At Ludlow Beach, I followed the hill upward and then branched off onto the steep side street where Marcia Threadgill lived. I parked and got out my binoculars, scanning her patio. All of her plants were present and accounted for and they were all looking healthier than I liked. There was no sign of Marcia or the neighbor she feuded with. I wished she would move so I could take pictures of her lugging fifty-pound cartons of books down to a U-Haul van. I’d even settle for a glimpse of her coming back from the grocery store with a big double bag of canned goods ripping across the bottom from the weight. I focused in on her patio again and noticed for the first time that there were actually four plant hooks screwed into the wooden overhang of the patio above. On the hook at the near comer was the mammoth plant I’d seen before, but the other three hooks were empty.
I put the binoculars away and went into the building, pausing at the landing between the second and third floors. I peered down through the stair railing. If I situated myself correctly, I’d be able to focus my camera at just the right angle to pick up a nice view of Marcia’s front door. Having ascertained that much, I went out to my car again and drove to the Gateway supermarket. I hefted a few houseplants potted in plastic and found one that was just right for my purposes: twenty-five pounds of sturdy trunk with a series of vicious swordlike leaves protruding at intervals. I picked up some prettied gift ribbons in a fire-engine red and a get-well card with a sentimental verse. All of this was taking up precious time that I would have preferred devoting to Nikki Fife’s business, but I have my rent to account for and I felt like I owed California Fidelity for at least half a month.
I went back to Marcia’s apartment and parked in front. I checked my camera, tore open the packaged ribbons, and stuck several of them to the plastic pot in a jaunty fashion and then tucked the card down inside with a signature scrawled on it that even I couldn’t read. I hoisted plant, camera, and myself with a slightly thudding heart up the steep concrete stairs, into the building, and up to the second floor. I set the plant down near Marcia’s doorsill and then went up to the landing, where I checked my light meter, set up the camera, and adjusted the focus on the lens. Nice angle, I thought. This was going to be a work of art. I trotted back down, took a deep breath and rang Ms. Threadgill’s bell, racing back up the stairs again at breakneck speed. I picked up the camera and checked the focus again. My timing was perfect.
Marcia Threadgill opened her front door and stared down with surprise and puzzlement. She was wearing shorts and a crocheted halter and in the background the voice of Olivia Newton-John boomed out like an audible lollipop. I hesitated a moment and then peered over the rail. Marcia was leaning over to extract the card. She read it, turned it over, and then studied its face again, shrugging with bewilderment. She glanced down the stairwell as though she might catch sight of the delivery person. I began to click off pictures, the whir of the thirty-five millimeter camera obscured by the record being played too loudly. Marcia padded back to her doorsill and bent casually from the waist, picking up twenty-five pounds of plant without even bothering to bend her knees as we’ve all been instructed to in the exercise manuals. As soon as she’d trucked the plant inside, I raced back down the stairs and out to the street, focusing again from the sidewalk below just as she appeared on the patio and placed the plant up on the rail. She disappeared. I backed up several yards, attaching the telephoto lens, waiting then with my breath held.
Back she came with what must have been a kitchen chair. I clicked off some nice shots of her climbing up. Sure enough, she picked up the plant by the wire, heaving it up to shoulder height, muscles straining until she caught the wire loop on the overhead hook. The effort was such that her halter hiked up and I got a nice shot of Marcia Threadgill’s quite large bosom peeping out, I turned away just in time, I suspect, catching only the inkling of her quick look around to see if anyone else had spotted her exposure. When I glanced back casually she was gone.
I dropped the film off to be developed, making sure it was properly dated and identified. Still photographs were not going to be much good to us, especially without a witness to corroborate my testimony as to the date, time, and circumstance, but the pictures might at least persuade the claims manager at California Fidelity to pursue the case, which was the best I could hope for at this point. With his authorization, I could go back with a video outfit and a real photographer and pick up some footage that would stand up in court.
I should have known he wouldn’t see it that way. Andy Motycka is in his early forties and he still bites his nails. He was working on his right hand that day, trying to gnaw off what remained of his thumb. It made me nervous just to look at him. I kept expecting him to rip loose a big triangle of flesh at the comer of his cuticle. I could feel my face set with distaste and I had to stare just over his shoulder to the left. Before I was even halfway through my explanation, he was shaking his head.
“Can’t do it,” he said bluntly. “This chick doesn’t even have an attorney. We’re supposed to get a signed release from the doctor next week. No deal. I don’t want to mess this one up. Fortyeight hundred dollars is chicken feed. It’d cost us ten grand to go into court. You know that.”
“Well, I know, but-”
“But nothing. The risk is too great. I don’t even know why Mac had you check this one out. Look, I know it frosts your ass, but so what? You set her off and she’ll go straight out and hire a lawyer and next thing you know, she’ll sue us for a million bucks. Forget it.”
“She’ll just do it again somewhere else,” I said.
Andy shrugged.
“Why do I waste my time on this shit,” I said, voice rising with frustration.
“Beats me,” he said conversationally. “Let me see the pix, though, when you get ‘em back. Her tits are huge.”
“Screw you,” I said and moved on into my office.
CHAPTER 21
There were two messages on my answering service. The first was from Garry Steinberg. I called him back.
“Hey, Kinsey,” he said when I’d been put through.
“Hi, Garry. How are you?”
“Not bad. I’ve got a little piece of information for you,” he said. I could tell from his tone that he was feeling satisfied with himself, but what he said next still took me by surprise.
“I looked up that job application on Lyle Abernathy this morning. Apparently he worked for a while as an apprentice to a locksmith. Some old guy named Fears.
“A locksmith?”
“That’s right. I called the guy this morning. You’d have loved it. I said Abernathy had applied for a job as a security guard and I was doing a background check. Fears hemmed and hawed some and finally said he’d had to fire the kid. Fears was getting a lot of complaints about missing cash on jobs where Lyle had worked and he began to suspect he was involved in petty thievery. He never could prove it, but he couldn’t afford to take the chance, so he let Lyle go.”
“Oh God, that’s great,” I said. “That means Lyle could have gotten into the Fifes’ house anytime he wanted to. Libby’s too.”
“It looks that way. He worked for Fears for eight months and he sure picked up enough information to give it a try, judging from what Fears said. Unless they had burglar alarms or something like that.”
“Listen, the only security system they had in effect was a big German shepherd that got hit by a car six weeks before Laurence Fife died. He and his wife and kids were away when the dog was killed.”
“Nice,” Garry said. “Nothing you could prove after all this time, but it might put you on the right track at any rate. What about the application? You want a copy?”
“I’d love it. What about Fife’s accounts?”
“I’ve got those at my place and I’ll look at ‘em when I can. It’s a lot of stuff. In the meantime, I just thought you might want to know about that locksmith stint.”