B is for Burglar (28 page)

In the meantime, Leonard had effectively blocked my path, putting me in check at least where the insurance company was concerned. I didn't dare go back and question
him
again and I knew I'd better be careful about any inquiries I made in the world at large. Any line I pursued was going to be interpreted as slander, harassment, or defamation from his point of view. What had I gotten myself into? Leonard Grice and Pat Usher would have to stonewall my investigation or the whole operation would come tumbling down around their ears.

I stopped off at the hardware store to pick up a pane of glass and then went back to my place. I had to find Elaine's passport. I checked the trash bags, behind couch cushions, under furniture, and all the other niches where I tend to tuck odds and ends. I didn't remember filing it and it hadn't occurred to me to hide it. I knew I hadn't thrown it out, which meant it had to be here somewhere. I kept standing there, doing a 360 degree turn, surveying every corner of the room—desk top, bookcase, coffee table, the small counter that separates the kitchenette.

I went out to the car and looked in the glove compartment, map pocket, down behind the seat, sun visor, briefcase, jacket pocket—shit. I went back into my apartment and started all over again. Where had I put the damn thing? It
might
be at the office. I decided to try there after CFI had closed up and Andy Montycka
had gone home. God, what did he know anyway? I was beginning to unravel the knots and I only hoped I could finish before he got nervous and paid off the claim.

I checked my watch. It was a little after one and I had the locksmith coming at four. I sat down at my desk and hauled out my file on Elaine Boldt. Maybe there was something I'd overlooked. I baited my hook and started to cast about randomly. I felt like I'd been through my notes a hundred times and I couldn't believe anything new would surface. I went back and read every report I had. I tacked all my index cards to the bulletin board, first in order, then haphazardly just to see if any contradictions would appear. I reread all the material Jonah had photocopied from the homicide files and I studied glossy eight-by-tens of the murder scene until I knew every detail by heart. How had Marty been killed? A “blunt instrument” could mean just about anything.

A lot of things were bothering me—minor questions buzzing around at the back of my brain like a swarm of gnats. I had begun to believe that if Elaine was dead, she'd been killed fairly early on. I had no proof yet but I suspected that Pat Usher had masqueraded as Elaine and had staged that whole bogus departure for Florida as a sleight of hand, laying a false trail to create the illusion that Elaine was alive and well and on her way out of town when, in fact, she was already dead. But if she'd been killed in Santa Teresa, where was the body? Disposing of a corpse is no mean feat. Fling one in the ocean and it swells up and floats right back. Toss it in the bushes and a jogger will stumble across it by six
A.M.
What else do you do with one? You bury it. Maybe the
body was concealed in the Grices' basement. I remembered the floor down the—cracked concrete and hard-packed dirt—and I thought, now that might explain why Leonard had never had the salvage crew come in. When I'd first searched the Grices' house I'd just been grateful for my good luck, but even at the time it had seemed almost too good to be true. Maybe Leonard didn't want the demolition experts knocking around down there.

Pat Usher bothered me too. Jonah hadn't had a chance to run a check on her through the National Crime Information Center because the computer had been down. By now he'd left for Idaho, but maybe I could have Spillman run the name for me to see what he could come up with. I didn't think Pat Usher was her real name, but it might show up as an alias—
if
she had a criminal record, which was uncertain at this point. I took out a legal pad and made myself a note. Maybe with some judicious backtracking, I could figure out who she was and how she'd gotten involved with Leonard Grice.

I sorted through the new stack of Elaine's bills that Tillie had given me, tossing out the few pieces of junk mail. I came across an appointment reminder from a dentist in the neighborhood and tossed that aside. Elaine Boldt didn't drive and I knew she patronized businesses within walking distance of her condominium. I remembered in the first batch of bills I'd seen, there was a bill from the same dentist. John Pickett, D.D.S., Inc. Where else had I run into him? I leafed back through the material from the homicide file, running my eye down each page. Ah. No wonder the name rang a bell. He was the dentist who supplied the full
mouth X rays used to identify Marty Grice. There was a knock at the door and I looked up, startled. It was already four o'clock.

I glanced out through the little fish-eye peephole and opened the door. The locksmith was young, maybe twenty-two. She flashed me a smile that featured nice white teeth.

“Oh hi,” she said, “I'm Becky. Is this the right place? I tried up front and the old guy said I probably wanted you.”

“Yes, that's right,” I said, “come on in.”

She was taller than I and very thin, with long bare arms and blue jeans that hung on her narrow hips. She had a carpenter's belt slung around her waist, a hammer hanging down like a gun in a holster. Her fair hair was cut short with a boyish cowlick across the front. Freckles, blue eyes, pale lashes, no makeup, all the gawkiness of an adolescent. She had an athlete's no-nonsense good looks and she smelled of Ivory soap.

I moved toward the bathroom. “The window's in here. I want some kind of heavy-duty hardware installed that can't be breached.”

Her eyes lit up when she saw the cut in the glass. “Gee, not bad. Slick job, huh. You want to put new locks on the other windows or just this?”

“I want new locks on everything including my desk. Can you rekey the dead bolt?”

“Sure. I can do anything you want. If you got glass, I'll reglaze the window for you too. I love doing things like that.”

I left her to install the heavy-duty hardware. Belatedly,
I snatched up several articles of dirty clothing strewn about my living room. There's nothing like an outsider's idle glance to make you conscious of your own environment. I chucked two beach towels, a sweatshirt, and a dark cotton sundress on top of some other stuff in the washing machine. I tend to use my washer as a dirty-clothes hamper anyway since I'm pinched for space. I tossed in a cup of detergent. I cranked the dial around to permanent press, just to keep the cycle short, and I was on the verge of popping the door shut again when I spotted Elaine's passport poking up out of the back pocket of a pair of blue jeans. I think I must have hooted my surprise because Becky stuck her head out of the bathroom door.

“Did you call me?”

“No, that's all right. I just found something I'd been looking for.”

“Oh. Okay. Good for you.” She went back to work. I put the passport at the back of my bottom desk drawer and locked it. Thank God I have the passport, I thought. Thank God it had turned up. It was like a talisman, a good omen. Cheered, I decided I might as well type up my notes, so I hauled out my little portable typewriter and set it up. I could hear Becky thumping around with the window, and after a few minutes, she stuck her head out of the bathroom again.

“Hey, Kinsey? This thing is all gimmicked up. You want me to fix it?”

“Sure, why not?” I said. “If you get the window to work right, I've got some other things you can take care of too.”

“Hey, great,” she said and disappeared again.

I could hear a big wrenching noise as she pried the window frame away. It was worrisome. All that pep and enthusiasm. I thought I heard something crack.

“Don't worry about the noise,” she called out. “I saw my dad do this once and it's a snap.”

After a moment, she passed through the room, tiptoeing elaborately, finger to her lips. “Sorry to disturb your work. I have to go out to the truck and get some line. You go right ahead,” she murmured. She was speaking in a hoarse whisper as though it would be less intrusive if she used a softer tone.

I rolled my eyes heavenward and went on typing. Three minutes later, she came back to the front door and tapped. I had to get up to let her in. She apologized again briefly and went back into the bathroom where she settled in. I did a cover letter for Julia and caught up with my accounting. Becky was in the other room going bang-bang-bang with her trusty hammer.

After a few minutes, she appeared again. “All done. Want to come try it?”

“Just a minute,” I said. I finished typing the envelope and got up, moving into the bathroom. I wondered if this was what it felt like to have a little kid around the house. Noise, interruptions, the constant bid for attention. Even the average mother amazes me. God, what fortitude.

“Look at this,” she said happily. She raised the window. Before, it had been like lifting a fifty-pound weight. It would stick midway and then shriek, flying up unexpectedly, glass nearly cracking as it whacked into
the frame. To lower the window, I practically had to hang by my hands, humping it down inch by inch. Most of the time I just left it shut. Now it slid up without a hitch.

She stepped back so I could try it. I reached over and lowered it, apparently unprepared for the improvement because the window dropped so fast, it made the window weights thump against the studs in the wall.

Becky laughed. “I told you it worked.”

I was staring from her to the window frame. Two ideas had popped into my head simultaneously. I was thinking about Dr. Pickett and the dental X rays and about May Snyder's claim that she heard someone going bang-bang-bang the night Marty died.

“I have to go someplace,” I said. “Are you nearly done?”

She laughed again; that uneasy, false merriment that burbles out when you think you're dealing with someone who's come unhinged. “Well, no. I thought you said you had other things you wanted me to do.”

“Tomorrow. Or maybe the next day,” I said. I was moving her toward the door, reaching for my handbag.

Becky allowed herself to be pushed along.

“Did I say something?” she asked.

“We'll talk about it tomorrow,” I said. “I really appreciate your help.”

I drove back to Elaine Boldt's neighborhood and circled the block, looking for Dr. Pickett's office on Arbol. I'd seen it before; one of those one-story clapboard cottages once so prevalent in the neighborhood. Most of them had been converted into branch offices for real-estate
companies and antiques stores that looked like someone's tiny, crowded living space with a sign hung out front.

Dr. Pickett had paved over some flowerbeds to create a little parking lot. There was only one car out back: a 1972 Buick with a vanity plate that read:
FALS TTH
. I pulled in beside it and locked my car, moving around the front and up to the porch. The sign on the door said
PLEASE WALK IN,
so I did.

The interior felt distinctly like my old grade school: varnished wood floors and the smell of vegetable soup. I could hear someone clattering around out in the kitchen. There was a radio on out there, tuned to a country-music station. A scarred wooden desk was angled across the entry hall with a little bell and a sign that said
PLEASE RING FOR SERVICE
. I tapped on the bell.

To my right was a waiting room with Danish-modern plastic couches and low tables done in wood laminate. The magazines were lined up precisely, but I suspected the subscriptions had run out. I spotted an issue of
Life
with “Starlet Janice Rule” on the front. A partition had been put up between the reception area and Dr. Pickett's examining room. Through the open door, I caught sight of an old-fashioned dental chair with a black plastic seat and a white porcelain spitting sink. The instrument tray was round and apparently swiveled on a metal arm. The surface was protected with white paper, like a placemat, and the instruments were lined up on it like something out of a dental museum. I was certainly thrilled that I didn't need my teeth cleaned right then.

To my left, along the wall, were some battered wooden
file cabinets. Unattended. I could hear the devil call out to me. Dutifully, I rang the bell again, the country music wailed right on. I knew the tune and the lyrics routinely broke my heart.

There were little brass frames on the front of each file cabinet into which hand-lettered white cards had been slipped. A–C read the first. D–F read the next. You can't lock those old files, you know. Well, sometimes you can, but not these. I was going to have to go through such a long song and dance too, I thought. And I might be on the wrong track, which would just waste everybody's time including my own. I only hesitated because the courts are real fussy about the integrity of evidence. You're not supposed to run around stealing information that you later hope to offer up as “Prosecution's Exhibits A & B.” The cops are supposed to acquire all that stuff, tag it, initial it, and keep meticulous records about who's had access to it and where it's been. Chain of evidence, it's called. I mean, I read all this stuff and I know.

I called “Yoo-Hoo!” and waited, wondering if “yoohoo,” like “mama” and “dada,” was one of those phrases that crop up in most languages. If nobody responded in the next ten seconds, I was going to cheat.

 

 

 

 

Mrs. Dr. Pickett appeared. At least, I assumed it was she. She was stout, with a big round face, rimless glasses, and a soft pug nose. The dress she wore was a navy blue nylon jersey with a print of tiny white arrows flying off in all directions. Her hair was pulled up to the top of her head and secured with a rubber band, curls cascading as though from a little fountain. She had on a wide white apron with a bib front and she smoothed the lap of the fabric down self-consciously.

“Well now, I thought I heard someone out here, but I don't believe I know your name,” she said. Her voice was honeyed, tinted with faint southern overtones.