B Is for Burglar Page 9

  That afternoon, he was wearing a red rag around his head pirate-style, his tanned forearms bare and powdered with flour, his fingers as long and nimble as a monkey's as he gathered the dough and turned it halfway. He was using a length of chilled pipe as a rolling pin and he paused to flour it while he worked, coaxing the pastry into a rectangle.

  I perched up on a wooden stool and retied my shoes. "You making napoleons?"

  He nodded. "I'm catering a tea for someone up the street. What are you up to, besides a run?"

  I filled him in briefly on my search for Elaine Boldt while he folded the dough in thirds and wrapped it, returning it to the refrigerator. When I got to the part about Marty Grice, I saw his brows shoot up.

  "Stay away from it. Take my advice and leave it to the homicide detectives. You're a fool if you get involved in that end of it."

  "But what if she saw who killed Marty? What if that's why she took off?"

  "Then let her come forward with the information. It's not up to you. If Lieutenant Dolan catches you messing around with his case, he'll have your rear end."

  "Actually, that's true," I said ruefully. "But how can I back off? I'm running out of places to look."

  "Who says she's lost? What makes you think she's not down in Sarasota someplace lapping up gin and tonic on the beach?"

  "Because somebody would have heard from her. I mean, I don't know if she's up to something or maybe in big trouble herself, but until she shows up I'm going to beat the bushes and bang on pans and see if I can run her to ground."

  "Make-work," he said. "You're chasing your own tail."

  "Well, that's probably true, but I gotta do something."

  Henry gave me a skeptical look. He opened a bag of sugar and weighed out a mound. "You need a dog."

  "No, I don't. And what's that got to do with it? I hate dogs."

  "You need protection. That business at the beach would never have happened if you'd had a Doberman."

  That again. God, even my recent brush with death had taken place in a garbage bin... someplace small and cozy with me sobbing like a kid.

  "I was thinking about that stuff today and you want to know the truth? All this talk about women being nurturing is crap. We're being sold a bill of goods so we can be kept in line by men. If someone came after me today, I'd do it again, only this time I don't think I'd hesitate."

  Henry didn't seem impressed. "I'm sorry to hear that. I hope you haven't started a trend."

  "I mean it. I'm tired of feeling helpless and afraid," I said.

  Henry puffed his cheeks up and blew a raspberry, giving me a bored look. Big talk, his face said, but you don't fool me a bit. He cracked an egg on the counter and opened it up with one hand, letting the white slip through his fingers into a cup. He put the yolk in a bowl and took up another egg, repeating the process with his eyes pinned on me.

  He said, "So defend yourself. Who's arguing with that? But you can drop the rhetoric. It's bullshit. Killing is killing and you better take a look at what you did."

  "I know," I said, with less energy. The look in his eyes was making me squirm and I wasn't all that crazy about his tone. "Look, maybe I haven't really dealt with that. I just don't want to be a victim anymore. I'm sick of it."

  Henry cradled the bowl in his arms, whisking the eggs with a practiced ease. When I do that, the eggs always slop out the side.

  He said, "When were you ever a victim? You don't have to justify yourself to me. You did what you did. Just don't try to turn it into a philosophical statement, because it doesn't ring true. It's not as if you made a rational decision after months contemplating the facts. You killed somebody in the heat of the moment. It's not a platform for a political campaign and it's not a turning point in your intellectual life."

  I smiled at him tentatively. "I'm still a good person, aren't I?" I didn't like the wistful tone. I meant to show him I was a grown-up, coping with the truth. Until the words came out of my mouth, I hadn't even known I felt so unsure.

  He didn't smile back. His eyes rested on my face for a moment and then dropped back to the eggs. "What happened to you doesn't change that, Kinsey, but you have to keep it straight. Blow somebody's brains out and you don't brush that off. And you don't try to turn it into an intellectual stance."

  "No, you don't," I said uneasily. I had a quick flash of the face that peered into the garbage bin just before I fired. By some remarkable distortion, I could have sworn I saw how the first bullet stretched the flesh like elastic before smashing through. I shook the image away and hopped down. "I have to run," I said, feeling anxious.

  I left the kitchen without glancing back, but I know what the look was on Henry's face. Caution and sorrow and pain.

  Once outside, I had to put it out of my mind again. Back the subject went, into its own little box. I did a quick stretch, concentrating on my hamstrings. I don't run fast enough or far enough to justify much of a warm-up. Other joggers, I know, would argue with that, citing injuries that result from insufficient stretching before a run, but I find exercise loathsome enough without adding contortions up front. For a time, I tried it, dutifully lying on my back in the grass with one leg straight out and the other cocked sideways toward my waist as though broken at the hip. I could never get up afterward unless I flopped about like a bug and I finally decided it was worth a possible groin-muscle pull to avoid the indignity. I've never been injured running anyway. I've never thrilled to it either. I'm still waiting for the rumored "euphoria" that apparently infuses everyone but me. I headed over to the boulevard at a brisk walk, keeping my mind blank.

  I generally do three miles, jogging along the bicycle path that borders the beach. The walkway is stenciled with odd cartoons at intervals and I watch for those, counting off the quarter-miles. The tracks of some improbable bird, the mark of a single fat tire that crosses the concrete and disappears into the sand. There are usually tramps on the beach; some who camp there permanently, others in transit, their sleeping bags arranged under the palm trees like large green larvae or the skins shed by some night-stirring beast.

  That afternoon the air seemed heavy and chill, the ocean sluggish. The cloud cover was beginning to break up, but the visible sky was a pale washed-out blue and there was no real sign of sun. Out on the water a speedboat ran a course parallel to the beach and the path of the wake was like a spinning ribbon of silver winding along behind. On the landward side, the mountains were dark green. At this distance, the low-growing vegetation looked like soft suede, with rock face showing through along the ridges as though the nap had worn away from hard use.

  I did the turnaround at East Beach and ran the mile and a half back, then walked the block to my apartment as a cool-down. I'm big on cool-downs. I showered and dressed again and then hopped in my car and headed up to Pam Sharkey's office on Chapel. Pam was the insurance agent who'd written up the policies for Leonard Grice and I wanted to probe that issue before I set it aside. I trust Vera, but I don't like taking people's word for things. Maybe Grice had taken out a massive policy from some other company. How did I know?

  The Valdez Building is located at the corner of Chapel and Feria, a Spanish word meaning "fair." I only know that because I looked it up. I've been thinking I should take a Spanish class one of these days, but I haven't gotten around to it yet. I can say taco and gracias but I'm real short on verbs. The Valdez is typical of the architecture in this town: two stories of white stucco with a red tile roof, big arches, windows faced with wrought-iron gratings. There are azure blue awnings and the landscaping consists of small plots of perfect grass. Palm trees grace the courtyard and there's a fountain capped by a small naked boy doing something wicked with a fish.

  Pam Sharkey's office is on the first floor and sports the same network of cubicles I'd seen at California Fidelity. Nothing architecturally innovative for the insurance game these days. It must be like doing business in a series of playpens. The company she works for, Lambeth and Creek, is an independent agency that writes policies for
a number of companies, CFI being one. I'd only dealt with Pam once, when I was bird-dogging an errant husband. His wife, my client, was in the process of divorcing him and was hoping for evidence of his philandering as a negotiating tool when it came down to the settlement. Pam had taken offense, not because I'd uncovered her affair with the man, but because I'd turned up two other women involved with him at the same time. None of this was ever brought up in court, of course, but her name was prominent in my report. She had never forgiven me for knowing too much. Santa Teresa is a small town and our paths cross now and then. We're polite to one another, but the civilities are undercut with spite on her part and sly amusement on mine.

  Pam is petite, a bristly little chihuahua of a human being. She's the only woman I ever met who claims to be ten years older than she actually is so that everyone will tell her how young she looks. On that basis, she swears she's thirty-eight. Her face is small, her skin dusky and she applies pancake makeup in varying shades in a vain attempt to add "planes" to her cheeks. I got news for her. There's no way to disguise the bags under your eyes by the skillful use of "cover." From most angles anybody with a brain can see the bags sitting right there, only looking phantom white instead of gray. Who's fooled by this? Why not go for the dark circles and at least look exotic and worldly-wise... Anna Magnani, Jeanne Moreau, Simone Signoret perhaps. Pam had also taken lately to a permanent wave, so her pale brown hair looked frizzy and unkempt, a style apparently billed as "the bedroom look." That afternoon she was done up in a little hunting outfit: a hacking jacket, brown knickers, pink hose and low heels with buckles. The only hunting she did was in singles bars, bagging one-night stands as though the season were nearly over and her license about to expire. Well, wait a minute here. I can see I've been unfair about this. I don't like Pam any more than she likes me. Every time I see her, it makes me feel petty and mean – not my favorite way to experience myself. Maybe she avoids me for the same reason.

  Her cubicle is near the front – a status symbol, I think. She caught sight of me and busied herself with papers and files. By the time I'd made my way over to her desk, she was on the phone. She must have been talking to a man because her manner was flirtatious. She touched herself everywhere as she talked, rolling a lock of hair around her finger, checking an earring, stroking the lapel of her jacket. She wore a series of gold necklaces and those got a workout too. Sometimes she'd rub her chin with a loop of gold chain, uttering a carefree, trilling laugh she must have practiced late at night. She glanced at me, feigning surprise, holding up a palm to indicate that I'd have to wait.

  She turned away from me in her swivel chair, completing the telephone exchange with a murmured intimacy of some sort. On top of a stack of files on her desk, I could see a copy of Cosmo, offering articles on the G spot, cosmetic breast surgery, and social rape.

  Pam hung up at long last and swiveled back, all the animation leaving her face. No point in wasting the whole show on me. "Something I can help you with, Kinsey?"

  "I understand you wrote a couple of policies for Leonard and Marty Grice."

  "That's right."

  I smiled slightly. "Could you tell me the status of the paperwork at this point?"

  Pam broke eye contact, going through another quick digital survey: earring, hair, lapel. She took up a loop of gold chain, running her index finger back and forth on it until I worried she'd saw right through the skin. She wanted to tell me Leonard Grice was none of my business, but she knew I did occasional work for California Fidelity. "What's the problem?"

  "No problem," I said. "Vera Lipton's wondering about the claim on the fire loss and I need to know if there were any other policies in effect."

  "Now, wait a minute. Leonard Grice is a very dear man and he's been through a terrible six months. If California Fidelity intends to make trouble, Vera better deal directly with me."

  "Who said anything about trouble? Vera can't even process the claim until the proof of loss is in."

  "That goes without saying, Kinsey," she said. "I still don't see what this has to do with you." I could feel my smile begin to set like a pan of fudge. I leaned forward, left hand flat on the desk, right hand resting on my hip. I thought it was time to clarify our relationship. "Not that it's any of your business, Pam, but I'm in the middle of a big investigation adjunctive to this. You don't have to cooperate, but I'm just going to turn around and present a court order to the supervisor here and somebody's going to come down on you like a ton of bricks for all the trouble it'll cause. Now is that how you want to proceed on this or what?"

  Under the pancake makeup, she began to show signs of sunburn. "I hope you don't think you can intimidate me," she said.

  "Absolutely not." I shut my mouth then and let her assimilate the threat. I thought it sounded pretty good.

  She took up a stack of papers and rapped them on the desk, aligning the edges. "Leonard Grice was insured through California Fidelity Life and California Fidelity Casualty Insurance. He collected twenty-five hundred dollars for the life insurance and he'll get twenty-five thousand for the structural damage to the house. The contents were uninsured."

  "Why only twenty-five for the house? I thought that place was worth over a hundred grand? He won't have enough money to do the repairs, will he?"

  "When he bought the place in 1962, it was worth twenty-five thousand and that's what he insured it for. He never increased the coverage and he hasn't taken out any other policies. Personally, I don't see how he can do anything with the house. It's a complete loss, which I think is what's broken him."

  Now that she'd told me, I felt guilty for all the macho bullshit I'd laid on her.

  "Thanks. That's a big help," I said. "Uh... by the way, Vera wanted me to ask if you'd be interested in meeting an unattached aerospace engineer with bucks."

  A wonderful look of uncertainty crossed her face: suspicion, sexual hunger, greed. Was I offering her a cookie or a flat brown turd on a plate? I knew what was going through her head. In Santa Teresa, a single man is on the market maybe ten days before someone snaps him up.

  She shot me a worried look. "What's wrong with him? Why didn't you take him first?"

  "I just came off a relationship," I said, "I'm in retreat." Which was true.

  "Maybe I'll give Vera a buzz," she said faintly.

  "Great. Thanks again for the information," I said and I gave her a little wave as I moved away from her desk. With my luck, she'd fall in love with the guy and want me to be a bridesmaid. Then I'd be stuck with one of those dumb dresses with a hunk of flounce on the hip. When I glanced back at her, she seemed to have shrunk and I felt a twinge. She wasn't so bad.

  Chapter 11

  * * *

  I ate dinner that night at Rosie's, a little place half a block down from my apartment. It's a cross between a neighborhood bar and an old-fashioned beanery, sandwiched between a Laundromat on the corner and an appliance repair shop that a man named McPherson operates out of his house. All three of these businesses have been in operation for over twenty-five years and are now, in theory, illegal, representing zoning violations of a profound and offensive sort, at least to people who live somewhere else. Every other year, some overzealous citizen gets a bug up his butt and goes before the city council denouncing the outrage of this breach of residential integrity. In the off years, I think money changes hands.

  Rosie herself is probably sixty-five, Hungarian, short, and top-heavy, a creature of muumuus and hennaed hair growing low on her forehead. She wears lipstick in a burnt-orange shade that usually exceeds the actual shape of her mouth, giving the impression that she once had a much larger set of lips. She uses a brown eyebrow pencil lavishly, making her eyes look stern and reproachful. The tip of her nose comes close to meeting her upper lip.

  I sat down in my usual booth near the back. There was a mimeographed menu sheet slipped into a clear plastic cover stuck between the ketchup bottle and the napkin box. The selections were typed in pale purple like those notices they used to send home wi
th us when we were in grade school. Most of the items were written in Hungarian; words with lots of accent marks and z's and double dots, suggesting that the dishes would be fierce and emphatic.

  Rosie marched over, pad and pencil poised, her manner withdrawn. She was feeling offended about something, but I wasn't sure yet what I'd done. She snatched the menu out of my hand and put it back, writing out the order without consulting me. If you don't like the way the place is run, you go somewhere else. She finished writing and squinted at the pad, checking the results. She wouldn't quite meet my eyes.

  "You didn't come in for a week so I figured you was mad at me," she said. "I bet you been eating junk, right? Don't answer that. I don't want to hear. You don't owe me an apology. You just lucky I give you something decent. Here's what you gonna get."

  She consulted the pad again with a critical eye, reading the order to me then with interest as though it were news to her too.

  "Green pepper salad. Fantastic. The best. I made it myself so I know it's done right. Olive oil, vinegar, little pinch of sugar. Forget the bread, I'm out. Henry didn't bring fresh today so what do I know? He could be mad at me too. How do I know what I did? Nobody tells me these things. Then I give you sour oxtail stew."

  She crossed that off. "Too much grease. Is no good for you. Instead I give you tejfeles suit ponty, some nice pike I bake in cream, and if you clean your plate, I could give you deep-fried cherries if I think you deserve it, which you don't. The wine I'm gonna bring with the flatware. Is Austrian, but okay."