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

by Sue Grafton

  “Who?”

  “Cristina Tasinato? She’s a private professional…”

  “You said that! When did this happen?”

  “Late last week. I’ve seen the paperwork myself and it was properly executed. Ms. Tasinato worked through an attorney and she put up a bond, which she’s required to do by law.”

  “Gus doesn’t need some stranger stepping in to take charge of his life. He has a niece in New York. Didn’t anyone talk to her? She must have some rights in this.”

  “Of course. Under probate law, a relative has priority when it comes to an appointment as conservator. Mrs. Rojas mentioned the niece. Evidently, she spoke to her on three separate occasions, describing his condition and begging her to help. Ms. Oberlin couldn’t spare the time. Mrs. Rojas felt a conservator was imperative to Mr. Vronsky’s well-being…”

  “That’s a complete crock of shit. I talked to Melanie myself and it wasn’t like that at all. Sure, Solana called her, but she gave no indication he was in trouble. If she’d known, Melanie would have flown out in a heartbeat.”

  The prim mouth again. “Mrs. Rojas says otherwise.”

  “Isn’t there supposed to be a hearing?”

  “Ordinarily, yes, but in an emergency, the judge can go ahead and grant the request, pending investigation by the court.”

  “Oh, right. And suppose the court does the same nifty job you did? Where does that leave Gus?”

  “There’s no need to get personal. All of us have his best interests at heart.”

  “The man can speak for himself. Why was this done without his knowledge or consent?”

  “According to the petition, he has a hearing deficit in addition to periods of confusion. So even if there had been a regular court hearing, he wouldn’t have been competent to attend. Mrs. Rojas said you and his other neighbors don’t fully comprehend the kind of trouble he’s in.”

  “Well, we sure as fuck know now. How’d this Tasinato woman get wind of it?”

  “She might have been contacted by the convalescent facility or one of his physicians.”

  “So however this went down, she now has total control over him? Finances, real property, medical treatment? All of it?”

  Ms. Sullivan declined to respond, which I found infuriating.

  “What kind of idiot are you! Solana Rojas played you for a fool. She played us all for fools. And look at the result. You’ve handed him over to a pack of wolves.”

  The color was rising in Nancy Sullivan’s face and she looked down at her lap. “I don’t think we should continue the conversation. You might prefer to talk to my supervisor. I discussed this with her this morning. We thought you’d be relieved…”

  “Relieved?”

  “I’m sorry if I upset you. I may have presented it wrong. If so, I apologize. You called, we’ve looked into it, and we’re convinced he’s in capable hands.”

  “I beg to differ with you.”

  “I’m not surprised. You’ve been antagonistic since I sat down.”

  “Stop. Just stop. This is pissing me off. If you don’t get the hell out, I’ll start screaming at you.”

  “You’ve already screamed,” she said tightly. “And believe me, this will go in my report.” While she shoved papers in her briefcase and gathered her belongings, I could see the tears splashing down her cheeks.

  I put my head in my hands. “Shit. Now I’m the villain of the piece.”

  27

  The minute she was out the door, I grabbed my jacket and shoulder bag and trotted over to the courthouse, where I entered a side door and climbed the wide red-tile steps to the corridor above. Arches in the stairwell were open to the chill winter air and my footsteps echoed against the mosaic tile walls. I went into the county clerk’s office and filled out a form, requesting the file on Augustus Vronsky. I’d been in the same place seven weeks previously, doing the background check on Solana Rojas. Clearly, I’d screwed that up, but I wasn’t sure how. I sat in one of the two wooden chairs while I waited, and six minutes later I had the record in hand.

  I moved to the far side of the room and sat down at a table, occupied largely by a computer. I opened the file and leafed through, though there wasn’t much to see. I was looking at a standard four-page form. A pale X had been typed into various boxes running down the page. I flipped to the end of the document, where I noted the name of the attorney representing Cristina Tasinato, a man named Dennis Altinova, with an address on Floresta. His phone and fax numbers were listed, as was an address for Cristina Tasinato. Flipping back to the first page, I started again, scanning the headings and subheadings, seeing what I already knew. Augustus Vronsky, designated the conservatee, was a resident of Santa Teresa County. Petitioner was not a creditor or debtor or agent of either. Petitioner was Solana Rojas, asking the court to appoint Cristina Tasinato as conservator for the person and estate of the conservatee. I suspected Solana was at the heart of the matter, but it was still a jolt to see her name neatly typed in the box.

  Under “Character and estimated value of the property of the estate,” all the particulars were declared “Unknown,” including real property, personal property, and pensions. A box was also ticked stating that the conservatee was unable to provide for his or her personal needs for physical health, food, clothing, or shelter. Supporting facts were apparently spelled out in an attachment that was part of the Confidential Supplemental Information and Petition “on file herein.” There was no sign of the document, but that’s what the term “confidential” implies. In the paragraph below that, a box was ticked indicating that Gus Vronsky, proposed conservatee, was “substantially unable to manage his or her financial resources or resist fraud or undue influence.” Again, supporting facts were specified in the Confidential Supplemental Information, which had been filed with the petition but was unavailable as part of the public record. The signatures of the attorney, Dennis Altinova, and the conservator, Cristina Tasinato, were penned at the end. The document had been filed with the Santa Teresa Superior Court on January 19, 1988.

  Also part of the file was an invoice for “Caregiver management” costs, broken down according to fees, month, and running total. For the latter half of December 1987 and the first two weeks in January 1988, the amount requested was $8,726.73. That sum was substantiated by an invoice from Senior Health Care Management, Inc. There was also an invoice submitted by the attorney for professional services as of January 15, 1988, listing dates, hourly rates, and the amount charged off to the conservatorship. The balance due him was $6,227.47. These expenses had been submitted for court approval, and just in case the routing of funds wasn’t clear, the note at the end read, “Please make checks payable to Dennis Altinova: senior attorney time, $200.00/hour; associate attorney time, $150.00/hour; paralegal time, $50.00/hour.” Between them, the newly appointed conservator and her attorney had racked up charges totaling $14,954.20. I was surprised the attorney hadn’t attached a stamped, self-addressed envelope to speed the payment along.

  I marked the pages I wanted reproduced—which is to say, all of them—and returned the file to the clerk. While I waited for copies, I borrowed a phone book and looked up Dennis Altinova in the white pages. Under his office address and phone number, his home address and home phone were listed, which surprised me. I don’t expect doctors and lawyers to make personal information available to anybody smart enough to check. Apparently, Altinova wasn’t that worried about being stalked and killed by a disgruntled client. The neighborhood he lived in was pricey, but in Santa Teresa even houses in the shabby parts of town cost staggering amounts. There were no other Altinovas in evidence. I checked the listings for Rojas: many, but no Solana. I looked for the name Tasinato: none.

  When the clerk called my name, I paid for the copies and tucked them in my bag.

  Dennis Altinova’s office on Floresta was half a block from the courthouse. The police station was on the same street, which came to a dead end at the point where the Santa Teresa High School property picked up. In
the other direction, Floresta crossed State Street, ran past the downtown, and eventually butted up against the freeway. Lawyers had staked out the area, settling in to cottages and assorted small buildings whose original tenants had moved on. Altinova was renting a small suite of offices on the top floor of a three-story building with an off-brand savings and loan at street level. If I remembered correctly, the space had once been devoted to an upholsterer’s shop.

  I studied the directory in the lobby, which really amounted to little more than a walk-in pantry where you could wait for an elevator that moved with all the speed and grace of a dumbwaiter. The rents here weren’t cheap. The location was prime, though the building itself was woefully out of date. The owner probably couldn’t bear to sacrifice the time, energy, and money required to move tenants out and do a proper remodeling job.

  The elevator arrived, a four-by-four cubicle that jerked and shuddered throughout my creeping ascent. This gave me time to examine safety inspection dates and speculate about how many people it would take to exceed the weight limit, which was 2,500 pounds. I figured ten guys at 250 pounds apiece, assuming you could squeeze ten guys into a contraption that size. Twenty women at 125 pounds each was out of the question.

  I exited on three. The floor in the corridor was a speckled black-and-white terrazzo marble, rubble in other words, bound with white cement, white sand, and pigment, and reformed as tile. The walls were paneled in oak that was darkened by time. Oversized windows at either end of the hall let in daylight that was augmented by rafts of fluorescent tubing. The entrance doors to the offices were pebbled glass with the names of the occupants stenciled in black. I thought the effect was charming, suggestive as it was of lawyers’ and detectives’ offices in old black-and-white movies.

  Altinova’s office was midway down the hall. The door opened into a modest reception area that had been modernized by the addition of a desk made of stainless steel and poured glass. The desktop was bare except for a four-line telephone console. The lighting in the room was indirect. The chairs—four of them—looked as though they’d make your butt go numb minutes after you sat down. There were no side tables, no magazines, no art, and no plants. Certain “interior designers” do shit like this and call it minimalism. What a joke. The place looked like the tenant had yet to move in.

  A receptionist came through a door in the back wall marked “private.” She was a tall, cool blonde, too pretty to imagine she wasn’t banging the boss.

  “May I help you?”

  “I wonder if I might have a quick word with Mr. Altinova.” I thought the word “quick” struck a nice note.

  “You have an appointment?”

  “Actually, I don’t. I was over at the courthouse and decided I’d chance it. Is he in?”

  “Can you tell me what this is regarding?”

  “I’d prefer to discuss it with him.”

  “Were you referred?”

  “No.”

  She didn’t like my responses so she punished me by breaking off eye contact. Her face was a perfect oval, as smooth, pale, and unblemished as an egg. “And your name is?”

  “Millhone.”

  “Pardon?”

  “Millhone. M-I-L-L/H-O-N-E. Accent on the first syllable. Some people pronounce it ‘Malone,’ but I don’t.”

  “I’ll see if he’s free.”

  I was reasonably certain he didn’t know who I was, and if he did know, I was hoping he’d be curious what I was up to. I was curious myself. I knew he wouldn’t give me a snippet of information. Primarily, I wanted to lay eyes on the man who’d drafted the legal papers that eradicated Gus Vronsky’s autonomy. Also, I thought it might be interesting to shake the tree to see if anything ripe or rank hit the ground.

  Two minutes later the man himself appeared, holding on to the frame while he stuck his head around the door. Good move on his part. If he’d invited me into his office, he might have given the impression he was interested in what I had to say. His coming out to the reception desk implied that:

  (a) he could disappear at will,

  (b) that my business wasn’t worth sitting down for, and

  (c) therefore I’d better get to the point.

  I said, “Mr. Altinova?”

  “What can I do for you?” His tone was as flat and hard as the look in his eyes. He was tall and dark-haired with sturdy black-framed glasses resting on a sturdy outcrop of nose. Good teeth, fleshy mouth, and a cleft chin so pronounced it looked as if someone had taken a hatchet to his face. I placed him in his late sixties, but he looked fit and he carried himself with the vigor (or perhaps testiness) of someone younger. The receptionist peered over his shoulder from the hallway, watching our interchange like a kid hoping to see a sibling get bawled out and sent to her room.

  “I’m looking for a woman named Cristina Tasinato.”

  His expression showed nothing, but he did peer around the door with mock curiosity, scanning the reception area as though Ms. Tasinato might be playing hide-and-seek in the nearly empty room. “Can’t help.”

  “Name doesn’t ring a bell?”

  “What sort of work do you do, Ms. Millhone?”

  “I’m a private investigator. I have some questions for Ms. Tasinato. I was hoping you could put me in touch.”

  “You know better than that.”

  “But she’s a client of yours, yes?”

  “Ask someone else. We have nothing to discuss.”

  “Her name appears with yours on a document I saw at the courthouse just now. She was appointed conservator for a man named Gus Vronsky. I’m sure you’ve heard of him.”

  “Nice meeting you, Ms. Millhone. You can let yourself out.”

  Witty rejoinders in short supply, I said, “I appreciate your time.”

  He closed the door abruptly, leaving me on my own. I waited a beat, but his lovely receptionist didn’t reappear. I couldn’t believe she was passing up the opportunity to lord it over me. On the pristine glass desktop, line one on the telephone console lit up—Altinova, no doubt, putting a call in to Cristina Tasinato. The desktop was otherwise bare so I couldn’t even see a way to snoop. I let myself out as instructed and took the stairs down, not willing to risk the elevator, which was little more than a rickety box hanging by a string.

  I retrieved my car from the public parking garage, circled the block, and headed up Capillo Hill, in my eternal search for Melvin Downs. Having suffered the indignity of Altinova’s rebuff, I needed the soothing effects of routine work. Where Capillo crossed Palisade, I took a left and continued on Palisade until I saw the campus of Santa Teresa City College coming up on my right. The bench at the bus stop was empty. I cruised down the long hill that curved away from the campus. At the bottom there was a small nest of businesses: minimart, liquor depot, and a cluster of motels. If Melvin Downs did maintenance or custodial work, it was hard to believe he was employed only two days a week. Those were full-time jobs, 7:00 A.M. to 3:00 P.M., or hours along those lines. Besides which, the hill itself was long and steep, which meant he’d have had to trudge up that half mile at the end of his workday. Why do that when there was a bus stop half a block in the other direction, closer to the beach?

  Back up the hill I went. This time I drove past the college and down as far as the two strip malls at the intersection of Capillo and Palisade. Here my choices were many and varied. On my left there was a large drugstore and, behind it, an independent market that handled local organic produce and other natural foodstuffs. Perhaps Melvin unloaded crates or bagged groceries, or maybe he’d been hired to keep the aisles swept and mopped. I parked in the drugstore lot and went in. I did a walk-through, scanning each aisle as I passed. There was no sign of him. This was Tuesday and if he still worked in the neighborhood, he’d be finishing up in an hour or two. I went out the front exit.

  Still on foot, I crossed the street. Walking the length of the mall to my right, I passed two mom-and-pop restaurants, one serving Mexican fare and one leaning more toward the breakfast and lunch trade.
I glanced through the window at a shoe repair shop, cased the laundromat, a jewelry store, and the pet-grooming establishment next door. The last small business was a discount shoe store, trumpeting a GOING-OUT-OF-BUSINESS SALE! EVERYTHING REDUCED 30 TO 40 PERCENT. The store was bereft of customers so even the liquidation sale was a dud. I retraced my steps.

  At the corner, I waited for the light to change and crossed Capillo to the shops and specialty businesses lined up in a row on the far side of the intersection. I wandered through a craft mart, a drugstore, and a gift-and-card shop, all without success. I returned to my car and sat there wondering if I was completely off base. I’d been encouraged by Vernon Waibel’s assertion that Melvin was still in town, but I had no real reason to believe it. It made me happy thinking I could run him to ground through sheer tenacity, a trait I’ve been blessed with since birth. More to the point, if he’d fled into the world at large, I had no idea how to find him. Better to believe he was still in range.

  I started my car and backed out of the slot. I took a right turn onto Capillo and then a left at the light. This put me back on Palisade, moving past a residential neighborhood of small wood-and-stucco homes built in the 1940s. On my right, a road snaked up the hill to houses of a loftier nature with spectacular ocean views. I slowed at a set of crosswalks. A crossing guard watched with care as a string of children made their way from the near corner to the one on the other side. They walked in twos, holding hands, while a teacher and a teacher’s assistant hurried them along.

  When the guard nodded that traffic could proceed, I followed the slope of the hill down to the beachside park below. I did a slow circle of the parking lot, taking in the smattering of people I could see. I came out of the lot and turned right again, climbing the hill to the more populated section of Palisade I’d cruised before. How much gas was I willing to burn in the hope he was here?