by Sue Grafton
Poppy’s cottage was one of three to the right of the grass courtyard. I knocked at her door.
A neighbor peered out of her window, which looked out onto Poppy’s porch. “She’s not here,” the woman yelled through the glass.
“Do you know when she’ll be back?”
The woman shook her index finger to indicate no without further explanation. I stood there for a moment, debating my options. If I thought Poppy was returning soon, I’d wait for her, but it was coming up on noon and I wanted to feel I’d been productive. I decided against leaving her a note. There was no way to spell out my questions without meeting her face-to-face, and as was usually the case, I didn’t want her forewarned. Nothing worse than giving people time enough to organize their stories. Meanwhile, the auto repair shop where Troy was employed was only seven blocks away, so I returned to my car and headed in that direction.
Better Brand Auto Repair was located in a narrow building that had enjoyed a former life as a service station. Out in front, where the gasoline pumps had been planted, there was a covered parking pad that once sheltered patrons who’d pulled in to fill the tanks on their Model As. The current business specialized in luxury imports: Mercedes-Benz, BMW, Nissan, Volvo. KEEP THE HORSES RUNNING UNDER YOUR HOOD said a separate sign board. I opened the door and went in.
Two adjoining offices occupied the rooms to my left, with space enough for a narrow counter that separated the reception area from the two-person bay that housed two desks, two rolling chairs, phones, a printer, an adding machine, files, and bookcases lined with manuals. On the near side of the counter, there were two chairs, a coffee machine, and a water dispenser with paper cups. The one woman working was middle-aged, businesslike, and brisk without being unfriendly. Her hair was a complicated arrangement of braids and curls, held in place with little metal clips shaped like butterflies. On one wrist, she wore a collection of stray rubber bands.
I said, “Hi. I’m looking for Troy.”
“He took an early lunch.”
“Do you know when he’ll be back?”
“Oh, he’s here. You’ll find him at a picnic table in the side yard.”
I retraced my steps, going out the office door and around to the left as specified by the thumb she’d hooked over her shoulder. Against the side of the building there was a large metal trash bin and a rolling cart filled with tires. Four vehicles parked along the fence were covered with canvas car cozies. I crossed the cracked asphalt driveway to a grassy patch where a wooden picnic table had been planted with a bench attached on either side.
Troy had his metal lunchbox set out on a square of waxed paper that he was using as a place mat. He’d placed his sandwich, a cluster of green grapes, a Baggie full of carrot sticks, and an oatmeal cookie in a semicircle along the edge, the whole of it anchored by a small milk carton of the sort you get in elementary school. The exterior of the lunchbox featured characters from Sesame Street: Ernie, Oscar the Grouch, Big Bird, and the Cookie Monster.
He pushed the last of the sandwich into his mouth and took a swallow of milk while he watched me approach. His coppery red hair contrasted nicely with his navy blue coveralls. He wiped his hands on a paper napkin, saying, “Help you?”
“Kinsey Millhone. You’re Troy.”
“That’s right.” His chin and jaw were well defined and his blue eyes were small, sheltered under pale brows. His hands were oil-stained, his fingernails edged in black. His smile revealed endearingly crooked teeth. Even from across the table, I could smell peanut butter on his breath.
“Sorry to interrupt your lunch.”
“I’ll keep on eating, if it’s all the same to you.”
“Please do,” I said. I sat down at the table and turned sideways so I could lift my feet over the bench, which was permanently affixed.
He tossed a grape in the air, moving his head so he could catch it in his mouth. He missed and the grape bounced off the table and out of sight. He smiled sheepishly and held out the grape cluster. I took three.
He popped a grape in his mouth and looked at me with interest. “I’m guessing social worker, parole officer, or US Marshal. Which?”
I looked down at myself. “In this outfit? None of the above.”
“Private eye.”
“Right.”
“Then you must be here about Fritz.”
I pointed at him by way of reply. “Have you seen him since he came home?”
“Nope. Even as a free man, I stick to parole conditions. No alcohol, no firearms, and no contact with convicted felons.”
“I’m impressed.”
“No need. I told a fib. We did talk. He called yesterday and told me about the tape. He said his parents hired a detective. Putz that I am, I was picturing a guy.”
“Happens that way sometimes. I’m used to it,” I said.
“How’d you end up working for the McCabes?”
“I was recommended by an attorney who’s a friend of mine.”
He broke his cookie in half and took a bite. “That’s tough—the demand for hush money. You have any idea what they’ll do?”
“They don’t want to pay, that’s for sure. I take it you weren’t slapped with a similar demand?”
“No point. I’m broke. You think I should hire an attorney?”
“I don’t know what an attorney could do for you until we see where this goes.”
He smiled ruefully. “I can’t afford one anyway, so scratch that idea.”
“Who represented you at the trial?”
“A public defender, but she’s moved on to private practice. She did a shit job anyway, at least from my perspective,” he said.
“People who go to jail often say the same thing.”
“I’m ignoring that remark,” he said. “So what’s the plan? Sit around waiting for the other shoe to drop?”
“There’s a chance I’ll catch up with the blackmailer first and that might change the game.”
“Scale of one to ten. How likely is that? Ten being guaranteed.”
“I’d give it a three.”
He laughed.
“You have family?” I asked.
“Mom and four brothers. She’s still in town, though I don’t see much of her. Couple of times a year at best. Brothers are spread all over and I don’t see much of them, either. I’m the son who disappointed everyone. They keep telling me I let the family down, like I’m not aware of it.”
“I’m sure you learned something.”
“No doubt, but I’m not sure what. I take that back. I learned how easy it is to do nothing. We all knew Austin was a creep.”
“What kind of creep?”
“A dangerous one. What you have to understand about the guy is that he liked to ferret out our secrets and use them to lord it over us. He had this thing he used to do with Bayard. He’d raise his index finger and say, ‘One call, dude. One call.’”
“Meaning it would only take one call to blow the whistle on him?”
“Pretty much,” he said. “And no, I don’t know what Bayard’s secret was.”
“Did he have something on you?”
“Well, yeah, but I’d just as soon not get into it.”
“Come on. This is just between us. I won’t tell anyone.”
He thought for a moment and then said, with some reluctance, “Okay. Here it is. I stole five hundred bucks.”
“When was this?”
“After my dad died, my mom was strapped for cash. He’d left enough insurance to pay off the house but she needed a short-term loan to cover the house payment until the money came in. I was soliciting donations for our church to provide Thanksgiving dinner to needy families. The treasurer assumed we’d be honest about how much we’d collected. I shorted her by five bills, which I always intended to pay back. Guess I better get on it now I brought it up. The point
is, I was ashamed of myself. Mortified that I’d done it.”
“Did Austin use that against you?”
“Once. That’s how I ended up driving my truck that night.”
“He sounds like a bully.”
“That was our fault in part. We just didn’t have the guts to stand up to him. How can I atone for that? I keep saying I’m sorry, for all the good it does. The dead don’t come back. Done is done and what I did was bad.”
“Sounds like you’ve taken responsibility.”
“Which doesn’t erase regret. I don’t know what else to do but get on with life and be the best person I know how.”
“Are you married?”
“Wife and two little boys. The older is two and the little guy is three months. He has some medical issues that are costing us an arm and a leg, but what can you do? Half the couples we know are up to their eyeballs in debt. My wife’s great. Kerry’s one of a kind. She knows I went to prison for what I did. We dated before I went in and then kept in touch. I couldn’t have made it without her.”
“Where did you do your time?”
“I lucked out. I was assigned to Mountain Home, which was the first mobile Conservation Camp. Inmates take a two-week training course the same as civilians and then they put us on a crew working the fire lines, mostly in Tulare and Kern counties. Santa Ana winds were bad back then. Bad every year since, now that I think about it. We chopped brush sometimes eight hours at a stretch. Forty-five pounds of gear you’re carrying and you’re up against flames forty and fifty feet high. Hard work. Exhausting. On the plus side, you’re housed in semi-trailer rigs. No locked doors and no barbed wire. Good food. Spare time, you play pool or go out and shoot hoops. Sometimes you forget you’re in prison.”
“How long were you incarcerated?”
“I was sentenced to five years, but ended up serving less. This place belongs to my brother-in-law, Jim. Otherwise I’d be unemployed. His last name is Brand, which is how he came up with Better Brand Auto Repair. How’d you know where to find me?”
“My friend Ruth Wolinsky has her car serviced here.”
“She’s nice.”
“Yes, she is,” I said. “What did they charge you with?”
“Accessory after the fact, obstruction of justice, kidnapping, lying to the police, plus anything else they could throw into the mix. Oh, aiding and abetting, which they take very seriously.”
“I’m surprised they didn’t hit you with felony murder. I thought if you participated in a kidnapping that resulted in death, you were on the hook the same way Fritz was.”
“Technically, yes. But the DA seemed more interested in Fritz than the rest of us. He was the one who pulled the gun and forced her into the truck. There was definitely some wheeling-dealing going on in the background and I confess I didn’t inquire too closely, not wanting to look a gift horse in the mouth and all that stuff. I was willing to cop to most of it anyway. I mean, we all lied to the police. We alibied each other and destroyed evidence. But here’s the truth. I never thought she’d die. Farthest thing from my mind. Austin was an asshole, but I didn’t think he’d go that far.”
“What happened that night?”
“Oh, man. Most of the time, I block it. It’s been ten years and I still carry images I don’t like. You want to ask questions, I’ll tell you what I can.”
“I understand there was a party. Where did that take place?”
“Austin’s parents had a cabin off the pass. Originally, we went up there to celebrate the end of the school year. Good fun that turned ugly in the end, but that’s what alcohol and dope will do. Austin and Sloan started butting heads. He said she insulted him and she owed him an apology.”
“What did she say that set him off?”
“You know about the cheating scandal?”
“Sure. You and Poppy acquired a copy of an academic proficiency test and Sloan was accused of sending an anonymous note to the school administrators, telling what you’d done. Austin accused her of snitching and persuaded her classmates to shun her.”
“It got worse. The night she died, she accused him of writing the note, which made total sense once she said it. Of course, Austin went ballistic on her and demanded a retraction. He thought all he had to do was apply the screws and she’d cave. He took her up the mountain so she’d know he meant business.”
“So this was after the party?”
“Right. When most of the kids were gone.”
“How many of you were left?”
“The four of us and her.”
“Meaning you, Fritz, Austin, and Bayard Montgomery.”
He nodded. “Bayard was supposed to give her a ride home, but then the situation got complicated. Austin was ordering everyone around. We were giving him static, but not doing much else. At one point, she took off and Austin sent me and Bayard and Fritz after her.
“Thing was, she was still in her bathing suit with a shirt over it. She’d borrowed shoes from Austin’s dad and she was clumping down the road. She was pissed off by then and she wanted to get the hell out of there. We thought she’d gone to get dressed and didn’t even realize she’d disappeared until Bayard went looking for her. Anyway, she left her clothes and her purse at the cabin when she took off. We forgot all about that until later when we realized we better get rid of her stuff.”
“Because by then you’d decided to claim you’d dropped her off on State Street alive when you knew she was dead.”
“More or less.”
“Not ‘more or less.’ You knew she was dead and you were covering your butts. I’m not trying to be nasty. I’m stating the obvious.”
“Okay, sure. I admit it. Fritz made a bad mistake, but it was really all on Austin. This was damage control. We had to protect ourselves.”
He was showing the first hint of defensiveness. I’d assumed he was being straight, reporting as truthfully as he could, but I realized he was editing as he went along.
I shook my head. “Sorry. I interrupted you. Once she took off, how’d you manage to get her back to the cabin?”
“We went after her in the truck. There was only the one road to the highway and she’d made pretty good progress. She was a jock and she was in great shape.”
“She returned voluntarily?”
“Not really. I was driving, so Bayard was the one who got out to talk to her. He tried to be reasonable, but she wasn’t buying it. We knew Austin was furious and things would only get worse if we showed up without her.”
“What was Fritz doing all this time?”
“We made him ride in the truck bed, so he was following the conversation. He could see Bayard wasn’t having any luck. Meanwhile, he had a gun that belonged to Austin’s dad, so he hopped down and started yelling. He pointed it right at her and told her to get in, which she did.”
“That was gutsy of him.”
“That’s where the kidnapping charge originated. He scared the shit out of me. Fritz was a twerp and for him to step in like that was out of character. Anyway, she did what he told her. He put her in the front seat between him and me. This time Bayard rode in the truck bed and we took off.”
“Did she put up a fight?”
“Not with the gun in her ribs.”
“So you guys take her back to the cabin and then what?”
“It was clear she wasn’t going to back down, so that’s when we took her up to Yellowweed.”
“That’s on Figueroa Mountain, as I remember it,” I said.
Troy nodded. “Fritz and Bayard and Austin walked her up this steep trail to the campsite. Austin started hammering away at her, trying to make her say she was wrong and she was sorry. Later, Bayard said what he felt so bad about was not coming to her defense. We could have made a difference if we’d tried.”
“Where were you all this time?”
“Down at the
road in my pickup truck. By then, I was so freaked out my hands were shaking. I figured Austin would hassle her. You know, make her eat crow and apologize, but I thought then he’d be satisfied and we’d be heading down the mountain back to town. I waited and they were gone so long I decided I better go up and see what was happening. If Austin was still pissed, I’d do what I could to defuse the situation. I started up the path in the pitch dark. I was at the halfway point when I heard someone shout and then pop, pop, pop, pop, pop. Six or eight shots. Could have been fired in the air is what I hoped. Fritz whooping like a maniac. By this time I was close enough to take a look and I busted out in tears. Bayard was really shaken. He looked like he’d been hit by a truck. Fritz was all hyped up. Said he’d never killed anyone and he was totally stoked. He was jumping around like a wild man.
“Austin made me go back to the truck and get a shovel so we could bury her. By then, he’d taken the gun off Fritz and he’s standing there reloading it, calm as can be, like he didn’t have a care in the world. I was crying so hard I couldn’t see what I was doing. Fritz sobered up, seeing me bawl like that. He’d turned white by then. All the blood drained away from his face. I thought he’d pass out. Next thing you know, he was blubbering the same as me.”
“And Bayard?”
“He sat on the ground and rocked back and forth, kind of moaning to himself. We were all sick about it. Austin told us to shut the fuck up or we’d get the same as she did.”
“Why move the body?”
“We didn’t move her far. He said it would mess up whatever forensic evidence we might’ve left.”
“And now you have the tape to deal with.”
“Out of the frying pan,” he said.
“So what’s the story on that?”
He hung his head, shaking it with embarrassment. “Sounds stupid now, but it started out as a joke. Make a pseudo-porn film and then shop it around. We probably could have made some money if we’d pulled it off. It was supposed to be a satire. A mockumentary.”
“Whose idea was it?”
“Austin’s. He didn’t want to dirty his hands, but he was happy telling us what to do.”
“And Iris?”
