V is for Vengeance Page 18

  “Anything else I can be doing?”

  “You could put a notice in the newspapers—the Dispatch, the San Francisco Chronicle, the San Luis Obispo Tribune, and the Chicago papers. “Seeking information about Audrey Vance …” Use my phone number in case we get crank calls, which are all too common in these situations.”

  “And if no one comes forward?”

  “Well, if the house in San Luis doesn’t net more than this, I’d say we were up shit creek.”

  “But overall, this is good, right? I mean, so far, you haven’t uncovered any evidence she was a master criminal.”

  “Ah. Funny you should say that. I forgot to mention my talk with the vice detective. Audrey’s been convicted of grand theft on at least five prior occasions, which suggests she was into retail theft up to her pretty little neck.”

  “Saints preserve us,” he said, which was a phrase I hadn’t heard in years.

  13

  The drive from Santa Teresa to San Luis Obispo took an hour and forty-five minutes. I was on the road by 8:00 A.M., which put me in S.L.O. at 9:45 on the nose. The late-April weather was sunny and cool with a breeze blowing flirtatiously through the trees along the side of the road. Traffic was light. The winter months had generated sufficient rainfall to transform the low rolling hills from the usual honey and gold hues to a vibrant green. San Luis Obispo is the county seat, the home of Mission San Luis Obispo de Tolosa, the fifth in the string of twenty-one missions that dot the California coast from San Diego de Alcala, at the southernmost point, to San Francisco Solana de Sonoma, to the north. The charm of the town was completely lost on me. I’m single-minded when it comes to the hunt and I was interested in what I might find in Audrey’s house. The fact that I didn’t have a key in my possession only added to the fun. Maybe I’d have the opportunity to use the key picks Pinky had given me.

  I left the 101 at Marsh Street, cleared the off-ramp, and pulled over to the curb. I’d tossed a city map on the passenger seat beside me and now I spent a few minutes getting my bearings. I was looking for Wood Lane, which the street index indicated was somewhere on the grid designated as J-8. I followed the coordinates, taking the dog-leg from Marsh to Broad Street, one of the main arteries through town. Closer to the airport in the southeastern section of the city, Broad became Edna Road. Wood Lane was an offshoot as delicate as an eyelash and just about that long.

  The area was mixed use, industrial and agricultural. I could imagine a city planner or a developer many years before with vision enough to realize the land would be more valuable vacant than given over to subdivisions. A few single-family dwellings had cropped up in what was otherwise a flat countryside. Aside from the fields under cultivation for spring planting, the landscape was hard-packed dirt, sparse vegetation, and the occasional fence. Here and there I could see an outcropping of boulders as big as sandstone sedans. In the absence of trees, the wind swept across the bare acreage, throwing up eddies of dust.

  Wood Lane was a cul-de-sac with two small frame houses at the end. The ranch-style house on the right was set in the middle of a well-kept lawn. The driveway was blacktopped and lined with white stones. The address there was 803, which I took to be her landlady’s house. Audrey’s driveway consisted of two dirt ruts with a stretch of dead grass between. At the end of the drive there was a single-car garage with a small shed attached. I parked and picked my way down the rough drive, taking note of the overgrown shrubs surrounding the house on three sides. The overhead garage door looked ancient, but it yielded without a fuss. The interior was empty and smelled of hot dust. The floor was concrete, marked by a black patch in the center where a vehicle had leaked oil. I leaned down and touched the surface of the spill, which was still sticky. The adjacent shed contained two bags of bark mulch the rats had chewed through.

  I returned to the front porch and climbed the stairs. The white paint on the one-story cottage had turned chalky with age. The windows sported injured-looking venetian blinds, hanging crookedly from their mounts. A mailbox was nailed to one side of the front door. I did a quick check and came up with two pieces of mail, both addressed to Audrey Vance. As she was dead and I was unobserved, I opened both envelopes. The first was a preapproved credit card offer from a company that looked forward to serving her financial needs. The second was a response to an inquiry about rental property in Perdido, twenty-five miles to the south of us in Santa Teresa. It was a form letter sent in response to an application she’d filled out in which she’d neglected to complete certain items that were required for proper processing. There followed several X’s in parentheses, indicating that she needed to supply the address and telephone number of her employer, her job title, and the number of years in that position. Also, the name and contact number for her current landlord along with her reasons for leaving. “Regretfully, we have nothing available at this time. We have, however, placed your letter in our files and if at any point in the future one of our tenants should give notice, we’ll be happy to get in touch.”

  I shoved the two letters into the outer compartment of my shoulder bag. The credit card offer I’d toss at the first opportunity. The form letter from the property-management company I’d look at again. It was possible that on further reflection I’d see a way to make use of it, though I wasn’t quite sure how. Which left me with the physical premises. On the off chance the door was unlocked, I tried the knob. Nope.

  While I was at it, I went around to the rear and tried the back door with the same result. I returned to the front yard and studied the sparsely traveled road. Audrey was a party animal. Yet here she was, miles from the nearest bar and the nearest convenience store. What was the point? If she’d needed to spend two nights a month in San Luis Obispo, why not camp out at the nearest Motel 6? I couldn’t imagine why she’d elect to rent such an isolated place unless she was up to no good.

  I looked over at the house next door, which was separated from Audrey’s by a sagging wire fence. Everything in Audrey’s yard was dead, but I could see signs of a newly planted garden on the neighbor’s side of the fence. Behind the house, a woman with a laundry basket was pinning freshly washed linens on a clothesline. The sheets flapped and snapped, sounding like the beating of wings as they tossed in the wind.

  I crossed to the fence and waited to catch her eye. She was in her forties, wearing a cotton housedress with an apron over it. Her bare legs were sturdy and the muscles in her arms had been defined by hard work. When she noticed me, I waved and gestured her closer. She put a handful of clothespins in her apron pocket and approached the fence. “Are you looking for Audrey?”

  “Not exactly. I don’t know if you’re aware of it, but she died this past Sunday.”

  “I was about to say the same thing to you. I read about it in the local paper.”

  “You’re her landlady?”

  “She rented the house from my husband and me,” she said, with caution.

  “I’m Kinsey Millhone. I’m a private detective.” I reached into my shoulder bag and extracted a business card, which I passed to her. I could see her take in the information at a glance.

  She said, “Vivian Hewitt. I thought you might be the police.”

  “Not me. Audrey was engaged to a friend of mine. Questions have come up in the wake of her death and he’s hired me to fill in the blanks.”

  “Questions of what sort?”

  “For one thing, she told him she had two grown kids living in San Francisco. He has no way to reach them. If nothing else, he’d like to let them know what happened. He thought she might have kept an address book up here among her personal effects.”

  “I can understand his concern. Is there something else?”

  “Basically, he’s wondering just how big a fool he was. Some of what she told him turns out to be false. She also omitted a couple of crucial details.”

  “Such as what?”

  “She’d been convicted of grand theft and served time in prison. Grand theft means she was picked up with merchandise worth more
than four hundred dollars. Six months ago, she finally got off parole. Then, Friday of last week, she was arrested again. We hoped you’d be willing to open the house so I can have a look. You’re welcome to accompany me, if you’re worried this isn’t on the up-and-up.”

  She studied me briefly. “Wait here and I’ll fetch the key.”

  I returned to the front porch and tried peering in the windows while Vivian Hewitt was gone. The slats in the venetian blinds were set so all I saw were thin slices of the floor, not that informative as these things go. A few minutes later, she returned with a big ring of keys. I watched her sort through the collection until she found one marked with a dot of red nail polish. She inserted it in the lock. The key refused to turn. Frowning, she pulled the key from the lock and tried it again.

  “Well, I don’t know what’s wrong. This is a duplicate of the one I gave her.”

  “Mind if I have a look?”

  She handed me the key. I checked the manufacturer’s stamp and then leaned forward and examined the lock itself. “This says Schlage. The key is a National.”

  “She changed the locks?”

  “She must have.”

  “Well, she never said a word to me.”

  “Audrey’s full of surprises. I have ways of getting us in there if you don’t object.”

  “I don’t want my windows broken or the door kicked down.”

  “Absolutely not.”

  We circled the house to the rear and tried the same key again. Not surprisingly, that lock had been swapped out as well.

  “You have a problem with my picking this?”

  “Help yourself. I’ve never seen it done.”

  I took out my trusty leather zip case and removed the custom-made picks Pinky Ford had fashioned for me. Pinky had confessed that he sometimes constructed picks with complicated-looking bends and twists when in reality the only two items required were a tension wrench and a length of flat wire, bent at the tip. A bobby pin or a paper clip would do the same job. I removed the tension wrench from the case and inserted it into the lock, applying a gentle pressure while I eased the feeler pick to the back of the lock. The trick was to wiggle the pick as I pulled it out, easing it past the pins. With luck, the pick would toggle each pin in turn until it cleared the shear line. Once all the pins were up, the lock would pop open as though of its own accord. I have an electric lock pick that does the job in half the time, but I usually don’t have it with me. It’s a felony offense if you’re caught carrying burglar tools.

  During my initial instruction, Pinky had dismantled a number of different lock mechanisms to demonstrate the technique. After that he said it was a matter of developing the proper touch, which differed from person to person. Like any other skill, practice made perfect. There was a period when I was adept, but it had been a while since I’d had occasion to pick a lock, so the task required patience. Vivian watched with interest and I wouldn’t have put it past her to try it herself once I was gone. One minute became two and just when I was about to despair, the pins gave way. The door swung inward and we were at liberty to tour the place.

  “That was handy,” she remarked.

  “You bet.”

  In a circumstance such as this, I like to be systematic, starting at the front door and working my way back. Vivian was a step behind me as I turned to survey the space. “Have you been here recently?”

  “Not since she moved in.”

  The interior was a simple box, divided into four squares: living room, kitchen, bedroom, and a combination mudroom, bath, and laundry room. The living room contained a collection of mismatched furniture: chairs, two end tables, a couch, a sewing machine, and a credenza with a faux marble top, all pushed to the outside walls. All the drawers and cabinets were empty. On one of the tables there was an old-fashioned Princess phone. I picked up the handset and listened for a dial tone. The line was dead.

  “How long was she a tenant?”

  “A little over two years.”

  “You put an ad in the paper?”

  “We tried that but had no response, so we staked a For Rent sign in the yard, and she came knocking on my door, asking to see the place. My husband and I bought these two properties at the same time, thinking one of our kids would move in. When that didn’t work out, we decided to offer it for rent so we’d have money coming in. This end of town, we don’t get many prospects so I was happy to show her around. I told her we’d waive the cleaning fee as long as she didn’t have pets.”

  “Did she fill out a rental agreement?”

  “No need. She paid me cash, six months in advance. Took out her wallet, counted the bills, and put them in my hand.”

  “You must have been delighted.”

  “I was. Most of all, I liked the idea of someone living close by. We only have the one car and I was hoping she’d drive me into town now and then. I didn’t realize how seldom she’d be home, though ‘home’ is probably not the right term. She traveled a lot and only wanted the use of the place when she was in the area.”

  “How often was that?”

  “Every other Saturday.”

  In the absence of a dining room, the living room had been called into service, the center taken up with a harvest table big enough to seat ten. The room smelled of a pine-scented cleaning product. I leaned closer to the tabletop, peering at a slant so the light washed over the surface. No smudges and no fingerprints. That was interesting. I flicked a switch and the overhead light came on. I got down on my hands and knees and did an eyeball scan of the floor. By the table leg I found a three-inch T-shaped length of clear plastic, not much thicker than a thread. I held it up so Vivian could see. “Know what this is?”

  “Looks like a piece of plastic used to secure the price tags on items of clothing.”

  “Exactly,” I said. I put it in my pocket. Under the table leg, I found a second one that I added to the first.

  I continued to search, quizzing her as questions occurred to me. The kitchen was immaculate. Counters and windowsills were spotless. Marvin had said Audrey was a neatnik, but when had she had time to scrub the place down? The refrigerator was empty except for the standard items: Tabasco sauce, mustard, ketchup, olives, and mayonnaise, which were stashed in the door. The stove top had been scoured with an S.O.S pad, judging from the residue of blue foam and a few stray fibers of steel wool. The flip-top trash can was lined with a brown paper bag. At the bottom I found a crusty cleaning rag, gray with dirt and smelling of the same pine scent that permeated the rest of the house. Under the rag I found remnants of two S.O.S pads reduced to nubs. I’m sometimes a whiz when it comes to clues.

  “Did she have visitors?” I asked.

  “I’m sure she did. Twice a month I saw a van pull in a short time after she arrived. She’d go around and open the garage and have the driver pull into the garage. If visitors went in and out the back door, I wouldn’t have seen them from my house. There was also a white panel truck over there at the same time.”

  “Quite a crowd,” I said.

  “Nights she was here and the lights were on, she made a point of closing the venetian blinds.”

  “Guess she didn’t want you peeping in.”

  “No danger of that. Rafe and I are usually in bed by ten. She was a night owl. Sometimes I’d see lights burning into the wee hours. I don’t sleep well, which means I’m up two or three times.”

  “Do you remember when was she here last?”

  “I’d say Sunday or Monday night, but that can’t be right. According to the paper, she was found Sunday afternoon so I must be mistaken.”

  A survey of the under-the-counter cabinets revealed a stack of big cast-iron skillets and cheap six-quart saucepans. In the upper cabinets there were numerous tumblers and two sets of melamine dinnerware. One drawer was packed with a jumble of kitchen utensils and another held assorted flatware. There was no dishwasher and no disposal, but I found an adequate supply of dish soap in a squirt bottle under the sink. While the shelves in the reachin p
antry were bare, numerous sticky circles on the otherwise clean surface suggested the recent presence of industrial-sized canned goods. For a woman who didn’t cook or entertain, Audrey had been prepared to feed the multitudes.

  “What happened when the first six months’ rent were up?”

  “She stopped by one afternoon and paid for the next six.”

  “Always in cash?”

  She nodded. “I suppose I should have asked her about it, but it really wasn’t any of my business. At least I didn’t have to worry about a check not clearing.”

  “Didn’t you wonder why she carried so much cash?”

  “I can guess what you’re getting at. You think she might have been dealing drugs. I read the papers like everyone else and I know about meth labs and marijuana farms. If I’d thought she was doing something illegal, I’d have called the police.”

  “Good for you. Sometimes people get so busy minding their own business, they forget to do what’s right.”

  I went into the bedroom, which was crudely outfitted with a full-size mattress, two pillows, and a pile of blankets neatly folded at the foot of the bed. The closet was empty, not even one wire hanger left on the rod. I closed my eyes and drew in a breath. The lingering scent of White Shoulders cologne was unmistakable.

  I made two more circuits of the room, talking to Vivian over my shoulder. “Let me know if you see something I’ve missed.”

  By then, the idea of finding her address book seemed laughable since there were no personal items at all. I was satisfied I’d seen everything, though I hadn’t dug up the dead flower beds or tapped my way around the walls in search of secret panels.

  I scribbled Marvin’s address on the back of a second card. “This is her fiancé’s address. If mail comes for her, could you forward it to him?”

  “I don’t see why not.”

  “You want me to lock up?”

  “No point. I’ll have the locks changed as soon as I can get someone out. No telling who else has a key.”

  She walked me out to my car.