

  “Charlie, could you help me with this?” I ventured through clenched teeth. One licked me right in the mouth as I spoke.

  “Tootsie! Moe! Knock it off!” he snapped.

  I wiped my lips. “Tootsie and Moe?”

  Charlie laughed and dragged them both by neck chains to the utility room, where he shut them in. One began to howl while the other barked.

  “Oh Jesus. Let ‘em out,” I said. He opened the door and both bounded out, tongues flapping like slivers of corned beef. One of the dogs galummoxed into the other room and came trotting back with a leash in its mouth. This was supposed to be cute. Charlie put leashes on both and they pranced, wetting the floor in spots.

  “If I walk them, they calm down,” Charlie remarked. “Sort of like you.”

  I made a face at him but there seemed to be no alternative but to follow him out the front. There were various dog lumps in the grass. A narrow wooden stairway angled down toward the beach, giving way in places to bare ground and rock. It was a hazardous descent, especially with two ninety-five-pound lunkheads doing leaps and pirouettes at every turn.

  “John comes home at lunch to give ‘em a run,” Charlie said back over his shoulder.

  “Good for him,” I said, picking my way down the cliffside, concentrating on my feet. Fortunately, I was wearing tennis shoes, which provided no traction but at least didn’t have heels that would catch in the rotting steps and pitch me headfirst into the Pacific.

  The beach below was long and narrow, bounded by precipitious rocks. The dogs loped from one end to the other, the black one pausing to take a big steaming dump, backside hunched, eyes downcast modestly. Jesus, I thought, is that all dogs know how to do? I averted my gaze. Really, it was all so rude. I found a seat on a rock and tried to turn my brain off. I needed a break, a long stretch of time in which I didn’t have to worry about anybody but myself. Charlie threw sticks, which the dogs invariably missed.

  Finally, the dog romp at an end, we staggered back up the steps together. As soon as we were inside, the dogs flopped happily on a big oval rug in the living room and began to chew it to shreds. Charlie went into the kitchen and I could hear ice trays cracking.