I got handed down from my grandmother-silver and garnet. The stone was
chipped but it had sentimental value. I left it out on the dresser and
the next day it was gone.”
“Did you ask her about it?” I said.
“I didn’t come out and accuse her, but I did ask her if she’d seen
it.
Or the earrings. She said no, real casual. But we knew it had to be
her. Who else could it have been? She’s the only other person ever
stepped in here, and things never disappeared until she came.”
“It must have been an emotional problem,” said Ben. “Kleptomania, or
something like that. She couldn’t have gotten any serious money for
any of it. Not that she needed dough. She had plenty of clothes and a
brand-new car.”
“What kind of car?”
“One of those little convertibles-a Mazda, I think. She got it after
Christmas, didn’t have it when she first started living with us or we
might have asked for a little more rent, actually. All we charged her
was a hundred a month. We thought she was a starving student.”
Bobby said, “She definitely had a head problem. I found all the junk
she stole out in the garage, buried under the floorboards, in a box,
along with a picture of her-like she was trying to stake claim to it,
put away a little squirrel’s nest or something. To tell the truth, she
was greedy, too-I know that’s not charitable but it’s the truth. It
wasn t until later that I put two and two together.”
“Greedy in what way?”
“Grabbing the best for herself. Like if there’d be a half-gallon of
fudge ripple in the freezer, you’d come back and find all the fudge dug
out and just the vanilla left. Or with a bowl of cherries, all the
dark ones would be picked out.”
“Did she pay her rent on time?”
“More or less. Sometimes she was a week or two late. We never said
anything, and she always paid, eventually.”
Ben said, “But it was turning into a tense scene.”
“We were getting to the point where we would have asked her to leave,”
said Bobby. “Talked about how to do it for a couple of weeks.
Then we got the gig in Sonoma and got all tied up, practicing. Then we
came home and.
“Where was she murdered?”
“Somewhere downtown. A club.”
A nightclub?”
Both of them nodded. Bobby said, “From what I gather it was one of
those New Wave places. What was the name of it, Ben?
Something Indian, right?”
“Mayan,” he said. “The Moody Mayan. Or something like that.” Thin
smile. “The cop asked us if we’d been there. Right.”
“Was Dawn a New Waver?”
“Not at first,” said Bobby. “I mean, when we met her she was pretty
straight-looking. Almost too straight-kind of prim, actually. We
thought she might think we were too loose. Then gradually she punked
up. One thing she was, was smart, I’ll tell you that.
Always reading textbooks. Studying for a Ph.D. Biomathematics or
something like that. But at night she used to change she’d dress up to
go out. That’s what Ben meant by her having the clothes-punk stuff,
lots of black. She used to smear on that temporary hair dye that
washes right out. And all this Addams Family makeup-sometimes she’d
mousse up her hair and spike it. Like a costume. The next morning
she’d be straight again, going to work. You wouldn’t have recognized
her.”
“Did she actually get killed at this club?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “We really weren’t listening to the details,
just wanted the cops to get her stuff out of here, get the whole thing
out of our systems.”
“Do you remember the detective’s name?”
“Gomez,” they said in unison.
“Ray Gomez,” said Bobby. “He was a Los Lobos fan and he liked
doo-wop.
Not a bad guy.”
Ben nodded. Their knees were pressed up against each other, white from
pressure.
“What a thing to happen,” she said. “Is this child going to suffer
because Dawn stole the chart?”
“That’s what she told us when she applied. Biomathematics, or
something.”
“Did she ever mention her professor’s name?”