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

by Sue Grafton

  “I told you I would. As soon as I’ve made dupes.”

  “Goddamn it, Reba. Are you totally out of your mind?”

  “Pretty much.” She glanced back over her shoulder at the vast empty garage. “We better get going before someone else shows up.”

  We got out of the car and walked to the service door, our footsteps echoing against the bare concrete walls. Reba tried the knob, locked as anticipated, and then used the key Onni had so thoughtfully designated. The door opened into a stairwell. We walked down a flight and discovered two additional doors about ten feet apart. Reba said, “The lady or the tiger? You pick.”

  I pointed to the left. She shrugged and handed me the keys. I had to do a bit of experimenting to find the right one. Onni’s paucity of imagination had resulted in her labeling some of the keys numerically. I tried three before I came to the one that worked. I unlocked the door and opened it. We found ourselves in the same ten-parking-space cul-de-sac we’d seen from the street.

  Reba said, “Aha!”

  We closed the first door and moved to the second. “Your turn,” I said. “I’d go for the key marked number four.”

  “No sweat. I already know what’s behind this one.” She eased the key into the lock, turned it, and pushed the door open. We stood looking into a long windowless corridor. Flats of fluorescent lights affixed to the ceiling lent a bluish cast to the air. At regular intervals, oversize metal doors on either side of the hall opened into the shipping and receiving departments of the various shops along the mall, some of which fronted on Chapel Street and some on the mall’s interior esplanade. Signs above the doors indicated the respective retailers: the luggage shop, a children’s clothing store, an Italian pottery outlet, the jewelry store, and so on down the line.

  I studied the layout. There was no sign of the two elevators I’d seen in the lobby above, but a solid wall of concrete suggested the bottom of the shaft that housed them. A short distance away, a mirror located in the upper right-hand corner was tilted to reveal the alcove, reflecting an image of the service elevator and the second elevator I’d noticed on the lobby level. I started to move forward, but Reba extended her arm, effectively blocking me like the gate at a railroad crossing. She put a finger to her lips and pointed up and to the right.

  I spotted a corner-mounted security camera, its aperture focused squarely on the far end of the hall. There was a telephone attached to the wall, presumably to facilitate communication between the front desk and deliverymen. We backed up and eased the door shut. Even so, she dropped her voice to an almost inaudible murmur. “After you dropped me off last night, I picked up my car and came back so I could chat with Willie. He’s nice, not as tight-assed as you’d think. Big chess buff. Plays duplicate bridge, and I swear to god, he bakes sourdough bread. Says he’s had the same starter for nine years. Whole time we’re yakking, I’m checking out the monitors—all ten of ’em—so I’ll know what he sees. I was catching flashes of this view, but I didn’t know where it was until we opened the door down here. Upstairs, he’s got line of sight in both directions on all the hallways, but nothing in the elevators and nothing on the roof.”

  “What about Beck’s offices?”

  “Oh, please. Beck wouldn’t put up with that Big Brother shit. He doesn’t mind Willie spying on his tenants, but not on him.”

  “Seems like heavy security for a building this size.”

  “Interesting, isn’t it? I thought so myself.”

  “So where’d the elevators disappear to?”

  “The public elevators stop at lobby level. Clearly, Beck doesn’t want anyone to have access to his offices from down here,” she said. “One elevator does a short loop between the parking garage and the lobby. Anybody who needs to reach floors two, three, or four has to exit into the lobby and cross to the public elevators. That way, Willie can intercept them and quiz them. You better have a pretty good reason for being in the building or you’re out of luck. If you need to take an elevator down this far, you have to have a key. There isn’t any button you can push.”

  “But if the service elevator originates down here, can’t someone hop on down here and bypass Willard altogether?” I asked. “I mean, even with the cameras rolling he can’t be watching all ten monitors at once.”

  “In theory, you’re right, but it’d be tricky. For one thing, all these passageways are kept locked—”

  “Which didn’t keep us out.”

  “And for another,” she said, plowing right on, “there’s a security code for every floor. You could risk the service elevator—assuming Willie didn’t spot you in the corridor down here—but you couldn’t get off unless you knew the code for the alarm panel on any given floor. Mess up the numbers and all hell breaks loose.”

  “Which means what to us, exactly?”

  “Which means we better impose on Willie’s good nature and retrieve your purse before the end of his shift.”

  21

  We retraced our steps, emerging from the service corridor in the parking garage near Macy’s. We crossed to the escalator and went up one level to the esplanade. When we reached the front entrance to the Beckwith Building, Reba pushed the door and discovered that it was locked. She cupped her hands to the plate glass. “Hey, Willie. Over here.”

  She tapped on the glass to get the security guard’s attention. The minute he looked up, she gave him an enthusiastic wave and pantomimed his unlocking of the door. Willard shook her off, like a pitcher shaking off a sign. Reba motioned him over with an exaggerated rolling of her arm. He stared at her, unmoved, and she clasped her hands together earnestly as though in prayer. Reluctantly he left his perch at the desk and crossed to the door, where he said, “Building’s closed!” from his side of the glass.

  “Come onnn. Open up,” she said.

  He considered the request, his ambivalence clearly evident.

  She put her mouth against the glass and made a big sucky kiss. She gave him the big eyes and produced the dimples for effect. “Please, please, please?”

  He wasn’t happy, but he did pick up the keys attached to the chain on his belt. He unlocked the door and opened it a cautious three inches. “What do you want? I can’t be doing this unless you’re one of the tenants.”

  “I know, but Kinsey left her bag upstairs and she needs her car keys and wallet.”

  Unimpressed, Willard flicked a look at me. “She can come back on Monday. Building opens at seven.”

  “How’s she going to do that? Without her car keys, she can’t even drive. I had to pick her up at her house and bring her over here myself. This is her handbag, Will. Do you know what it’s like when a woman’s separated from her purse? She’s going berserk. She’s a private detective. She has her license in there. Plus her address book, makeup, credit cards, checkbook, every nickel she owns. Even her birth control pills. She gets pregnant, the burden’s on you, so get ready to raise a kid.”

  “Okay, okay. Tell me where it is and I’ll bring it down to her.”

  “She doesn’t know where it is. That’s the point. All she knows is she had it when we went up with Marty last night. Now it’s gone and that’s the only place she went. It has to be there somewhere. Come on. Be a peach. It won’t take five minutes and we’ll be out of your hair.”

  “Can’t. The alarm system’s on.”

  “Marty gave me the code. Honest. He said it’s fine with him as long as we cleared it with you first.”

  The long-suffering Willard opened the door and allowed us in. I thought he’d insist on coming upstairs with us, but he was serious about his monitoring duties and didn’t want to leave his post. Reba and I took one of the two public elevators, which made the four-floor journey at an agonizingly slow pace.

  “You sure you know the code?” I asked.

  “I watched Marty do it. Same code we had before when I was working for Beck.”

  “How come he’s such a nut about security and so careless about his codes? Sounds like anybody who ever worked for him cou
ld get in.”

  Reba waved the observation away. “We used to change ’em all the time—once a month—but with twenty-five employees, somebody was always messing up. The alarm would go off three and four times a week. The cops came out so many times, they started charging fifty bucks a pop.”

  The doors slid open and Reba hit the Stop Run button while she stepped out of the elevator. I leaned around and watched as she punched in the seven-digit code: 4-19-1949. “Beck’s birthday,” she said. “For a while he used Tracy’s, but he was the one who kept forgetting that date so he switched to his own.”

  The status light on the keypad shifted from red to green. She left the elevator on Stop Run, awaiting our return. I followed her into the reception area.

  The offices were dead quiet. There were numerous lights on, which oddly contributed to the overall feeling of abandonment. “Bart and Bret, the cleaning twins, were in last night. Check the vacuum cleaner tracks. We better hope whoever comes in here first thing Monday morning doesn’t wonder about our footprints running up and down the halls.”

  “How do you know the vacuuming was done by Bart and Bret and not the guys with the cleaning cart?”

  “I’m so glad you asked. Because I’ll tell you why. They weren’t real cleaning guys, which is something I figured out in the dead of night. Know what bugged me about them?” She paused for effect. “Wrong shoes. What guy mops the floors wearing four-hundred-dollar shiny Italian loafers?”

  “You are Sherlock Holmes.”

  “You’re damn straight. You grab your shoulder bag while I satisfy my curiosity. This shouldn’t take long.”

  I made a beeline for the roof, heading down the corridor closest to the stairs. Given Beck’s edict about clean surfaces, every desk I spotted en route looked as barren and untouched as an ad for office furniture. I took the steps two at a time and pushed through the big glass door that opened onto the roof. The morning sky was immense, the perfect shade of blue. I slowed and crossed to the parapet, drawn by a desire to see downtown Santa Teresa from this vantage point. The sun had warmed the air in the rooftop garden, coaxing fragrance from the flowering shrubs while a light breeze rustled through the foliage. In the distance, light spilled like pancake syrup across the mountain peaks. I leaned over and looked at the street, which was largely empty at this hour. I tilted my face to the light and took a deep breath before I righted myself and turned back to the task at hand. I retrieved my bag from behind the big potted ficus tree and went downstairs. Reba had been right about my birth control pills. I pulled out my packet and popped two like after-dinner mints.

  When I got downstairs, she’d taken out a tape measure and was busy checking the length and breadth of the corridor, one foot on the metal ribbon while she extended the tape to the full. She released the button and I could hear the metal tape sing as she brought it zinging back to her hand. The tip-end whipped against her finger and dealt her a nasty blow. “Shit. Son of a bitch!” She sucked on her knuckle.

  “You need a medic?”

  “Look at that. I’m bleeding to death.”

  The nick on her index finger was a quarter of an inch long and she studied it with a frown. “Anyway, bet you dollars to donuts the friggin’ room is right there. Press your ear to the wall and see if you can hear anything. Minute ago I heard a humming. Like machinery.”

  “Reba, that’s the elevator shaft. You probably caught the sound of the service elevator going down.”

  “Not from this floor. We’re the only ones up here.”

  “But we can’t be the only people in the building. The elevator equipment is right above us. Of course you’d hear it.”

  “You think?”

  “Let’s try the obvious and check it out,” I said.

  She followed me around the corner where the service elevator was located. From the digital readout on the wall, we could track the car going down, the number changing from 1 to G.

  “Told you,” I said, and then glanced at my watch. “Shit. We better get out of here before Willard gets anxious and comes looking for us. I can’t believe the nonsense you laid on him. Talk about maneuvering.”

  “I thought I did great…though that begging and pleading shit is only good for limited use. The next time we want in, I’ll have to screw the guy for sure.”

  “You’re making a joke, right?”

  “Don’t be such a prude. Screw one guy, you’ve screwed ’em all. You’re only a virgin once, and after that, you might as well reap the benefits. Besides, I wouldn’t mind. I think he’s cute.” Her gaze was raking the wall again and I could tell she was still speculating about the missing space. She said, “Maybe you get in by way of the roof. Through that little building that looks like a gardener’s shack.”

  “Skip it. We don’t have time. Let’s get out of here.”

  “You’re such a worrywart,” she said, taking out Onni’s key ring. “Just give me a second to return these, okay? I’m trying to be a good citizen.”

  “What about Beck’s phony docs.”

  “Right. I got ’em right here,” she said, patting her jacket pocket. She took the hem of her shirt and began cleaning fingerprints from the keys. “Wiping off the prints,” she said. “In case they ever dust.”

  “Just get on with it.”

  She walked down the hall to Onni’s office—not nearly fast enough for my taste—and disappeared from sight. I checked my watch again. We’d been up here twelve minutes. How long was it supposed to take us to find my shoulder bag? By now Willard would be out from behind his desk and on his way up. Reba took her time returning and when she finally appeared, hands shoved in her jacket pockets, instead of getting on the elevator as anticipated, she returned to the alcove where the service elevator was located and stood there staring at it.

  “What are you doing?”

  “I just figured it out. Hot damn.” She reached out and pressed the button, calling the service elevator to the fourth floor. As we watched the digital readout, the elevator began its slow and dutiful climb. Eventually the doors opened. She reached in and pressed Stop Run, then entered the service elevator with me close behind her. The space was twice the width and half again as long as an ordinary elevator, apparently to accommodate moving boxes, file cabinets, and oversize office equipment. The walls were hung with quilted gray fabric like the blankets movers use to protect furniture.

  Reba moved to the wall opposite the elevator doors and pulled the padding aside to reveal a second set of elevator doors. On a wall-mounted panel to the right of them, there was a nine-digit keypad. She studied it for a moment and then raised a tentative hand.

  “You know the code?”

  “Maybe. I’ll tell you in a minute.”

  “Guess wrong and won’t you set off the alarm?”

  “Oh, come on. It’s like a fairy tale—you get three tries before the thing goes berserk. If I blow it, we’ll tell Willie we made a wee mistake.”

  “Just leave it for now. You’re really pushing your luck.”

  She ignored me, of course. “I know it’s not going to be his birth date—even Beck wouldn’t be dumb enough to use that again. But it might be a variation. He’s a narcissist. Everything he does relates to him.”

  “Reba…”

  She flashed a look at me. “If you’d quit whining and help me out we can get on with it and be on our way. I can’t pass this up. It may be the only chance we have.”

  I rolled my eyes, trying to control my panic, which was already accelerating. She wasn’t going to budge until we figured it out or got caught. I said, “Shit. Try the same date backwards.”

  “Not bad. I like it. That’d be what?”

  “9-4-9-1-9-1-4.”

  She thought about it briefly and then made a face. “Don’t think so. Too tough for him to rattle the number off the top of his head. Let’s try this…”

  She punched in 1949-19-4.

  No deal.

  She punched in 19-4-1949.

  I could feel my heart thud. �
�That’s two.”

  “Would you get off it? I know it’s two. I’m the one punching in numbers. Let’s just think about it for a second. What’s another possibility?”

  “What about Onni’s birthday?”

  “Let’s hope not. I know it’s November 11, but I’m not sure what year. Anyway, Beck hasn’t been boffing her long so he probably doesn’t have a clue himself.”

  I said, “11-11 any year would be eight digits, not seven.”

  She pointed at me, apparently impressed with my ability to count.

  “What’s his wife’s birthday?” I asked.

  “3-17-1952. But he’s blown that one so many times he’s probably spooked by now. Besides, he prefers numbers with internal connections or sequences. Know what I mean? Repeats or patterns.”

  “I thought you said he used your birthday at one point.”

  “True. That’d be 5-15-1955.”

  “Hey, mine’s 5-5-1950,” I chirped, sounding like a lunatic.

  “Great. We’ll do a joint celebration when the dates roll around next year. So what should I try? His birth date backwards or mine straight ahead?”

  “Well, his birth date backwards has an internal logic if you group the numbers. 949-191-4. Would he break it down that way?”

  “Might.”

  “Just do one or the other before I have a heart attack.”

  She punched in 5-15-1955. A moment of silence and then the doors slid open. “My birthday. Sweet. You think he still cares?”

  I pushed the Stop Run button and watched her wipe her prints off the keypad, taking care not to trigger the alarm. “Wouldn’t want anyone to know we were here,” she said, happily.

  Meanwhile, I was staring straight ahead. The room was probably six feet by eight—not much bigger than a closet. The cleaning cart we’d seen was shoved up against the left wall. A U-shaped counter took up much of the remaining floor space. I looked up. The room seemed to be well ventilated, the walls heavily padded. A smoke detector and a heat detector had been installed in the shadowy upper reaches of the ceiling, where I could see sprinkler heads as well. Rungs embedded in the wall formed a ladder that went straight up. Around the perimeter of the ceiling, I could see rectangles of daylight roughly corresponding to the vents in the fake gardener’s cottage on the roof. Reba was right. In a pinch, you could probably gain entry to the room from the roof. Or escape that way.