G is for GUMSHOE Page 2

  “And when did you last hear from her?”

  “Christmas. I sent her some money and she called to thank me. Things were fine from what she said, though to tell you the truth, she didn’t sound good. She does sometimes drink.”

  “What about the neighbors? Any way to get through to them?”

  She shook her head again. “Nobody has a telephone. You have no idea how crude conditions are out there. These people have to haul their own trash to the city dump. The only thing provided is a school bus for the children and sometimes the townspeople raise a fuss about that.”

  “What about the local police? Any chance of getting a line on her through them?”

  “I’ve been reluctant to try. My mother is very jealous of her privacy, even a bit eccentric when it comes right down to it. She’d be furious if I contacted the authorities.”

  “Six months is a long time to let this ride.”

  Her cheeks tinted slightly. “I’m aware of that, but I kept thinking I’d hear. Frankly, I haven’t wanted to brave her wrath. I warn you, she’s a horror, especially if she’s on a tear. She’s very independent.”

  I thought about the situation, scanning the possibilities. “You mentioned that she has no regular address. How do I find her?”

  She reached down and picked up a leather jewelry case she’d tucked under the chaise. She removed a small envelope and a couple of Polaroid snapshots. “This is her last note. And these are some pictures I took last time I was there. This is the trailer where she lives. I’m sorry I don’t have a snapshot of her.”

  I glanced at the pictures, which showed a vintage mobile home painted flat blue. “When was this taken?”

  “Three years ago. Shortly before Clyde and I moved up here. I can draw you a map, showing you where the trailer’s located. It’ll still be there, I guarantee. Once someone at the Slabs squats on a piece of land – even if it’s just a ten-by-ten pad of concrete – they don’t move. You can’t imagine how possessive people get about raw dirt and a few creosote bushes. Her name, by the way, is Agnes Grey.”

  “You don’t have any pictures of her?”

  “Actually, I don’t, but everyone knows her. I don’t think you’ll have a problem identifying her if she’s there.”

  “And if I find her? What then?”

  “You’ll have to let me know what kind of shape she’s in. Then we can decide what course of action seems best. I have to say, I chose you because you’re a woman. Mother doesn’t like men. She doesn’t do well among strangers to begin with, but around men she’s worse. You’ll do it then?”

  “I can leave tomorrow if you like.”

  “Good. I was hoping you’d say that. I’d like some way to reach you beyond business hours,” she said. “If Mother should get in touch, I want to be able to call without talking to your machine. An address, too, if you would.”

  I jotted my home address and phone number on the back of my business card. “I don’t give this out often so please be discreet,” I said, as I handed it to her.

  “Of course. Thank you.”

  We went through the business arrangements. I’d brought a standard contract and we filled in the blanks by hand. She paid me an advance of five hundred dollars and sketched out a crude diagram of the section of the Slabs where her mother’s trailer stood. I hadn’t had a missing persons case since the previous June and I was eager to get to work. This felt like a routine matter and I considered the job a nice birthday present for myself.

  I left the Gersh house at 12:15, drove straight to the nearest McDonald’s, where I treated myself to a celebratory Quarter Pounder with Cheese.

  Chapter 2

  *

  By one o’clock I was home again, feeling smug about life. I had a new job, an apartment I was thrilled with…

  The phone began to ring as I unlocked the door. I snatched up the receiver before my answering machine kicked in.

  “Ms. Millhone?” The voice was female and unfamiliar. The hiss in the line suggested the call was long-distance.

  “Yes.”

  “Will you hold for Mr. Galishoff?”

  “Sure,” I said, instantly curious. Lee Galishoff was an attorney in the public defender’s office in Carson City, Nevada, whom I’d worked with some four years back. At the time, he was trying to track a fellow named Tyrone Patty, believed to be in this area. An armed robbery suspect named Joe-Quincey Jackson had been arrested and charged with attempted murder in the shooting of a liquor store clerk. Jackson was claiming that Tyrone Patty was the triggerman. Galishoff was very interested in talking to him. Patty was rumored to have fled to Santa Teresa, and when the local police weren’t able to locate him, Galishoff had contacted the investigator for the Santa Teresa public defender’s office, who in turn had referred him to me. He filled me in on the situation and then sent me the background information on Patty, along with a mug shot from a previous arrest.

  I traced the subject for three days, doing a paper chase through the city directory, the crisscross, marriage licenses, divorce decrees, death certificates, municipal and superior court records, and finally traffic court. I picked up his scent when I came across a jaywalking ticket he’d been issued the week before. The citation listed a local address – some friend of his, as it turned out – and Patty answered my knock. Since I was posing as an Avon sales rep, I was fortunate I didn’t have to deal with the lady of the house. Any woman in her right mind would have known at a glance I didn’t have a clue about makeup. Patty, operating on other instincts, had shut the door in my face. I reported his whereabouts to Galishoff, who by then had found a witness to corroborate Jackson’s claim. A warrant was issued through the Carson City district attorney’s office. Patty was arrested two days later and extradited. The last I’d heard, he’d been convicted and was serving tune at the Nevada State Prison in Carson City.

  Galishoff came on the line. “Hello, Kinsey? Lee Galishoff. I hope I didn’t catch you at a bad time.” His voice was booming, forcing me to hold the receiver eight inches from my ear. Telephone voices are deceptive. From his manner, I’d always pictured him in his sixties, balding and overweight, but a photograph I’d spotted in a Las Vegas newspaper showed a slim, handsome fellow in his forties with a shock of blond hair.

  “This is fine,” I said. “How are you?”

  “Good until now. Tyrone Patty’s back in county jail, awaiting trial on a triple murder charge.”

  “What’s the story this time?”

  “He and a pal of his hit a liquor store up here and the clerk and two customers were shot to death.”

  “Really. I hadn’t heard that.”

  “Well, there’s no reason you would. The problem is, he’s pissed at us, claims his life was ruined the day he was put away. You know how it goes. Wife divorced him, kids are alienated, the guy gets out and can’t find a job. Naturally, he took to armed robbery again, blasting anybody in his way. All our fault, of course.”

  “Hey, sure. Why not?”

  “Yeah, well, here’s the bottom line. Apparently, couple weeks ago, he approached another inmate on a contract murder plot involving the two of us, plus the DA and the judge who sentenced him.”

  I found myself pointing at my chest as I squinted into the receiver. “Us, as in me?” My voice had gotten all squeaky like I was suddenly going through puberty.

  “You got it. Fortunately, the other inmate was a police informant who came straight to us. The DA put a couple of undercover cops on it, posing as potential hit men. I just listened to a tape recording that would chill your blood.”

  “Are you serious?”

  “It gets worse,” he said. “From the tape, we can’t tell who else he might have talked to. We’re concerned he’s been in touch with other people who may be taking steps we don’t know about. We’ve notified the press, hoping to make this too hot to handle. Judge Jarvison and I are being placed under around-the-clock armed protection, but they thought I better pass the information on to you. You’d b
e smart to contact the Santa Teresa police to see about protection for yourself.”

  “God, Lee. I can’t imagine they’d provide any, especially on a threat from out of state. They don’t have the manpower or the budget for that.” I’d never actually called the man by his first name before, but I felt a certain privilege, given what I’d just heard. If Patty was the plotter, Galishoff and I were fellow plottees.

  “We’re actually facing the same situation here,” he said. “The sheriff’s department can’t cover us for long… four or five days at best. We’ll just have to see how things stand after that. In the meantime, you might want to hire somebody on your own. Temporarily, at any rate.”

  “A bodyguard?” I said.

  “Well, somebody versed in security procedures.”

  I hesitated. “I’d have to think about that,” I said. “I don’t mean to sound cheap, but it would cost me a fortune. You really think it’s warranted?”

  “Let’s put it this way – I wouldn’t chance it, if I were you. He’s got six violent priors.”

  “Oh.”

  “Oh, indeed. The insulting part is he isn’t even paying that much. Five grand for the four of us. That’s less than fifteen hundred bucks apiece!” He laughed when he said this, but I didn’t think he was amused.

  “I can’t believe this,” I said, still trying to take it in. When you’re presented with bad news, there’s always this lag time, the brain simply unable to assimilate the facts.

  Galishoff was saying, “I do know a guy, if you decide that’s what you want. He’s a local P.I. with a background in security. At the moment, he’s burned out, but I know he’s excellent.”

  “Just what I need, somebody bored with his work.”

  He laughed again. “Don’t let that dissuade you. This guy’s good. He lived in California years ago and loves it out there. He might like the change of scene.”

  “I take it he’s available.”

  “As far as I know. I just talked to him a couple days ago. His name is Robert Dietz.”

  I felt a little jolt. “Dietz? I know him. I talked to him about a year ago when I was working on a case.”

  “You have his number?”

  “It’s around here someplace, but you might as well give it to me again,” I said.

  He gave me the number and I made a note. I’d only dealt with the man by phone, but he’d been thorough and efficient, and he hadn’t charged me a cent. Really, I owed him one. I heard a buzz on Galishoff’s end of the phone.

  He said, “Hang on a sec.” He clicked off, was gone briefly, and then clicked on again. “Sorry to cut it short, but I got a call coming in. Let me know what you decide.”

  “I’ll do that,” I said. “And thanks. Keep safe.”

  “You, too,” he said and he was gone.

  I set the receiver down, still staring at the phone. A murder contract? How many times had someone tried to kill me in the last year? Well, not that many, I thought defensively, but this was something new. Nobody (that I knew of) had ever put out a contract on me. I tried to picture Tyrone Patty chatting up the subject with a hit man in Carson City. Somehow it seemed strange. For one thing, it was hard to imagine the kind of person who made a living that way. Was the work seasonal? Were there any fringe benefits? Was the price discounted since there were four of us to whack? I had to agree with Galishoff – fifteen hundred bucks was bullshit. In the movies, hit men are paid fifty to a hundred thou, possibly because an audience wants to believe human life is worth that. I suppose I should have been flattered I was included in the deal. A public defender, a DA, and a judge? Distinguished company for a smalltown private eye like me. I stared at Dietz’s number, but I couldn’t bring myself to call. Maybe the crisis would pass before I had to take any steps to protect myself. The real question was, would I mention this to Henry Pitts? Naaah. It would just upset him and what was the point?

  When the knock at the door came, I jumped like I’d been shot. I didn’t exactly flatten myself against the wall, but I exercised a bit of caution when I peered out to see who was there. It was Rosie, who owns the tavern in my neighborhood. She’s Hungarian, with a last name I don’t pronounce and couldn’t spell on a dare. I suppose she’s a mother substitute, but only if you favor being browbeaten by a member of your own sex. She was wearing one of her muumuus, this one olive green, printed with islands, palm trees, and parrots in hot pink and chartreuse. She was holding a plate covered with a paper napkin.

  When I opened the door, she pushed it toward me without preamble, which has always been her style. Some people call it rude.

  “I brought you some strudel for your birthday,” she said. “Not apple. It’s nut. The best I ever made. You’ gonna wish you had more.”

  “Well, Rosie, how nice!” I lifted a corner of the napkin. The strudel had a nibbled look, but she hadn’t snitched very much.

  “It looks wonderful,” I said.

  “It was Klotilde’s idea,” she said in a fit of candor. Rosie’s in her sixties, short, topheavy, her hair dyed the utterly faux orange-red of new bricks. I’m not certain what product she uses to achieve the effect (probably something she smuggles in from Budapest on her biannual trips home), but it usually renders her scalp a fiery pink along the part. She had pulled the sides back today and affixed them with barrettes, a style much favored in the five-year-old set. I’d spent the last two weeks helping her find a board-and-care facility for her sister Klotilde, who’d recently moved to Santa Teresa from Pittsburgh, where the winters were getting to be too much for her. Rosie doesn’t drive and since my apartment is just down the street from her little restaurant, it seemed expedient for me to help her find a place for Klotilde to live. Like Rosie, Klotilde was short and heavyset with an addiction to the same hair dye that tinted Rosie’s scalp pink and turned her tresses such a peculiar shade of red. Klotilde was in a wheelchair, suffering from a degenerative disease that left her cranky and impatient, though Rosie swore she’d always been that way. Theirs was a bickering relationship and after an afternoon in their presence, I was cranky and impatient myself. After checking out fifteen or sixteen possibilities, we’d finally found a place that seemed to suit. Klotilde had been settled into a ground-floor room in a former two-family dwelling on the east side of town, so I was now off the hook.

  “You want to come in?” I held the door open while Rosie considered the invitation.

  She seemed rooted to the spot, rocking slightly on her feet. She becomes coquettish at times, usually when she’s suddenly unsure of herself. On her own turf, she’s as aggressive as a Canada goose. “You might not want the company,” she said, demurely lowering her eyes.

  “Oh, come on,” I said. “I’d love the company. You have to see the place. Henry did a great job.”

  She wiggled once and then sidestepped her way into the living room. She seemed to survey the room out of the corner of her eye. “Oh. Very nice.”

  “I love it. You should see the loft,” I said. I set the strudel on the counter and quickly put some water on for tea. I took her through the place, up the spiral steps and down, showing her the trundle bed, the cubbyholes, the pegs for hanging clothes. She made all the proper noises, only chiding me mildly for the meagerness of my wardrobe. She claims I’ll never get a beau unless I have more than one dress.

  After the tour, we had tea and strudel, working our way through every crispy bite. I cleaned the plate of flaky crumbs with a dampened fingertip. Her discomfort seemed to fall away, though mine increased as the visit went on. I’d known the woman for two years, but with the exception of the last couple of weeks, our entire relationship had been conducted in her restaurant, which she rules like a dominatrix. We didn’t have that much to talk about and I found myself manufacturing chitchat, trying to ward off any awkward pauses in the conversation. By the time we finished tea, I was sneaking peeks at my watch.

  Rosie fixed me with a look. “What’s the matter? You got a date?”

  “Well, no. I’ve got a j
ob. I have to drive down to the desert tomorrow and I need to get to the bank.”

  She pointed a finger and then poked me on the arm. “Tonight, you come to my place. I’m gonna buy you a glass of schnapps.”

  We left at the same time. I offered to drop her off, but the tavern’s only half a block away and she said she preferred to walk. The last I saw of her the mild spring breezes were billowing through her muumuu. She looked like a hot-air balloon shortly before liftoff.

  I headed into town, detouring by way of the automated teller machine at my bank, where I deposited Mrs. Gersh’s advance and pulled a hundred bucks in cash. I circled the block and parked my car in the public lot behind my office. I confess this news about a hit man had made me conscious of my backside and I suppressed the urge to zigzag as I went up the outside stairs.

  In my office, I picked up my portable typewriter, some files, and my gun, then stopped into the California Fidelity Insurance offices next door. I chatted briefly with Darcy Pascoe, who doubles as the company’s secretary and receptionist. She had helped me on a couple of cases and was thinking about changing fields. I thought she’d be a good investigator and I was encouraging her. Being a P.I. beats sitting on your ass at somebody else’s front desk.

  I moved on to Vera Lipton’s cubicle, completing my rounds. Vera’s one of those women men are mad about. I swear it’s not anything in particular she does. I suppose it’s the air of total confidence she exudes. She likes men and they know it, even when she sasses them. She’s thirty-seven, single, addicted to cigarettes and Coca-Cola, which she consumes throughout the day. You’d think that would offend the health nuts, but it doesn’t seem to cause dismay. She’s tall, probably a hundred and forty pounds, a redhead who wears glasses with big round lenses, tinted gray. I know none of this sounds like the girl of your dreams, but there’s something about her that’s apparently tough to resist. She’s not in any way promiscuous, but if she goes to the supermarket, some guy will strike up a conversation with her and end up dating her for months. When the relationship’s over, they usually remain such good friends that she’ll match him up with someone she knows.