A is for ALIBI

by Sue Grafton

  Unless there was someone else involved. Someone else who killed.

  I felt a chill.

  Oh my God. Lyle? Charlie? I sat down, blinking rapidly, hand across my mouth. I’d bought into the notion that one person killed all three, but maybe not. Maybe there was another possibility. I tried it out. Gwen had murdered Laurence Fife. Why couldn’t someone else have spotted the opening and taken advantage of it? The timing was close, the method the same. Of course it was going to look like it was all part of the same setup.

  I thought about Lyle. I thought about his face, the strange imperceptibly mismatched eyes: sullen, watchful, belligerent. He said he’d been with Libby three days before she died. I knew he’d heard about Laurence’s death. He was not a man who possessed a giant intellect, but he could have managed that much, imitating the cunning of someone else even stoned.

  I called my answering service. “I’m going down to Los Angeles,” I said. “If Nikki Fife calls, I want you to give her the telephone number of the Hacienda motel down there and tell her it’s important that she get in touch. But no one else. I don’t want it known that I’m out of town. I’ll check in with you often enough to pick up whatever calls come in. Just say I’m tied up and you don’t know where I am. You got that?”

  “All right, Miss Millhone. Will do,” she said cheerfully and then clicked off. God. If I’d said to her, “Hold the calls. I’m slitting my throat,” she’d have responded with the same blank good will.

  The drive to Los Angeles was good for me ��� soothing, uneventful. It was after nine and there wasn’t that much traffic on the darkened road south. On my left, hills swelled and rolled, covered with low vegetation ��� no trees, no rocks. On my right, the ocean rumbled, almost at arm’s length, looking very black except for a ruffle of white here and there. I passed Summerland, Carpinteria, passed the oil derricks and the power plant, which was garlanded with tiny lights like a decorative display at Christmastime. There was something restful about having nothing to worry about except having a wreck and getting killed. It freed my mind for other things.

  I had made a mistake, a false assumption, and I felt like a novice. On the other hand, I’d made the very assumption that everyone else had made: same M.O., same murderer. But now I didn’t think that was true. Now it seemed to me the only explanation that made any sense was that someone else had killed Libby Glass ��� and Sharon too. I drove through Ventura, Oxnard, Camarillo, where the state mental asylum was located. I’ve heard that there is less tendency to violence among the institutionalized insane than there is in the citizenry at large and I believe that. I thought about Gwen without surprise or dismay, my mind jumping forward and back randomly Somehow I was more offended by the minor crimes of a Marcia Threadgill who tried for less, without any motivation at all beyond greed. I wondered if Marcia Threadgill was the new standard of morality against which I would now judge all other sins. Hatred, I could understand ��� the need for revenge, the payment of old debts. That’s what the notion of “justice” was all about anyway: settling up.

  I went over the big hill into Thousand Oaks, with traffic picking up; tract housing stretched out on either side of the road, then shopping malls packed end to end. The night air was damp and I kept the windows rolled down. I felt over into the backseat for my briefcase and fumbled with the catch. I tucked my little automatic into my jacket pocket, encountering a wad of papers. I pulled them out and glanced down. Sharon Napier’s bills. I’d stuck them in my windbreaker on the way out of her place and I hadn’t thought about them since. I’d have to go through them. I tossed them on the passenger seat and looked at my watch by the icy wash of highway light. It was 10:10, forty-five minutes of driving left, maybe more given traffic on the surface roads once I got off the freeway. I thought about Charlie, wondering if I’d blown a perfectly nice relationship. He didn’t seem like the type to forgive and forget, but who knew. He was a lot more yielding than I was, that was for sure. My thoughts rambled on disjunctively. Lyle had known I was driving to Vegas. I wasn’t sure how Sharon connected, but I’d figure that out. Blackmail still seemed like the best bet. The letter I couldn’t figure at all. How had Libby come by that? Or had she? Maybe Lyle and Sharon were in cahoots. Maybe Lyle got the letter from her. Maybe he was planting the letter among Libby’s effects, not trying to take it away. It was certainly to his advantage to reinforce the idea of Libby’s romantic tie to Laurence Fife. He had known I was stopping back through to pick up her boxes. He could have made it back to Los Angeles well in advance of me since I’d stopped for the night to see Diane. Maybe he had deliberately timed it closely to incite my curiosity about what might have been tucked away there. My mind veered off that and I thought about Lieutenant Dolan with a faint smile. He was so sure Nikki had killed her husband, so satisfied with that. I’d have to put a call through to him when I got back. I thought about Lyle again. I didn’t intend to see him that night. He wasn’t as smart as Gwen, but he might be dangerous. If it was him. I didn’t think I should jump to conclusions again.

  I checked into the Hacienda at 11:05, went straight to room #2, and put myself to bed. Arlette’s mother was on the desk. She is twice as fat.

  In the morning, I showered and got back into the same clothes, staggering out to the car to retrieve the overnight case I kept in the crowded backseat. I went back to my room and brushed my teeth ��� oh blessed relief ��� and ran a comb through my hair. I went down to a delicatessen on the comer of Wilshire and Bundy, where I ordered scrambled eggs, sausage links, a toasted bagel with cream cheese, coffee, and fresh orange juice. Whoever invented breakfast really did it good.

  I walked back up to the Hacienda to find Arlette waving a massive arm out the office door for me. Her round face was flushed, her little cap of blonde curls in a flyaway state, her eyes squeezed almost to invisibility by the heavy cheeks. I wondered when she’d last seen her own neck. Still, I liked her, irksome as she was at times.

  “There’s someone on the phone for you and she sounds real upset. I told her you were out but I said I’d flag you down. Thank goodness you’re back,” she said to me, out of breath and wheezing hard.

  I hadn’t seen Arlette so excited since she found out that panty hose came in queen-size. I went into the office with Arlette hard on my heels, breathing heavily. The receiver was on the counter and I picked it up.

  “Hello?”

  “Kinsey, this is Nikki.”

  Why the dread in her voice, I thought automatically. “I tried calling you last night,” I said. “What’s the matter? Are you okay?”

  “Gwen’s dead.”

  “I just talked to her last night,” I said blankly. Killed herself. She’d killed herself. Oh shit, I thought.

  “It happened this morning. Hit-and-run driver. I just heard it on the news. She was jogging along Cabana Boulevard and someone ran her down and then skipped.”

  “I don’t believe it. Are you sure?”

  “Positive. I tried calling you and the service said you were out of town. What are you doing in L.A.?

  “I’ve got to check out something down here but I should be back tonight,” I said, thinking fast. “Look, would you see if you can find out the details?”

  “I can try.”

  “Call Lieutenant Dolan at Homicide. Tell him I told you to ask.”

  “Homicide,” she said, startled.

  “Nikki, he’s a cop. He’ll know what’s going on. And it may not be an accident anyway, so see what he has to say and I’ll call you as soon as I get back.”

  “Well, okay,” she said dubiously, “I’ll see what I can do.”

  “Thanks.” I hung up the phone.

  “Is someone dead?” Arlette asked. “Was it someone you knew?”

  I looked right at her but I drew a blank. Why Gwen? What was happening?

  She followed me out of the office and toward my room.

  “Is there anything I can do to help? Do you need anything? You look awful, Kinsey. You’re
pale as a ghost.”

  I closed the door behind me. I thought about that last image of Gwen, standing on the street, her face white. Could it have been an accident? Coincidence? Things were moving too quickly. Someone was beginning to panic and for reasons I still couldn’t quite understand.

  A possibility flashed into my head and out. I stood stockstill, running it by me again like an old film clip. Maybe so. Maybe yes. It was all going to come together soon. It was all going to fit.

  I threw everything into the backseat of my car, not even bothering to check out. I’d mail Arlette the damn twelve bucks.

  The drive to the Valley was a blur, the car moving automatically, though I paid no attention whatever to road, sun, traffic, smog. When I reached the house in Sherman Oaks where Lyle was laying brick, I saw his battered truck parked out front. I didn’t have any more time to waste and I didn’t want to play games. I locked the car and went up the drive, going around the side of the house to the back. I caught sight of Lyle before he caught sight of me. He was bending over a pile of two-by-fours: faded jeans, work boots, no shirt, a cigarette in the comer of his mouth.

  “Lyle.”

  He turned around. I had the gun out and trained on him. I held it with two hands, legs apart, meaning business He froze instantly where he stood, not saying a word.

  I felt cold and my voice was tight, but the gun never wavered an inch. “I want some answers and I want them now,” I said. I saw him glance to his right. There was a hammer lying on the ground but he made no move.

  “Back up,” I said, stepping forward slightly until I was between him and the hammer. He did as instructed, the pale blue eyes sliding back to mine, hands coming up.

  “I don’t want to shoot you, Lyle, but I will.”

  For once, he didn’t look sullen or sly or arrogant. He stared straight at me with the first sign of respect I’d seen from him.

  “You’re the boss,” he said.

  “Don’t fuckin’ smart-mouth me,” I snapped. “I’m not in the mood. Now sit down in the grass. Out there. And don’t move a muscle unless I tell you to.”

  Obediently, he moved out to a small stretch of grass and sat down, eyes on me the whole time. It was quiet and I could hear birds chirping stupidly but we seemed to be alone and I liked it that way. I kept the gun pointed right at his chest, willing my hands not to shake. The sun was hot and it made him squint.

  “Tell me about Libby Glass,” I said.

  “I didn’t kill her,” he shot back uneasily.

  “That’s not the point. I want to know what went on. I want to know what you haven’t told me yet. When did you see her last?”

  He shut his mouth.

  “Tell me!”

  He didn’t have Gwen’s poise and he didn’t have her smarts. The sight of the gun seemed to help him make up his mind.

  “Saturday.”

  “The day she died, right?”

  “That’s right, but I didn’t do anything. I went over to see her and we had a big fight and she was upset.”

  “All right, all right. Skip the buildup. What else?”

  He was silent.

  “Lyle,” I said, warningly. The muscles in his face seemed to pull together like a drawstring purse and he started to weep. He put his hands up over his face pathetically. He’d kept it in for a long time. If I was wrong about this, I was wrong about everything. I couldn’t let him off the hook.

  “Just tell me,” I said, tone dead, “I need to know.”

  I thought he was coughing but I knew what I heard were sobs. He might have been nine years old, looking squeezed up and frail and small.

  “I gave her a tranq,” he said with anguish. “She asked for one and I found this bottle in the medicine cabinet and gave it to her. God, I even gave her a glass of water. I loved her so much.”

  The first rush subsided and he dashed at the tears on his face with a grubby hand, leaving streaks of dirt. He hugged himself, rocking back and forth in misery, tears streaming down his bony cheeks again.

  “Go on,” I said.

  “I left after that but I felt bad and I went back later and that’s when I found her dead on the bathroom floor. I was afraid they’d find my fingerprints and think I’d done something to her so I wiped the whole place down.”

  “And you took the tranquilizers with you when you left?”

  He nodded, pressing his fingers into his eye sockets as though he could force the tears back. “I flushed ‘em down the toilet when I got home. I smashed up the bottle and threw it away.”

  “How’d you know that’s what it was?”

  “I don’t know. I just knew. I remembered that guy, the one up north and I knew he’d died that way. She might not have taken the goddamn thing if it weren’t for me, but we had that screaming fight and she was so mad, she shook. I didn’t even know she had any tranqs till she asked for one and I didn’t see anything wrong with that. I went back to apologize.” The worst of it seemed to be over with and he sighed deeply, his voice almost normal again.

  “What else?”

  “I don’t now. The phone was unplugged. I plugged it back in and wiped that down too.” he said woodenly. “I didn’t mean any harm. I just had to protect myself. I wouldn’t poison her. I wouldn’t have done that to her, I swear to God. I didn’t have anything to do with that or anything else except I cleaned the place. In case there were fingerprints. I didn’t want anything pointing to me. And I took the bottle the pills were in. I did that.”

  “But you didn’t break into the storage bin,” I said.

  He shook his head.

  I lowered the gun. I’d half known but I had to be sure. “Are you going to turn me in?”

  “No. Not you.”

  I went back to the car and sat blankly, wondering in some vague irrational way if I really would have used the gun. I didn’t think so. Tough. I’m tough, scaring the shit out of some dumb kid. I shook my head, feeling tears of my own. I started the car and put it into gear, heading back over the hill toward West L.A. I had one more stop and then I could drive back to Santa Teresa and clean it up. I thought I knew now who it was.

  Chapter 26

  *

  I caught sight of my reflection in one of the mirrored walls across from the entrance to Haycraft and McNiece. I looked like I was ready for the last round-up: seedy, disheveled, mouth grim. Even Allison, in her buckskin shirt with the fringes on the sleeves, seemed alarmed by the sight of me, and her prerehearsed receptionist’s smile dropped from sixty watts to twenty-five.

  “I have to talk to Garry Steinberg,” I said, my tone apparently indicating that I wouldn’t take much shit.

  “He’s back in his office,” she said timidly. “Do you know which one it is?”

  I nodded and pushed through the swinging doors. I caught sight of Garry walking down the narrow interior corridor toward his office, slapping a batch of unopened mail against his thigh.

  “Garry?”

  He turned, his face lighting up at the sight of me and then turning hesitant. “Where’d you come from? You look exhausted.”

  “I drove down last night. Can we talk?”

  “Sure. Come on in.”

  He turned left into his office, gathering up a stack of files on the chair in front of his desk. “You want some coffee? Can I get you anything?” He tossed the mail on the file cabinet.

  “No I’m fine but I need to check out a hunch.”

  “Fire away,” he said, sitting down.

  “Didn’t you tell me once upon a time ���”

  “Last week,” he inserted.

  “Yeah, I guess it was. You mentioned that Fife’s accounts were being put on computer.”

  “Sure, we were converting everything. Makes it a hell of a lot easier on us and it’s better for the client too. Especially at tax time.”

  “Well what if the books had been fiddled with?”

  “You mean embezzlement?”

  “In a word,” I said with irony. “Wouldn’t that have sh
own up pretty quickly?”

  “Absolutely. You think Fife was milking his own accounts?”

  “No,” I said slowly, “I think Charlie Scorsoni was. That’s part of what I need to ask you about. Could he have skimmed money out of the estates he was representing back then?”

  “Sure. It can be done and it’s not that hard,” Garry said appreciatively, “but it might be a bitch to track. It really depends on how he did it. ” He thought for a moment, apparently warming to the idea. He shrugged. “For instance, he could have set up some kind of special account or an escrow account for all his estates ��� maybe two or three phony accounts within this overall account. A large dividend check comes in, he diverts a percentage of the check from the estate it’s supposed to be credited to, and he credits it to a phony account instead.”