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

by Sue Grafton

  I started the Mustang and of course when I backed up to pull out of the slot, I tapped the bumper of the car behind. It didn’t seem sufficient to warrant getting out to look, but as surely as I didn’t, I’d get dinged for thousands in repair work, plus an additional citation for leaving the scene of an accident. I opened the car door and left it ajar while I walked around to the back of my car. There wasn’t any sign of damage and when the officer walked over to see for himself, he seemed to agree.

  “You might be a little more careful.”

  “I will. I am. I can leave a note if you think it’s necessary.” You see that? Fear of authority will reduce a grown woman to this kind of groveling, like I would have licked his belt buckle to a high shine if he’d grace me with a smile. Which he didn’t.

  I managed to drive away without any further mishap, but I was rattled.

  I let myself into the office and put on a pot of coffee. I didn’t need the caffeine; I was already wired. What I needed was a game plan. When the coffee was done I poured myself a mug and took it to my desk. Solana was setting me up. I had no doubt she’d scratched the car herself and then called the police. The move was a wily one in her campaign to establish my enmity. The more vengeful I appeared, the more innocent she looked by comparison. She’d already made a case for my calling the county hotline as a gesture of spite. Now I was a candidate for charges of vandalism. She’d have a hell of a time proving it, but the point was to damage my credibility. I had to find a way to counteract her strategy. If I could stay one step ahead of her I might be able to beat her at her own game.

  I opened my bag, found the scrap of paper Charlotte had given me, and phoned the bank. When the call was picked up I asked for Jay Larkin.

  “This is Larkin,” he said.

  “Hi, Jay. My name is Kinsey Millhone. Charlotte Snyder gave me your number…”

  “Right. Absolutely. I know who you are. What can I do for you?”

  “Well, it’s a long story, but I’ll give you the condensed version.” Whereupon I laid out an account of the situation in as succinct a manner as possible.

  When I finished, he said, “Not to worry. I appreciate the information. We’ll take care of it.”

  By the time I got back to my coffee it was stone cold, but I was feeling better. I sat back in my swivel chair and put my feet up. I laced my hands on the top of my head and stared at the ceiling. Maybe I could put a stop to this woman yet. I’ve dealt with some very bad folks in my day—thugs, brute killers, and scamsters, with a number of truly evil people thrown into the mix. Solana Rojas was cunning, but I didn’t think she was smarter than I was. I may not have a college degree, but I’m blessed (she said, modestly) with a devious nature and an abundance of native intelligence. I’m willing to match wits with just about anyone. That being true, I could (therefore) match wits with her. I simply couldn’t go about it in my usual blunt-force fashion. Going head-to-head with her had landed me where I was. From now on, I’d have to be subtle and every bit as cunning as she. Here’s what else I thought: If you can’t go through a barrier, find a way around. There had to be a crack in her armor somewhere.

  I sat up, put my feet on the floor, and opened the bottom right-hand desk drawer where I kept her file. There wasn’t much in it: the contract with Melanie, the original job application, and the written report of what I’d learned about her. As it turned out, all the personal recommendations were horseshit, but I didn’t know that then. I’d tucked Lana Sherman’s résumé at the back of the file and I studied that now. Her comments about Solana Rojas had been hostile, but her criticisms only reinforced the notion that Solana was hardworking and conscientious. No hint of abusing the elderly for fun and profit.

  I placed Solana’s application on the desk in front of me. It was clear I’d have to go back and fact-check every line, starting with the address she’d given out in Colgate. The first time I’d seen the street name, I’d had no idea where it was, but I realized I’d seen it since. Franklin ran parallel to Winslow, one block over from the twenty-four-unit building Richard Compton owned. It was the Winslow property where the Guffeys had so enjoyed themselves, ripping out cabinets and demolishing the plumbing fixtures, thus generating their very own rendition of the Flood, minus Noah’s Ark. The neighborhood was a hotbed of low-life types, so it made sense that Solana would be comfortable in such a setting. I picked up my jacket and my shoulder bag and headed for my car.

  I pulled up across from the apartment building on Franklin, a drab beige three-story structure, free of architectural flourishes—no lintels, no windowsills, no shutters, no porches, and no landscaping, unless you find drought-tolerant dirt aesthetically pleasing. There was a pile of dead bushes near the curb and that was the extent of the vegetation. The apartment number on Solana’s application was 9. I locked my car and crossed the street.

  A cursory survey of the mailboxes suggested that this was a twenty-unit complex. Judging from the numbered doors, Apartment 9 was on the second floor. I made my way up the stairs, which consisted of iron risers with pebbly rectangular slabs of poured concrete forming the treads. At the top I took a moment to reconsider. As nearly as I could tell, Solana was living at Gus’s full-time, but if the Franklin address was still her permanent residence, she might come and go. If I ran into her, she’d know she was under scrutiny, which was not good.

  I returned to the ground floor, where I’d seen a white plastic sign on the door to Apartment 1, indicating the manager was living on the premises. I knocked and waited. Eventually a fellow opened the door. He was in his fifties, short and rotund, with pudgy features in a face that age had sucked into the collar of his shirt. The corners of his mouth were turned down and he had a double-chin that made his jaw look as formless and flat as a frog’s.

  I said, “Hi. Sorry to bother you, but I’m looking for Solana Rojas and wondered if she was still living here.”

  In the background I heard someone call, “Norman, who’s that?”

  Over his shoulder he called, “Just a minute, Princess, I’m in a conversation here.”

  “I know that,” she called, “I asked who it was.”

  To me he said, “Nobody named Rojas in the building unless it’s someone subletting, which we don’t allow.”

  “Norman, did you hear me?”

  “Come see for yourself. I can’t be yelling back and forth like this. It’s rude.”

  A moment later his wife appeared, also short and round, but twenty years younger with a mop of dyed yellow hair.

  “She’s looking for a woman named Solana Rojas.”

  “We don’t have a Rojas.”

  “I told her the same thing. I thought it might be someone you knew.”

  I looked at the application again. “This says Apartment Nine.”

  Princess made a face. “Oh, her. The lady in Nine moved three weeks ago—her and that lump of a son—but the name’s not Rojas. It’s Tasinato. She’s Turkish or Greek, something of the kind.”

  “Cristina Tasinato?”

  “Costanza. And don’t get us started. She left us with hundreds of dollars in damages we’ll never recoup.”

  “How long did she live here?”

  The two exchanged a look and he said, “Nine years? Maybe ten. She and her son were already tenants when I took over as the manager and that was two years ago. I never had occasion to check her place until she was gone. The kid had kicked a big hole in the wall, which must have created a draft because she was using old newspapers as insulation, stuffed between the studs. The dates on the papers went back to 1978. A family of squirrels had taken up residence and we’re still trying to get them out.”

  Princess said, “The building was sold two months ago and the new owner raised the rent, which is why she moved. We’ve got tenants flocking off the premises like rats.”

  “She didn’t leave a forwarding address?”

  Norman shook his head. “Wish I could help you out, but she disappeared overnight. We went in and the place stunk so bad, w
e had to have a crew that usually handles crime scenes come in…”

  Princess chimed in, “Like if a body’s been rotting on the floor for a week and the boards are soaked with that bubbly-looking scum?”

  “Got it,” I said. “Can you describe her?”

  Norman was at a loss. “I don’t know, average. Kinda middle-aged, dark…”

  “Glasses?”

  “Don’t think so. She might have wore them to read.”

  “Height, weight?”

  Princess said, “On the thin side, a little chunky through the middle, but not as big as me.” She laughed. “The son you couldn’t miss.”

  “She called him Tiny, sometimes Tonto,” Norman said. “Babyfaced—great big hulk of a guy…”

  “Real big,” she said. “And not right in the head. He’s mostly deaf so he talked all in grunts. His mom acted like she understood him, but none of the rest of us did. He’s an animal. Prowling the neighborhood at night. Scared the crap out of me more than once.”

  Norman said, “Couple of women were attacked. He beat the shit out of this one gal. Hurt her so bad, she nearly had a nervous breakdown.”

  “Charming,” I said. I thought about the goon I’d seen while I was cruising through Gus’s house. Solana had been charging Gus’s estate for the services of an orderly, who might well be her kid. “You wouldn’t happen to have the tenant application she filled out when she moved in.”

  “You’d have to ask the new owner. The building’s thirty years old. I know there’s a bunch of boxes in storage from back when, but who knows what’s in ’em.”

  “Why don’t you give her Mr. Compton’s phone number?”

  Startled, I said, “Richard Compton?”

  “Yeah, him. He also owns that building across the alley.”

  “I do business with him all the time. I’ll call and ask if he objects to my searching the old files. I’m sure he won’t mind. In the meantime, if you hear from Ms. Tasinato, would you let me know?” I took out a business card, which Norman read and then passed to his wife.

  “You think her and this Rojas woman are the same?” she asked.

  “Looks that way to me.”

  “She’s a bad one. Sorry we can’t tell you where she went.”

  “Never mind. I know.”

  Once the door was closed, I stood for a moment, relishing the information. Score one for me. Things were finally making sense. I’d done a background check on Solana Rojas, but in reality I was dealing with someone else—first name Costanza or Cristina, last name Tasinato. At some point there’d been a switch in ID, but I wasn’t sure when. The real Solana Rojas might not even be aware that someone had borrowed her résumé, her credentials, and her good name.

  When I returned to my car, there was a white Saab parked behind me and a fellow was standing on the sidewalk, his hands in his pockets, looking at the Mustang with a discerning eye. He wore jeans and a tweed jacket with leather elbow patches: middle-aged, neatly clipped brown beard laced with gray, wide mouth, a mole near his nose and another on his cheek. “This yours?”

  “It is. Are you a fan?”

  “Yes ma’am. It’s a hell of a car. You happy with it?”

  “More or less. Are you in the market?”

  “I might be.” He patted his jacket pocket and I almost expected him to take out a pack of cigarettes or a business card. “Are you Kinsey Millhone, by any chance?”

  “Yes. Do I know you?”

  “No, but I believe this is yours,” he said, offering a long white envelope with my name scrawled across the front.

  Puzzled, I took it and he touched my arm, saying, “Baby, you’ve been served.”

  I felt my blood pressure drop and my heart skipped a beat. My soul and my body neatly detached from one another, like cars in a freight train when the coupling’s been pulled. I felt as if I were standing right next to myself, looking on. My hands were cold but shook only slightly as I opened the envelope and removed the Notice of Hearing and Temporary Restraining Order.

  The name of the person asking for protection was Solana Rojas. I was named as the person to be restrained, my sex, height, weight, hair color, home address, and other relevant facts neatly typed in. The information was more or less accurate except for the weight, mine being ten pounds less. The hearing had been scheduled for February 9—Tuesday of the following week. In the meantime, under Personal Conduct Orders, I was forbidden to harass, attack, strike, threaten, assault, hit, follow, stalk, destroy personal property, keep under surveillance, or block the movements of Solana Rojas. I was also ordered to stay at least one hundred feet away from her, her home, and her vehicle—the low number of feet apparently taking into account the fact that I lived right next door. I was also forbidden to own, possess, have, buy or try to buy, receive or try to receive, or in any other way get a gun or a firearm. At the bottom of the paper in white letters on a block of black, it said This is a Court Order. Like I hadn’t guessed as much.

  The process server watched me with curiosity as I shook my head. He was probably accustomed, as I was, to serving restraining orders on individuals in need of anger-management classes.

  “This is so bogus. I never did a thing to her. She’s invented this shit.”

  “That’s what the hearing’s for. You can tell the judge your side of it in court. Maybe he’ll agree. In the meantime, I’d get a lawyer if I were you.”

  “I have one.”

  “In that case, best of luck. Pleasure doing business. You made it easy for me.”

  And with that, he got in his car and drove away.

  I unlocked the Mustang and got in. I sat, engine off, my hands resting on the steering wheel while I stared out at the street. I glanced down at the restraining order I’d tossed on the passenger’s seat beside me. I picked it up and read it for the second time. Under Court Orders, in Section 4, the box marked “b” had been checked, specifying that if I didn’t obey these orders, I could be arrested and charged with a crime, in which case I might have to (a) go to jail, (b) pay a fine of up to $1,000, or (c) both. None of the choices appealed to me.

  The bitch of it was she’d outmaneuvered me again. I’d thought I was so smart and she was already one step ahead of me. Which left me what? My options were now limited, but there had to be a way.

  On the way home I stopped at a drugstore and picked up some 400 ASA color film. Then I drove back to my apartment and left my car in a weedy patch in the alleyway behind Henry’s house. I slipped through a gap in the back fence and let myself into my studio. I went upstairs and cleared the surface of the footlocker I use as a bed table, setting the reading lamp, alarm clock, and a big stack of books on the floor. I opened the trunk and took out my 35mm single-lens reflex camera. It wasn’t cutting-edge equipment, but it was all I had. I loaded the film and went down the spiral staircase. Now all I had to find was a vantage point that would allow me to fire off multiple views of my nemesis next door, making certain, at the same time, she didn’t catch sight of me and call the police. Surreptitious picture-taking would certainly qualify as surveillance.

  When I told Henry what I was up to, he smiled impishly. “Your timing’s good at any rate. I saw Solana driving off as I was coming back from my walk.”

  It was his clever idea to use a flexible silver sunscreen against the windshield of his station wagon, which he insisted on my borrowing. Solana knew my car too well and she’d be watching for me. He went out to the garage and came back with the screen he used to keep the interior temperatures down when he was parked in the sun. He cut a couple of nice round lens-sized holes in the material and handed me the car keys. I tucked the sunscreen under my arm and tossed it on the passenger’s seat before I backed the station wagon out of his garage.

  There was still no sign of Solana’s car, though there was a handsome length of curb where she’d been parked earlier. I drove around the block and found a spot across the street, being careful to keep the requisite hundred feet between my person and hers, assuming she staye
d where she belonged. Of course, if her parking spot was taken and she pulled her car in behind mine, I’d be jail bait for sure.

  I popped open the sunscreen and set it against the windshield, then positioned myself, camera in hand, and zeroed in on Gus’s front door. I shifted my focus to the empty section of curb and adjusted the lens. I slouched down on my spine to wait, watching the front of the house through a narrow gap between the dashboard and the bottom of the screen. Twenty-six minutes later Solana turned the corner onto Albanil, half a block down the street. I watched her reclaim her parking place, probably feeling pleased with herself as she eased the car nose-first into the space. I sat up and braced my arms on the steering wheel as Solana emerged. The click and whir of the camera were soothing as I shot frame after frame. She stopped in her tracks and her head came up.

  Uh-oh.

  I watched her survey the street, her body language suggesting her hypervigilance. Her gaze swept the block to the corner and then swung back and fixed on Henry’s car. She stood and stared as though she could see me through the sunscreen. I shot six more frames, taking advantage of the moment, and then held my breath, waiting to see if she’d cross the street. I couldn’t very well start the car and drive away without first removing the sunscreen, thus exposing myself to view. Even if I managed that, I’d have to pass right by her and the game would be up.

  31

  SOLANA

  Solana sat in the old man’s kitchen, smoking one of Tiny’s cigarettes, a guilty pleasure she allowed herself on rare occasions when she needed to concentrate. She’d poured herself a tot of vodka to sip while she counted and bundled up the cash she’d amassed. Some was money she’d kept in a savings account, acquired over the years from other jobs. She had $30,000 that had been happily earning interest while she worked in her current position. She’d spent the past week selling off the jewelry she’d collected from Gus as well as her prior clients. Some pieces she’d held for years, worried that the items might have been reported as stolen. She’d run an ad in the classified pages of the local paper, indicating a sale of “estate jewelry,” which sounded hoity-toity and refined. She’d had many calls from the bloodhounds who routinely combed that section, looking for a bargain born of someone else’s desperation. She’d had the jewelry appraised and she’d carefully calculated selling prices that would be tempting without generating questions about how she came by Edwardian and Art Deco diamond rings and bracelets by Cartier. Not that it was anybody’s business, but she’d invented a number of stories: a rich husband who died and left her with nothing but the jewelry he’d given her over the years; a mother who’d smuggled the bracelets and rings out of Germany in 1939; a grandmother who’d fallen on hard times and had no choice but to sell the treasured heirloom necklaces and earrings she’d been given by her own mother years before. People liked sob stories. People paid more for an item with a tragedy attached. These personal accounts of hardship and yearning imbued the rings and bracelets, brooches and pendants, with a value that exceeded the gold content and the stones.