by Sue Grafton
Bass appeared in the archway, his gaze turning to mine quizzically. I jammed backward on the push rim, pivoting in the wheelchair. I pushed myself down the corridor, passing a room where someone was calling for help in a low, hopeless tone. A clear plastic tube trailed from under the sheet to a gallon jug of urine under the bed. It looked like lemonade.
Olive usually brought the mail in. I’d seen her toss it on the hall table carelessly the day before. She might have been the intended victim even if the package was addressed to him. I really couldn’t remember what she’d told me about who she was siding with in the power play between Ebony and Lance. Maybe he did it as a means of persuading the others to fall in line.
Darcy was waiting in my room when I got back. “Andy’s gone,” she said.
Chapter 17
*
I eased myself back into bed while Darcy filled me in on the details. Andy had come whipping into the office at about 10:00 the day before. Mac had insisted on keeping office hours until 5:00, despite the fact that it was New Year’s Eve day. Andy had a lunch meeting scheduled as well as a 2:00 appointment with one of the company vice-presidents. Darcy said Andy was in panic mode. She tried to give him his phone messages, but he cut her dead, hurried into his office, and began to load his personal items into his briefcase, along with his Rolodex. Next thing she knew, he was gone.
“It was too weird for words,” she said. “He’s never done anything like that before. And why the Rolodex? I’d already been through it and I didn’t find a thing, but what made him think of that?”
“Maybe he’s psychic.”
“He’d have to be. Anyway, we didn’t see him again for the rest of the day, so after work I hopped in my car and drove out to his place.”
“You went all the way out to Elton?”
“Well, yeah. I just didn’t like his attitude. He really had his undies in a bundle and I wanted to know what it was about. I didn’t see his car parked anywhere near his apartment, so I went up and peeked in his front window. The place was a pigsty and all the furniture was gone. Maybe a card table in the living room, but that was it.”
“That’s all he’s got,” I said. “It looks like Janice took him for a bundle and she’s clamoring for more.”
“She can clamor all she wants, Kinsey, the man is gone. His next-door neighbor saw me peering in the window and he came out and asked me what I was up to. I told him the truth. I said I worked with Andy and we were worried because he left the office in a snit without telling us what to do about his appointments. This guy claims he saw Andy going down the steps yesterday morning with two big suitcases banging against his legs. This was maybe nine-thirty, something like that. He must have come straight to the office, packed up his stuff, and taken off. I called his place every couple of hours last night and again this morning. All I get is his machine.”
I thought about it briefly. “Did the newspapers carry an account of Olive’s death?”
“Not till this morning and he was gone by then.”
I could feel a surge of energy, part restlessness, part dread. I pushed the covers back and swung my legs over the side of the bed. “I’ve gotta get out of here.”
“Are you supposed to be up?”
“Sure. No problem. Check the closet and see if Daniel brought me any clothes.” The green cocktail dress was gone, probably dissected by a pair of surgical scissors in the emergency room the night before, along with my tatty underwear.
“It’s empty, except for this,” she said. She held up my handbag.
“Great. We’re in business. As long as I’ve got my keys, I can get some clothes when I get home. I assume you’ve got a car here.”
“Can you leave without a doctor’s permission?”
“I got it. She told Daniel I could go as long as he looked in on me, which he said he would.”
Darcy studied me uncertainly, probably guessing what I said was part fib.
“God, don’t worry about it, Darcy. It’s not against the law to check out of a hospital. It’s not a prison sentence. I’m a volunteer,” I said.
“What about your bill?”
“Would you quit being such a stickler? My insurance pays for this so I don’t owe them anything. They’ve got my address. They’ll find me if they need to.”
Darcy was clearly unconvinced, but she shrugged and helped me into the wheelchair, pushing me down the corridor toward the elevators. One of the nurse’s aides stared at us as we went by, but I gave her a little wave and she apparently decided she didn’t need to concern herself.
When we got downstairs, Darcy lent me her coat and left me in the glass foyer while she went to fetch the car. There I sat in my borrowed coat and little paper slippers, handbag in my lap. If my doctor walked by, I wasn’t sure what I’d do. People passing through the foyer gave me cursory glances, but nobody said a word. Being sick is bullshit. I had work to do.
By 3:15 I was letting myself into my apartment, which already seemed to have the musty smell of neglect. I’d been gone one day, but it felt like weeks. Darcy came in behind me, her expression tinged with guilt when she saw that I was still shaky on my feet. I perched on the couch, momentarily clammy, and then set about getting dressed.
“What next?” she asked.
I was easing into my blue jeans. “Let’s go into the office and see if Andy left anything behind,” I said. I pulled on a sweatshirt and went into the bathroom, where I brushed my teeth. My reflection in the bathroom mirror showed a face marked by astonishment where my eyebrows used to be. My cheeks looked sunburned. I could see a few scrapes and bruises, but it was no big deal. I kind of liked having frizz across the front where my hair once was. I opened the medicine cabinet and took out my trusty nail scissors. I clipped the tape off my right arm and unwound the gauze, inspecting what was underneath. Looked okay to me. Burns do better in the open air, anyway. I took a painkiller just in case, and then waved dismissively at the sight of myself. I was fine.
I snagged the file folder I’d made after raiding Andy’s trash. I put on some sweatsocks and tennis shoes, grabbing a jacket just before I locked up again. Santa Teresa usually gets chilly once the sun goes down and I wasn’t sure how long I’d be gone.
Outside, it felt more like August than January. The sky was clear, the sun high overhead. There was no breeze at all, and the sidewalks were functioning like solar panels, absorbing the sunlight, throwing off heat. There was no sign of Daniel, for which I was grateful. He would no doubt have disapproved of my hospital defection. I spotted my little VW parked two doors down and I was glad somebody’d had the foresight to drive it back to my place. I wasn’t up to driving yet, but it was nice to know the car was there.
Darcy drove us over to the office. There was scarcely any traffic. The whole downtown area seemed deserted, as if in the wake of nuclear attack. The parking lot was empty, except for a series of beer bottles clustered near the kiosk, the dregs of a New Year’s Eve revelry.
We went up the back stairs. “You know what bothers me?” I asked Darcy as we climbed.
She unlocked the door to the building, glancing back at me. “What’s that?”
“Well, suppose we assume Andy’s guilty of conspiracy in this. It does look that way even though we don’t have proof at this point, right?”
“I’d say so.”
“I can’t figure out why he agreed to it. We’re talking major insurance fraud. He gets caught, it’s his livelihood. So what’s in it for him?”
“It has to be a payoff,” Darcy said. “If Janice hosed him, he’s probably desperate for cash.”
“Maybe,” I said. “It means somebody knew him well enough to think he’d tumble to a bribe. Andy’s always been a jerk, but I never really thought of him as dishonest.”
We’d reached the glass doors of California Fidelity. “What are you saying?” she asked as she unlocked the door and let us in. She flipped the overhead lights on and tossed her handbag on a chair.
“I don’t really know. I’m
wondering if something else was going on, I guess. He’s in a perfect position to fiddle with the claim forms, but it’s still a big risk. And why the panic? What went wrong?”
“He probably didn’t count on Olive getting killed. That’s gotta fit in somewhere,” she said.
We went into Andy’s office. Darcy watched with interest as I went through a systematic search. It looked like his business files were still intact, but all of his personal effects had been removed: the photograph of his kids that had sat on his desk, his leather-bound appointment calendar, address book, Rolodex, even the framed APSCRAP and MDRT awards he’d gotten some years before. He’d left a studio portrait of Janice, a five-by-seven color head shot, showing bouffant blond hair, a heart-shaped face, and a pointed chin. She did have a spiteful look about her, even grinning at the camera. Andy had blackened one front tooth and penned in some handsome hairs growing out of her nose. By widening her nostrils slightly, he’d created a piggy effect. The ever-mature Andy Motycka expressing his opinion of his ex-wife.
I sat in his swivel chair and surveyed the place, wondering how I was going to get a line on him. Where would he go and why take off like that? Had he made the bomb? Darcy was quiet, not wanting to interrupt my thought processes, such as they were.
“You have a number for Janice?” I asked.
“Yeah, at my desk. You want me to call and see if she knows where he is?”
“Let’s do that. Make up an excuse if you can, and don’t give anything away. If she doesn’t know he’s skipped out, let’s don’t tip it at this point.”
“Right,” Darcy said. She moved out to the reception area. I picked up the file I’d brought and pulled out all the papers. It was clear that Andy was in serious financial straits. Between Janice’s harangue over the late support check, and the pink ��� and red ��� rimmed dunning notices, it was safe to assume that the pressure was on. I reread the various versions of his love letter to his inamorata. That must have been quite a Christmas eve they’d had. Maybe he’d run away with her.
Andy’s calendar pad still sat at the uppermost edge of his blotter, two date sheets side by side, connected by arched clips that allowed the pages to lie flat. He’d taken his leather month-by-month appointment book, but he’d left this behind. Apparently he made a habit of noting appointments on both places so his secretary could keep track of his whereabouts. I leafed back through the week, day by day. On Friday, December 24, he’d circled 9:00 P.M. and penciled in the initial L. Was this his beloved? I worked my way back through the last six months. The initial cropped up at irregular intervals, with no pattern that I could discern.
I went out to the reception area, taking the calendar pad and the file folder with me.
Darcy was on the phone, in the midst of a chat with Janice, from what I gathered.
“Uh-hun. Well, I wouldn’t know anything about that. I don’t know him all that well. Uh-hun. What’s your attorney telling you? I guess that’s true, but I don’t know what good it would do you. Look, I’m going to have to run, Janice. I’ve got somebody standing here waiting to use the phone. Uh-hun, I’d appreciate that and I’ll let you know what we hear on this end. I’m sure he just went off for the weekend and forgot to mention it. Thanks much. You too. Bye-bye. Right.”
Darcy replaced the receiver and let out a deep breath. “Good God, that woman can talk! It’s lucky I called when I did because I got an earful. She’s p.o.‘d. He was supposed to come by last night and pick the kids up and he never showed. She was all set to go out and had to cancel her plans. No call, no apologies, nothing. She’s convinced he’s skipped town and she’s all set to call the cops.”
“Wouldn’t do any good unless he’s been missing seventy-two hours,” I said. “He’s probably shacked up somewhere with this bimbo he’s so crazy about.” I showed Darcy the letters I’d picked out of his trash.
It was wonderful watching her expression shift from amusement to distaste. “Oh God, would you let him suckle your hmphm-hmph?”
“Only if I doused it with arsenic first.”
Darcy’s brow wrinkled. “Her bazookas must be huge. He couldn’t think what to compare ‘em to.”
I looked over her shoulder. “Well, ‘footballs,’ but he crossed that out. Probably didn’t seem romantic.”
Darcy shoved the papers back in the file. “That was titillating stuff. Oh, bad joke. Now what?”
“I don’t know. He took his address book with him, but I do have this.” I flipped through the calendar pad and showed her the penciled initials scattered through the months. I could see Darcy’s mental wheels start to turn.
“Wonder if she ever called him here,” she said. “She must have, don’t you think?”
She opened her top right-hand desk drawer and took out the log for incoming telephone calls. It was a carbonless system with a permanent record in yellow overlaid by white perforated originals. If a call came in for someone out of the office, she made a note of the date and time, the caller, and the return number, checking off one of the responses to the right, “Please call,”
“Will call back,” or “Message.” The top slip was then torn out and given to the relevant recipient. Darcy turned back to December 1.
It didn’t take us long to find her. By comparing the log of Andy’s calls with the calendar pad, we came up with one repeat caller who left a number, but no name, always a day or two prior to Andy’s assignations… if indeed that’s what they were.
“Do you keep crisscross around here?” I asked.
“I don’t think so. We used to have one, but I haven’t seen it for months.”
“I’ve got last year’s in my office. Let’s see who’s listed at this number. We better hope it’s not a business.”
I pulled my keys out of my handbag as Darcy followed me.
“You were supposed to turn those keys in,” she said in mild reproof.
“Oh really? I didn’t know that.”
I unlocked my office door and moved to the file cabinet, pulling the crisscross from the bottom drawer. The number, at least the year before, belonged to last name, Wilding, first name Lorraine.
“You think it’s her?” Darcy asked.
“I know a good way to find out,” I said. The address listed was only two blocks from my apartment, down near the beach.
“Are you sure you’re okay? I don’t think you should be running around like this.”
“Don’t sweat it. I’m fine,” I said. The truth was, I wasn’t feeling all that terrific, but I didn’t want to lay my little head down until a few questions had been answered first. I was running on adrenaline ��� not a bad source of energy. When it ran out, of course, you were up shit creek, but for the time being it seemed better to be on the move.
Chapter 18
*
I had Darcy drop me off. In an interview situation I prefer to work alone, especially when I’m not quite sure who I’m dealing with. People are easier to manage one on one; there’s more room to adlib and more room to negotiate.
The apartment building was Spanish style, probably dating from the thirties. The red-tile roof had aged to the color of rust and the stucco had mellowed from stark white to cream. There were clumps of beaky-looking bird of paradise plants in front. A towering, sixty-foot pine tree enveloped the yard in shade. Bougainvillea was massed at the roofline, a tumble of magenta blossoms that spread out along the gutters and trailed like Spanish moss. Wood shutters, painted dark brown, flanked the windows. The loggia was chilly and smelled of damp earth.
I knocked at apartment D. There was no sign of Andy’s car on the street, but there was still a possibility that he was here. I had no idea what I’d say if he appeared at the door. It was nearly six and I could smell someone’s supper in the making, something with onions and celery and butter. The door opened and I felt a little lurch of surprise. Andy’s ex-wife was staring out at me.
“Janice?” I said, with disbelief.
“I’m Lorraine,” she said. “You m
ust be looking for my sister.”
Once she spoke, the resemblance began to fade. She had to be in her mid-forties, her good looks just beginning to dehydrate. She had Janice’s blond hair and the same pointed chin, but her eyes were bigger and her mouth was more generous. So was her body. She was my height, probably ten pounds heavier, and I could see where she carried the excess. Her eyes were brown and she’d lined them with black, adding false lashes as dense as paintbrushes. She wore snug white twill shorts and a halter top. Her legs had been shapely once, but the muscles had taken on that stringy look that connotes no exercise. Her tan looked like the comprehensive sort you acquire at a tanning salon ��� the electric beach.
Andy must have been in heaven. I’ve known men who fall in love with the same type of woman over and over again, but the similarities are usually not so obvious. She looked hauntingly like Janice. The difference was that Lorraine was voluptuous where the former Mrs. Motycka tended toward the small, the dry, and the mean. Judging from Andy’s letter, Lorraine was freer with her affections than Janice ever was. She did things to him that made his syntax turn to hiccups. I wondered if his affair with Lorraine came before or after his divorce. Either way, the liaison was dangerous. If Janice found out about it, she would extract a pretty price. It crossed my mind briefly that someone might have used this as leverage to secure his cooperation.
“I’m looking for Andy,” I said.
“Who?”
“Andy Motycka, your brother-in-law. I’m from the insurance company where he works.”
“Why look at me? He and Janice are divorced.”
“He gave me this address in case I ever needed to get in touch.”
“He did?”
“Why else would I be here?”
She looked at me with suspicion. “How well do you know Janice?”
I shrugged. “I don’t really. I used to see her at company parties before they split. When you first opened the door, I thought it was her, you look so much alike.”