B Is for Burglar Read online

  One entry, appearing in the middle of a typed report, interested me considerably. According to a deputy at the police department, a call had come in at 9:06 on the night of the murder that might well have been placed by Marty Grice. The caller had been female, in a panic, and had blurted out a cry for help before the phone went dead. Since the call was placed to the police station instead of 911, the deputy had no way of getting a fix on the address from which the call had originated. She'd made a note of it, however, and when the murder came to light, she'd reported it to Dolan, who had included it in his report. He'd questioned Grice about that too. If it was Marty, why would she have called the station instead of dialing 911? Leonard had pointed out that he and Marty had a telephone answering machine with a rapid-dial function. She'd entered the telephone numbers of both the police department and the fire department. The answering machine was found, undamaged, on a table in the rear of the hallway with the numbers neatly printed on the index. It looked as if Marty had had some warning of the attack and had been able to reach the telephone, calling out at least part of a distress signal before she'd been killed. If she'd actually placed the call, it pinpointed the time of death at 9:06 or soon afterward.

  For a moment, I harbored the fleeting hope that Leonard Grice might still be implicated. After all, as nearly as I could tell, the police had only Lily's word for the fact that he was still at her place at that time. I was speculating that he might have come home early, killed Marty, started the fire, and then parked around the block until the appropriate moment to arrive. If he and his sister were in cahoots, they could both simply maintain afterward that he'd been with her. I was out of luck on that one. Three interviews down, there was a short paragraph detailing a conversation that Dolan had had with some of Lily's neighbors who'd stopped by unexpectedly at nine P.M. to drop off a birthday present. The husband and wife both reported independently that Leonard was there and hadn't left for home until approximately ten. The time was noted because they'd been trying to persuade him to stay for a television program that came on at ten. It turned out to be a rerun and since he was anxious to get home to his wife anyway, he'd left.

  Well, shit, I thought.

  Now, why was this making me feel so cross? Ah, well, because I wanted Leonard Grice to be guilty of something. Murder, conspiracy to murder, accessory to murder. I was fond of the idea for tidiness' sake – for statistical purposes, if nothing else. California has over three thousand homicide victims annually, and of those, fully two-thirds are slain by friends, acquaintances, or relatives, which makes you wonder if you might be better off as a friendless orphan in this state. The point is, when a murder goes down, the chances are good that someone near and dear has had a hand in it.

  I thought about that, reluctant to give it up. Could Grice have hired someone to kill his wife? It was always possible, of course, but it was hard to see what he might have gained. The police, not being ignorant buffoons, had pursued the line as well, but had come up with nothing. No moneys unaccounted for, no meetings with unsavory characters, no apparent motive, no visible benefit.

  Which brought me back to Elaine Boldt. Could she have been involved in Marty Grice's death? Most of what I'd learned about her cried out a big resounding "no." There really wasn't a hint that she'd been attached to Leonard romantically or any other way, except as an occasional bridge partner. I didn't think Marty Grice had been killed for messing up a small slam, but with bridge partners one can never tell. Wim Hoover had mentioned that Elaine and Beverly had quarreled about a man at Christmastime, but it was hard to picture the two of them in an arm wrestle over Leonard Grice. I kept coming back to the same suspicion – that Elaine knew something or had seen something related to Marty's murder and had left town to avoid the scrutiny of the Santa Teresa police.

  I turned my attention to the photographs, neatly disconnecting my brain. I needed to know how things had looked and I couldn't afford to react emotionally. Violent death is repellent. My first impulse, always, is to turn abruptly away, to shield my soul from the sight, but this was the only tangible record of that event and I had to see for myself. I turned a cold eye to the first black-and-white photograph. The color pictures would be worse and I thought I'd start with the "easy" ones.

  Jonah cleared his throat. I looked up.

  "I'm going to have to turn in," he said. "I'm beat."

  "You are?" I glanced at my watch, startled. It was 10:45. I'd been sitting there for more than two hours without moving. "I'm sorry," I said. "I had no idea I'd been here that long."

  "That's okay. I got up at five this morning to work out and I need some shut-eye. You can take that stuff if you like. Of course, if Dolan ever catches you with it, I'll deny everything and throw you to the wolves, but aside from that, I hope it helps."

  "Thanks. It's already helped." I shoved the photographs and reports into a big manila envelope and tucked that, in turn, in my handbag. I drove home, disturbed. Even now, there was an image of Marty's body graven behind my eyes: features blurred by charring, mouth open, lying in a circle of ash like a pile of gray confetti. The heat had caused the tendons in her arms to retract, pulling her fists up into a pugilistic pose. It was her last fight and she had lost, but I didn't think it was over yet.

  I willed the image away, running back over what I'd learned to that point. One little detail still bothered me. Was it possible that May Snyder had been accurate when she talked about the bang-bang-bang of hammering that night? If so, what in the world could it have been?

  I was almost home again when I remembered the shed in the Grices' backyard. I slammed the brakes on and hung a hard left, heading across town.

  Via Madrina was dark, heavily overhung by Italian stone pines. There wasn't much traffic at that hour. The night sky was hazy and though the moon was full, the light that filtered down was partially blocked by the condominium next door. parked and got a little penlight out of the glove compartment. I pulled on a pair of rubber gloves and locked my car, heading up the Grices' front walk. I cut around the side of the house, my tennis shoes making no sound at all on the concrete.

  In my jacket pocket I fingered the key pick, shaped like a flattened metal mandolin. I had a set of five picks with me on a key ring and a second more elaborate set at home in a nice leather case. They'd been given to me by a nonresidential burglar who was currently serving ten months in the county jail. Last time he'd been caught, he'd hired me to keep an eye on his wife, whom he believed was misbehaving with the guy next door. Actually, she hadn't been doing anything and he was so grateful for the good news that he gave me the key picks and taught me how to use them. He'd paid me some cash too, but then it turned out he'd stolen it and he had to ask for it back when the judge ordered him to make restitution.

  It was chilly and there was a frisky little breeze making breathy sounds in the pine boughs. The house behind the Grices' had canvas awnings that were snapping like sails, and the hollow sigh of dry grass gave the whole enterprise an eerie ambiance of its own. I was feeling jumpy anyway because I'd just been looking at pictures of a charbroiled corpse, and here I was, about to do a little breaking-and-entering number that could land me in jail and cause my license to be snatched away. If the next-door neighbors set up a howl and the cops arrived on the scene, what was I going to say? Why was I doing it anyway? Ah, because I wanted to know what was in this wee metal house and I couldn't figure out how else to get in.

  I fixed a tiny beam of light on the bottom of the padlock. In the diagram my burglar friend had drawn of a lock like this, there is a flat, hairpin spring that latches into notches in the shackle. Usually only the tip of the key actuates the spring, so it was a question of figuring out which of my picks would spread the latch apart, releasing the mechanism. In truth, I could have tried a paper clip with a small L bent on one end but that was the shape of the first pick I used and the padlock wouldn't budge. I tried the next pick which had an H shape in the point. Nope. I tried the third, working it carefully. The lock popped open in
my hand. I checked my watch. A minute and a half. I get a bit vain about these things.

  The shed door made a wrenching sound when I opened it and I stood for a moment, heart thudding in my throat. I heard a motorcycle putter past in the street but I didn't pay much attention to it because I had just understood Mike's custodial relationship to his uncle's property. In the shed, along with the stack of clay pots, the hand-push lawn mover, and a weed whacker were six shelves crammed with illegal drugs: Mason jars full of reds and dexies, yellow jackets, rainbows and sopers... along with some fat plastic packets of grass and hashish. Well, this was all just too yummy for words. I didn't think Leonard Grice was the druggist, but I was willing to bet money his nephew had invested heavily in this little portable Rexall. I was so enamored of my discovery that I didn't know he was behind me until he let out an astonished "hey!"

  I jumped back and whipped around, suppressing a shriek. I found myself face-to-face with the kid, his green eyes glowing in the dark like a cat's. He was as startled to see me as I was to see him. Fortunately, neither of us was armed or we might have had a quick duel, doing each other a lot of needless harm.

  "What are you doing?" he said. He sounded outraged, as if he couldn't believe this was happening. His Mohawk was beginning to grow out and the wind was making it lean slightly to the left like a field of tall grass in one of those old commercials for Kotex. He had on a black leather motorcycle jacket and a rhinestone earring. His boots were knee-high and made of plastic scored to resemble cobra skin only looking more like psoriasis. It was hard to take this lad seriously, but in some odd way I did. I closed the shed door and snapped the padlock into place. What could he prove?

  "I got curious about what you were doing back here so I thought I'd take a peek."

  "You mean you just broke in?" he said. His voice had that adolescent crack left over from puberty and his cheeks were hot pink. "You can't do that!"

  "Mike, sweetie, I just did," I said. "You're in big trouble."

  He stared at me for a moment, his expression blank. "You gonna call the cops?"

  "Shit yes!"

  "But what you did is just as much against the law as this," he said. I could tell he was one of those bright boys accustomed to arguing righteously with adults.

  "Oh crap," I said, "wise up. I'm not going to stand out here and argue the California penal code with you. You're dealing drugs. The cops aren't going to care what I was up to. Maybe I was passing by and thought you were breaking in yourself. You're out of business, kiddo."

  His eyes took on a shrewd look and he changed his tack. "Well now, wait a minute. Don't go so fast. Why can't we talk about this?"

  "Sure, why not? What's to say?"

  I could practically see his brain cells scurry around forming a new thought. He was no fool, but he still surprised me with the line he took. "Are you looking into Aunt Marty's death? Is that why you're here?"

  Aunt Marty. Nice touch, I thought. I smiled briefly.

  "Not quite, but that's close enough."

  He glanced off toward the street, then down at the toe of his cobra boot. "Because I got something... you know, like some information about that."

  "What kind of information?"

  "Something I never told the cops. So maybe we could make a trade," he said. He stuck his hands in his jacket pockets looking back at me. His face was innocent, his complexion clear, the look in his eyes so pure I'd have given him my firstborn if I'd had one. The little smile that crossed his face was engaging and I wondered how much money he'd made selling dope to his high-school friends. And I wondered if he was going to end up with a bullet in his head for cheating someone higher up in the scheme of things. I was interested in what he had to say and he knew it. I had to make quick peace with my own corruption and it wasn't that hard to do. Times like this, I know I've been in the business too long.

  "What kind of trade?"

  "Just give me time to clear this stuff out before you tell anyone. I was about to lay off anyway because the narcs have some undercover agents at our school and I thought I'd cool it 'til the pressure's off."

  We're not talking permanent reform here, folks. We're talking simple expediency, but at least the kid wasn't trying to con me... too much.

  We looked at each other and something shifted. I knew I could rail and stomp and threaten him. I knew I could be pious and moralistic and disapproving and it wouldn't change a thing. He knew the score as well as I did and what we had to offer each other might not be a bad bet on either side.

  "All right, you got it," I said.

  "Let's go somewhere and talk," he said. "I'm freezin my nuts off.

  It bothered me to realize that I'd started to like him just a little bit.

  Chapter 15

  * * *

  We went to The Clockworks on State Street; he on his motorcycle, with me following in my car. The place is a teen hangout and looks like something out of a rock video; a long, narrow room painted charcoal gray with a high ceiling and the lighting done in pink and purple neon tubing. The whole of it resembles the interior of a clock in abstract and futuristic forms. There are mobiles looking like big black gears suspended from the ceiling, the smoke in the air moving them in slow circles. There are four small tables near the door and on the left are what look like shelves at chest height in a series of standing-room-only booths where couples can neck while drinking soda pop. The menu posted on the wall is larded with side orders like dinner salad and garlic toast that kids can snack on, paying seventy-five cents for the privilege of taking up table space for hours at a time. You can also buy two kinds of beer and a house chablis if you are old enough and have tangible proof. It was now nearly midnight and there were only two other people in the place, but the owner apparently knew Mike and his gaze slid over to me appraisingly. I tried to look like I was not Mike's date. I didn't mind a May/December romance now and then, but a seventeen-year-old is pushing it some. Also I'm not clear on the etiquette of making deals with junior dope peddlers. Who pays for the drinks? I didn't want his self-image to suffer.

  "What do you want?" he asked, moving toward the counter.

  "Chablis is fine," I said. He was already pulling his wallet out so I let him pay. He probably made thirty grand a year selling grass and pills. The owner looked over at me again and I waved my I.D. at him casually, indicating that he could card me, but he'd be wasting a trip across the room.

  Mike came back with a plastic glass of white wine for me and a soft drink for himself. He sat down, surveying the place for narcs in disguise. He seemed strangely mature and I was having trouble dealing with the incongruity of a kid who looked like a Boy Scout and behaved like a Mafia management trainee. He turned toward me then, resting both elbows on the table. He'd taken up a sugar packet from the container on the table and he tapped it and turned it restlessly, addressing most of what he had to say to the trivia question printed on the back.

  "Okay. Here's what happened," he said, "and I'm tellin' you the truth. For one thing, I didn't stash at Uncle Leonard and Aunt Marty's until after she got killed and he moved out. Once the cops got done and everything, it occurred to me the utility shed was perfect so I moved some stuff in. Anyway, I went by the house the night she got killed..."

  "Did she know you were coming?"

  "Nuh-uh, I'm getting to that. I mean, I knew they went out on Tuesday nights and I thought they'd be gone. Like, you know, if I was hard up and needed some bucks or something, I might cruise by and pick up some loose change. They kept cash around – not a lot, but enough. Or sometimes I'd take something I could unload somewhere else. Nothing they'd miss and nobody'd ever said anything about it so I figured they hadn't tipped to it yet. Anyway what happened was I went over there that night thinking the place would be empty, but when I got there the door was open –"

  "The door was standing open?"

  He shook his head. "I just kind of turned the knob and it was unlocked. When I stuck my head in I knew something weird was going on...."

&
nbsp; I waited, watching him uneasily.

  He cleared his throat, looking over his shoulder at the front entrance. His voice dropped.

  "I think the guy was still there, you know? The light was on in the basement and I could hear someone knocking around down there and there was this rug in the hall, like an area rug that had been thrown over something. I saw a hand sticking out with blood on it. Man, I took off."

  "You're pretty sure she was dead at that point?"

  He nodded, hanging his head. He ran a hand along the pink center divider of hair, looking off to one side. "I should've called the cops. I knew I should, but the whole thing really freaked me out. I hate that shit. And what was I supposed to do? I couldn't tell the cops anything and I didn't want 'em looking at me, so I just kept my mouth shut. I mean, 1 couldn't see what difference it made. I didn't see who did it or anything like that."

  "Do you remember anything else? A car parked out front..."

  "I don't know. I didn't stay long. I took one look at that shit and I was gone. I could smell all these gasoline fumes or something and..."

  He hesitated briefly. "Wait a minute, yeah, there was a brown grocery bag in the hall too. I don't know what it was doing there. I mean, I didn't know what the fuck was happening, so I just backed away real quiet and came on down here and made sure people saw me."