Three Complete Novels: A Is for Alibi / B Is for Burglar / C Is for Corpse

by Sue Grafton

  “I attended a visitation at Wynington-Blake. Afterward, I had a cup of tea with the sole surviving family member. Lovely man.”

  “Oh, sorry. I didn’t realize someone died. I wouldn’t have sounded quite so chirpy if I’d known.”

  “That’s all right. This was Francis Bunch. Eighty-three years old.”

  “Gee, that’s young.”

  “My thought precisely. He was mowing his lawn Monday and blew an aneurysm in his brain. His second cousin Norbert is the only one left. At one count, there were twenty-six first cousins and now everybody’s gone.”

  “That’s a tough one.”

  “It is. Francis was quite the fellow—U.S. Army veteran, who fought in WW Two. He was a retired pipe-fitter and a Baptist. Preceded in death by his parents, his wife of sixty-two years—Mae was her name—seven children, and his brother, James. Norbert said Francis loved working in his yard so he went the way he would have wanted, except perhaps not quite so soon.”

  I turned the corner onto Cabana Boulevard and drove the three blocks to Castle, where I turned right again. “How long had you known him?”

  William looked surprised. “Oh, I never met the man. I read about him in the paper. With so many of his family gone, I thought someone should be there to pay their respects. Norbert was most appreciative. We had a nice long chat.”

  “I thought you’d given up funerals.”

  “I have…in the main…but there’s no harm in attending a service now and then.”

  I turned right onto my street, passing Rosie’s. I spotted a space halfway between my apartment and the restaurant and then did a half-assed job of parallel parking. Close enough, I thought. I shut the engine down and turned to him. “Before you go, I’ve been wondering about something. Did you, by any chance, call Lewis in Michigan and talk him into coming?”

  “Oh, he didn’t require much persuasion. Once I mentioned Mattie’s name, he was Johnny-on-the-Spot. I even had him thinking it was his idea. As I said to Rosie, ‘This is just the ticket.’”

  “William, I can’t believe you did that!”

  “Neither can I. In a moment of inspiration, the idea popped into my head just like that. I thought, Henry’s complacent. He needs an incentive and this ought to do the trick.”

  “I didn’t say I liked the plan. I think it stinks.”

  He frowned, somewhat taken aback. “Why do you say that? He and Lewis are jealous of one another. I’m surprised you weren’t aware.”

  “Of course I’m aware. I’d have to be brain-dead to miss that. The problem is Henry’s reaction is just the opposite. He’s not going after her. He’s backing away.”

  “He’s a sly one, that Henry. Always has a little something hidden up his sleeve.”

  “That’s not what I hear. He’s saying he refuses to compete. He thinks it’s tacky behavior so he’s retiring from the field.”

  “Don’t be fooled by that ploy. I’ve seen this a dozen times or more. He and Lewis set their caps for the same fair maiden and the jousting begins. It’s actually working out even better than I’d hoped. You know Lewis talked Mattie into staying an extra day. You should have seen the look that came across Henry’s face. That set him back on his heels, but he’ll rally. It may take a bit of doing, but he’ll prevail.”

  “Have you talked to him?”

  “Not since yesterday. Why?”

  “When I came home last night, her car was gone and his place was dark.”

  “He didn’t come to Rosie’s. I can assure you of that. You know Lewis invited Mattie to go with him to the art museum and then lunch afterward.”

  “William, I was sitting right there.”

  “Then you must have seen her response. She sparked to the idea, which Henry couldn’t fail to notice. He probably came up with something special for the two of them last night.”

  “I don’t think so. When I talked to Henry, he was adamant.”

  William waved the idea away. “He’ll back down in the end. He’ll never let Lewis get the better of him.”

  “I hope you’re right,” I said dubiously.

  We opened our respective car doors and got out, taking leave of each other on the street. I wanted to say more, but it seemed wiser to let the subject drop. He seemed so sure of himself. Maybe Henry would come back fighting and William’s meddling would be “just the ticket,” as he’d referred to it. I watched him set off toward Rosie’s, whistling and twirling his cane. As I went through the gate, I picked up Henry’s afternoon paper, which was still lying on the walk.

  I rounded the corner. Henry’s back door was open. I went through a quick debate, then crossed the patio and tapped on the screen. “You there?”

  “I’m here. Come in.”

  The overhead light was off and, though to all intents and purposes it was still broad daylight outside, the effect was gloomy. He sat in his rocker with his usual glass of whiskey in hand. The kitchen was spotless, appliances gleaming, the counters glossy. The oven was off and the stove top was bereft of any pots and pans. The air smelled blank. This was so unlike him. No sign of his daily baking project, no dinner preparations under way.

  “I brought your paper in.”

  “Thank you.”

  I placed it on the kitchen table. “Mind if I join you?”

  “Might as well. There’s half a bottle of wine in the refrigerator if you’re interested.”

  I took a wineglass from the cabinet and found the stoppered bottle of Chardonnay tucked in the refrigerator door. I poured myself half a glass and looked over at him. Henry hadn’t moved. “Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine.”

  “Ah. That’s good because the kitchen looks kind of grim. I thought I’d turn on some lights.”

  “Suit yourself.”

  I crossed to the wall and flipped the switch, which didn’t seem to help. The light seemed as dull and as flat as Henry’s demeanor. I sat down and placed my wineglass on the table. “What happened last night? I saw Mattie’s car was gone and you were out. The two of you go somewhere?”

  “She left for San Francisco. I took a walk.”

  “What time did she leave?”

  “I didn’t pay much attention. Four thirty-two,” he said.

  “Pretty late start for a six-hour drive. If she stopped for supper, she probably didn’t get home until close to midnight.”

  Silence from Henry.

  “I take it she stayed for lunch. Did you go with them to the art museum?”

  “You know we don’t have to discuss this. There’s really nothing to say. I’d just as soon drop the subject.”

  “Sure. No problem,” I said. “Are you going to Rosie’s for supper? I was thinking of doing that myself.”

  “And risk running into Lewis? I think not.”

  “We could go somewhere else. Emile’s-at-the-Beach is always lovely.”

  He looked at me with such injury in his eyes, I couldn’t bear to see it. “She broke it off.”

  “She did?”

  “She said I was impossible. She said she really couldn’t bear my bad behavior.”

  “What brought that on?”

  “Nothing. It came out of a clear blue sky.”

  “Maybe she had a hard day.”

  “Not as hard as mine.”

  I sat staring at the floor, feeling a wave of disappointment washing over me. I had such high hopes for them. I said, “You know what I find hard? I want to believe nice things can happen to us. Not every day, maybe, but just now and then.”

  “Me too,” he said. He got up and left the room.

  I waited a minute and when it was clear he wasn’t coming back, I dumped my wine in the sink, rinsed the glass, and then let myself out. I was ready to wring William’s neck and I wouldn’t have minded having a go at Lewis while I was at it. I could have handled pain of my own easier than Henry’s. Part of my bleak mood was probably connected to my lack of sleep, but it didn’t feel that way. It felt deep and permanent, a darkness being stirred up, like si
lt, from the very depths. Henry was a great guy and Mattie’d seemed perfect for him. He probably had been impossible, but so had she in her way. What would it have taken to be a little more sensitive to the situation? Unless she didn’t care much to begin with, I thought. In that case, she’d cut and run the minute things got tough. As a person with cut-and-run tendencies myself, I could see her point. Life was difficult enough without having to put up with someone else’s petulance.

  I let myself into my apartment and checked the answering machine. I was hoping Cheney’d left a message, but the light wasn’t blinking so I kissed that one off. Despite my earlier self-confidence, I wasn’t keen on the idea of waiting around to see if he’d call. It was dinnertime, but I wasn’t any more willing than Henry to venture into Rosie’s. William would prance over, taking his own pulse and asking for the latest in the lovers’ progress report. In case he was ignorant of the breakup, I didn’t want to be the one to tell him. And if he’d heard it from Lewis, I didn’t want to listen to him minimize the role he’d played. I suspected a run would cheer me up, but given my current mental state, I’d have had to jog all the way to Cottonwood, twenty miles round-trip.

  This was one of those moments when you need a girlfriend. When you’re down in the dumps, that’s what you do—call your best friend—or so I’ve heard. You chat. You laugh. You tell her your sad tale of woe, she commiserates, and then you take off and go shopping like normal folk. But I didn’t have a girlfriend, a lack I’d hardly noticed until Cheney appeared. So now, not only was I facing the fact that I didn’t have him, I didn’t have her either, whoever she was.

  A voice said…Ah, but you do have Reba.

  I thought about that one. If I made a list of desirable girlfriend traits, “convicted felon” wouldn’t be one. On the other hand, I’d be a convicted felon myself if I’d ever been caught doing even half the things I’d done.

  I picked up the phone and punched in the number for the Lafferty estate. When Reba answered, I said, “Reba, this is Kinsey. I need a favor. How good are you at giving fashion advice?”

  Reba picked me up in her car, a two-year-old black BMW she’d acquired shortly before she’d been sent to CIW. “The DA was panting to seize the car on the premise I’d bought it with ill-gotten gains. Ha ha ha on him. My father gave it to me for my thirtieth birthday. Hopes dashed again.”

  “What’d you say to Onni when you canceled dinner?”

  “I told her something came up and we’d make it another night.”

  “She was cool with that?”

  “Of course. She probably hated the idea of having dinner with me. I was always pouring my heart out about Beck. There wasn’t anyone else I could talk to about him. Beck said this, Beck said that. When it came to our sex life, I’d be giving her a blow by blow, so to speak.”

  “That was your mistake. You made him sound too good.”

  “You got that right. She was always jealous of me. Minute my back is turned, she walks off with my job and then she walks off with the love of my life, or so I thought at the time. I hate women who get into that competitive shit.”

  “What’s she like?”

  “You can judge for yourself as long as you end up agreeing with me. I know where she hangs out. If you’re interested, we can drop by later and I’ll introduce you.”

  “Drop by where?”

  “Bubbles in Montebello.”

  “That’s been closed for two years.”

  “Nuhn-uhn. The place has changed hands. Name’s the same, but it’s been open for a month under new management.”

  “Where we headed now?”

  “The mall.”

  Passages, the newly opened shopping plaza in the heart of Santa Teresa, had been designed to resemble an old Spanish town. The architecture featured a picturesque assortment of narrow shoulder-to-shoulder buildings of varying heights, arches, loggias, courtyards, fountains, and side streets, the whole of the three-block complex capped by red tile roofs. At ground level there were restaurants, clothing stores, galleries, jewelry stores, and other retail shops. The wide central esplanade was anchored at one end by Macy’s and at the other end by Nordstrom’s, with a large chain bookstore occupying a prominent spot. Pepper trees and flowering shrubs were planted throughout. In the taller structures, three and four stories high, office space had been leased to lawyers, accountants, engineers, and anyone else who could afford the staggering rents.

  Given Santa Teresa’s resistance to new construction, the project had taken years to push through. The city-planning commission and the architectural board of review, plus the city council, plus the county board of supervisors, plus the building and safety commission, all at odds with one another, had to be soothed, pacified, and reassured. Citizens’ groups protested the razing of buildings five and six decades old, though most were otherwise unremarkable. Many were already slated for mandatory earthquake retrofitting, which would have cost the owners more than they were worth. Environmental impact studies had to be approved. Numerous small merchants were evicted and displaced, with only one holdout, a funky little bar called Dale’s that was still moored in the middle of the plaza like a tugboat in a harbor full of yachts.

  We ate dinner at an Italian boutique restaurant located on one of the smaller avenues that connected the center esplanade to State Street on one side and Chapel on the other. Temperatures were still elevated, and we elected to eat on the patio outside. As the dark came down, the landscape lighting began to paint walls and vegetation in colors more vivid than their daylight shades. Details of wrought-iron fixtures were picked out in shadow, the plaster frieze along the roof outlined in black. If you squinted, you could almost believe you’d been transported to a foreign country.

  While we waited for our salads, I said, “I appreciate your doing this—the clothes thing.”

  “No problem. It’s obvious you need help.”

  “I’m not sure the word ‘obvious’ should come into play.”

  “Trust me.”

  Later, while she was winding spaghetti on her fork, she said, “You know this is Beck’s project.”

  “What is?”

  “The mall.”

  “He did Passages?”

  “Sure. I mean, not on his own—in partnership with a guy in Dallas, another developer. Beck moved his office to the far end, down by Macy’s. The fourth floor runs the full block between State and Chapel.”

  “I didn’t realize the building covered that much ground.”

  “Because you didn’t bother to look up. If you did, you’d see that there are covered walkways that join the second and third levels in places above the esplanade. Technically, in the rainy season, you could move from one building to the other without getting wet.”

  “You’ve got a better eye than I do. I missed that.”

  “I have the advantage. The mall’s been in development for years so I’ve seen the plans at just about every stage. Beck moved his office in a couple of months after I went into CIW, so I never got to see it. Turned out great, or so I hear.”

  I took a sip of wine, finishing the last bite of eggplant parmigiana while I watched Reba use a chunk of bread to clean up her marinara sauce. I said, “Where are you going with this?”

  She popped the bread in her mouth, smiling while she chewed. “You’re the kick-ass private eye. You figure it out. In the meantime, let’s go buy you some clothes and then we can make the run into Montebello.”

  15

  We shopped until the stores closed at 9:00. Reba kept up a running commentary as I tried things on. In the interests of education, she let me make my choices without reference to her opinion. At first, I tried gauging her reaction as I lifted a garment off the rack, but she looked on with the same deadpan expression she must have donned at the poker table. With no guidelines whatever, I picked out two dresses, a pantsuit, and three cotton skirts. “Okay,” I said.

  Her brow went up about an eighth of an inch. “That’s it?”

  “Isn’t this enough?�
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  “You like that green deal, that pantsuit thing?”

  “Well, yeah. You know, it’s dark and it won’t show spots.”

  “All riiiight,” she said, with a tone suggesting that you have to let kids make boo-boos in order for them to learn.

  She trailed behind me as far as the line of dressing cubicles in the rear. She looked on idly while I opened door after door, trying to find a room not in use. When I finally found an empty cubicle, she gave every impression of following me in.

  “Hold on a sec. You’re coming in here with me?”

  “What if something doesn’t fit? You can’t stroll around out there in your underwear.”

  “I wasn’t planning to. I was going to try on stuff back here and then decide.”

  “Deciding is my job. You try on clothes and I’ll explain how misguided you are.”

  She sat on a plain wooden chair in a space that was six feet on a side with floor-to-ceiling mirrors on three. The fluorescent lighting guaranteed your skin would look sallow and every tiny body flaw would appear in bas relief.

  I took my shoes off and began to strip down with the same enthusiasm I feel before a pelvic exam. “I can tell I have a better developed sense of modesty than you do,” I said.

  “Oh, please. Prison knocked that out of me. The shower stalls were a quarter this size with these skimpy canvas curtains designed to keep your head and feet in view. That was to prevent the inmates from having sex in private. Little did they know. Aside from that, you might as well forget privacy altogether. It was simpler to prance around nude like everybody else.”

  During these revelations, I was trying to step gracefully out of my blue jeans, but my foot caught and I nearly toppled sideways. Reba pretended not to notice. I said, “Didn’t that bother you?”

  “At first, but after a while, I thought, oh who gives a damn? All these naked women and pretty soon you’ve seen every possible body type—short, tall, skinny, fat, little tits, big ass, or big tits and no ass. Scar, moles, tattoos, birth defects. Everybody looks just about like everybody else.”