by Sue Grafton
“I don’t know. He never made a big deal of it. If people around him were drinking, he just said ‘No thanks.’”
“Tell me what was happening the week he died.”
“Nothing. It seemed like an ordinary week to me. He talked to Woody. Two days later, he was dead. After the funeral, I packed up, put everything in a U-Haul, and hit the road for home. This is where I’ve been ever since.”
“And there was nothing among his things to suggest what was going on? No letter? A note?”
She shook her head. “I went through his desk the day he died, and I didn’t see a thing.”
Chapter 12
*
The flight home was uneventful. I’d spent an hour and a half with Lyda, and the rest of the night in the airport terminal with its red carpeting, high glass ceiling, real trees, and an actual bird that flew back and forth, chirping incessantly. It was sort of like camping out, only I was sitting upright and I didn’t have any wienies to roast. I made notes of my conversation with Lyda, which I’d transcribe for the files when I got home. I was inclined to believe Hugh Case had been murdered, though I had no idea how, why, or by whom. I also tended to think his death was related to current events at Wood/Warren, though I couldn’t imagine what the connection might be. Lyda had promised to get in touch if she remembered anything of note. All in all, it was not an unproductive trip. It had generated more questions than it answered, but that was fine with me. As long as there are threads to unravel, I’m in business. The frustration starts when all the leads dry up and the roads turn out to be dead ends. With Hugh Case, I felt like I’d just found one of the corner pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. I had no idea what the final picture would look like, but at least I had a place to start.
I boarded the plane at 4:30 A.M. and arrived at LAX at 5:45. I had to wait for a 7:00 A.M. shuttle to Santa Teresa, and by the time I dragged my sorry ass home, I was dead on my feet. I let myself into the apartment an hour later, checked for messages (none), pulled my boots off, and curled up in the folds of my quilt, fully dressed.
At approximately 9:02, there was a knock at my door. I staggered up out of sleep and shuffled to the door, dragging my quilt behind me like a bridal train. My mouth tasted foul and my hair was standing straight up, as spiky as a punker’s, only not as clean. I peered through the fish-eye, too clever to be caught unawares by an early-morning thug. Standing on my doorstep was my second ex-husband, Daniel Wade.
“Shit,” I murmured. Briefly, I leaned my head against the door and then peeked again. All I could see in truncated form was his face in profile, blond hair curling around his head like an aura. Daniel Wade is quite possibly the most beautiful man I’ve ever seen ��� a bad sign. Beautiful men are usually either gay or impossibly narcissistic. (Sorry for the generalization, folks, but it’s the truth.) I like a good face or an interesting face or a face with character, but not this sculpted perfection of his… the straight, well-proportioned nose, high cheekbones, strong jawline, sturdy chin. His hair was sun-bleached, his eyes a remarkable shade of blue, offset by dark lashes. His teeth were straight and very white, his smile slightly crooked. Get the picture, troops?
I opened the door. “Yes?”
“Hi.”
“Hello.” I gave him a rude stare, hoping he’d disappear. He’s tall and slim and he can eat anything without gaining weight. He stood there in faded jeans and a dark-red sweatshirt with the sleeves pushed up. His skin had a golden sheen, tanned and windburned, so his cheeks glowed darkly. Just another boring California golden boy. The hair on his arms was bleached nearly white. His hands were tucked in his pockets, which was just as well. He’s a jazz pianist with long, bony fingers. I fell in love with his hands first and then worked my way up.
“I’ve been in Florida.” Good voice, too… just in case his other virtues fail to excite. Reedy and low. He sings like an angel, plays six instruments.
“What brought you back?”
“I don’t know. Homesick, I guess. A friend of mine was heading this way so I tagged a ride. Did I wake you up?”
“No, I often walk around looking like this.”
A slight smile here, perfectly timed. His manner seemed hesitant, which was unusual for him. He was searching the sight of me, looking (perhaps) for some evidence of the girl I used to be.
“I like the haircut,” he said.
“Gee, this is fun. I like yours, too.”
“I guess I caught you at a bad time. I’m sorry about that.”
“Uh, Daniel, could we skip to the punch line here? I’m operating on an hour’s sleep and I feel like shit.”
It was clear he’d rehearsed this whole conversation, but in his mind my response was tender instead of downright rude. “I wanted you to know I’m clean,” he said. “I have been for a year. No drugs. No drinking. It hasn’t been easy, but I really have straightened up.”
“Super. I’m thrilled. It’s about bloody time.”
“Could you knock off the sarcasm?”
“That’s my natural way of speaking ever since you left. It’s real popular with men.”
He rocked slightly on his heels, looking off across the yard. “I guess people don’t get a second chance with you.”
I didn’t bother to respond to that.
He tried a new tack. “Look. I have a therapist named Elise. She was the one who suggested I clean up the unfinished business in my life. She thought maybe you might benefit, too.”
“Oh, hey. That’s swell. Give me her address and I’ll write her a bread-and-butter note.”
“Can I come in?”
“Jesus Christ, Daniel, of course not! Don’t you get it yet? I haven’t seen you for eight years and it turns out that’s not long enough.”
“How can you be so hostile after all this time? I don’t feel bad about you.”
“Why would you feel bad? I didn’t do anything to you!”
A look of injury crossed his face and his bewilderment seemed genuine. There’s a certain class of people who will do you in and then remain completely mystified by the depth of your pain. He shifted his weight. This apparently wasn’t going as he thought it would. He reached up to pick at a wood splinter in the door frame above my head. “I didn’t think you’d be bitter. That’s not like you, Kinsey. We had some good years.”
“Year. Singular. Eleven months and six days, to be exact. You might move your hand before I slam the door on it.”
He moved his hand.
I slammed the door and went back to bed.
After a few minutes, I heard the gate squeak.
I thrashed about for a while, but it was clear I wouldn’t get back to sleep. I got up and brushed my teeth, showered, shampooed my hair, shaved my legs. I used to have fantasies about his showing up. I used to invent long monologues in which I poured out my sorrow and my rage. Now I was wishing he’d come back again so I could do a better job of it. Being rejected is burdensome that way. You’re left with emotional baggage you unload on everyone else. It’s not just the fact of betrayal, but the person you become… usually not very nice. Jonah had survived my tartness. He seemed to understand it had nothing to do with him. He was so blunt himself that a little rudeness didn’t bother him. For my part, I really thought I’d made my peace with the past until I came face to face with it.
I called Olive Kohler and made an appointment to see her later in the day. Then I sat down at my desk and typed up my notes. At noon, I decided to get some errands done. Daniel was sitting in a car parked just behind mine. He was slouched down in the passenger seat, his booted feet propped up on the dashboard, a cowboy hat tilted over his face. The car was a ten-year-old Pinto, dark blue, dented, rusted, and stripped of its hubcaps. The sheepskin car-seat covers looked like badly matted dog. A decal on the bumper indicated that the car was from Rent-A-Ruin.
Daniel must have heard the gate squeak as I came out. He turned his head, pushing his hat back lazily. He sometimes affects that aw-shucks attitude. “Feeling better (Miss Kitty)?”
I unlocked my car and got in, started the engine and pulled away. I avoided the apartment for the rest of the day. I can’t remember now half of what I did. Mostly I wasted time and resented the fact that I was not only out an office but banned from my own residence.
At 5:00, with the aid of a street map, I found the Kohlers’ house on an obscure leafy lane in Montebello. The property was hidden by a ten-foot hedge, the driveway barred by an electronically controlled wrought-iron gate. I parked out on the street and let myself in through a wooden gate embedded in the shrubbery. The house was a two-story, English Tudor style, with a steeply pitched shingled roof, half-timbered gables, and a handsome pattern of vertical beams across the front. The lot was large, shaded with sycamores and eucalyptus trees as smooth and gray as bare concrete. Dark-green ivy seemed to grow everywhere. A gardener, a graduate of the Walt Disney school of landscape maintenance, was visible, trimming the shrubs into animal shapes.
The newspaper was resting on the doormat. I picked it up and then I rang the bell. I expected a maid, but Olive opened the door herself in a gray satin robe and low-heeled satin mules. I’d mostly seen those in Joan Crawford movies, and they looked like they’d be a trick to wear. I had brief visions of plopping around my apartment in backless bedroom slippers. Cigarette holder. Marcelled hair. I could have my eyebrows plucked back to ogee arches.
“Hello, Kinsey. Come in. Terry’s on his way. I forgot we were due at a cocktail party at six.” She stepped away from the door and I followed her in.
“We can do this another time if you like,” I said. I handed her the paper.
“Thanks. No, no. This is fine. It’s not for an hour anyway and the people don’t live far. I’ve got to finish dressing, but we can talk in here.” She glanced at the paper briefly and then tossed it on the hall table next to a pile of mail.
She clattered her way along the dark stone-tile hallway toward the master suite at the rear of the house. Olive was slim and blond, her shoulder-length hair blunt-cut and thick. I wondered sometimes if Ash was the only sister whose hair remained its natural shade. Olive’s eyes were bright blue, her lashes black, her skin tone gold. She was thirty-three or so, not as brittle as Ebony, but with none of Ash’s warmth. She was talking back over her shoulder to me.
“I haven’t seen you for ten years. What have you been up to?”
“Setting up my own agency,” I said.
“Married? Kids?”
“No, on both counts. You have kids?”
She laughed. “God forbid.”
The bedroom we entered was spacious. Beamed ceiling, big stone fireplace, French doors opening onto a walled-in patio where a small deck had been added on. I could see a round two-person hot tub, surrounded by ferns. A white Persian cat was curled up on a chaise, its face tucked into the circling plume of its tail.
The bedroom floor was polished teak with area rugs of a long white wool that probably came from yaks. The entire wall behind the bed was mirrored and I flashed on an image of Terry Kohler’s sexual performances. What did Olive stare at, I wondered, while he watched himself? I glanced at the ceiling, checking to see if there was a cartoon tacked up there, like the one in my gynecologist’s examining room: “Smile. It gives your face something to do!” This does not amuse.
I eased into an easy chair and watched while Olive moved into a walk-in closet the size of a two-car garage. Quickly she began to sort through a rack of evening clothes, rejecting sequined outfits, floor-length organza gowns, beaded jackets with long, matching skirts. I could see an assortment of shoes stacked in clear plastic boxes on the shelf overhead, and at one end of the rack, several fur coats of various lengths and types. She selected a knee-length cocktail dress with spaghetti straps and returned to the bedroom where she scrutinized her reflection. The dress was avocado green, infusing her skin with sallow undertones.
“What do you think?” she said, eyes still pinned to her own image in the glass.
“Makes you look green.”
She stared at herself, squinting critically. “You’re right. Here. You take this. I never liked it anyway.” She tossed the dress on the bed.
“I don’t wear clothes like that,” I said uncomfortably.
“Take it. We’ll have a New Year’s Eve party and you can wear it then.” She pulled out a black taffeta dress cut straight across the front. She stepped into it, then zipped it up the back in a motion that snapped everything into place. She was so slender I didn’t see how the globelike breasts could possibly be hers. She looked like she’d had softballs surgically implanted on her chest. Hug a woman like that and she was bound to leave dents.
She sat down on the dressing-table bench and pulled on black panty hose, then slipped her feet into four-inch black spike heels. She looked gorgeous, all curves and flawless skin, the pale-blond hair brushing against her bare shoulders. She sorted through her jewelry box and selected clip-on diamond earrings shaped like delicate silver branches hung with sparkling fruit.
She returned to the closet and emerged in a soft, white fur coat the same length as the dress. When she pulled the coat around her, she looked like a flasher decked out in white fox.
She half-smiled when she caught my look. “I know what you’re thinking, sweetie, but they were already dead when I got to the furrier’s. Whether or not I bought the coat had no effect on their fates.”
“If women didn’t wear them, they wouldn’t be killed in the first place,” I said.
“Oh, bullshit. Don’t kid yourself. In the wild, these animals get torn to shreds every day. Why not preserve the beauty, like a piece of art? The world’s a vicious place. I don’t pretend otherwise. And don’t argue with me,” she said, firmly. She pointed a finger. “You came to talk, so talk.” She slipped the coat off and tossed it on the bed, then sat down on the bench and crossed her legs. She eased off one high heel and let her shoe flap against the bottom of her foot.
I said, “How much do you know about the situation at Wood/Warren?”
She gestured impatiently. “Business is a bore. I use that section of the paper to line the cat box.”
“You have no interest in the family split?”
“What split? You mean with Lance? I have nothing invested one way or the other. He and Ebony disagree. She wants me to vote with her. The way she explains it, it’s to my advantage. Lance will have a fit, of course, but who gives a shit? He’s had his chance.”
“You’re siding with her?”
“Who knows? Probably. She’s smarter than he is and it’s time for new blood. He’s got his head in the toilet half the time.”
“Meaning what?”
“Let me give you the lowdown on my brother, honey-bun. He’s a salesman at heart. He can charm your socks off when it suits him. He’s enthusiastic about anything that interests him, which isn’t much. He has no head for figures. Absolutely none. He hates sitting in an office and he can’t stand routine. He’s good at generating business and lousy at follow-through. End transmission.”
“You’ve seen this firsthand or is this Ebony’s claim?”
“I hear about what happens at the plant every day. Terry’s a workaholic and most of what he talks about is business.”
“How do he and Lance get along?”
“They knock heads all the time. Terry’s obsessive. It drives him crazy when people fuck up. Excuse the scientific term. Lance has poor judgment. Everyone knows that. Meet the woman he married if you have any doubts.”
“What about the rest of the family? Can’t they vote him out?”
“Nope. The rest of us combined only own forty-nine percent of the stock. Ebony wants to put the squeeze on him, but she can’t actually force him out. She can bring him to heel, which I suspect is what she wants.”
“I take it Bass isn’t involved since he lives in New York.”
“He shows up for board meetings occasionally. He enjoys playing mogul, but he’s harmless enough. He and Lance are usually thick.”
“Who will
Ashley side with?”
“She could go either way. Obviously, Ebony’s hoping she can persuade us all to mutiny.”
“How does your mother feel? This couldn’t sit well with her.”
“She hates it. She wants Lance in charge. Not because he’s good, but because it’s less hassle.”
“Do you think he’s honest?”
“Lance? Are you kidding? No way.”
“How do you and he get along?”
“I can’t stand him. He’s a very tense person and he’s soooo paranoid. I hate to be around him. He gets on my nerves. He’s my brother and I love him, don’t get me wrong. I just don’t like him much.” She wrinkled her nose. “He always smells like garlic and sweat and that nasty Brut cologne. I don’t know why men wear it. Such a turnoff.”
“Have you heard any gossip about the warehouse blaze?”
“Just what Terry’s told me. You know Lance borrowed money against the company two years ago and now he’s losing his shirt. He’d love half a million bucks.”
“Oh really. That’s the first I heard of it.”
She shrugged carelessly. “He went into the printing business, which is foolish in itself. I’ve heard printing and restaurants are the quickest way to go broke. He’s lucky the warehouse burned down. Or is that the point?”
“Why don’t you tell me?”
She rested her elbow on her knee and propped her chin up on her fist. “If you’re looking for answers, I’ve just run out. I don’t care about Lance. I don’t care about Wood/ Warren, to tell you the truth. Sometimes the politics amuse me in a soap-opera kind of way, like Dynasty, but it’s still boring stuff.”
“What do you care about?”
“Tennis. Travel. Clothes. Golf. What else is there?”
“Sounds like a fun life.”
“Actually, it is. I entertain. I do charity work when I have the time. There are people who think I’m a spoiled, lazy bitch, but I have what I want. That’s more than most can say. It’s the have-nots who wreak havoc. I’m a real pussycat.”
“You’re fortunate.”
“Like they say, there’s no such thing as a free ride. I pay a price, believe me.”
