Liar

5

“It doesn’t appear to be much of an estate, I’ll grant you,” he went on. “But we haven’t really had time to check for assets. You know, sometimes you read about these hermits who live very simply, but end up having a million bucks stashed away in a savings account somewhere.”

“Brilliant,” Frank said angrily. “You think this single mother who worked as a file clerk was a millionaire? A woman who was living on disability checks?”

McCain shrugged.

“No matter how much she did or didn’t have,” I said, “I don’t want any of it. And I have no idea why she named me in her will.”

McCain studied me for a moment, then seemed to come to some decision; he appeared to relax a little. He asked me a few more questions about my childhood relationship with Briana, then said, “Any idea why someone might want to kill her?”

“No. I don’t know anything about her recent life that Mary didn’t tell me tonight. As I said, I haven’t been in touch with Briana in a long time.”

“You’re certain this was premeditated?” Frank asked.

“Not absolutely. But a couple of things bothered us about it, or I wouldn’t be here,” McCain said, seeming to loosen up a little more. “First, a high rate of speed, coming down a street that isn’t exactly known for drag racing. Second, no skid marks-and yes, maybe the car had antilock brakes, but we’ve got two wits that say the car didn’t stop at all. You and I both know that very few people would accidentally hit someone and never apply the brakes.” He turned to me. “Most hit-and-run drivers are surprised, you might say-they stop or try to stop at some point. Maybe panic sets in or they have some reason for avoiding the police- drugs in the car, car’s stolen, they’ve got warrants out on ‘em, whatever-so they take off after they realize what they’ve done. But they seldom just hit somebody and keep rolling as if nothing’s happened. In this case, no one heard brakes or saw the driver swerve to avoid her.”

“Any chance the driver just didn’t see her?” I asked.

“Your aunt was in the middle of an intersection on a bright and sunny morning, wearing light-colored clothing. The direction of the vehicle’s travel was away from the sun, so nothing impaired the driver’s vision. In fact, the witnesses say that after the initial impact, the driver deliberately drove the car over her after she was down.”

I shuddered.

“The witnesses give you a make on the vehicle?” Frank asked.

“They can’t agree on the make, but between what they’ve given us and some of the physical evidence, we think we’re looking for a Camry.” He paused, then looked over at me. “As I said, the witnesses agreed that it looked deliberate. The vehicle wasn’t out of control-it maneuvered to hit her. The car hits her, knocks her down, rolls over her, and drags her body a few yards. The collision breaks a headlamp and does some other damage to the car, and makes a noise loud enough to bring people running out of a little store on the corner. No brake lights, no slowing, no horn.”

Even though I hadn’t seen her in a long time, it was hard for me to hear this description, to imagine someone doing that to Briana. Frank took my hand. I held on.

After a moment, McCain said, “Any idea where your cousin is these days?”

“Travis? No.”

“Your aunt’s ex-husband?”

“He wasn’t really her husband. But no, I don’t know anything about him.”

He asked a few more questions, then walked over to the kitchen door.

As he opened it, it was clear from both her startled expression and her nearness to the door that Mary had been eavesdropping. She recovered herself quickly though, and I had to admire her regal bearing as she continued on into the living room. “Thank you, Detective McCain,” she said. “It was insufferably hot in that kitchen.”

McCain gave a little laugh. As he came back to where we were seated he smothered a yawn, then said, “Excuse me. I think I’ll call it a night. You’ll be in the area for the next few weeks, Ms. Kelly?”

“As far as I know.”

He took out a card. “Give me a call if you have any questions, or if anything comes to mind.”

“One moment,” Aunt Mary said.

He waited.

“I assume you aren’t charging Irene with any crime?”

“No, as of now, I have no reason to do so,” he said.

“Is there any reason why she can’t visit Briana’s apartment, take things out of there?”

He hesitated, then said, “It’s no longer sealed, if that’s what you’re asking.”

“I don’t want-” I began.

“Hush!” she snapped at me. “I want you to go over there tomorrow morning and clear her things out. You can keep them in boxes and give them to Travis when we find him. That’s fine.”

“But her furniture-we don’t have room-” I began again, grasping at the first argument that came to mind.

“Don’t worry about that. I’ll even arrange to have movers bring the furniture here. I’ll store it for you until we find him.”

“What’s your hurry?” McCain asked.

She folded her arms across her chest. “I drove over to Briana’s apartment the other day. I’m sure one of your men mentioned that to you.”

McCain just smiled.

“Well, he wouldn’t let me in the apartment, but I spoke briefly to Briana’s neighbors. They said up until you and your patrolmen started hanging around, there had been problems with break-ins in that building. I don’t want thieves looting what belongs to Travis.”

“Neither do I,” McCain said, looking right at me.

Frank rose halfway out of his chair. I placed a hand on his arm and said, “That won’t help anyone.” He sat back down.

“What’s your real reason for wanting her to go over there?” McCain asked Mary.

“That’s real enough,” she said, narrowing her gaze on him. “I don’t lie as readily as some people do.”

He didn’t say anything, just kept smiling.

“I do have another reason. I want her to find her cousin. I’m very worried about him.”

“We’ll find him.”

“Hah! Listen here, Mr. McCain. There are only about six or seven states that have a bigger population than Los Angeles County-you’re going to tell me that you’ll find the needle I want out of a haystack as big as that? And that’s if he stayed local. Besides, you just mentioned to us that things are kind of busy in your division.”

“We have other professionals who-”

“So does she!” Mary crowed. “One sitting right next to her.”

“I’m sure Detective Harriman won’t want to cause jurisdictional problems.”

“No,” Mary answered for him. “Even though you’re in his right now. But he’s going sailing tomorrow morning. Irene’s going to hire that private investigator friend of hers to help us look for Travis.”

It took all the acting skill I have not to betray my surprise at this announcement. I’m not sure I succeeded. McCain seemed skeptical. Frank was cooler under fire.

“Rachel Giocopazzi,” he supplied, not missing a beat. “She worked homicide in Phoenix. She’s my partner’s wife.”

McCain’s working smile suddenly brightened into the genuine article-this one lit up his face with pleasure. “Giocopazzi? Rachel Giocopazzi got married?” He laughed. “‘Pazzi! Well, I’ll be damned!” He quickly looked over at Mary and said, “Pardon me, ma’am.”

She waved that away. “You know her?” A bold question, since Mary had never actually met Rachel, only heard us talk about her.

“Know her?” McCain said. “Yes. I know her. Lord, yes. We worked together on a long, tough case-two victims killed here, bodies taken to Phoenix.”

This led to some grisly shop talk between Frank and McCain, during which it was obvious that Jim McCain’s unspoken reminiscences were not strictly about the case.

“Married,” he said again. “Your partner must be quite a guy. I don’t think there was a man in the Phoenix department that didn’t dream about ‘Pazzi. They’d call her that, or ’the Amazon.”“

I wondered what he’d think of Pete Baird when he met him. I had a feeling he was in for a shock. I’m fond of Pete, but a page off the Hunk-A-Day Calendar he ain’t.

“So you’ll give Irene the keys to the apartment?” Mary asked.

He rubbed his chin, then said, “Sure, but I don’t have the keys with me. I tell you what, I’ll meet you and Rachel over there.”

“But we go through the apartment on our own,” I said.

Again he hesitated, looking at me curiously before he said, “All right, meet you there at ten o’clock. But you’ll tell me if you come across anything that has a bearing on this case?”

“If someone murdered my aunt, Detective McCain, I’ll do everything in my power to help you find her killer.”

“Good. And no trying to get in there before ten, all right?”

“Fine. I’ll see you then.”

“You sure Rachel can make it?” he asked.

“I’m almost certain,” I said, praying Rachel wouldn’t mind giving up sailing, too.

“Families,” Rachel said on a sigh, her eyes not leaving the heavy traffic in front of us. “My brothers, we might not speak to each other for years, but one of ‘em calls up and says, ”Hey, Rach, I need a little something from the dark side of the moon,“ and even though my mouth might say, ”Are you nuts? I’m not going to any damned moon,“ I’m already thinking, Gee, wonder how I’ll look in a spacesuit?”

“You’re just as good to your friends as you are to your family,” I said. “Thanks for giving up the sailing trip.”

Uneasy about McCain’s suspicion of me, Frank had talked about canceling, too-but Rachel had shooed him out the door with the other men. When we first mentioned McCain to her, she frowned a little, glancing over at Pete, then said, “Yeah, I think I remember him.”

She helped me gather up some empty boxes, and offered to drive us over in her Plymouth sedan, which was better suited to hauling boxes than my Karmann Ghia.

Now we were on the Vincent Thomas Bridge, high above LA Harbor. Rachel hit the brakes as a pickup truck made a sudden lane change into the space in front of us, and I heard her muttering something in Italian.

“Starting to regret this?” I asked.

“Aw, I don’t mind this at all. Glad to come along. You think I’d be happier stuck on a sailboat all day with those clowns? No way.”

“If you needed an alternative, you could probably think of something more fun than going through a dead stranger’s possessions.”

“Hell, I’m used to it.”

“I guess you are,” I said. Rachel had retired in her early forties from her job in Phoenix homicide, after putting in twenty years in the department-where she’d started as a meter maid, back when they called them that.

“Am I horning in on something you’d rather do alone?” she asked.

“No-not at all. Even if you hadn’t been so willing to offer your car or to help pack boxes, I’d be grateful just to have you with me. I’m glad I’m not facing this alone.”

“That’s understandable. You said you don’t know how much stuff is in this apartment, right?”

“Aunt Mary said the place is small and that it wouldn’t take long to pack up, but she’s never moved from the first house she bought in Las Piernas, so I’m not sure she’s much of a judge.”

After McCain left her house, Aunt Mary said she hoped we didn’t mind the way she’d rescheduled our Saturday. Apparently it was her guilt over this that led her to make a generous offer-to call my sister and explain a few matters to her about the cemetery. But I had a score to settle with Barbara, so I told Mary that I would make the call myself.

Barbara’s an early riser, so I called before leaving for San Pedro, and started by telling her that the “stranger” in what she thought of as her grave was our mother’s sister.

That led to a brief bout of hysterical exclamations regarding Briana’s unworthiness to be buried in the same cemetery as our mother, let alone in an adjoining plot. Listening to Barbara’s version of family history, it would have been more appropriate to bury Benedict Arnold in Arlington National Cemetery.

I nocked my first arrow. “Then you should call the person who owns the gravesite and tell her off.”

“I will!” Barbara fumed. “Who is it?”

I let the arrow fly. “Aunt Mary.”

Utter silence. Bull’s-eye.

I loosed the next one by saying, “Of course, if you make too much of a fuss about it, you might be the one who ends up buried in some other cemetery. Aunt Mary owns most of the nearest plots.”

“She does?”

“Yes, she does. And Barbara? If I ever hear from Mary that only one half of our parents’ gravestone is being cared for? I’m going to beg her to sell those remaining plots to me. And I think she’ll do it, don’t you?”

She hung up on me. William Tell never had a better day.

Briana’s apartment was on the east side of San Pedro, an area named by Juan Cabrillo when he sailed into its bay in 1542. San Pedro was once a city itself, but became part of Los Angeles near the turn of the century; Briana’s apartment was near the old downtown, an area once known as Vinegar Hill, on one of the streets between Gaffey and the harbor.

We turned onto Sixth Street, driving past an old theater and Vinegar Hill Books. At the corner of Centre and Sixth was Papadakis Taverna, Frank’s favorite Greek restaurant. We had dined there not long ago, and now I thought of how close we had been to Briana’s home that night.

We turned off Sixth and drove through the surrounding neighborhood, a mix of homes and apartments that ranged in style from Victorian mansion to postwar crackerbox. Briana’s apartment wasn’t hard to find: there was a black-and-white LAPD patrol car sitting in front of it.

“Old Mac didn’t trust us to wait for him,” Rachel laughed.

“Mac?”

“McCain. He called me ‘Pazzi, I suppose? He picked that up from those boneheads I worked with in Phoenix.”

“How well do you know this guy?” I asked.

“Well enough,” she answered, in a tone that made me change the subject. She was doing me a big favor and her past was none of my business-my own is by no means sterling. I was curious about her connection with McCain, but it was clear I’d have to wait to learn more.

The apartment was in a run-down fourplex. The crown of the building was a flat roof skirted by three irregular rows of red Spanish tile. The exterior walls were sun-faded brown with white pockmarks; as we came closer, we could see that the stucco was coming off-large, broken, dry bubbles of it clung to the walls-wounds in the building’s hide.

The windows at the side of the building were barred. Four large picture windows faced the street; at the center of the building, a wide doorway opened onto a concrete porch. Inside this door were a short entryway and a steep set of stairs; at the top and bottom of the stairs, apartment doors faced one another. On the right-hand side of the entry, a short row of black mailboxes was attached to the wall. Self-adhesive gold numbers-the type one might find in a hardware store-adorned the locking mailbox doors, numbering them one through four. Three of the four boxes also had red-and-white tape labels bearing the occupant’s first initial and last name.

The officer in the patrol car waved at us. Rachel smiled and waved back, saying under her breath, “Yeah, putz, we know you’re watching us.” I glanced at my watch. We were only about fifteen minutes early.

The building was quiet; I decided to see if any of Briana’s neighbors were home. I knocked on the door across from Briana’s and heard a parrot squawk, but no one came to the door. I heard a phone ring in one of the upstairs apartments; it rang about ten times. I climbed the stairs anyway, but got nothing but a little exercise.

When-right at ten o’clock-Rachel saw McCain’s car pull into an empty parking spot down the street, she glanced at me nervously and took a deep breath. I had never seen her less than ready to take on the world, so I was surprised by her reaction. But when McCain stepped out of his car, dramatically clutched his chest and shouted, “Married? Married?” she was already grinning and hurrying toward him. There was nothing sexual about their dancing embrace in the middle of the street, nothing desperate. If anything, it was the sort of happy, enthusiastic hug two football fans might give one another after their team scored a crucial goal on a Hail Mary pass. Friends, I told myself, they were just friends.

Told myself that until they came walking back toward me, Rachel a little ahead of him, and I saw how McCain watched her, saw the hunger with which he took in her way of moving, and saw her glance back at him and smile.

Show him a picture of Pete, I wanted to say, but didn’t. She must have read something on my face though, because she stopped smiling and said, “I guess you two have already met.”

“I guess you two have, too,” I said, hating the snide little note I heard in it.

“Well,” McCain said uncomfortably, bringing out a keychain with a St. Christopher medal on it. “Here are your aunt’s keys.”

“Thanks,” I said, taking them from him. Determined to redeem myself with Rachel, I added, “Listen, you two haven’t seen each other in a long time, and it’s bound to take me awhile to even figure out how I want to tackle this job, so maybe you’d like to grab a cup of coffee somewhere.”

“I’d love to do some catching up,” McCain said, “but why don’t you come with us?”

“Yeah, come along,” Rachel said meaningfully. “I’ll drive.”

“Okay,” McCain said. He went over to the patrol car, said something to the officer in it.

While McCain was out of earshot, I started to apologize to her, but she said, “Thanks for coming along. I know you’re anxious to get started on your aunt’s place.”

Nothing was further from the truth than this last, but I didn’t argue with her. I looked up to see the black-and-white driving off. McCain was walking back.

“You’re still a suspicious bastard, Mac,” Rachel said when he was nearer. “What the hell was that guy guarding? We’re here to take everything we can out of the place anyway.”

“As I recall, you’re good with a set of lock picks. Why risk damage to the door?”

“No damage. Like you said, I’m good with them.”

He didn’t answer, just started to ask her about people in Phoenix. She started asking about people in the LAPD. This continued even after we were at the coffee shop, Rachel and I on one side of a booth, McCain on the other. He tried to bring me into the conversation by talking about Frank’s time as a hostage, focusing on the efforts to free him. It was still difficult to talk about.

“That whole experience was awful,” Rachel said. “It’s still with all of us, Mac. It’s affected everybody who cares about Frank. Out on the job, I don’t think Pete can stand to go more than a couple of hours without knowing where Frank is. Drives Frank nuts.”

“That’s right,” McCain said. “I forgot he was Harriman’s partner.” He smiled a little and said to me, “I think your husband was kind of angry with me last night.”

Kind of angry? I decided I wouldn’t tell him all the choice things Frank had said about him on the drive home.

“In fact,” he went on, “I think he was seriously considering kicking my ass.

“Then you’re lucky he didn’t try,” Rachel said.

“Your husband as big as Harriman?” he asked.

“You don’t need to worry about whether my husband can kick your ass,” she said, leaning across the table.

“Why not?”

“Because we both know I can.”

He laughed until he was wiping tears from his face, but didn’t contradict her.

She dropped him off at his car, telling him she wanted his parking spot-which, of course, ensured that he had to drive off. He was no sooner out of sight than Rachel said, “Be careful around him. He suspects you-if not of murder, of-well, I don’t know what.”

“How can you tell that? He never talked about the case this morning.”

“I know him. He doesn’t trust anybody.”

This time, when we came up the porch steps, I could hear the noise of neighbors at home. The parrot in apartment one was calling out “Stick ‘em up!” The phone was ringing in apartment four, but this time it was answered after two rings. Briana’s apartment was silent.

I reached into my jeans pocket and took out the key ring; it had three keys and the medallion on it. I used the smallest key to open mailbox number four, the one with nothing but a sticky rectangle where “B. Maguire” ought to have been. The mailbox was empty. Now that we weren’t being watched by the LAPD, I took out my notebook and wrote down the other occupants’ names and their apartment numbers. Rachel watched me, but didn’t say anything.

“Is that a Christopher medal?” she asked, as I moved to the door of apartment number four.

“Yes. I was sad when Christopher got taken off the A-list. All the surfers used to wear the medals anyway.”

“I never did any surfing, but maybe he deserved to get ousted. He was supposed to protect travelers, right?”

“Right.”

“Your aunt couldn’t make it from here to the store.”

I shrugged and put the key in the lock.

Above us, a door opened and an elderly woman stepped out on the landing. She was wearing a thin housecoat and a pair of slippers; her white hair was in wild disarray. “Just hold it right there!” she called, coming down the stairs at such a fast clip, I feared for her safety.

She pointed a finger at me. “Just what do you think you’re doing?”

“I’m Briana’s niece-”

“Hah!”

“She is!” Rachel protested.

“Let’s see some identification,” the woman said.

“All right, Mrs. Woolrich,” I said, using the name from the tag on the mailbox. I pulled out my wallet as she continued to eye me suspiciously.

I showed her my driver’s license. She pulled a pair of reading glasses out of the pocket of the housecoat and put them on. She looked between me and the license. “Irene Kelly… you’re Mary Kelly’s grandniece?”

“Yes. And this is my friend, Rachel Giocopazzi.”

“I’m Esther Woolrich. Miss Woolrich, by the way, which is something no mailbox can tell you,” she said with a wink. More solemnly, she said, “Mary told me she’d be sending you by for Briana’s things. I’m sorry for your loss, although from what Mary tells me…”

“Yes,” I said quickly. “Well, if you’ll excuse us, we’ve got a lot of work to do.”

She didn’t move. “Sorry if I was a little brusque, but twice in the last few weeks, someone has tried to rob this apartment. Now that the cops are going away, we don’t want anyone to start trying to break in again.”

“Mary mentioned something about break-ins, but-only this apartment?”

“Yes. I’ve told the police about it, but they don’t do a thing.”

“You told the homicide detective?” Rachel asked.

“No, no. As I said, this was before we knew what had happened to poor Briana. Started not long before she died. I called the regular number, not homicide. They think I’m some old crackpot. You’d think I’d have to wait until the thieves actually broke in.”

“You came down those stairs thinking we were burglars?” Rachel asked. “Miss Woolrich, next time, it might be better to call the police. If we had been here to commit a burglary-”

“You probably would have run off. That’s what the others did.”

“What others?” I asked.

“First time, it was a man. Come right up to the front door, bold as brass. I’d seen him here before-parked out front. Casing the joint, that’s what he was up to then. That was before Briana died.”

“I’m confused-did he try to rob Briana’s apartment while she was still alive?”

“Yes. He parked out front and watched her leave, then came up and read the mailboxes, just like you did.”

“You couldn’t see that from your apartment,” I said.

She sighed, then startled us by calling out, “Open the door, Ruby.”

Behind us, the door to apartment number one opened a crack, and a short, stout woman who appeared to be near Esther Woolrich’s age peered out.

“Put the gun away and come out and meet Mary’s grandniece,” Esther said.

Rachel and I quickly exchanged horrified looks.

“Oh, don’t worry! She’s trained to use it,” Esther said.

We were not entirely reassured. Anyone with a parrot that had learned to say “Stick ‘em up” might be a little trigger-happy. But when Ruby stepped out into the hall, she greeted us warmly, with no sign of any intention of shooting us.

“You ever ridden with Mary in that car of hers?” she asked me as she shook my hand.

“Several times,” I said.

Rachel looked at me questioningly.

“A cherry ‘68 Mustang convertible,” I said, getting nods of agreement from Esther and Ruby.

“I’ve got to meet this woman,” Rachel said.

“Who lives in the other apartment?” I asked, pointing to the one across the hall from Esther’s.

“Oh, that guy. He’s spending a month back east with his grandkids,” Esther said, then added with a note of disapproval, “He’s like your aunt was-he keeps to himself.”

“But I take it you all keep an eye on one another?” I said to Ruby.

“Yes. That’s how we caught the burglars. Esther scared them off- didn’t have to use my little semiautomatic. Only a twenty-two, not much stopping power. But it will do in a pinch. I must say I’m relieved to have you take Briana’s belongings away from this place.”

“Tell us more about these attempted burglaries,” Rachel said. “The first time you saw him, he parked out front, came up to look at the mailboxes, then left?”

“Yes,” Ruby said. “Esther spotted him first, and called me. We watched him while he was watching the place. But he didn’t try to get in that time. Later, we sat down and figured out that it had been just before the accident.” She shook her head. “I feel so terrible about that! Briana kept to herself more than most, so we didn’t always know what she was up to, if you know what I mean. We knew she wasn’t home, but recently she’d taken to leaving for a few days at a time, and we just thought she might have gone visiting some friends or relatives. But then to find out…” Her voice trailed off as she caught Esther’s censorious glare.

“To answer your question,” Esther said, “the man showed up just before Briana died, and watched the place. Then he came by again, after the accident, but before we knew what had become of her. He had a set of lock picks with him.”

“Lock picks?” Rachel said. “Are you sure?”

“Yes,” Ruby said. “Saw them plain as day through the peephole.” She pointed out a small opening in her apartment door.

“I scared him off,” Esther said. “And I got a good look at him, too.”

“Mind describing him for me?” I asked.

“He’s tall,” Esther said, “about six foot, I’d say, and handsome enough, I guess.”

“Hoo!” Ruby exclaimed. “A regular silver fox!”

“Control yourself,” Esther said, but added, “To be fair, he was a somewhat attractive man. I’d put him in his mid-to-late fifties. Broad shoulders. He must have been dark-haired at one time, but mostly gray now. Cut short. And he was clean-shaven.”

“I smelled booze on him,” Ruby added.

“Oh, now, Ruby!”

“I was right down here near him, Esther, and I tell you I smelled booze.” She turned to us. “Do you know him?”

“Now Ruby Hambly, why on earth would they know a drunken burglar?” Esther exclaimed. “Of course they don’t.”

“You said there were two attempts?” I asked.

“Yes,” Esther said. “The second time was just a day or two ago. Didn’t get as good a look that time-slender fellow, trying to break in through a back window.”

“How tall?” Rachel asked.

“That’s hard to say, too. I only saw him at night, and from my upstairs window. Saw someone in dark clothes and a knit cap, which was an odd thing to be wearing on a spring evening. Heard him trying to pry the bars off. Stupid thing to try. I shouted down at him and he ran off. I’d guess him to be younger than the fellow who was at the door, and definitely not as tall.”

“Sure it wasn’t the same man?” I asked.

“That much I’m sure of. Different build.”

Rachel asked a few more questions, but the ladies seemed not to be able to recall much more. There was an argument over the make and color of the drunken burglar’s car. It was American, a sedan, dark green or brown.

“I appreciate your watching over things,” I said. “I’m going to try to get everything moved out this weekend, so with any luck this place won’t seem so attractive to thieves.”

They again expressed condolences, then went back to their apartments.

I unlocked Briana’s apartment door, and Rachel followed me in and shut it behind us.

“I’ll open a couple of windows,” she said.

The room we stepped into was warm and close. I felt a mild sensation of claustrophobia, and if Rachel had not hurried to let some air in, I might have stepped back outside. I glanced back at the door and saw a crucifix above it, dried palm leaves from a Palm Sunday Mass placed behind the cross. I turned my attention back to the job at hand.

I reached over a small, tattered sofa and raised the blind on the picture window, filling the room with sunlight. Looking more closely at the sofa, I saw tufts of shredding on the corners and arms; the type that can only be made by a cat who has decided to use the upholstery as a scratching post. For a moment I worried that some feline had been horribly neglected after Briana’s death, but saw no other signs that a cat had been living in the apartment-no scent of a cat or a litter box, no fur, no food dishes, no cat toys.

This front room was a parlor of sorts, a room that could be closed off from the rest of the apartment by pulling two sliding wooden doors shut. The carpet was a faded floral pattern of large, pale roses on a beige background. On one wall, there was a framed print of the Sacred Heart. On top of a set of built-in bookcases, Briana had made up a small shrine to the Blessed Virgin: a little plaster statuette surrounded by five blue-glass candle holders. A pink-glass rosary lay to one side, on top of a holy card with the prayer “Hail Holy Queen” printed on it. One shelf of the bookcase held a dog-eared, leather-bound Bible and a worn St. Joseph’s Sunday Missal, as well as Butler’s Lives of the Saints. There were no other books, only two solemn ceramic angels, one with its guiding hand on a small boy’s shoulder, the other like it, but guiding a little girl. The lower shelves held a few seashells.

If Briana was this religious a couple of decades ago, when we were closer, I didn’t remember it. Devout Catholics though Briana and my mother had been, that devotion hadn’t overwhelmed the decor of their homes.

Rachel had already moved to the rear of the apartment. I continued to walk through rooms, but more slowly. I moved from the front room into a larger room that contained a small dining table and a set of built-in cupboards. The cupboards contained a few pieces of mismatched crockery. On the table, facing the single chair, was a small, black-and-white TV with a crack in its case; a bent hanger did duty as an antennae. In front of the TV was a plastic placemat-a photograph of a meadow blooming with small yellow flowers. Although it was clean, there was an indentation where hot cups of tea had been placed. I caught myself making this supposition of tea and stood remembering that unlike her sister, Briana had never acquired a taste for coffee; that on Sundays after Mass, Briana would come to the house and my mother-who had shopped at special stores to find the type of tea her sister liked to drink-would bake scones. Tea and scones to make Briana feel welcomed in our home. I ran my fingers across the indentation in the plastic mat and wondered if Briana ever thought of those long-ago Sunday mornings.

I went into the small, bright kitchen at the back of the apartment. I opened cupboards, found a can of peaches, two cans of chicken noodle soup, a tin of Hershey’s cocoa, a box of powdered milk, a box of baking soda, a small box of sugar and half a bag of flour. Nothing more. The refrigerator was empty, but Mary had warned me that the landlord was going to clean it out-it belonged to him, along with the stove. In a drawer next to the stove, I found a box of generic-brand tea bags. I felt my throat tighten.

I shut the drawer and moved through another door, which led to a bathroom. Here there was a sink, toilet and claw-foot tub; a small mirror that was losing its silvering; a pink toothbrush in a water-stained glass; three hairpins near the faucet; cracked linoleum; a set of thin towels neatly folded over a single towel rack. I moved on.

I found Rachel sitting at a small rolltop desk in the bedroom, lost in thought. It didn’t look as if she had been searching the contents of the desk, which surprised me-we’re both curious by nature.

“You doing okay?” she asked as I walked in.

“Yes. Sorry to take so long-I guess I’ve been looking for-well, it’s hard to explain.”

“Something to tell you who she was?”

“Yes.”

“This is the room you’ve been looking for.”

As I glanced around the bedroom, I saw that she was right. There were a number of photographs on display on top of a plain wooden dresser. The small bookcase in the room was not filled with religious books but with two types of paperbacks: westerns and Georgette Heyer romances. Near the end of the neatly made twin bed was a rocking chair; a basket of knitting-blue and gray yarn to make an afghan, it seemed-lay on the seat.

There were a crucifix and a rosary on a nightstand next to the bed, and above it, a print known to any Catholic school child. An angel with flowing blond tresses and a white star above her head hovers serenely behind two barefoot children, a little boy in a straw hat and his sister, who carries a basket over one arm and comforts her brother with the other. Dark woods rise in the background as the children cross a dilapidated bridge over a treacherous river, but we fear not-their guardian angel will see them to safety.

The nightstand also held a plastic statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary that was about ten inches high, the type that has a little night-light bulb in the base and glows from within when plugged in, although this one wasn’t. But even with these items, the bedroom had less the feel of a religious articles store display than the front room.

“Is this you?” Rachel asked, holding out a small, framed snapshot.

I took a look. “Yes, with Barbara. Judging from the missing front teeth, I was probably about seven, so Barbara was about twelve.”

Barbara and I were a study in contrasts-she, a redhead with green eyes, was looking at the camera with a bored, half-pouting regard: how awful to be asked to pose with her little sister. I, with dark hair and blue eyes, looking more like the Kellys-my father’s side of the family. In the photo I was grinning up at the lens with my goofy gap-toothed smile, oblivious to Barbara’s sullenness.

I began studying the other photographs. One was of a thin, gray-haired woman with a cane, standing next to a priest, in front of a church. I saw the family resemblance and thought perhaps this was a photograph of my grandmother, in Kansas, until I noticed a palm tree in the background. A closer look made me realize-with a shock-that this must be Briana herself. In that instant it was brought home to me that she had not stopped aging when my mother died; that while my mother would forever be fixed in my mind as a woman in her early forties, Briana had gone on, had become a woman in her sixties. She was my mother’s younger sister by a number of years, but I could not remember exactly how many, and now, looking at the photo, I wondered what my mother might have looked like at a similar age, had she lived.

Even taking a high estimate of Briana’s age, she could not have been past her early sixties. The years, I was sad to see, had not been kind.

Another photo showed her when she was younger, looking much as I remembered her-probably in her late thirties or early forties-holding a toddler. Travis, most likely. There were several photos of Travis at various ages, sometimes with other adults and children, other times alone. None showed Travis with his father, Arthur. There were no photos of Arthur.

I looked for the most recent of Travis, which seemed to be a senior yearbook portrait. I picked this one up and studied it, trying to be objective. With dark hair and light-green eyes, Travis resembled Arthur to a great degree-but some of the Maguire looks were also in his features. Perhaps he had not grown up to be quite as handsome as his father, but he wasn’t hard to look at.

“Your cousin?” Rachel asked.

“Yes. This must be from high school. He’s in his mid-twenties now.”

“He looks like his dad?”

“For the most part. You’re wondering if Arthur was the man who was trying to pick the locks on the front door?”

“Yes. Do you think it could have been him?”

“It’s possible. Allowing for a few changes since I last saw him, he’d probably fit the description-but so could any number of other men.

The age would be about right. If it was Arthur, why wouldn’t he just knock on the door?“

“He could have been looking for something she didn’t want to give him.”

“What? A copy of Butler’s Lives of the Saints? A pink rosary? An old tin of cocoa?”

“We haven’t looked through this desk yet. Maybe he wanted something that had to do with the murder of his first wife-”

“Only wife, as far as I know. And that was more than a dozen years ago,” I said.

“Was he ever tried?”

“No. Never even charged.”

“Look at it another way,” she said. “If he had been tried and acquitted, he’d be protected.”

“Because of double jeopardy-he couldn’t be tried twice for the same crime.”

“Right. So he’d feel safe. But as it is, he’s still vulnerable. No statute of limitation on murder.”

“So if she blew his alibi apart… but this is nonsense,” I said. “She wasn’t the only one who alibied him. They were at the emergency room that night with Travis.”

She crossed her arms and tapped a toe. “You know the details of the murder case?”

“Not really. I wasn’t living around here then. I was working up in Bakersfield.”

“But… well, that’s your business,” she said, throwing her hands up in exasperation. “And what’s done is done.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I mean, you ignored your aunt for more than twenty years, and there’s not exactly any way to make up for that now, is there?”

I didn’t answer.

“Sorry,” she said.

I studied the photo of Briana and Travis, the one taken when he was a toddler. Like my mother, Briana was a redhead. Her eyes were blue, her smile shy. “She was timid,” I said. “Quiet and unassuming, for the most part. I’ll admit she could have changed over the years, but it’s hard for me to imagine her blackmailing Arthur.”

She shrugged. “Who knows?”

“So you think he came around here and tried to shut her up?”

“Right,” she said. “A possibility, anyway.”

“Maybe you’re right. Maybe she had some kind of proof that he did it, alibi or no alibi. Otherwise, what the hell would anybody try to steal from her? I mean, even the most rabid Georgette Heyer fan wouldn’t go to the trouble of prying off the bars on the back windows to steal these paperbacks.”

“Georgette Heyer?”

“The author of these genteel Regency romances,” I said, pointing to the books. “Not the sort of reading that leads to a life of crime.”

“No, I guess not.”

“It wasn’t a random break-in, though. He was looking for her place specifically-Esther said he had been watching the apartment, checking mailboxes.”

“Bene. We agree.”

“Tell you what. Let’s take a quick look through whatever papers McCain left in the desk and then pack up here. If we have time, maybe we can find the little market she was walking to, try to locate the place where the accident happened. It’s supposed to be close to here.”

“Sounds good. Monday morning, I’ll see if I can learn anything more from McCain.”

“You don’t need to get involved-”

“You think you can keep me out of this? Besides, your aunt Mary was right. You’re going to need to find your cousin-and fast. If the alibi can be broken, he’s probably next on his dear old dad’s hit list.”

Just as she said this, we heard an urgent knocking on the front door.

I opened it to see Ruby looking flushed and excited. “He’s here!” she shouted.