B is for BURGLAR Page 15

  “That’s where she said she was going,” he said, “though I tell you somethin’. With that fur coat, I told her she ought to head someplace cold. Get some use out of it. She laughed.”

  I felt myself hit the pause button mentally, a quick freeze frame. It was odd, that image, and it bothered me. I pictured Elaine Boldt with her fur coat and turban, on her way to warmth and sunshine, waving back over her shoulder ��� to the taxi driver who’d taken her to the airport. It was disturbing somehow, that last glimpse of her, and I realized that until now I hadn’t really pictured that at all. I’d been weighing the possibility that she was on the run, but in my heart of hearts,

  I’d pictured her dead. I’d kept thinking that whoever killed Marty Grice killed her too. I just couldn’t figure out why. Now the uncertainty had crept in again. Something was off, but I couldn’t figure out what it was.

  Chapter 16

  *

  Well, at least now I had a tiny mission in life. When I left Nelson, he was taking his temperature with a digital thermometer, confessing sheepishly a secret addiction to gadgets like that. I wished him a speedy recovery and hopped in my car, circling back around to Chapel.

  The veterinary clinic is a small box of glass and cinderblock painted the color of window putty and tucked into the dead end formed when Highway 101 was cut through. I love that whole series of dead-end streets ��� relics of the town as it used to be, a refreshing departure from the pervading Spanish look. The small frame houses in that neighborhood are actually Victorian cottages built for the working class, with hand-turned porch rails, exotic trim, wooden shutters, and peaked roofs. They look like shabby antiques now, but it’s still possible to imagine a day when they were newly constructed and covered with fresh paint, the full-grown trees no more than slender saplings planted in the midst of newly seeded lawns. The town then must have been dirt roads and carriages. I’m not above wishing more of it remained.

  I parked in the lot behind the clinic and went in through the back door. I could hear dogs barking hoarsely somewhere in the rear; shrill cries for mercy, freedom, and relief. There were only two animals in the waiting room, both bored-looking cats who had formed themselves into bolster pillows. Their humans spoke to them in what was apparently cat-English, using high-pitched voices that made my own head hurt. Now and then when some dog set up a howl in the back, one or the other of the cats would appear to smile faintly.

  There must have been two vets working because both cats got called at the same time and were carted on down the hall, leaving me alone with the receptionist behind the counter. She was in her late twenties, blue-eyed, pale, with an Alice-in-Wonderland blue ribbon across her straight blond hair. Her name tag read “Emily.”

  “May I help you?”

  She spoke as though she’d never progressed beyond the age of six; a breathy, wispy tone, softly modulated, perhaps especially cultivated to soothe distressed beasts. Occasionally I run into women who talk like that and it’s always puzzling, this perpetual girlhood in a world where the rest of us are struggling to grow up.

  Dealing with her made me feel like a linebacker. “I wonder if you could give me some information.”

  “Well, I’ll try,” she whispered. Her voice was sweet and musical, her manner submissive.

  I was going to show her the photostat of my P.I. license but I worried that it would seem brutal and coarse. I decided to hold off on that and whip it out if I had to turn the screws.

  “Back in January, a woman brought a cat into the clinic for some kind of emergency treatment and I want to find out if she ever came back to pick it up.”

  “I can check our records if you like. Can you tell me the name, please?”

  “Well, the woman’s name was Elaine Boldt. The cat was Mingus. It would have been the night of January ninth.”

  Two patches of mild pink appeared on her cheeks and she licked her lips, staring at me fixedly. I wondered if she’d sold the cat to a vivisectionist.

  “What happened?” I asked. “Do you know which one I’m talking about?”

  “Well yes, I know which one. He was here for weeks,” she said. Her speech had taken on a nasal cast, coming out through her nostrils now as though by ventriloquist. She wasn’t exactly whining, but it was the tone of voice I’ve heard kids use in department stores when their moms accuse them of misbehavior and threaten to jerk their arms off. It was clear she was feeling defensive about something, but I wasn’t sure quite what. She reached for a small tin box and walked her fingers through a file of index cards. She pulled out the record, snapping it onto the countertop self-righteously.

  “She only paid three weeks’ board and care and she never responded to any of our postcards or calls, so in

  February the doctors said we’d have to make other arrangements because our space is so limited.” She was really working herself into a snit here.

  “Emily,” I said patiently. “Is that your name, or somebody else’s tag?”

  “It’s Emily.”

  “I really don’t care where the cat is. I just need to know if the woman came back.”

  “Oh. No, she didn’t.”

  “What happened to the cat? I’m just curious.”

  She stared at me for a moment, her chin coming up. She brushed her hair back across her shoulder with a flip of her hand. “I adopted him. He’s really a fabulous cat and I just couldn’t turn him over to the pound.”

  “That’s fine. Hey, that’s great. I’ve heard he was terrific and I’m glad you found a place for him. Enjoy. I will take your secret with me to the grave. If the woman shows up, though, would you let me know?” I put my card on the counter. She read it and nodded without another word.

  “Thanks.”

  I went back to the office. I thought I better give Julia Ochsner a call and tell her I’d located the cat, thus saving her an unnecessary canvass of Boca kennels and vets. I left my car in the parking lot out back and came up the rear stairs. When I reached my office there was a man standing in the corridor, scribbling a message on a scrap of paper.

  “Can I help you?”

  “I don’t know. Are you Kinsey Millhone?” His smile seemed superior and his attitude amused, as though he had a piece of information too precious to share.

  “Yes.”

  “I’m Aubrey Danziger.”

  It took me a second to compute the name. “Beverly’s husband?”

  “Right,” he said and then gave a little laugh in the back of his throat. So far, I didn’t think either one of us had much cause for merriment. He was tall, maybe six foot two, with a smooth, thin face. He had very dark hair, lank, looking as if it would be silky to the touch, brown eyes, an arrogant mouth. He was wearing a pale gray three-piece suit. He looked like a riverboat gambler, a dandy, a “swell,” if such persons exist in this day and age.

  “What can I do for you?”

  I put my key in the lock, opened the door, and went in. He followed, surveying the premises with the sort of look that told me he was pricing the furniture, calculating my overhead, estimating my quarterly taxes, and wondering why his wife hadn’t hired a high-class outfit.

  I sat down behind my desk and watched him while he took a seat and crossed his legs. Nice, sharp crease in the pants, nice narrow ankle, Italian leather pumps with a narrow polished toe. I caught sight of his snow-white shirt cuff, his initials ��� AND ��� in a pale blue monogram, hand-done no doubt. He was smiling at me faintly, watching me watch him. He took a flat cigarette case out of his inside jacket pocket and extracted a slim, black cigarette that he tamped on the case and then stuck in his mouth, flicking a lighter that shot out a jet of fire I thought might set his hair ablaze. He had elegant hands and his fingernails were beautifully manicured, with clear polish on each tip. I confess I was sore amazed at the sight, amazed by the scent of him that was wafting across the desk at me; probably one of those men’s designer aftershaves called Rogue or Magnum. He studied the ember on his cigarette and then fixed me
with a look. His eyes reminded me of hard clay, flat brown with no warmth and no energy.

  I didn’t offer him coffee. I pushed the ashtray toward him as I’d done with his wife. The smoke from his cigarette smelled like a smothered campfire and I knew it would linger long after he’d driven back to Los Angeles.

  “Beverly got your letter,” he said. “She was upset. I thought maybe I should drive up here and have a chat.”

  “Why didn’t she come herself?” I said. “She can talk.”

  That amused him. “Beverly doesn’t care for scenes. She asked me to handle it for her.”

  “I’m not crazy about scenes myself, but I don’t see the problem here. She asked me to look for her sister. I’m doing that. She wanted to dictate the terms and I decided I should work for someone else.”

  “No, no, no. You misunderstood. She didn’t want to terminate the relationship. She simply didn’t want you to go to Missing Persons with it.”

  “But I disagreed with her. And I didn’t think it was nice to take her money when I was ignoring her advice.” I tried a noncommittal smile on him, swiveling slightly in my chair. “Was there something else?” I asked. I felt certain he was angling around for something. He didn’t have to drive ninety miles for this.

  He shifted in his chair, trying a friendlier tone. “I can tell we’ve gotten off on the wrong foot here,” he said. “I’d like to know what you’ve found out about my sister-in-law. If I’ve pissed you off, I’d like to apologize. Oh. And you might be interested in this.”

  He took a folded paper from his jacket pocket and passed it across the desk to me. For a moment, I thought it was going to be an address or a telephone number, some scrap of information that might really help. It was a check for the $246.19 Beverly owed me. He made it seem like some kind of bribe and I didn’t like that. I took the money anyway. I knew the difference whether he did or not.

  “I sent Beverly a copy of my report two days ago. If you want to know what I’ve come up with, why not ask her?”

  “I’ve read the report. I’d like to know what you’ve found out since then if you’re willing to share that.”

  “Well, I’m not. I don’t mean to sound surly about this, but any information I have belongs to my current employer and that’s confidential. I’ll tell you this much. I did go to the cops and they’re circulating a description of her, but that’s only been a couple of days and so far they haven’t come up with anything. You want to answer a question for me?”

  “Not really,” he said, but he laughed. I was beginning to realize that his manner was probably born of discomfort, so I plowed ahead anyway.

  “Beverly told me she hadn’t seen her sister for three years, but a neighbor of Elaine’s claims she was not only up here at Christmas, but the two had a knock-down-drag-out fight. Is that true?”

  “Well, yeah, probably.” His tone was softening and he seemed less aloof. He took a final drag of his cigarette and pinched the ember loose from the end. “To tell you the truth, I’ve been concerned that Beverly’s somehow involved in this.”

  “How so?”

  He’d stopped looking at me now. He rolled the tag end of his cigarette between his fingers until nothing was left but a small pile of tobacco shreds and a scrap of black paper. “She’s got a drinking problem. She’s had it for some time, though you’d probably never guess. She’s one of those people who might not have a drink for six months, then… boom, she’s off on a three-day drunk. Sometimes a binge lasts longer than that. I think that’s what happened in December.” He looked at me then and most of the pomposity had dropped away. This was a man in pain.

  “Do you know what they quarreled about?”

  “I have a fair idea.”

  “Was it you?” I asked.

  He focused on me suddenly, with the first real life in his eyes. “What made you say that?”

  “The neighbor said they probably quarreled about a man. You were the only one I knew about. You want to buy me lunch?”

  We went to a cocktail lounge called Jay’s just around the corner. It’s very dark, with massive art deco booths in pale gray leather and black onyx tables that look like small free-form pools. The surface of them is so shiny you can almost see your reflection, like some kind of commercial for liquid dishwashing detergent. The walls are padded with gray suede and the carpet underfoot is tricked out with matting so thick you feel as if you’re walking on sand. The whole place comes close to a sensory-deprivation tank, dim and hushed, but the drinks are huge and the bartender puts together incredible hot pastrami sandwiches on rye. I can’t afford the place myself, but it felt like the perfect setting for Aubrey Danziger. He looked like he could pay the tab.

  “What sort of work do you do?” I asked when we were seated.

  Before he could answer, the waitress appeared. I suggested two pastrami sandwiches and two martinis. That look of secret amusement returned to his face but he agreed with a careless shrug. I didn’t think he was accustomed to women ordering for him, but there didn’t seem to be any harmful side effects. I felt like this was my show and I wanted to work the lights. I knew we’d get blasted, but I thought it might take the high gloss off the man and humanize him some.

  When the waitress left, he answered my question. “I don’t work,” he said, “I own things. I put together real-estate syndicates. We buy land and put up office buildings and shopping malls, sometimes condominiums.” He paused, as though he could have said a lot more, but had decided that much would suffice. He took out his cigarette case again and held it out to me. I declined and he lit another slim black cigarette.

  He tilted his head. “What’d I do that pissed you off? That happens to me all the time.” The superior smile was back but this time I didn’t take offense. Maybe that’s just the way his face worked.

  “You seem arrogant and you’re way too slick,” I said. “You keep smiling like you know something I don’t.”

  “I’ve had a lot of money for a long time, so I feel slick. Actually, it amuses me to think about a girl detective. That’s half the reason I drove up here.”

  “What’s the other half?”

  He hesitated, debating whether to say it. He took a long drag of his cigarette. “I don’t trust Beverly’s account of what went on. She’s devious and she manipulates. I like to double-check.”

  “Are you talking about her transactions with me or hers with Elaine?”

  “Oh, I know about her transactions with Elaine. She can’t stand Elaine. She also can’t leave her alone. Have you ever hated anybody that way?”

  I smiled slightly. “Not recently. I guess I have in my day.”

  “It’s like Bev has to know about Elaine and if she hears something good, it pisses her off. And if she hears something bad, she’s satisfied, but it’s never enough.”

  “What was she doing up here at Christmastime?”

  The martinis arrived and Aubrey took a long sip of his before he answered. Mine was silky and cold with that whisper of vermouth that makes me shudder automatically. I always eat the olive early because it blends so nicely with the taste of gin.

  He caught sight of the shiver. “I can leave the room if you want to be alone with that.”

  I laughed. “I can’t help it. I never drink these things, but Jesus Lord, what a rush. I can already feel the hangover forming.”

  “Hell, it’s Saturday. Take the day off. I didn’t think I’d catch you in your office at all. I was going to leave you a note and then nose around seeing if I could find out something about Elaine myself.”

  “I take it you’re as puzzled as everybody else about where she might be.”

  He shook his head slightly. “I think she’s dead. I think Bev killed her.”

  That got my attention at any rate. “Why would she do that?”

  Again, the long hesitation. He looked off across the room, checking the premises, doing some kind of mental arithmetic as though in placing a dollar value on his surroundings, he’d know where he stood. His e
yes slid back to me and the smile hovered on his mouth. “She found out I’d had an affair with Elaine. It was my own damn fault. The IRS is auditing my tax returns from three years back and, like a fool, I asked Beverly to dig up some canceled checks and credit-card receipts. She figured out I’d been in Cozumel right at the same time Elaine went down there after Max died. I’d told her I was off on a business trip.

  “Anyway, I got home from the office that day and she flew at me in such a rage it’s a wonder I got out alive. Of course, she’d been drinking. Any excuse to sock down the sauce. She took a pair of kitchen shears and stabbed me right in the neck. Caught me right here. Just above the collarbone. The only thing that saved me was my collar and tie and maybe the fact that I have my shirts done with heavy starch.”

  He laughed, shaking his head uncomfortably at the recollection. “When that didn’t work, she got me in the arm. Fourteen stitches. I bled all over the place. When she drinks, it’s like Jekyll and Hyde. When she doesn’t drink, she’s not too bad… bitchy and hard as nails, but she isn’t nuts.”

  “How’d you get involved with Elaine? What was that about?”

  “Oh hell, I don’t know. It was stupid on my part. I guess I’d had the hots for her for years. She’s a beautiful woman. She does tend to be self-involved and self-indulgent but that only made her harder to resist. Her husband had just died and she was a mess. What started out as brotherly concern turned into unbridled lust, like something off the back of a paperback novel. I’ve strayed before, but never like that. I don’t shit in my own Post Toasties as the old saying goes. This time I blew it.”

  “How long did it last?”

  “Until she disappeared. Bev isn’t aware of that. I told her it was over after six weeks and she bought it because that’s what she wanted to believe.”

  “And she found out about it this past Christmas?”

  He nodded and then caught the waitress’s attention, glancing over at me. “You ready for another one?”

  “Sure.”

  He held up two fingers like a victory sign and the waitress moved over to the bar. “Yeah, she found out right about then. She tore into me and then jumped straight in the car and drove up here. I got a call through to Elaine to warn her, so we could at least get our stories straight, but I’m not really sure what was said between them. I didn’t talk to her after that and I never saw her again.”