A Stranger in My Grave

by Margaret Millar

  “That’s pretty old,” Pinata said wryly.

  “Sure. I know. I was kinda surprised Nita’d want to go out with him.”

  “Out where?”

  “To the movies. Nita and the old bird had an argument about it, not a real fight like, just quiet. You go home to your mother, the old bird says, but Nita wasn’t having any of that stuff, so she and the guy take off. Nita don’t like to be told a thing. Like the other day it’s raining, see, and I says to her, look, it’s raining. That’s all, nothing personal. But she gets sore as hell, like I’d told her her lipstick was on crooked or something. Me, I think she’s zafada, she needs a headshrinker.”

  Mrs. Brewster turned suddenly and called out in a sharp, pen­etrating voice, “Chico, sweep!”

  “Sure. Yes, ma’am,” Chico said. “I got to get back to work now, Mr. Pinata. See you at the Y, huh?”

  “I hope so. I’d hate to think you’ve given up everything merely to support a car.”

  “That’s the way it is these days, if you dig me.”

  “Yes, I guess I dig you, Chico.”

  “You can’t change it, I can’t change it, that’s the way it is.”

  “Chico!” Mrs. Brewster screamed. “Sweep!”

  Chico swept.

  The public phone booth on the corner smelled as if it were used during the dark hours for more personal communication and needs than the telephone company had planned on. The walls were covered with telephone numbers, initials, names, messages: winston tastes good. winston, 93446. sally m is cool. don’t be haf safe. greetings from jersey city. life is rotten. you guys are all nutz. 24t, u4 me. hello crule world goodby.

  Pinata dialed Daisy’s number and received a busy signal. Then he called Charles Alston at his house.

  Alston himself answered. “Hello?”

  “This is Steve Pinata, Charley.”

  “Any luck?”

  “That depends on what you mean by luck. I went to the Velada. Juanita wasn’t on duty, but there’s no doubt she’s the girl.”

  Alston’s heavy sigh could be heard even above the street noises coming through the open door of the telephone booth. “I was afraid of this. Well, I have no alternative. I’ll have to let the Proba­tion Department know about her. I hate the idea, but the girl’s got to be protected and so do the children. Do you think—that is, you agree, don’t you, that I should notify the Probation Department?”

  “That’s up to you. You know the circumstances better than I do.”

  “They’re closed for the weekend, of course, but I’ll call them first thing Monday morning.”

  “And meanwhile?”

  “Meanwhile we wait.”

  “Meanwhile you wait,” Pinata said. “I don’t. I’m going to try and find her.”

  “Why?”

  “She happens to be out with an ex-client of mine. I’d like to see him again for various reasons.”

  “When you find her, go easy on her. For her sake,” Alston added, “not yours. I assume you can take care of yourself. Where’s she staying?”

  “With her mother, I think. At least she’s in contact with her, so I’ll try there first. Where does Mrs. Rosario live?”

  “When I knew her, she was living in a little house on Granada Street. It’s very likely she’s still there, since the house belongs to her. She bought it a long time ago. She used to be the housekeeper on the old Higginson ranch. When Mrs. Higginson died, she left Mrs. Rosario a few thousand dollars, as she did all her other employees. By the way, if Juanita is out with this ex-client of yours, why do you expect to find her at the house on Granada Street? Believe me, she isn’t the type to bring the boys home to mother.”

  “I have a hunch she might have dropped in to change her clothes. She was working, in uniform, until two o’clock. She wouldn’t be likely to keep a date while wearing a uniform.”

  “Definitely not. So?”

  “I thought I’d try to get some information from Mrs. Rosario.”

  Alston’s laugh was loud and brief. “You may or may not get it. It depends on whether you have a mal ojo. By the way, I set up your appointment with Roy Fondero for three o’clock.”

  “It’s almost that now.”

  “Then you’d better get over there. He’s driving down to L.A. for the game tonight. Oh yes, one more word of advice, Steve: in dealing with Mrs. Rosario, play up the clean-living, high-thinking angle. You never swear, drink, smoke, blaspheme, or fornicate. You go to Mass and confession and observe saints’ days. You don’t happen to have a brother or uncle who’s a priest?”

  “I might have.”

  “That would help,” Alston said. “Incidentally, do you speak Spanish?”

  “Some.”

  “Well, don’t. Many Spanish Americans who’ve been here a long time, like Mrs. Rosario, resent people addressing them in Spanish, although they may use the language themselves with their friends and families.”

  A dozen Doric columns entwined with giant Burmese hon­eysuckle made the front of Fondero’s place look like an old southern mansion. The impression was destroyed by the long black hearse parked by the side door. In the driveway behind the hearse stood a small bright red sports car. The incongruity of the two vehicles amused Pinata. The death and the resurrection, he thought. Maybe that’s how modern Americans imagine resurrection, as a bright red sports car whitewalling them along a Styrofoam road to a nylon-Orlon-Dacron nirvana.

  Pinata went in the side door and turned right.

  Fondero was watering a planter full of maranta. He was a man of massive proportions, as if he’d been built to withstand the weight and pressure of other people’s griefs.

  “Sit down, Mr. Pinata. Charley Alston called me to say you want some information.”

  “That’s right.”

  “What about?”

  “You may recall Carlos Camilla?”

  “Oh yes. Yes, indeed.” Fondero finished watering the maranta and put the empty pitcher on the window ledge. “Camilla was my guest, shall we say, for over a month. As you know, the city has no official morgue, but Camilla’s body had to be kept, pend­ing investigation of the source of the money that was found on him. Nothing came of the investigation, so he was buried.”

  “Did anyone attend the funeral?”

  “A hired priest and my wife.”

  “Your wife?”

  Fondero sat down in a chair that looked too frail to bear him. “Betty refused to let Camilla be buried without mourners, so she acted as a substitute. It wasn’t entirely acting, however. Camilla, perhaps because of the tragic circumstances of his death, perhaps because we had him around so long, had gotten under our skin. We kept hoping that someone would come along to claim him. No one did, but Betty still refused to believe that Camilla didn’t have somebody in the world who cared about him. She insisted that the money found on Camilla be used for an imposing mon­ument instead of an expensive coffin. She had the idea that someday a mourner might appear, and she wanted Camilla’s grave to be conspicuous. As I recall, it is.”

  “It’s conspicuous,” Pinata said. And a mourner did come along and find it, but the mourner was a stranger—Daisy.

  “You’re a detective, Mr. Pinata?”

  “I have a license that says so.”

  “Then perhaps you have some theory of how a man like Camilla got hold of $2,000.”

  “A holdup seems the most likely source.”

  “The police were never able to prove that,” Fondero said, tak­ing a gold cigarette case from his pocket. “Cigarette? No? Good for you. I wish I could give them up. Since this lung cancer business, some of the local wits have started calling cigarettes Fonderos. Well, it’s publicity of a kind, I suppose.”

  “Where do you think Camilla got the money?”

  “I’m inclined to
believe he came by it honestly. Perhaps he saved it up, perhaps it was repayment of a loan. The latter theory is more logical. He was a dying man. He must have been aware of his condition, and knowing how little time he had left, he decided to collect money owing to him to pay for his funeral. That would explain his coming to town—the person who owed him money lived here. Or lives here.”

  “That sounds plausible,” Pinata said, “except for one thing. According to the newspaper, the police made an appeal to the pub­lic for anyone who knew Camilla to come forward. No one did.”

  “No one came forward in person. But I had a peculiar telephone call after Camilla had been here a week or so. I told the police about it, and they thought, as I did at the time, it was the work of some religious crank.”

  The expression on Fondero’s face as he leaned forward was an odd mixture of amusement and irritation. “If you want to hear from every crackpot and prankster in town, try going into this business. At Halloween it’s the kids. At Christmas and Easter it’s the religious nuts. In September it’s college boys being initiated. Any month at all is good for a lewd suggestion from a sex deviate as to what goes on in my lab. I received the call about Camilla just before Christmas, which made it the right timing for one of the religious crackpots.”

  “Was it from a man or a woman?”

  “A woman. Such calls usually are.”

  “What kind of voice did she have?”

  “Medium in all respects, as I recall,” Fondero said. “Medium- pitched, medium-aged, medium-cultured.”

  “Any trace of an accent?”

  “No.”

  “Could it have been a young woman, say about thirty?”

  “Maybe, but I don’t think so.”

  “What did she want?”

  “I can’t remember her exact words after all this time. The gist of her conversation was that Camilla was a good Catholic and should be buried in consecrated ground. I told her about the difficulties involved in such an arrangement, since there was no evidence that Camilla had died in the Church. She claimed that Camilla had fulfilled all the requirements for burial in consecrated ground. Then she hung up. Except for the degree of self-control she displayed, it was an ordinary run-of-the-mill crank call. At least I thought so then.”

  “Camilla is buried in the Protestant cemetery,” Pinata said.

  “I talked it over with our parish priest. There was no alternative.”

  “Did the woman mention the money?”

  “No.”

  “Or the manner of his death?”

  “I got the impression,” Fondero said cautiously, “from her insis­tence on Camilla being a good Catholic, that she didn’t believe he had killed himself.”

  “Do you?”

  “The experts called it suicide.”

  “I should think by this time you’d be something of an expert yourself along those lines.”

  “Experienced. Not expert.”

  “What’s your private opinion?”

  Outside the window Fondero’s son had begun to whistle, loudly and off-key, “Take Me Out to the Ball Game.”

  “I work very closely with the police and the coroner’s office,” Fondero said. “It wouldn’t be good business for me to have an opinion contrary to theirs.”

  “But you have one anyway?”

  “Not for the record.”

  “All right, for me. Top secret.”

  Fondero went over to the window and then returned to his chair, facing Pinata. “Do you happen to recall the contents of the note he left?”

  “Yes. ‘This ought to pay my way into heaven, you stinking rats. .. . Born, too soon, 1907. Died, too late, 1955.’”

  “Now everybody seemed to take that as a suicide note. Perhaps that’s what it was. But it could also be the message of a man who knew he was going to die, couldn’t it?”

  “I guess so,” Pinata said. “The idea never occurred to me.”

  “Nor to me, until I made my own examination of the body. It was that of an old man—prematurely aged if we accept the date of his birth as given, and I see no reason why he should lie about it under the circumstances. Many degenerative processes had taken place: the liver was cirrhotic, there was considerable hard­ening of the arteries, and he was suffering from emphysema of the lungs and an advanced case of arthritis. It was this last thing that interested me the most. Camilla’s hands were badly swollen and out of shape. I seriously doubt whether he could have grasped the knife firmly enough to have inflicted the wound himself. Maybe he could. Maybe he did. All I’m saying is, I doubt it.”

  “Did you express your doubts to the authorities?”

  “I told Lieutenant Kirby. He wasn’t in the least excited. He claimed that the suicide note was more valid evidence than the opinion of a layman. Although I don’t hold a pathologist’s degree, I hardly consider myself a layman after some twenty-five years in the business. Still, Kirby had a point: opinions don’t constitute evidence. The police were satisfied with a suicide verdict, the coro­ner was satisfied, and if Camilla had any friends who weren’t, they didn’t bother complaining. You’re a detective, what do you think?”

  “I’d be inclined to agree with Kirby,” Pinata said carefully, “on the basis of the facts. Camilla had good reason to kill himself. He wrote, if not a suicide note, at least a farewell note. He left money for his funeral expenses. The knife used had his own initials on it. In the face of all this, I can’t put too much stock in your opin­ion that Camilla’s hands were too crippled to have wielded the knife. But of course I’ve had no experience with arthritis.”

  “I have.”

  Fondero leaned forward, holding out his left hand as if it were some specimen from his lab. Pinata saw what he hadn’t noticed before: that Fondero’s knuckles were swollen to twice normal size, and the fingers were bent and stiffened into a claw.

  “That,” Fondero said, “used to be my pitching hand. Now I couldn’t even field a bunt if the World Series depended on it. I sit in the stands as a spectator, and when Wally Moon belts one over the fence, I can’t even applaud. All my lab work these days is done by my assistants. Believe me, if I wanted to kill myself, it would have to be with something other than a knife.”

  “Desperation often gives a man additional strength.”

  “It may give him strength, yes, but it can’t loosen up fused joints or restore atrophied muscles. It’s impossible.”

  Impossible. Pinata wondered how often the word had already come up in connection with Camilla. Too many times. Perhaps he’d been the kind of man destined for the impossible, born to botch up statistics and defy the laws of physics. The evidence of motive, weapon, suicide note, and funeral money was powerful enough, but fused joints couldn’t be loosened overnight, nor atro­phied muscles restored on impulse or by desire.

  Fondero was still holding out his hand for exhibit like a freak at a sideshow. “Are you still inclined to believe Kirby, Mr. Pinata?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I don’t actually know, either. All I can say is that if Camilla grasped that knife with those hands of his, I wish he’d have stayed alive long enough to tell me how he did it. I could use some advice on the subject.”

  He hid his deformed hand in his pocket. The show was over; it had been an effective one.

  “Kirby’s a sharp man,” Pinata said.

  “That’s right, he’s a sharp man. He just doesn’t happen to have arthritis.”

  “Wouldn’t Camilla’s condition have prevented him from writ­ing the suicide note?”

  “No. It was printed, not written. This is common among arthritics. It’s a good deal easier to print legibly.”

  “From your examination of the body, what general information did you get about Camilla’s manner of living?”

  “I won’t go into furthe
r medical details,” Fondero said, “but the evidence indicates that he was a heavy drinker, a heavy smoker, and at some time in his life a heavy worker.”

  “Was there any clue about what kind of work?”

  “One, although some orthopedists might not agree with me. He had a bone malformation known as genu varum, less politely called bowlegs. Now bowlegs can be caused by a number of things, but if I had to make a wild guess about Camilla’s occupa­tion, I’d say that, beginning early in his youth, he had a lot to do with horses. He may have worked on a ranch.”

  “Ranch,” Pinata said, frowning. Someone had recently men­tioned a ranch to him, but it wasn’t until he got back to his car that he recalled the circumstances: Alston on the telephone had said that Mrs. Rosario, Juanita’s mother, had been housekeeper on a ranch and had inherited enough money, when the owners died, to buy the house on Granada Street.

  14

  The hotel guests are looking at me queerly while I write this, as if they are wondering what a tramp like me is doing in their lobby where I don’t belong, writing to a daughter who has never really belonged to me. . . .

  Granada was a street of small frame houses built so closely together that they seemed to be leaning on each other for moral and physical and economic support against the pressures from the white side of town. The pomegranate trees, for which the street was named, were fruitless now, but at Christmas time the gaudy orange balls of fruit hung from the branches looking quite unreasonable, as if they had not grown there at all but had been strung up to decorate the street for the holiday season.

  Five-twelve hid its age and infirmities—and proclaimed its independence from its neighbors—with a fresh coat of bright pink paint that seemed to have been applied by a child or a nearsighted amateur. Blotches of paint stained the narrow sidewalk, the rail­ing of the porch, the square yard of lawn; the calla lilies, the leaves of the holly bush and the pittosporum hedge, were pimpled with pink as if they’d broken out with some strange new plant disease. Pink footsteps, belonging to a child or a very small woman, led up the gray porch steps and disappeared in the coarse bristles of the coca mat outside the front door. These footsteps were the only evidence that a child or children might be living in the house. There were no toys or parts of toys on the porch or lawn, no dis­carded shoes or sweaters, no half-eaten oranges or jelly sand­wiches. If Juanita and her six children had taken up residence here, someone was being careful to hide the fact, perhaps Juanita her­self, perhaps Mrs. Rosario.