V is for Vengeance

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 reach-in pantry 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.

I said, “I appreciate your being so nice about this.”

“I don’t want to protect the woman if what she did was against the law. I’ll admit I was a bit uneasy, which is why I kept an eye on her. I couldn’t put my finger on what was wrong, and when it came right down to it, I didn’t have anything concrete to report.”

“Understood. You can’t call the police because someone’s drawing the blinds,” I said. “When your husband comes home, would you ask if he has anything to add?”

“I’ll ask, but he won’t be much help. I was the one who dealt with Audrey. She was a nice woman, by the way. I thought her schedule was odd, but aside from that, I had no quarrel with her.”

“My client’s in the same boat,” I said. “If you think of anything else, would you give me a call? My office number’s on my card and my home phone’s on the back.”

“Of course. I hope you’ll let me know what you learn.”

“I’ll do that, and thanks for your help.”

I returned to my car and fired up the engine. I pulled out of the cul-de-sac and turned right on Edna Road. I kept an eye on the rearview mirror, and once I was out of sight of the house, I pulled onto to the berm and took the pack of index cards from my shoulder bag. I wrote down what I’d learned, which didn’t amount to much. Audrey Vance was a cipher and as such, she was getting on my nerves. When I finished making notes, I put the car in gear and returned to the 101, arriving in Santa Teresa at 1:05. While the trip felt like a waste of time, I didn’t write it off altogether. Sometimes coming up with nothing is a form of information in itself.

I stopped by Marvin’s on my way through town, hoping he’d be home. He answered my knock with a paper napkin tucked under his chin. He removed the napkin and crumpled it in one hand. “This is a nice surprise. I didn’t expect to see you so soon.”

“I’m interrupting your lunch.”

“Not at all. Come on in.”

“I wondered if you’d had a chance to scare up the old phone bills.”

“I pulled the file. Have you had lunch?”

“I’ll grab something on my way back to the office.”

“You should have a bite to eat. I made a big pot of soup. Chicken noodle with lots of fresh vegetables thrown in. I vary the soup from week to week depending on what looks good at the farmer’s market. We can talk in the kitchen.”

“A man of talent,” I remarked.

“I’d reserve judgment if I were you.”

I waited while he closed the front door, then followed him into the kitchen with its bright yellow breakfast nook. He turned the gas up under the six-quart stockpot and took a bowl from the cabinet. “Have a seat. You want something to drink?”

“Tap water’s fine.”

“I’ll take care of it. You sit and relax.”

He put ice in a glass and filled it at the kitchen sink. He took out a paper napkin and a soup spoon, then ladled soup into a bowl, which he carried gingerly from the stove with a shy smile. He seemed happy to have company. In the center of the table he’d put a jumble of wildflowers in a jar, and I had the sudden sense of what a nurturing man he was. I felt badly about Audrey’s deceit. He deserved better.

The soup was rich and dense. “This is wonderful,” I said.

“Thanks. It’s a specialty of mine, just about the only one I have.”

“Well, it’s a good one,” I said. “Do you bake?”

“Biscuits, but that’s it.”

“I’ll have to introduce you to my landlord, Henry. He’s William’s younger brother. I suspect the two of you would have lots to talk about.”

When I’d eaten, Marvin insisted that I sit while he washed the dishes and set them in the rack.

I filled him in on my visit to Audrey’s house in San Luis. “You could have made the trip yourself,” I said. “I know you were worried about the impact, but there were no surprises. The place was bare.”

“Was it nice?”

“Nice? No, it was a dump. Small wonder Audrey liked living with you.”

“What about an address book? Any sign of it?”

“There was nothing personal at all.”

“That seems odd,” he said. “Hang on a minute and I’ll go get the phone bills.”

He left the kitchen and returned moments later with a file folder that he placed on the table in front of me. “I hope you don’t mind but I went over them myself. This past month, she made two calls to Los Angeles; three to Corpus Christi, Texas; and one to Miami, Florida. Same thing in January and February. If there were other calls, they must have been in the 805 area code.”

“Too bad.” I ran an eye down the list of numbers. Marvin had put a checkmark beside calls he ascribed to her. “Have you tried calling these?” I asked.

“I thought I’d leave it to you. I’m not that good at thinking on my feet. I get rattled and no telling what I’d blurt out. You want to use my phone?”

“Sure. As long as I’m here.”

“Have at it,” he said, indicating the wall-mounted phone.

I stood and reached for the handset, tucking it between my shoulder and my ear. I held the phone bill with my thumb close to the first mark he’d made. I punched in the number in the 213 area code. After three rings, I was treated to an ear-splitting screech, followed by a mechanical voice telling me the number was a disconnect: “If you feel you have received this recording in error, please hang up, check the number, and dial again.”

“Disconnect,” I said.

I tried the number again with the same result. The second Los Angeles number was also no longer in service. I dutifully tried a second time to be sure I was dialing correctly. Same dead end. “This is informative,” I said. I zeroed in on the Miami call and punched in those numbers. When the screeching began again, I held out the handset so Marvin could hear. The number in Corpus Christi rang twenty-two times by my count but no one answered. I hung up and sat down again, putting my chin in my hand.

“So now what?” he asked.

“I’m not sure. Let me think about it for a minute.”

He shrugged. “The way I see it, we’ve got nothing.”

“Shhh!”

“Sorry.”

Marvin returned to his seat. He was on the verge of saying something else, but I held up a hand like an auditory traffic cop. In my mind, I was running through index cards in rapid succession. We still had no address book and no appointment calendar. The numbers she’d called in the past few months were useless at this point. If I’d had access to Polk directories for Corpus Christi or Miami, I might have been able to backtrack from the phone numbers to the relevant street addresses. Checking those addresses, even if I had them, would have meant making the trip myself or hiring private investigators in Texas and Florida to cover the job for me. Both options were expensive and might not have netted us anything. If the phones had been shut down, the target locations had probably been shut down as well.

This is what I knew: Audrey had reason to spend the night in San Luis Obispo on an average of twice a month. During her stays, she made use of a house in an isolated area where, with the exception of her neighbor, her privacy was guaranteed. What she did in that house entailed the use of a table big enough to seat ten, a pantry full of oversize canned goods, and skillets and saucepans sufficient to feed any number of visitors. Vivian Hewitt said she’d seen a van and a white panel truck pull into Audrey’s drive from time to time, but she’d never seen anyone going into Audrey’s house. This suggested that her visitors came and went by way of the back door, which wasn’t visible from her neighbor’s vantage point. Vivian had also told me that on nights when the lights were on late, Audrey made a point of closing her venetian blinds.

I’d thought at first Audrey was the one busy covering her tracks. The problem was she’d been dead since Sunday, and I didn’t see how she could have done such a thorough job in the brief period between her arrest and her going off the bridge. This was Thursday and the house in San Luis had been stripped of personal items and all of the surfaces wiped down. When had she found the time? Vivian Hewitt claimed someone had been there Sunday or Monday night. Clearly, it wasn’t Audrey.

I looked down at the phone bill. Of four phone numbers she’d called, three had been disconnected. Someone was sweeping up in the wake of her death, shutting down all the links, eradicating evidence. The only thing I’d spied with my little eye were the two snippets of clear plastic. I met Marvin’s gaze.

He said, “What?”

“I did find these.” I held up a finger, alerting him to my find while I slid a hand into my pocket and pulled out the two clear plastic stems. “What do these look like to you?”

“The little doodads they use to secure price tags to clothes in department stores.”

“Right. You know what I think was going on? Twice a month Audrey met with her crew and they sat around the table clipping tags out of all the garments they’d stolen. I don’t know what happened to the goods afterward or what happened to the crew, but once she died, someone got busy dismantling the operation.”

“So now what?”

“I think I started in the wrong place. There’s no point investigating Audrey. She’s gone. It’s the younger woman we need. I’m still mad at myself for not catching her license plate.”

“Yeah, too bad you don’t have a time machine. You could whiz back to the parking garage and take another look.”

I felt a small mental jolt. My mouth didn’t actually drop open, but that was the sensation I experienced. “Oh, wow. Thanks for saying that. I just came up with an idea.”