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

by Sue Grafton

“It looks that way. Aside from the obvious—cracked ribs, cracked pelvis, and torn ligaments—you’re talking about soft-tissue injuries, which are difficult to prove.”

  “All this from a fender-bender?”

  “I’m afraid so. Low-impact collisions can be more serious than you’d think. The right front fender of the Fredricksons’ van struck the left side of Lisa Ray’s car with sufficient force that it spun both vehicles in a postcollision rotation. There was a second impact when Lisa’s right rear fender came in contact with the van’s left rear fender.”

  “I get the general idea.”

  “Right. These physicians are all doctors we’ve dealt with before, and there’s no hint of fraudulent diagnoses or padded bills. If the police hadn’t cited Lisa, we’d be a lot more inclined to dig in our heels. I’m not saying we won’t fight, but she’s clearly in the wrong. I sent the claim on up the line so ICPI could take a look. If the plaintiff is claim-happy, her name should show up in their database. On a minor note—and we don’t think it pertains to this situation—Millard Fredrickson was handicapped in an automobile accident some years ago. Talk about someone plagued by misfortune.”

  Mary went on to say she thought Gladys would end up accepting a hundred thousand dollars, not including her medical expenses, a bargain from the company’s perspective as they could sidestep the threat of a jury trial with its attendant risks.

  I said, “A million bucks reduced to a hundred grand? That’s a hefty discount.”

  “We see it all the time. The attorney tacks on a big price tag so the settlement will look like a good deal to us.”

  “Why settle at all? Maybe if you stand your ground the woman will back off. How do you know she’s not exaggerating?”

  “Possible, but not likely. She’s sixty-three years old and overweight, which is a contributing factor. With the office visits, physical therapy, chiropractic appointments, and all the medications she’s on, she’s not able to work. The doctor’s suggesting the disability may be permanent, which is going to add yet another headache.”

  “What kind of work does she do? I didn’t see it mentioned.”

  “It’s in there somewhere. She does billing for an assortment of small businesses.”

  “Doesn’t sound lucrative. How much does she make?”

  “Twenty-five thousand a year, according to her. Her tax returns are privileged, but her attorney says she can produce invoices and receipts to back up her claim.”

  “And Lisa Ray says what?”

  “She saw the van approach, but she felt she had ample time to make the turn, especially since Millard Fredrickson had activated his right-turn signal and slowed. Lisa started into the turn and the next thing she knew the van was bearing down on her. He estimated his speed at less than ten miles an hour, but that’s nothing to sniff at when a thirty-two-hundred-pound vehicle is banging into you. Lisa saw what was coming but couldn’t get out of the way. Millard swears it was the other way around. He says he slammed on his brakes, but Lisa had pulled out so abruptly there was no way to avoid plowing into her.”

  “What about the witness? Have you talked to him?”

  “Well, no. That’s just it. He’s never turned up, and Lisa has precious little in the way of information. ‘Old guy with white hair in a brown leather bomber jacket’ is as much as she recalls.”

  “The cop at the scene didn’t take his name and address?”

  “Nope, nor did anyone else. He’d disappeared by the time the police arrived. We posted notices in the area and we ran ads in the ‘Personals’ section of the classifieds. So far no response.”

  “I’ll meet with Lisa myself and then get back to you. Maybe she’ll remember something I can use to track this guy down.”

  “Let’s hope. A jury trial’s a nightmare. We end up in court and I can just about guarantee Gladys will show up in a wheelchair, wearing a collar and a nasty-looking leg brace. All she has to do is drool on herself and that’s a million bucks right there.”

  “I hear you,” I said. I went back to the office, where I caught up with paperwork.

  There are two items I suppose I should mention at this point: (1) Instead of my 1974 VW sedan, I’m now driving a 1970 Ford Mustang, manual transmission, which is what I prefer. It’s a two-door coupe, with a front spoiler, wide-track tires, and the biggest hood scoop ever placed on a production Mustang. When you own a Boss 429, you learn to talk this way. My beloved pale blue Bug had been shoved nose-first into a deep hole on the last case I worked. I should have bulldozed the dirt in on top and buried it right there, but the insurance company insisted that I have it hauled out so they could tell me it was totaled: no big surprise when the hood was jammed up against the shattered windshield, which was resting on or about the backseat.

  I’d spotted the Mustang at a used-car lot and bought it the same day, picturing the perfect vehicle for surveillance work. What was I thinking? Even with the gaudy Grabber Blue exterior, I’d assumed the aging vehicle would fade into the landscape. Silly me. For the first two months, every third guy I met would stop me on the street to have a chat about the hemi-head V-8 engine originally developed for use in NASCAR racing. By the time I realized how conspicuous the car was, I was in love with it myself and I couldn’t bear to trade it in.

  (2) Later, when you watch my troubles begin to mount, you’ll wonder why I didn’t turn to Cheney Phillips, my erstwhile boyfriend, who works for the Santa Teresa Police Department—“erstwhile” meaning “former,” but I’ll get to that in a bit. I did call him eventually, but by then I was already in the soup.

  5

  I have my office in a little two-room bungalow with a bath and kitchenette, located on a narrow side street in downtown Santa Teresa. It’s in walking distance of the courthouse, but more importantly it’s cheap. My unit is the middle one of three, set in a squat row like the cottages of the Three Little Pigs. The property is perpetually for sale, which means I could be evicted if a buyer comes along.

  After Cheney and I broke up, I won’t say I was depressed, but I really didn’t feel like exerting myself. I hadn’t run for weeks. Perhaps “run” is too kind a word, as running is properly defined as six miles an hour. What I do is a slow jog, which is better than a brisk walk, but not by much.

  I’m thirty-seven years old and many women I know were whining about weight gain as a side effect of aging, a phenomenon I was hoping to avoid. I had to concede that my eating habits were not what they should have been. I devour a lot of fast food, specifically McDonald’s Quarter Pounders with Cheese, while simultaneously consuming fewer than nine servings of fresh fruits and vegetables daily (actually, fewer than one, unless you want to count the french fries). In the wake of Cheney’s departure, I’d been driving up to the take-out window more often than was good for me. The time had now come to shake off the blues and take myself in hand. I vowed, as I did almost every morning, to start jogging again first thing the next day.

  Between phone calls and clerical work, I made it to the noon hour. For lunch, I had a carton of nonfat cottage cheese with a dollop of salsa so fierce it brought tears to my eyes. From the time I removed the lid until I tossed the empty container in the trash, the meal took less than two minutes—twice as long as it took me to consume a QP with Cheese.

  At 1:00 I got in my Mustang and drove over to the law firm of Kingman and Ives. Lonnie Kingman is my attorney, who’d also rented me office space after I’d been relieved of the position with California Fidelity Insurance that I’d enjoyed for seven years. I won’t go into the humiliating details of my being fired. Once I was out on the street, Lonnie offered me the use of an empty conference room, providing a temporary haven in which I could lick my wounds and regroup. Thirty-eight months later, I opened an office on my own.

  Lonnie was hiring me to serve an Ex Parte Order of Protection on a Perdido man named Vinnie Mohr, whose wife had accused him of stalking, threats, and physical violence. Lonnie thought his hostility might be defused if I delivered the restraining orde
r instead of a uniformed deputy from the county sheriff’s office.

  “How dangerous is this guy?”

  “Not that bad unless he’s drinking. Then anything can set him off. Do what you can, but if you don’t like the feel of it, we’ll try something else. In an odd way he’s chivalrous…or at any rate, partial to cute girls.”

  “I’m neither cute nor girlish, but I appreciate the thought.”

  I checked the paperwork, making sure I had the correct address. In the car again, I consulted my Thomas Guide to Santa Teresa and San Luis Obispo Counties Streets, flipping from page to page until I’d pinpointed my destination. I took surface streets to the closest freeway on-ramp and headed south on the 101. There was very little traffic and the drive to Perdido took nineteen minutes instead of the usual twenty-six. There’s no nice reason I can think of to be dragged into court, but by law a defendant in a criminal or civil suit must be given proper notice. I delivered summonses, subpoenas, garnishments, and assorted court orders, preferably by hand, though there were other ways to get the job done—by touch and by refusal being two.

  The address I was looking for was on Calcutta Street in midtown Perdido. The house was a sullen-looking green stucco with a sheet of plywood nailed across the picture window in front. In addition to breaking the window, someone (no doubt Vinnie) had kicked a big knee-high hole in the hollow-core front door and then ripped it off its hinges. A series of strategically placed two-by-fours had since been nailed across the frame, rendering the door impossible to use. I knocked and then bent down and peered through the hole, which allowed me to see a man approaching from the other side. He wore jeans and had thin knees. When he leaned toward the hole on his side of the door, all I could see of his face was his stubble-covered cleft chin, his mouth, and a row of crooked bottom teeth. “Yeah?”

  “Are you Vinnie Mohr?”

  He withdrew. There was a brief silence and then a muffled reply. “Depends on who’s asking.”

  “My name’s Millhone. I have papers for you.”

  “What kind of papers?” His tone was dull but not belligerent. Fumes were already wafting through the ragged hole: bourbon, cigarettes, and Juicy Fruit gum.

  “It’s a restraining order. You’re not supposed to abuse, molest, threaten, stalk, or disturb your wife in any way.”

  “Do what?”

  “You have to stay away from her. You can’t contact her by phone or by mail. There’s a hearing next Friday and you’re required to appear.”

  “Oh.”

  “Could you show me some ID?”

  “Like what?”

  “A driver’s license would suffice.”

  “Mine’s expired.”

  “As long as it bears your name, address, and likeness, that’s good enough,” I said.

  “Okay.” There was a pause and then he pressed his license against the hole. I recognized the cleft chin, but the rest of his face was a surprise. He was not a bad-looking guy—a bit squinty through the eyes, but I couldn’t afford to be judgmental as the photo on my driver’s license makes me look like I top the list of the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted.

  I said, “You want to open the door or should I put the papers through the hole?”

  “Hole, I guess. Man, I don’t know what she said, but she’s a lying bitch. Anyways, she drove me to it, so I’m the one should be filing papers on her.”

  “You can tell the judge your side of it in court. Maybe he’ll agree,” I said. I rolled the papers into a cylinder and pushed them through the hole. I could hear paper crackle on the other side as the document was unfurled.

  “Hey, come on now! Dang. I never did what’s wrote here. Where’d she get this? She’s the one hit me, not the other way around.” Vinnie was assuming the “victim” role, a time-honored move for those who hope to claim the upper hand.

  “Sorry I can’t help you, Mr. Mohr, but you take care.”

  “Yeah. You, too. You sound cute.”

  “I’m adorable. Thanks for your cooperation.”

  In the car again, I logged the time I’d spent and the mileage on my car.

  I drove back into downtown Santa Teresa and parked in a lot near a notary’s office. I took a few minutes to fill out the affidavit of service, then went into the office, where I signed the return and had it notarized. I borrowed the notary’s fax machine and made two copies, then walked over to the courthouse. I had the documents file-stamped and left the original with the clerk. One copy I retained and the other I’d return to Lonnie for his files.

  Once in my office again, I found a call from Henry waiting on my machine. The message was brief and required no reply. “Hi, Kinsey. It’s a little after one and I just got home. The doctor popped Gus’s shoulder back in, but they decided to admit him anyway, at least for tonight. No broken bones, but he’s still in a lot of pain. I’ll go over to his house first thing tomorrow morning and do some cleaning so it won’t be so disgusting when he gets home. If you want to pitch in, great. Otherwise, no problem. Don’t forget cocktails after work today. We can talk about it then.”

  I checked my calendar, but I knew without looking that Tuesday morning was clear. I diddled at my desk for the rest of the afternoon. At 5:10, I locked up and went home.

  A sleek black 1987 Cadillac was parked in my usual spot in front so I was forced to cruise the area until I found a stretch of empty curb half a block away. I locked the Mustang and walked back. As I passed the Cadillac, I noted the license plate, which read I SELL 4 U. The car had to be Charlotte Snyder’s, the woman Henry’d dated off and on for the past two months. Her real estate success was the first thing he’d mentioned when he’d decided to pursue the acquaintance.

  I went around to the rear patio and let myself into my studio apartment. There were no messages on my home machine and no mail worth opening. I took a minute to freshen up and then crossed the patio to Henry’s place to meet the latest woman in his life. Not that he’d had many. Dating was new behavior for him.

  The previous spring, he’d been smitten with the art director on a Caribbean cruise he took. His relationship with Mattie Halstead hadn’t worked out, but Henry had bounced back, realizing in the process that female companionship, even at his age, wasn’t such a terrible idea. A number of other women on the cruise had taken a shine to him and he’d decided to contact two who were living within geographic range. The first, Isabelle Hammond, was eighty years old. She was a former English teacher, still the subject of legend at Santa Teresa High School when I attended some twenty years after she retired. She loved to dance and she was passionate about reading. She and Henry had gone out on several occasions, but she’d quickly decided the chemistry was off. Isabelle was looking for sparks, and Henry, while flinty, had failed to ignite her flame. This she told him straight out, greatly offending him. He believed men should do the wooing, and, further, that courtship should proceed with courtesy and restraint. Isabelle was cheerfully aggressive and it soon became clear the two of them were ill-suited. In my opinion, the woman was a nincompoop.

  Now Charlotte Snyder had entered the picture. She lived twenty-five miles south, just past Perdido, in the seaside community of Olvidado. At age seventy-eight, she was still active in the workplace and apparently showed no inclination to retire. Henry had invited her for drinks at his house and then for dinner at a lovely neighborhood restaurant called Emile’s-at-the-Beach. He’d asked me to join them for cocktails so I could check her out. If I didn’t think Charlotte was suitable, he wanted to know. I thought the assessment was his to make, but he’d asked for my opinion, so that’s what I’d be there to give.

  Henry’s kitchen door was open, his screen on the latch, so I could hear them laughing and chatting as I approached. I picked up the scent of yeast, cinnamon, and hot sugar, and guessed, correctly as it turned out, that Henry had dealt with his predate nerves by baking a pan of sweet rolls. In his working days he was a baker by trade, and as long as I’ve known him, his skills have never ceased to amaze. I tapped on the screen and
he let me in. He’d dressed up for his date, exchanging his usual shorts and flip-flops for loafers, tan slacks, and a short-sleeved sky blue dress shirt that exactly matched his eyes.

  I gave Charlotte high marks on sight. Like Henry, she was trim and she dressed with classic good taste: a tweed skirt, white silk blouse over which she wore a yellow crewneck sweater. Her hair was a soft reddish brown, cut short, expensively dyed, and brushed away from her face. I could tell she’d had her eyes done, but I didn’t write it off to vanity. The woman was in sales, and her personal appearance was as much an asset as her experience. She looked like someone who could walk you through an escrow without a hitch. If I’d been in the market for a house, I’d have bought one from her.

  She was leaning against the kitchen counter. Henry’d fixed her a vodka and tonic while he was having his usual Jack Daniel’s over ice. He’d opened a bottle of Chardonnay for me and he poured me a glass as soon as Charlotte and I had been introduced. He’d set out a bowl of nuts and a tray of cheese and crackers, with clusters of grapes tucked here and there.

  I said, “While I’m thinking about it, Henry, I’d be happy to help you clean tomorrow if we can finish before noon.”

  “Perfect. I’ve already told Charlotte about Gus.”

  Charlotte said, “Poor old guy. How’s he going to manage when he gets home?”

  “That’s what the doctor asked. He’s not going to release him unless he has help,” he said.

  “Does he have any family left?” I asked.

  “Not that I’ve heard. Rosie might know. He talks to her every other week or so, mostly to complain about the rest of us.”

  “I’ll ask when I see her,” I said.

  Charlotte and I went through the usual exchange of small talk, and when the subject shifted to real estate, she became more animated. “I was telling Henry how much these older homes have appreciated in recent years. Before I left the office, just out of curiosity, I checked the MLS for properties in the area and the median price—median, mind you—was six hundred thousand. A single-family residence like this one would probably sell for close to eight, especially since it has a rental attached.”