by Sue Grafton
"Let's go back to Hugh's death," I said.
"I can't help you much with that. I'd only been with the company a few weeks before he died, so I hardly knew the man."
"Was there an office manager before you?"
Ava shook her head. "I was the first, which meant the office was a mess. Nobody did a thing. Filing alone was piled up to here. There was just one secretary. Heather was the receptionist, but all the day-to-day business was handled by Woody himself, or one of the engineers. It took me six months to get things squared away. Engineers may be obsessive, but not when it comes to paperwork." She took another drag, then tapped the small accumulation of ash from the end of her cigarette.
"What was the atmosphere like at the time? Was it tense? Was anybody caught up in an office dispute? A feud of any kind?"
"Not that I ever heard. Woody bid on a government contract and we were trying to get organized for that."
"Which entailed what?"
"Routine office procedure. Forms to be filled out, clearances, that kind of thing."
"What happened to the bid?"
"Nothing. The whole thing fell through Woody had a heart attack, and after he died, Lance let the matter drop."
"What was it they were bidding on? I wonder if that ties in."
"I don't remember what it was. Hold on. I'll ask." Ava turned and scanned the room. John Salkowitz was passing through, blueprint in hand, apparently on his way to the rear of the plant. "John? Could I ask you about something over here?"
He detoured toward us, his expression clouding with concern when he caught sight of me. "What's the story on Lyda Case? My wife just called and said she heard about her on the news."
I gave him the shorthand version, putting it together with the question at hand. "I'm still trying to figure out how it ties into this business with Lance. There's gotta be a connection somewhere."
"He's not seriously being accused of insurance fraud, is he?"
"Looks that way. Along with me, I might add."
"Appalling," he said. "Well. I don't see how it could have any bearing on the contract we bid on, but I'll fill you in. We get a little trade paper called Commerce Daily, published by the government. It was Hugh's job to check it for any contract available for bid that might apply to us. He found one under heating equipment, requesting bids on a furnace for processing beryllium, which is used in the making of nuclear bombs and rocket fuel. It's hazardous work. We'd have had to build in a whole new venting system to accommodate CALOSHA, but if we got it, we'd have been in a position to bid on future contracts. Woody felt it was worth the expense of retooling. Not all of us agreed with him, but he was a shrewd man and you had to trust his instincts. Anyway, that's what we were going after."
"What would it have been worth to the company?"
"Quarter million bucks. Half a million maybe. More, of course, in the long run, if we bid on future work."
"What was the status of the bid when Hugh died?"
"I don't know. I guess we were gearing up. I know he'd gone down to the Federal Building in Los Angeles to pick up all the paperwork. Since it was the Department of Defense, we were going to need a company clearance, plus individual clearances. Hugh's death really didn't have much effect, but when Woody died on top of that, we lost heart."
"Could the company have handled the work with both men gone?"
"Probably, but of course Lance was just taking over, getting his feet wet. I guess we dropped the ball, but that's all it amounted to. We weren't out anything. We might not have been low bidder anyway, so it's all speculative."
"What about bids since?"
"That's an aspect of the business we haven't paid much attention to. We're on overload half the time as it is."
I looked at him, truly stumped. "And you don't think it's relevant?"
"If it is, I don't see how."
"Thanks for your time, at any rate. I may need to get back to you."
"Sure thing," he said.
Ava and I chatted a while longer, but the conversation seemed unproductive, except for one minor point. She mentioned, in passing, that Ebony had attended the memorial services for Hugh Case.
"I thought she was in Europe, married to some playboy named Julian."
"She was, but they came back to the States to visit every six months or so."
"How long had she been in town? Do you have any idea?"
Her look was blank. "Can't help you there. I was too new myself to sort out what was normal in that family."
"Maybe I can check it out," I said. "Thanks for your help."
Driving back into town, I was kicking myself. I'd falsely assumed that neither Ebony nor Bass could have been tied in to Hugh's death as both of them were out of the picture at the time – Ebony in Europe, Bass in New York. Now I wasn't sure. I stopped at a public phone booth and called the Woods' house. The maid answered. I was willing to talk to just about any member of the family, but that turned out to be problematic. Mrs. Wood was resting and had asked not to be disturbed. Ebony and Ashley had gone to the Santa Teresa Monument Company to look at memorial tablets for Miss Olive's gravesite. Bass was due back at any minute. Did I care to leave my name and number? I decided to hold off on that. I said I'd call again later and hung up without identifying myself. I hauled more change from my handbag and tried Darcy at the office. She had nothing new to report. I brought her up-to-date and we commiserated briefly on the blanks we were drawing. She said she'd leave word on my answering machine if anything developed. Fat chance, I thought.
I returned to my car and sat there at the curb. I poured the rest of the hot coffee into the thermos lid, sipping it with care. I was getting closer to the truth. I could feel it in my bones. I felt like I was circling, the orbits getting tighter as I approached the central point. Sometimes all it took was one tiny nudge and everything fell into place. But the balance was delicate, and if I pushed too hard, I might barge right past the obvious.
I didn't have that many trees to shake. I screwed the lid on the thermos and tossed it in the back seat. I started up the car and drove back into town again. Maybe Andy's mistress had heard from him. That might help. Fifteen minutes later, I was standing at her door, knocking politely. I wasn't sure if she worked or not. She was home, but when she opened the door, she didn't seem that thrilled to see me.
"Hi," said I. "I'm still looking for Andy and I wondered if you'd heard from him."
She shook her head. Some people think they can lie to me that way, without forming the actual falsehood with their lips. It's apparently part of an inner conviction that if they don't speak the lie aloud, they won't burn in hell.
"He never checked in to let you know he was okay?"
"I just said that, didn't I?"
"Seems odd to me," I remarked. "I half expected him to drop you a note, or make a quick phone call."
"Sorry," she said.
There was a tiny silence wherein she was hoping to close the door and be done with me.
"How'd he get that account anyway?" I asked.
"What account?"
"Wood/Warren. Did he know Lance pretty well or was it someone else in the family?"
"I have no idea. Anyway, he's the claims manager. I don't know that he sold the policy in the first place."
"Oh. Somehow I thought he did. I thought I saw that somewhere on one of the forms we processed. Maybe it was his account before he got promoted to claims manager."
"Are you through asking questions?" she said snappishly.
"Uh, well, actually I'm not. Did Andy know any of the Woods personally? I don't think you told me that."
"How do I know who he knew?"
"Just thought I'd take a flyer," I said. "It puzzles me that you're not worried about him. The man's been gone, what, four days? I'd be frantic."
"I guess that's the difference between us," she said.
"Maybe I'll check out at his place again. You never know. He might have stopped back at the apartment to pick up his clothes and his mail."
She just stared at me. There didn't seem a lot left to say.
"Well, off I go," I said, cheerfully. "You've really been a peach."
Her goodbye was brief. Two words, one of which started with the letter "F." Her mama apparently hadn't taught her to be ladylike any more than mine had taught me. I decided to drive back out to Andy's place because, frankly, I couldn't think what else to do.
Chapter 23
* * *
I headed out to the condominium complex where Andy lived, thrilled that I wasn't going to have to type up a report on the day's events. The truth was, I had no plan afoot, no strategy whatever for wrapping this business up. I didn't have a clue to what was going on. I was driving randomly from one side of the city to the other, hoping that I could shake something loose. I was also avoiding my apartment, picturing the gendarmes at my door with a warrant for my arrest. Andy represented one of the missing links. Someone had designed an elaborate scheme to discredit Lance and eliminate two key engineers at Wood/ Warren. Andy had facilitated the frame-up, but once Olive was blown to kingdom come, he must have decided to blow town himself. If I could pinpoint the connection between Andy Motycka and the person who'd suckered him into it, then maybe I could figure out what the payoff was. The electronic gates at The Copse stood open, and I passed through without attracting armed guards or vicious dogs. A tall, fair-haired woman in a jumpsuit was walking an apricot poodle, but she scarcely looked at me. I parked my car in the slot Andy had left in the wake of his departure. I trotted up to the second-floor landing and let myself in with the front-door key, which I knew from past experience he kept hidden on the cornice above the front door. I confess I sniffed the air apprehensively as I let myself in, mindful that Andy might have ended up in the same state as Lyda Case. The apartment smelled benign and the dust that had settled on the empty bookshelves attested to the fact that no one had been here for days.
I did a quick pass through the apartment to make sure it was unoccupied. I opened the rear sliding-glass door, peered into each bedroom, then returned to the living room, where I drew the front drapes. I moved through the daylight gloom with curiosity. Andy lived on such spartan terms that his place had looked abandoned even when he was in residence. Now, however, the emptiness had the aura of a vacant lot, the wall-to-wall carpeting littered with paper scraps. In situations like this, I always long for the obvious-cryptic messages, motel receipts, annotated itineraries indicating where the missing might have gone. The various bits of paper on Andy's floor were none of the above and I was no wiser for having crawled around on my hands and knees reading them. The business of private investigation is fraught with indignities.
The medicine cabinet in his bathroom had been cleared out. Shampoo, deodorant, and shaving gear were gone. Wherever he was, he'd be clean-shaven and smell good. In his bedroom, all of the dirty clothes were gone and the blue plastic crates had been emptied of their contents. One tatty pair of boxer shorts remained, wild with fuchsia exclamation marks. I'm always amazed by men's underwear. Who could guess such things by looking at their sober three-piece suits? He'd left behind his bicycle, rowing machine, and the remaining moving cartons. There were still a few poorly folded sheets in the linen closet, one package of pizza rolls in the freezer. He'd taken the bottle of aquavit and the Milky Way bars, perhaps anticipating his life on the road as an endless round of sugar and alcohol abuse.
The card table was still in place, the answering machine on top, aluminum lawn chairs pulled up as if he'd had dinner guests for a banquet of Lean Cuisine. I sat down, propped my feet up on the adjacent chair and surveyed Andy's makeshift office. There were still some pencils, a scratch pad, gummy whiteout, unpaid bills. His answering machine turned out to be a duplicate of mine. I reached over and flipped open the side panel where the "oft-dialed" numbers were penned in. Of the sixteen spaces allotted, only six were filled. Andy was real imaginative. Fire, Police, California Fidelity, his ex-wife, a liquor store, and a pizza joint with free delivery.
I stared at the display on the answering machine, thinking about the features on this model. Carefully I pressed the asterisk button to the left of 0. On my machine, the * redials the last number called. With a flurry of notes up and down the scale, the machine redialed, the number displayed in green. It was vaguely familiar and I made a note of it. The line began to ring. Three times. Four.
Someone picked up. There was a whir and a pause as a machine on the far end of the line came to life.
"Hello. This is Olive Kohler at 555-3282. Sorry we're not here to take your call. I'm out at the supermarket at the moment, but I should be home at four-thirty or so. If you'll leave your number and a message, I'll get back to you as soon as I return. If you're calling with confirmations for the New Year's Party, just leave your name and we'll see you this evening. 'Bye for now."
I could feel my heart thump. No one had changed the message since Olive's death, and there she was again, perpetually hung up in New Year's Eve day, leaving a verbal note before she went off to shop for the party that would never take place.
Perversely, I pressed the asterisk again. Four rings, and Olive picked up, her voice sounding hollow, but full of life. She was still going out to shop for the New Year's party, still requesting the caller's name, telephone number, and a message. " 'Bye for now," she said. I knew if I called a hundred times, she'd still be saying "'Bye for now" without ever knowing how final that farewell would be.
Andy's last phone call had been to her, but what did it mean? A tiny jolt of memory shot through me. I saw Olive unlock the front door, her arms loaded with groceries, the package bomb, addressed to Terry, resting on top. As the door swung open, the telephone had rung and that's why she'd tossed the package in such haste. Maybe Andy knew the package was waiting on the doorstep and had called to warn them off.
I closed up Andy's apartment, got in my car, and headed back to town, detouring en route to wolf down a fast-food lunch. The Kohlers" house was the next logical stop, but as I turned into the lane, I noticed a whisper of anxiety. I had not, of course, been to the house since the bomb went off and I was not eager to live through the trauma again. I parked in front and gingerly stepped through the gap in the hedge where the gate had been. Only the posts remained now, the hardware twisted where the force of the bomb had wrenched the heavy wooden gate from its hinges. In places the blast had left the shrubbery completely bald.
I approached the house. Plywood sheets and two-by-fours had been nailed across the yawning opening where the front door had been. One of the columns supporting the porch roof had been snapped in two and a clumsy six-by-six had been rigged up in its place. The walkway was scorched, grass sparse and blackened. Sawhorses and warning signs cautioned folks to use the rear. I could still detect the faint briny smell of the cocktail onions that had littered the yard like pearls.
I felt my gaze drawn irresistibly to the spot where Olive had lain in a tumbled, bloody heap. I remembered then how I'd offered to carry the package for her since her arms were loaded with grocery bags. Her casual refusal had saved me. Death sometimes passes us by that way, with a wink, a nod, and an impish promise to return for us at another time. I wondered if Terry felt the same guilt I did that she'd died in our stead.
I was holding my breath, and I shook my arms out like a runner in the middle of a race, moving then toward the rear of the house. I knocked at the back door, cupping my hand against the glass to see if Terry or the housekeeper was home. There was no sign of anyone. I waited, then knocked again. In the lower right-hand corner of the kitchen window there was an alarm-company decal that said "Armed Response" across the bottom. I stepped back so I could scan the area. There was a red light showing on the alarm panel to the right, indicating that the system was armed. If the light was green, any burglar would know it was safe to start work. I took a business card from my handbag and sketched a quick note, asking Terry to call me when he got home. I got in my car again and drove to the Woods'. For all I knew, he was still there.
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Early-afternoon sunlight poured down on the house with its dazzling white facade. The grass was newly cut, as short and densely green as wool-pile carpeting. Beyond the bluffs, the ocean was an intense navy blue, the surface feathered with whitecaps that suggested a strong wind coming off the water. The hot desert wind was blowing at my back, and the palms tossed restlessly where the two met. Ash's little red sports car was parked in the circular driveway, along with a BMW. There was no sign of Terry's Mercedes. I walked around the house to the long, low brick porch on the seaward side and rang the bell.
The maid let me in and left me in the foyer while she went to fetch Miss Ebony. I had asked for Ash, but I was willing to take pot luck. I wished fervently that I had a theory, but this was still a fishing expedition. I couldn't be far from understanding the truth, but I had no clear concept what the revelation might be. Under the circumstances, all I knew to do is persist, plowing through. Bass was the only member of the family I was hoping to avoid. Not that it made any difference at that point, but pride is pride. Who wants to make small talk with your ex-spouse's lover? I had to be careful that my sense of injury didn't get in the way of spotting his role in this.
"Hello, Kinsey."
Ebony was standing at the bottom of the stairs, her pale oval face as smooth as an egg, expressionless, composed. She was wearing a shirtwaist dress of black silk that emphasized her wide shoulders and slim hips, the long shapely legs. Her red spike heels must have added five inches to her height. Her hair was skinned back from the taut bones of her face. A swath of blusher on each cheek suggested high stress instead of the good health it was meant to convey. In the family mythology, she was the thrill-seeker, addicted to the sort of treacherous hobbies that can spell early death: skydiving, helicopter skiing, climbing the sheer faces of impossible cliffs. In the family dynamic, maybe she'd been designated to live recklessly, just as Bass lived with vanity, idleness, and self-indulgence.