“Was he purebred?”
“No and she’d had him neutered early on, so he wasn’t used for breeding purposes or anything like that.”
“Well,” I said, “I may as well start checking up on him too, since I don’t have anything else at this point. Did you talk to the police yesterday?”
“Oh yes, and told ‘em we thought the woman might have stolen Elaine’s bills when she broke in. The officer looked at me like he thought I was nuts, but he did write it down.”
“I’ll tell you something else Wim brought up. He swears Elaine’s sister Beverly was up here at Christmastime and got into a big fight with her. Were you aware of that?”
“No I wasn’t, and Elaine never mentioned anything about it either,” she said, shifting restlessly. “I’ve got to go in, Kinsey. I’ve got some sherbet that’ll leak right out if I don’t pop it in the freezer soon.”
“All fight. I’ll get back to you later if I need anything else,” I said. “Thanks, Tillie.”
Tillie went on through the lobby, lugging her grocery cart and I went back to my car and unlocked it. I glanced over at the Grices’ house as usual, my attention drawn almost irresistibly to that half-charred ruin where the murder had taken place. On impulse, I locked my car again and trotted up to the Snyders’ front door. He must have spotted me through the window because the door opened just as I raised my hand to knock. He stepped out on the porch.
I saw you coming up the walk. You’re the one was here yesterday,” he said. “I don’t remember your name.”
“Kinsey Millhone. I talked to Mr. Grice out at his sister’s house yesterday. He said you had a key to his place and would let me in so I could take a look around.”
“Yes, that’s right. I got it here somewhere.” Mr. Snyder seemed to frisk himself and then fished a key ring out of his pocket. He sorted through the keys.
“This’s it,” he said. He wrestled the key off the ring and handed it to me. “That’s to the back door. Front’s all boarded up as you can see. For a time there, they had the whole place cordovaned off ‘til them fellas from the crime-scene unit could go over everything.”
From the rear, I heard, “What is it, Orris? Who’s that you’re talking to?”
“Hold your horses! Y’old coot. I got to go,” he said, his jowls atremble.
“I’ll bring this back when I’m done,” I said, but he was already lumbering off toward the back of the house in a snit. I thought she could hear remarkably well for someone he claimed was as deaf as a loaf of bread.
I cut across the Snyders’ yard, the ivy rustling under my feet. The Grices’ front lawn was dead from neglect and the sidewalk was littered with debris. It didn’t look as if it had been cleaned up since the fire trucks departed, and I was crossing my fingers that the salvage crew had never gone in to clear the place out. I went around the side, passing the padlocked double doors that were slanted up against the house and led down into the basement. At the rear of the house, I climbed five crumbling steps onto a small back porch. The back door had a big glass window in the upper half and I could see into the kitchen through ruffled curtains that were dingy now and hung crookedly.
I unlocked the door and let myself in. For once, I was in luck. The floor was covered with rubble, but the furniture was still in place; kitchen table filthy, chairs knocked askew. I left the door open behind me and surveyed the room. There were dishes on the counter, shelves of canned goods visible through an open pantry door. I was feeling a faint thrill of uneasiness as I always do in situations like these.
The house smelled richly of scorched wood and there was a heavy layer of soot on everything. The kitchen walls were gray with smoke and my shoes made a gritty sound as I moved through the hallway, crushing broken glass to a sugary consistency underfoot. As nearly as I could tell, the interior of the Grices’ house was laid out like the Snyders’ house next door and I could identify what I guessed was the dining room just off the kitchen, with a blackened swinging door between. This must be the counterpart to the room in the Snyders’ house that Orris had now outfitted as a bedroom for his wife. There was a half-bath across the hall, just the toilet and sink. The old linoleum had blistered and buckled, showing blackened floorboards beneath. The window in the hallway was broken now, but it looked out onto a narrow walkway between the two houses and right into May Snyder’s converted bedroom. I could see her clearly, lying on a hospital bed that had been cranked up to a forty-five-degree angle. She seemed to be asleep, looking small and shrunken under a white counterpane. I moved away from the window and down the hall toward the living room.
The fire had leached the color out of everything and it looked now like a black-and-white photograph.- The char patterns-like dark stretches of alligator hide-covered doorframes and window sashes. The destruction became more pronounced as I moved toward the front of the house. As I passed the stairs leading to the half-story up above, I could see where the flames had chewed the treads and part of the wooden banister. The wallpaper in the stairwell was as tattered and inky as an old treasure map.
I moved on, trying to get my bearings. There was an ominous patch of missing floorboards near the front door where I imagined Marty Grice’s body had been found. Flames had eaten up the walls, leaving pipes and blackened beams exposed. Across the floor here, and extending back down the hall and up the stairs, there were irregular burned trails where an accelerant of some kind had been splashed. I bypassed the gaping hole in the floor and peered into the living room, which looked as if it had been outfitted with avant-garde “works of furniture” made entirely of charcoal briquettes. Two chairs and a couch were still arranged in a conversational grouping, but the fire had gnawed the upholstery right down to the bare springs. All that remained of the coffee table was a burned frame.
I went back to the stairs and crept up with care. The fire had taken the bedroom in whimsical bites, leaving a stack of paperback books untouched while the footstool nearby had been almost completely consumed. The bed was still made, but the room had been drenched by the fire hoses and smelled now of rotting carpet fiber and soggy wallpaper, mildewed blankets, singed clothing, and clumps of insulation that had boiled out through the fire-bared lath and plaster here and there. On the bed table, there was a framed photograph of Leonard with an appointment card for a teeth cleaning and exam tucked in the edge of the glass.
I moved the card aside, peering closely at Leonard’s face. I thought about the snapshot I’d seen of Marty. Such a dumpy little thing: overweight, plastic eyeglass frames, a hairdo that looked like a wig. Leonard was much more attractive and in happier times presented a trim appearance, a rather distinguished face, graying hair, a steady gaze. His shoulders were rounded, possibly because of his back problems, but it gave the impression of something weak or apologetic in his nature. I wondered if Elaine Boldt had found him appealing. Could she have come between these two?
I put the picture back and picked my way down the stairs. As I moved along the hall toward the kitchen, I noticed a door ajar and I pushed it open gingerly. Before me yawned the basement, looking like a vast, black pit. Shit. In the interest of being thorough, I knew I’d have to check it out. I made a face to myself and went out to my car to get the flashlight out of the glove compartment.
Chapter 13
The basement stairs were intact. The fire had apparently been contained before it reached this far. The damage to the rooms above seemed to be the result of some accelerant that had ensured at least a superficial combustion throughout the house. The beam from my flashlight cut through the dark, illuminating a narrow, moving path filled with things I didn’t want to touch. I reached the bottom of the stairs. There wasn’t a lot of headroom. The house was more than forty years old and the foundation was dank and spider-pocked. The air felt dense, like the atmosphere in a greenhouse, except that everything down here was dead, exuding that fenny perfume of old fire and old damp, abandonment and rot.