by Sue Grafton
"Look," I said, "I just flew in from California to speak with a woman who's on her way out of the terminal. I've got to catch her before she hits the parking lot, and I have no idea which exit she's using. Is there any way to have her paged?"
The woman fixed me with the one eye while the other moved to the one-page directory she kept taped to her desk top. Without a word, she picked up the phone and dialed. "What's the name?" she asked.
"Lyda Case."
She repeated the name and within moments, I heard Lyda Case being paged to the Traveler's Aid station, terminal 2. I was profuse in my thanks, though she didn't seem to require much in the way of appreciation. She finished packing up and, with a brief word, departed.
I had no idea if Lyda Case would show. She might have been out of the building by the time her name was called. Or she might have been too tired and cranky to come back for any reason. On an impulse, I rounded the desk and sat down in the chair. A man passed with a rolling suitcase that trailed after him reluctantly, like a dog on its way to the vet. I glanced at my watch. Twelve minutes had passed. I checked the top desk drawer, which was unlocked. Pencils, pads of paper, tins of aspirin, cellophane-wrapped tissue, a Spanish-language dictionary. I read the list of useful phrases inside the back cover. "Buenas tardes," I murmured to myself. "Buenas noches." Good nachos. I was starving to death.
"Somebody paging me? I heard my name on the public-address system and it said to come here." The accent was Texan. Lyda Case was standing with her weight on one hip. Petite. No makeup. All freckles and frizzy hair. She was dressed in dark slacks and a matching vest – one of those all-purpose bartender uniforms that you can probably order wholesale from the factory. Her name was machine-embroidered on her left breast. She had on a diamond-crusted watch, and in her right hand she held a lighted cigarette, which she dropped and crushed underfoot. "
"What's the matter, baby? Did I come to the wrong place?" Mid-thirties. Lively face. Straight little nose and a sharp, defiant chin. Her smile revealed crooked eyeteeth and gaps where her first molars should have been. Her parents had never gone into debt for her orthodontia work.
I got up and held my hand out. "Hello, Mrs. Case. How are you?"
She allowed her hand to rest in mine briefly. Her eyes were the haunting, surreal blue of contact lenses. Distrust flickered across the surface. "I don't believe I know you."
"I called from California. You hung up on me twice."
The smile drained away. "I thought I made it clear I wasn't interested. I hope you didn't fly all this way on my account."
"Actually, I did. You'd just gone off duty when I got to the lounge. I'm hoping you'll spare me a few minutes. Is there some place we can go to talk?"
"This is called talkin' where I come from," she snapped.
"I meant, privately."
"What about?"
"I'm curious about your husband's death."
She stared at me. "You some kind of reporter?"
"Private detective."
"Oh, that's right. You mentioned that on the phone. Who all are you working for?"
"Myself at the moment. An insurance company before that. I was investigating a warehouse fire at Wood/Warren when Hugh's name came up. I thought you might fill me in on the circumstances of his death."
I could see her wrestling with herself, tempted by the subject. It was probably one of those repetitious nighttime tales we tell ourselves when sleep eludes us. Somehow I imagined there were grievances she recited endlessly as the hours dragged by from 2:00 to 3:00. Something in the brain comes alive at that hour and it's usually in a chatty mood.
"What's Hugh got to do with it?"
"Maybe nothing. I don't know. I thought it was odd his lab work disappeared."
"Why worry about it? No one else did."
"It's about time then, don't you think?"
She gave me a long look, sizing me up. Her expression changed from sullenness to simple impatience. "There's a bar down here. I got somebody waiting so I'll have to call home first. Thirty minutes. That's all you get. I worked my butt off today and I want to rest my dogs." She moved off and I followed, trotting to keep up.
We sat in captain's chairs at a table near the window. The night sky was thick with low clouds. I was startled to realize it was raining outside. The plate glass was streaked with drops blown sideways by a buffeting wind. The tarmac was as glossy as black oilcloth, with runway lights reflected in the mirrored surface of the apron, pebbled with raindrops. Three DC-10s were lined up at consecutive gates. The area swarmed with tow tractors, catering vehicles, boom trucks, and men in yellow slickers. A baggage trailer sped by, pulling a string of carts piled high with suitcases. As I watched, a canvas duffel tumbled onto the wet pavement, but no one seemed to notice. Somebody was going to spend an irritating hour filling out "Missing Baggage" claim forms tonight.
While Lyda went off to make her phone call, I ordered a spritzer for me and a Bloody Mary for her, at her request. She was gone a long time. The waitress brought the drinks, along with some Eagle Snack pretzels in a can. "Lyda wanted somethin' to snack on, so I brought you these," she said.
"Can we run a tab?"
"Sure thing. I'm Elsie. Give a holler if you need anything else."
Ground traffic was clearing and I saw the jetway retract from the side of the plane nearest us. On the runway beyond, an L-1011 lumbered by with a stripe of lighted windows along its length. The bar was beginning to empty, but the smoke still sat on the air like a visible smudge on a photograph. I heard high heels clopping toward the table, and Lyda was back. She'd peeled off her vest, and her white blouse was now unbuttoned to a point just between her breasts. Her chest was as freckled as a bird's egg and it made her look almost tanned.
"Sorry it took me so long," she said. "I got this roommate in the middle of a nervous breakdown, or so' she thinks." She used her celery stalk to stir the pale cloud of vodka into the peppered tomato juice down below. Then she popped the top off the can of pretzels.
"Here, turn your hand up and lemme give you some," she said. I held my hand out and she filled my palm with tiny pretzels. They were shaped like Chinese pagodas encrusted with rock salt. Her hostility had vanished. I'd seen that before – people whose mistrust takes the form of aggressiveness at first, their resistance like a wall in which a sudden gate appears. She'd decided to talk to me and I suppose she saw no point in being rude. Besides, I was buying. With ten bucks in my pocket, I couldn't afford more than thirty minutes' worth of drinks anyway.
She had taken out a compact and she checked her makeup, frowning at herself. "God. I am such a mess." She plunked her bag up on the table and rooted through until she found a cosmetics pouch. She unzipped it and took out various items, and then proceeded to transform herself before my very eyes. She dotted her face with liquid foundation and smoothed it on, erasing freckles, lines, discolorations. She took out an eyeliner and inked in her upper and lower lids, then brushed her lashes with mascara. Her eyes seemed to leap into prominence. She dusted blusher high on each cheek, lined the contour of her mouth with dark red and then filled her lips in with a lighter shade. Less than two minutes passed, but by the time she glanced at me again, the rough edges were gone and she had all the glamour of a magazine ad. "What do you think?"
"I'm impressed."
"Oh, honey, I could make you over in a minute. You ought to do a little more with yourself. That hair of yours looks like a dog's back end."
I laughed. "We better get down to business if thirty minutes is all I get."
She waved dismissively. "Don't worry about that. I changed my mind. Betsy's workin' on an overdose and I don't feel like going home yet."
"Your roommate took an overdose?"
"She does that all the time, but she never can get it right. I think she got a little booklet from the Hemlock Society and takes half what she needs to do the job. Then I get home and have to deal with it. I truly hate paramedics trooping through my place after midnight. They're all twenty-
six years old and so clean-cut it makes you sick. Lot of times she'll date one afterwards. She swears it's the only way to meet nurturing men."
I watched while she drained half her Bloody Mary. "Tell me about Hugh," I said.
She took out a pack of chewing gum and offered me a piece. When I shook my head, she unwrapped a stick and doubled it into her mouth, biting down. Then she lit a cigarette. I tried to imagine the combination... mint and smoke. It was an unpleasant notion even vicariously. She wadded up the gum wrapper and dropped it in the ashtray.
"I was just a kid when we met. Nineteen. Tending bar. I went out to California on the Greyhound bus the day I turned eighteen, and went to bartending school in Los Angeles. Cost me six hundred bucks. Might have been a rip-off. I did learn to mix drinks but I probably could have done that out of one of them little books. Anyway, I got this job at LAX and I've been working airport bars ever since. Don't ask me why. I just got stuck somehow. Hugh came in one night and we got talkin' and next thing I knew, we fell in love and got married. He was thirty-nine years old to my nineteen, and I was with him sixteen years. I knew that man. He didn't kill himself. He wouldn't do that to me."
"What makes you so sure?"
"What makes you sure the sun's coming up in the east ever' day? It just does, that's all, and you learn to count on that the way I learned to count on him."
"You think somebody killed him?"
" 'Course I do. Lance Wood did it, as sure as I'm sittin' here, but he's not going to admit it in a million years and neither will his family. Have you talked to them?"
"Some," I said. "I heard about Hugh's death for the first time yesterday."
"I always figured they paid off the cops to keep it hush. They got tons of money and they know ever'one in town. It was a cover-up."
"Lyda, these are honorable people you're talking about. They'd never tolerate murder and they wouldn't protect Lance if they thought he had anything to do with it."
"Boy, you're dumber than I am, if you believe that. I'm tellin' you it was murder. Why'd you fly all this way if you didn't think so yourself?"
"I don't know what to think. That's why I'm asking you."
"Well, it wasn't suicide. He wasn't depressed. He wasn't the suicidal type. Why would he do such a thing? That's just dumb. They knew him. They knew what kind of man lie was."
I watched her carefully. "I heard he was planning to leave the company and start a business of his own."
"He talked about that. He talked about a lot of things. He worked for Woody fifteen years. Hugh was loyal as they come, but everybody knew the old man meant to leave the company to Lance. Hugh couldn't stand the idea. He said Lance was a boob and he didn't want to be around to watch him mess up."
"Did the two of them have words?"
"I don't know for sure. I know he gave notice and Woody talked him out of it. He'd just bid on a big government contract and he needed Hugh. I guess Hugh said he'd stay until word came through whether Woody got the bid or not. Two days later, I got home from work, opened the garage door, and there he was. It looked like he fell asleep in the car, but his skin was cherry red. I never will forget that."
"There's no way it could have been an accident?"
She leaned forward earnestly. "I said it once and I'll say it again. Hugh wouldn't kill himself. He didn't have a reason and he wasn't depressed."
"How do you know he wasn't holding something back?"
"I guess I don't, if you put it like that."
"The notion of murder doesn't make any sense. Lance wasn't even in charge at that point, and he wouldn't kill an employee just because the guy wants to move on. That's ludicrous."
Lyda shrugged, undismayed by my skepticism. "Maybe Lance worried Hugh would take the business with him when he went."
"Well, aside from the fact he wasn't gone yet, it still seems extreme."
She bristled slightly. "You asked for my opinion. I'm tellin' you what I think."
"I can see you believe it, but it's going to take more than that to talk me into it. If Hugh was murdered, it could have been someone else, couldn't it?"
"Of course it could. I believe it was Lance, but I can't swear to it. I don't have any proof, anyhow. Sometimes I think it's not worth foolin' with. It's over and done, so what difference does it make?"
I shifted the subject. "Why'd you have him cremated so fast?"
She stared at me. "Are you thinking I had a hand in it?"
"I'm just asking the questions. What do I know?"
"He asked to be cremated. It wasn't even my idea. He'd been dead for two days. The coroner released the body and the funeral director suggested we go ahead with it, so I took his advice. You can talk to him yourself if you don't believe me," she said. "Hugh was drugged. I'd bet money that's how they pulled it off. His lab work was stolen so nobody'd see the test results."
"Maybe he was drunk," I suggested. "He might have pulled into the garage and fallen asleep."
She shook her head. "He didn't drink. He'd given that up."
"Did he have a problem with alcohol?"
"Once upon a time, he did," she said. "We met in a bar. Two in the afternoon, in the middle of the week. He wasn't even travelin'. He just liked to come watch the planes, he said. I should have suspected right then, but you know what it's like when you fall in love. You see what you want to see. It took me years to figure out how far gone he was. Finally I said I'd leave him if he didn't straighten up. He went into this program... not AA, but something similar. He got sobered up and that's how he stayed."
"Is there a chance he'd gone back to drinking? It wouldn't be unheard of."
"Not with him on Antabuse. He'da been sick as a pup."
"You're sure he took the stuff?"
"I gave it to him myself. It was like a little game we played. Every morning with his orange juice. He held his hand out and I gave him his pill and watched him swallow it right down. He wanted me to see he didn't cheat. He swore, the day he quit drinking, he'd never go back to it."
"How many people knew about the Antabuse?"
"I don't know. He never made a big deal of it. If people around him were drinking, he just said 'No thanks.'"
"Tell me what was happening the week he died."
"Nothing. It seemed like an ordinary week to me. He talked to Woody. Two days later, he was dead. After the funeral, I packed up, put everything in a U-Haul, and hit the road for home. This is where I've been ever since."
"And there was nothing among his things to suggest what was going on? No letter? A note?"
She shook her head. "I went through his desk the day he died, and I didn't see a thing."
Chapter 12
* * *
The flight home was uneventful. I'd spent an hour and a half with Lyda, and the rest of the night in the airport terminal with its red carpeting, high glass ceiling, real trees, and an actual bird that flew back and forth, chirping incessantly. It was sort of like camping out, only I was sitting upright and I didn't have any wienies to roast. I made notes of my conversation with Lyda, which I'd transcribe for the files when I got home. I was inclined to believe Hugh Case had been murdered, though I had no idea how, why, or by whom. I also tended to think his death was related to current events at Wood/Warren, though I couldn't imagine what the connection might be. Lyda had promised to get in touch if she remembered anything of note. All in all, it was not an unproductive trip. It had generated more questions than it answered, but that was fine with me. As long as there are threads to unravel, I'm in business. The frustration starts when all the leads dry up and the roads turn out to be dead ends. With Hugh Case, I felt like I'd just found one of the corner pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. I had no idea what the final picture would look like, but at least I had a place to start.
I boarded the plane at 4:30 A.M. and arrived at LAX at 5:45. I had to wait for a 7:00 A.M. shuttle to Santa Teresa, and by the time I dragged my sorry ass home, I was dead on my feet. I let myself into the apartment an hour later, checked for mes
sages (none), pulled my boots off, and curled up in the folds of my quilt, fully dressed.
At approximately 9:02, there was a knock at my door. I staggered up out of sleep and shuffled to the door, dragging my quilt behind me like a bridal train. My mouth tasted foul and my hair was standing straight up, as spiky as a punker's, only not as clean. I peered through the fish-eye, too clever to be caught unawares by an early-morning thug. Standing on my doorstep was my second ex-husband, Daniel Wade.
"Shit," I murmured. Briefly, I leaned my head against the door and then peeked again. All I could see in truncated form was his face in profile, blond hair curling around his head like an aura. Daniel Wade is quite possibly the most beautiful man I've ever seen – a bad sign. Beautiful men are usually either gay or impossibly narcissistic. (Sorry for the generalization, folks, but it's the truth.) I like a good face or an interesting face or a face with character, but not this sculpted perfection of his... the straight, well-proportioned nose, high cheekbones, strong jaw-line, sturdy chin. His hair was sun-bleached, his eyes a remarkable shade of blue, offset by dark lashes. His teeth were straight and very white, his smile slightly crooked. Get the picture, troops?
I opened the door. "Yes?"
"Hi."
"Hello." I gave him a rude stare, hoping he'd disappear. He's tall and slim and he can eat anything without gaining weight. He stood there in faded jeans and a dark-red sweatshirt with the sleeves pushed up. His skin had a golden sheen, tanned and windburned, so his cheeks glowed darkly. Just another boring California golden boy. The hair on his arms was bleached nearly white. His hands were tucked in his pockets, which was just as well. He's a jazz pianist with long, bony fingers. I fell in love with his hands first and then worked my way up.
"I've been in Florida." Good voice, too... just in case his other virtues fail to excite. Reedy and low. He sings like an angel, plays six instruments.