B Is for Burglar

by Sue Grafton

  We moved up to the range, roof overhead like a carport extending fifteen feet on either side of us. Only one man was shooting and he had an H&K .45 competition pistol that Jonah coveted the minute he laid eyes on it. The two of them talked about the adjustable trigger and adjustable sights while I inserted eight rounds of reloads into the magazine of my little gun. I inherited this no-brand semiautomatic from the very proper maiden aunt who raised me after my parents died. She'd taught me to knit and crochet when I was six, and when I was eight, she'd brought me up here and taught me to target-shoot, bracing my arms on a wooden ironing board that she kept in the trunk of her car. I had fallen in love with the smell of gunpowder when I first came to live with her. I'd sit out on her concrete porch steps with a strip of caps and a hammer, patiently banging away until each snapped out its load of perfume. The porch steps would be littered afterward with bits of red paper and gray spots of burned powder the size of the buckle holes in a belt. I guess she decided after two years of my incessant hammering that she might as well school me in the real thing.

  Jonah had brought both his Colts and I fired a few rounds from each, but they felt like too much gun for me. The walnut grip on the Trooper handled like big hunk of petrified wood and the four-inch barrel made sighting a bitch. The gun bucked in my hand like that quick, automatic kick when a doctor taps on your knee, and each time the gun bucked a whiff of gunpowder blew back at me. I did slightly better with the Python, but it was still a distinct and familiar treat when I took up my .32 again, like holding hands with an old friend.

  At five, we packed up our gear and headed over to the old stagecoach tavern, tucked into a shady hollow not far from the range. We had beer and bread and baked beans and talked about nothing in particular.

  "How's your case going?" he asked me. "You turned up anything yet?"

  I shook my head. "I've got some things I may want to talk to you about at some point, but not for now."

  "You sound bummed out," he said.

  I smiled. "I always do this to myself. I want quick results. If I don't get things wrapped up in two days, I get depressed. What about you? Are you okay?"

  He shrugged. "I miss my kids. I used to spend Saturdays with them. It was nice you called. Gave me something to do besides mope."

  "Yeah, you can watch me mope," I said.

  He patted my hand on the table and squeezed it lightly. The gesture was brief and compassionate and I squeezed back.

  I dropped him off at his place again at 7:30 or so and went home. I was tired of worrying about Elaine Boldt so I sat on the couch and cleaned my gun, taking in the smell of oil, finding it restful to dismantle and wipe and put it all back together again. After that, I stripped my clothes off and wrapped up in my quilt, reading a book about fingerprint mechanics until I fell asleep.

  Monday morning, I stopped by Santa Teresa Travel on my way into the office and talked to an agent named Lupe who looked like an interesting mix of Chicano and black, slim as a cat. She was in her twenties, with tawny skin and dark frizzy hair with a faint golden cast, cut close to the shape of her head. She wore small rectangular glasses and a smart navy blue pantsuit with a striped tie. I showed her the ticket carbon and told her what I was looking for. My guess was correct. Elaine had been a regular client of theirs for the past several years, though Lupe seemed puzzled by the carbon. She pulled the glasses down low on her nose and looked at me. Her eyes were a flat gold, like a lemur's, and it gave her face an exotic quality. Puffy mouth, small straight nose. She had fingernails that were long and curved and looked as tough as horn. Maybe she had been some kind of burrowing creature in another life. She pushed the glasses back into place again thoughtfully.

  "Well, I don't know what to think," she said. "She always bought her tickets through us, but this one was purchased at the airport." She touched at one corner of the carbon, turning the ticket around so I could see the face of it. It reminded me of those teachers in grade school who somehow managed to read a picture book while holding it forward and to one side. "These numbers indicate that it was generated by the airline and paid for by credit card."

  "What kind of credit card?"

  "American Express. She usually uses that for travel, but I tell you what's odd. She'd made reservations for... wait a minute. Let me check." Lupe typed some numbers into her computer terminal, nails tap-dancing across the keys. The computer fired out line after line of green print-like tracers. She studied the screen.

  "She was scheduled to fly out of LAX, first class, on February third, with a return 3 August and those tickets were paid for."

  "I hear she left on the spur of the moment," I said. "If she set up the reservations over the weekend, she'd have had to go through the airlines, wouldn't she?"

  "Sure, but she wouldn't just forget about the tickets she had. Hold on a sec and I'll see if she ever picked 'em up. She could have traded 'em in."

  She got up and moved over to the file cabinet on the far wall, sorting through her files. She pulled out a packet and handed it to me. It was a set of tickets and an itinerary, tucked into a travel folder from the agency. Elaine's name was neatly typed across the front.

  "That's a thousand dollars' worth of tickets," Lupe said. "You'd think she'd have called us and had 'em cashed in when she got to Boca."

  I felt a chill. "I'm not sure she got there," I said. I sat for a full minute with the unused tickets in my hand. What was this? I reached into my purse and pulled out the original TWA folder Julia Ochsner had mailed to me. On the back flap, there were the four luggage tags sequentially numbered and still stapled firmly in place. Lupe was watching me.

  I was thinking about my own quick flight to Miami, getting off the plane at 4:45 in the morning, passing the glass-fronted cases where abandoned suitcases were stacked.

  "I want you to call Miami International for me," I said slowly. "Let's put in a claim for lost baggage and see if we come up with anything."

  "You lost some bags?"

  "Yeah, four of 'em. Red leather with gray fabric bindings. Hard-sided, graduated sizes, and my guess is that one is a hanging bag. These are the tags for them." I pushed the folder across the desk, and she wrote the numbers down.

  I gave her my business card and she said she'd be in touch as soon as she heard anything.

  "One more question," I said. "Was that flight she took non-stop?"

  Lupe glanced at the carbon and shook her head. "That's the red-eye. She'd have had a layover and a change of planes in St. Louis."

  "Thanks."

  When I got to the office, the message light on my answering machine was blinking. I pressed the playback button.

  It was my punker friend, Mike. "Hey, Kinsey? Oh shit, a machine. Well never mind. I'll call you back, okay? Oh. This is Mike and there's just something I want to talk to you about, but I have a class right now. Anyway, I'll call back later. Okay? Bye."

  I made a note. The timer on the machine indicated that he'd called at 7:42 A.M. Maybe he'd try again at noon. I wished he'd left me a number.

  I put in a call to Jonah and told him about Elaine's stopover. "Could you circulate a description of her through the St. Louis police?"

  "Sure. You think that's where she is?"

  "I hope."

  I intended to sit and chat with him, but I didn't have the chance. There was a quick knock and my office door flew open. Beverly Danziger stood on the threshold and she looked pissed off. I told Jonah I'd get back to him and hung up, turning my attention to Beverly.

  Chapter 18

  * * *

  "You goddamn bitch!" She slammed the door behind her, eyes flashing.

  I'm not real fond of being addressed like that. I could feel the heat rise in my cheeks, my temper climbing automatically. I wondered if she was going to challenge me to hand-to-hand combat. I gave her a slow smile just to show her I wasn't impressed with the histrionics.

  "What's the problem, Beverly?" I sounded like a smart aleck even to myself and I thought I better cast about for somet
hing to smite her with if she came flying across the desk at me. All I spotted was an unsharpened pencil and a Rolodex.

  She put her hands on her hips. "What the fuck did you contact Aubrey for? How dare you! How fucking dare you!!"

  "I didn't contact Aubrey. He got in touch with me."

  "I hired you. I did. You had no right to talk to him and no right to discuss my business behind my own back! You know what I'm going to do? I'm going to sue you for this!"

  I wasn't worried she'd sue me. I was worried she'd pull a pair of scissors out of her purse and cut me up like patches for a quilt.

  By now, she was leaning over my desk, stabbing a pointed index finger into my face. Shout lines appeared to come out of her mouth as in a cartoon. She thrust her chin forward, cheeks pink, bubbles collecting in the corner of her mouth. I wanted to slap the shit out of her, but I didn't think it'd be smart. She was beginning to hyperventilate, chest heaving. And then her mouth began to tremble and the fiery blue eyes filled with tears. She sobbed once. She dropped her handbag and put both hands to her face like a little kid. Was this woman nuts or what?

  "Sit down," I said. "Have a cigarette. What's going on?" I glanced down at the ashtray. Aubrey's telltale pile of shredded tobacco and a scrap of black paper were still sitting in my ashtray. Discreetly, I removed it, tipping the contents into my trash. She sat down abruptly, her anger gone, some deep-seated grief having taken its place. I'm sorry to report myself unmoved. I can be a coldhearted little thing.

  While she wept, I made coffee. My office door opened a crack and Vera peered in, making eye contact. She'd apparently heard the ruckus and wanted to make sure I was all right. I lifted my eyebrows in a quick facial shrug and she disappeared. Beverly fished out a Kleenex and pinched it across the bridge of her nose, pressing her eyes as though to extract the last few tears. Her porcelain complexion was now mottled and her glossy black hair had taken on a stringy look, like a fur muff left out in the rain.

  "I'm sorry," she breathed, "I know I shouldn't have done that. He's making me crazy. He's driving me absolutely insane. He's such a son of a bitch. I just hate his guts!"

  "Take it easy, Beverly. You want some coffee?"

  She nodded. She got a compact out of her bag and checked her eye makeup, mopping up a run of mascara with Kleenex folded over her finger. Then she tucked the compact away and blew her nose without making a sound. It was just a sort of squeezing process. She opened her bag again and searched for her cigarettes and matches. Her hands were shaking, but the minute she got her cigarette lighted, all the tension seemed to leave her body. She inhaled deeply as though she were taking in ether before surgery. I wish cigarettes felt that good to me. Every time I've had a drag, my mouth has tasted like a cross between charred sticks and spoiled eggs. It's made my breath smell about that good too, I'm sure. My office was now looking like the fog had rolled in.

  She began to shake her head hopelessly. "You have no idea what I've been through," she said.

  "Look," I said, "just to set the record straight –"

  "I know you didn't do anything. It's not your fault." Her eyes filled with tears briefly. "I should be used to it by now, I guess."

  "Used to what?"

  She began to fold the Kleenex in her lap. She recited slowly, fighting for control, sentences punctuated with silences and little humming noises when the weeping closed off her throat. "He... um... goes around to people. And he tells them ... um... that I drink and sometimes he claims I'm a nymphomaniac or he says I'm undergoing shock treatments. Whatever occurs to him. Whatever he thinks will do the most harm."

  I wasn't sure what to do with this. He had told me she was an alcoholic. He'd told me she went off on three-day toots. He'd told me she attacked him with a pair of scissors and had possibly murdered her sister in revenge for an affair he was having with her. Now here she sat, sobbing her tiny heart out, claiming that he was the perpetrator of this weird pathological stuff. Which of them was I to believe? She composed herself, giving her nose the old silent squeeze. She looked at me, the whites of her eyes now tinted with pink.

  "Didn't he tell you something like that?" she asked.

  "I think he was just concerned about Elaine," I said, trying to hedge until I could decide what to do. "We really didn't discuss anything personal so don't worry about that. How did you find out he'd been up here?"

  "Something came up in conversation," she said. "I don't even remember what. That's how he handles these things. He gives me these clues. He leaves the evidence around and waits for me to discover it. And if I don't stumble across it accidentally, he points me right to it and then sits back and pretends to be contrite and amazed."

  I was just about to say, "Like his affair with Elaine," but it suddenly occurred to me that it might not even be true, or if true, that she might not actually know about it. "Like what, for example?" I said.

  "He had an affair with Elaine. He was fucking around with my only sister. God, I can't believe he did that to me. I didn't doubt she'd do it. She was always jealous. She'd take anything she could. But him. I felt like such a fool. He was off balling her the minute Max died and I was such a dunce I didn't figure it out for years! It took me years."

  She did one of those bubbling laughs, filled more with hysteria than mirth. "Poor Aubrey. He must have been at his wit's end trying to get me to pick up on that. He finally cooked up this absurd tale about the IRS auditing his taxes. I told him the accountant could take care of it, but he said Harvey wanted us to go through the canceled checks and credit-card receipts. So like a dodo I did it and there it was."

  "Why don't you leave?" I asked. "I don't understand why you stay in a relationship like that." I always say the same thing. Every time I hear a tale like this. Drunkenness, beatings, infidelity, and verbal abuse. I just don't get it. Why do people put up with it? I had said it to Aubrey so I figured I might as well say it to her too. The marriage was a mess and regardless of where the truth lay, these two people were miserable. Was misery the point?

  "Oh, I don't know. Part of it's the money, I guess." she said.

  "Screw the money. This is a community-property state."

  "That's what I mean," she said. "He'll walk away with half of everything I have and it just seems so unfair."

  I looked at her blankly. "The money's yours?"

  "Well of course it's mine, " she said, and then her expression changed. "He told you it was his, didn't he?"

  I shrugged uncomfortably. "More or less. He told me he put together real-estate syndicates."

  She was startled for an instant and then she laughed.

  She started to cough, patting her chest. She stubbed out her cigarette, pecking it in the bottom of the ashtray. Smoke was streaming out of her nostrils as though her brain had caught fire. She was shaking her head, smile fading. "Sorry, but that's a new one on me. I should have guessed. What else did he say?"

  I held a hand up in protest. "Hey," I said. "Enough. I don't want to play this game. I don't know what your problems are and I don't care..."

  "You're right, you're right. God, we must seem like lunatics to you. I'm sorry you got sucked in. It's not your concern. It's mine. How much do I owe you for your time?" She was rooting through her handbag for her checkbook and her famous rosewood pen-and-pencil set.

  I could feel my temper on the rise again.

  "I don't want any money from you. Don't be absurd. Why don't you give me some straight answers for a change?"

  She blinked at me, the china blue eyes glazing over like ice on a pond. "About what?"

  "Elaine's neighbor claims you were up here at Christmas and the two of you had a big fight. You told me you hadn't seen her for years. Now which is it?"

  She stalled, reaching for another cigarette so she'd have time to frame a reply.

  I headed her off. "Come on, Beverly. Just tell me the truth. Were you up here or not?"

  She took out a packet of matches and removed a match, scratching it repeatedly across the packet without effect
. She tossed that one, a dud apparently, into the ashtray and took out a second match. This time, she managed to light her cigarette. "I did come up," she said carefully. She tapped the lighted cigarette on the lip of the ashtray as though to remove an ash when there was none yet.

  I was going to scream if she did any more shit with that cigarette. "Did you quarrel with her or didn't you?"

  She switched to her officious tone, mouth going all prim. "Kinsey, I had just found out about the affair. Of course we quarreled. That's exactly what Aubrey had in mind, I'm sure. What would you have done?"

  "What difference does it make? I'm not married to him so who gives a damn what I'd have done! I want to know why you lied to me."

  She stared at the desk, her face taking on a stubborn look.

  I tried another tack. "Why'd you call me off? Why wouldn't you let me contact the police?"

  She smoked for a moment and I thought at first she didn't intend to answer that question either. "I was worried he'd done something."

  I stared a her.

  She caught my look and leaned forward earnestly.

  "He's crazy. He is a truly crazy man and I was worried that he'd... I don't know... I suppose I was worried he'd killed her."

  "All the more reason to call the police. Isn't it?"

  "You don't understand. I couldn't turn the police loose on this. That's why I hired you in the first place. When this whole business came up about the will, I didn't think anything of it. It was such a minor matter. I just assumed she'd signed the paper and sent it to the attorney. And then when I realized no one had heard from her, it occurred to me that something might be wrong. I don't even know what I thought it was."