B is for Burglar (14 page)

I shook my head.

He glanced up then as Rosie put a plate down in front of each of us. I could tell by his look that he hadn't expected green peppers with a vinaigrette, even with little curlicues of parsley tucked here and there.

Usually Rosie waited until I tasted a dish and gave elaborate restaurant-reviewer-type raves, but this time she seemed to think better of it. As soon as she left, Jonah leaned forward.

“What is this shit?”

“Just eat.”

“Kinsey, for the last ten years I been eating with kids who sit and pick all the onions and mushrooms out. I don't know how to eat if it's not made with Hamburger Helper.”

“You're in for a big surprise,” I said. “What have you been eating for the year since your wife left?”

“She put up all these dinners in the deep freeze. Every night I thaw one and stick it in the oven at three-fifty for an hour. I guess she went to a garage sale and bought up a bunch of those TV dinner tins with the little compartments. She wanted me to eat well-balanced meals even though she was fucking me over financially.”

I lowered my fork and looked at him, trying to picture someone freezing up 365 dinners so she could bug out. This was the woman he apparently imagined mating with for life, like owls.

He was eating his first bite of pepper salad, his eyes turning inward. His facial expression suggested that the pepper was sitting in the middle of his tongue while he made chewing motions around it. I do that myself with those mashed candied sweet potatoes people insist on at
Thanksgiving time. Why would anyone put a marshmallow on a vegetable? Would I put licorice on asparagus, or jelly beans on Brussels sprouts? The very idea makes my mouth purse.

Jonah nodded philosophically to himself and began to fork up the pepper salad with gusto. It must have been at least as tasty as the shit Camilla cooked for him. I pictured tray after tray of frozen tuna casserole with crushed potato chips, with maybe frozen peas in one compartment, carrot coins in the next. I bet she left him six-packs of canned fruit cocktail for dessert. He was looking at me.

He said, “What's the matter? Why do you have that look on your face?”

I shrugged. “Marriage is a mystery.”

“I'll second that,” he said. “By the way, how's your case shaping up?”

“Well, I'm still nosing around,” I said. “Right now, I'm making a little side investigation into an unsolved murder. Her next-door neighbor was killed the same week she left.”

“That doesn't sound good. What's the connection?”

“I don't know yet. Maybe none. It just struck me as an interesting sequence of events that Marty Grice was murdered and Elaine Boldt disappeared within days of it.”

“Was there a positive I.D.?”

“On Marty? I have no idea. Dolan's getting really anal-retentive about that stuff. He won't tell me a thing.”

“Why not take a look at the files?”

“Oh come on. He's not going to let me see the files.”

“So don't ask him. Ask me. I can make copies if you tell me what you want.”

“Jonah, he would fire your ass. You would never work again. You'd have to sell shoes for the rest of your life.”

“Why would he have to know?”

“How could you get away with it? He knows everything.”

“
Bull
shit. The files are kept over in Identification and Records. I'll bet he's got a second set in his office so he probably never even looks at the originals. I'll just wait 'til he's out and Xerox whatever you need. Then I'll put it back.”

“Don't you have to sign 'em out?”

He gave me a look then like I was probably the kind of person who never parked in a red zone. Actually, for someone to whom lying comes so easily, I get anxious about vehicle codes and overdue library books. Violations of the public trust. Oh hey, once in a while I might pick a lock illegally, but not if I think there's a chance I'll get
caught
. The idea of sneaking official documents out of the police station made my stomach squeeze down like I was on the verge of getting a tetanus shot.

“Oh wow, don't do that,” I said. “You can't.”

“What do you mean, I ‘can't.' Of course I can. What do you want to see? Autopsy? Incident report? Followup interviews? Lab reports?”

“That'd be great. That would really help.”

I looked up guiltily. Rosie was standing there waiting to pick up our salad plates. I leaned back in the booth and waited until both had been removed. “Look, I'd never ask you to do such a thing—”

“You didn't ask. I volunteered. Quit being such a candy ass. You can turn around and do me a favor sometime.”

“But Jonah, he really is a nut about department leaks. You know how he gets. Please don't put yourself in jeopardy.”

“Don't sweat it. Homicide detectives are full of crap sometimes. You're not going to blow his case for him. He probably doesn't even have a case, so what's to worry about?”

 

 

After dinner, he walked me back over to my place. It was only 8:15, but I had work to do and he really seemed a bit relieved that the contact between us wasn't going to be prolonged or intimate. As soon as I heard his footsteps retreat, I turned the outside lights off, sat down at my desk with some index cards and caught up with my notes.

I checked back through the cards I'd filled out before and tacked them up on the big bulletin board above my desk. I stood there for a long time, reading card after card, hoping for a flash of enlightenment. Only one curious note emerged. I'd been very meticulous about writing down every single item I remembered from my first search of Elaine's apartment. I do that routinely almost
like a little game I play with myself to test my memory. In the kitchen cabinet, she'd had some cans of cat food. 9-Lives Beef and Liver Platter, said the note. Now it seemed out of place to me. What cat?

 

 

 

 

At nine the next morning, I drove over to Via Madrina. Tillie didn't answer my buzz so I stood for a minute, surveying the list of tenants' names on the directory. There was a Wm. Hoover in apartment 10, right next door to Elaine's. I gave him a buzz.

The intercom came to life. “Yes?”

“Mr. Hoover? This is Kinsey Millhone. I'm a private detective here in town and I'm looking for Elaine Boldt. Would you mind if I asked you a couple of questions?”

“You mean, right this minute?”

“Well, yes, if you wouldn't mind. I stopped by to talk to the building manager, but she's not here.”

I could hear a murmur of conversation and then the door buzzed at me by way of consent. I had to jump to catch it while the lock would still open. I took the elevator up a floor. Apartment 10 was just across from me when the elevator door slid open. Hoover was standing in the hall in a short blue terry-cloth robe with snags. I estimated his age at thirty-four, thirty-five. He was slight, maybe five foot six, with slim, muscular legs
faintly matted with down. His dark hair was tousled and he looked as if he hadn't shaved for two days. His eyes were still baggy from sleep.

“Oh God, I woke you up,” I said. “I hate to do that to people.”

“No, I've been up,” he said. He ran a hand across his hair, scratching the back of his head while he yawned. I had to clamp my teeth so I wouldn't yawn in response. Barefoot, he moved back into the apartment and I followed him.

“I just put some coffee on. It'll be ready in a sec. Come on in and have a seat.” His voice was light and reedy.

He indicated the kitchen to the right. His apartment was the flip image of Elaine's and my guess was that their two master bedrooms shared a wall. I glanced at the living room which, like hers, opened off the entryway and also looked down on the Grices' property next door. Where Elaine's apartment had a view of the street, this one didn't have much to recommend it—only a glimpse of the mountains off to the left, partially obscured by the two rows of Italian stone pines that grow along Via Madrina.

Hoover adjusted his short robe and sat down on a kitchen chair, crossing his legs. His knees were cute. “What's your name again? I'm sorry, I'm still half-unconscious.”

“Kinsey Millhone,” I said. The kitchen smelled of brewing coffee and the fumes of unbrushed teeth. His, not mine. He reached for a slim brown cigarette and lit it, hoping perhaps to mask his morning mouth with
something worse. His eyes were a mild tobacco brown, his lashes sparse, face lean. He regarded me with all the boredom of a boa constrictor after a heavy meal of groundhog. The percolator gave a few last burps and subsided while he reached for two big blue-and-white mugs. One had an overall design of bunny rabbits humping. The other portrayed elephants similarly occupied. I tried not to look. The thing I've worried about for years is how dinosaurs mated, especially those great big spiny ones. Someone told me once they did it in water, which helped support all that weight, but I find it hard to believe dinosaurs were that smart. It didn't seem likely with those tiny pinched heads. I shook myself back to reality.

“What do you call yourself? William? Bill?”

“Wim,” he said. He fetched a carton of milk from the refrigerator and found a spoon for the sugar bowl. I added milk to my coffee and watched with interest while he added two heaping tablespoons of sugar to his. He caught my look.

“I'm trying to gain a little weight,” he said. “I know the sugar's bad for my teeth, but I've been doing up these torturous protein drinks in the morning—you know the kind—with egg and banana and wheat germ thrown in. Ugh. The aftertaste just cannot be disguised. Besides, I hate to eat before two in the afternoon so I guess I should resign myself to being thin. Anyway, that's why I load up my coffee. I figure anything's bound to help. You look a little on the Twiggy side yourself.”

“I run every day and I forget to eat.” I sipped my coffee,
which was scented faintly with mint. It was really very good.

“How well did you know Elaine?” I asked.

“We spoke when we ran into one another in the hall,” he said. “We've been neighbors for years. Why do you want her? Did she run out on her bills?”

I told him briefly about her apparent absence, adding that the explanation didn't have to be sinister, but that it was puzzling nevertheless. “Do you remember when you saw her last?”

“Not really. Sometime before she went off. Christmas, I guess. No, I take that back. I did see her New Year's Eve. She said she was staying home.”

“Do you happen to know if she had a cat?”

“Oh sure. Gorgeous thing. A massive gray Persian named Mingus. He was actually my cat originally, but I was hardly ever home and I thought he should have company so I gave him to her. He was just a kitten at the time. I had no idea he'd turn out to be such a beauty or I never would have given him up. I mean, I've kicked myself ever since, but what can one do? A deal's a deal.”

“What was the deal?”

He shrugged indifferently. “I made her swear she'd never change his name. Charlie Mingus. After the jazz pianist. Also she had to promise not to leave him by himself, or what was the point in giving him away? I might as well have kept him myself.”

Wim took a careful drag of his cigarette, resting his elbow on the kitchen table. I could hear the shower running somewhere in the back of the apartment.

“Did she take him with her to Florida every year?”

“Oh sure. Sometimes right up in the cabin if the airline had the space. She said he loved it down there, thought he owned the place.” He picked up a napkin and folded it in half.

“Well, it's curious he hasn't shown up someplace.”

“He's probably still with her, wherever she is.”

“Did you talk to her after that murder next door?”

Wim shook his head, neatly flicking ash into the folded napkin. “I did talk to the police, or rather they talked to me. My living-room windows look right down on that house and they were interested in what I could have seen. Which was nothing, I might add. That detective was the biggest macho asshole I've ever met and I didn't appreciate his antagonistic attitude. Can I warm that up for you?”

He got up and fetched the coffee.

I nodded and he topped off both our mugs, pouring from a thermos. The sound of running water had abruptly ceased and Wim took note of it, just as I did. He went back to the sink and extinguished his cigarette by running it under the tap and then he tossed it in the trash. He got out a frying pan and took a package of bacon from the refrigerator. “I'd offer you breakfast, but I don't have enough unless you want to join me in a protein drink. I'm going to make that up in a minute, disgusting as it is. I'm doing real food for a friend of mine.”

“I've got to go shortly anyway,” I said, getting up.

He waved at me impatiently. “Sit down, sit down.
Finish your coffee at any rate. You might as well ask whatever you want as long as you're here.”

“What about a vet for the cat? Did she have someone in the neighborhood?”

Wim peeled off three strips of bacon and laid them in the pan, flipping on the gas. He leaned over, peering at the low blue flame. He had to tug his robe down in back.

He said, “There's a cat clinic around the corner on Serenata Street. She used to take Ming over in one of those cat carriers, howling like a coyote. He hated the vet.”

“You have any guesses about where Elaine might be?”

“What about her sister? Maybe she's gone down to L.A. to see her.”

“The sister was the one who hired me in the first place,” I said. “She hasn't seen Elaine in years.”

Wim looked up sharply from the bacon pan and laughed. “What a crock of shit! Who told you that? I met her up here myself not six months back.”

“You met Beverly?”

“Sure,” he said. He took a fork and pushed the bacon strips in the pan. He went back to the refrigerator and got out three eggs. I was starving to death just watching this stuff.