For a moment, I harbored the fleeting hope that Leonard Grice might still be implicated. After all, as nearly as I could tell, the police had only Lily’s word for the fact that he was still at her place at that time. I was speculating that he might have come home early, killed Marty, started the fire, and then parked around the block until the appropriate moment to arrive. If he and his sister were in cahoots, they could both simply maintain afterward that he’d been with her. I was out of luck on that one. Three interviews down, there was a short paragraph detailing a conversation that Dolan had had with some of Lily’s neighbors who’d stopped by unexpectedly at nine P.M. to drop off a birthday present. The husband and wife both reported independently that Leonard was there and hadn’t left for home until approximately ten. The time was noted because they’d been trying to persuade him to stay for a television program that came on at ten. It turned out to be a rerun and since he was anxious to get home to his wife anyway, he’d left.
Well, shit, I thought.
Now, why was this making me feel so cross? Ah, well, because I wanted Leonard Grice to be guilty of something. Murder, conspiracy to murder, accessory to murder. I was fond of the idea for tidiness’ sake-for statistical purposes, if nothing else. California has over three thousand homicide victims annually, and of those, fully two-thirds are slain by friends, acquaintances, or relatives, which makes you wonder if you might be better off as a friendless orphan in this state. The point is, when a murder goes down, the chances are good that someone near and dear has had a hand in it.
I thought about that, reluctant to give it up. Could Grice have hired someone to kill his wife? It was always possible, of course, but it was hard to see what he might have gained. The police, not being ignorant buffoons, had pursued the line as well, but had come up with nothing. No moneys unaccounted for, no meetings with unsavory characters, no apparent motive, no visible benefit.
Which brought me back to Elaine Boldt. Could she have been involved in Marty Grice’s death? Most of what I’d learned about her cried out a big resounding “no.” There really wasn’t a hint that she’d been attached to Leonard romantically or any other way, except as an occasional bridge partner. I didn’t think Marty Grice had been killed for messing up a small slam, but with bridge partners one can never tell. Wim Hoover had mentioned that Elaine and Beverly had quarreled about a man at Christmastime, but it was hard to picture the two of them in an arm wrestle over Leonard Grice. I kept coming back to the same suspicion-that Elaine knew something or had seen something related to Marty’s murder and had left town to avoid the scrutiny of the Santa Teresa police.
I turned my attention to the photographs, neatly disconnecting
my brain. I needed to know how things had looked and I couldn’t afford to react emotionally. Violent death is repellent. My first impulse, always, is to turn abruptly away, to shield my soul from the sight, but this was the only tangible record of that event and I had to see for myself. I turned a cold eye to the first black-and-white photograph. The color pictures would be worse and I thought I’d start with the “easy” ones.
Jonah cleared his throat. I looked up.
“I’m going to have to turn in,” he said. “I’m beat.”
“You are?” I glanced at my watch, startled. It was 10:45. I’d been sitting there for more than two hours without moving. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I had no idea I’d been here that long.”
“That’s okay. I got up at five this morning to work out and I need some shut-eye. You can take that stuff if you like. Of course, if Dolan ever catches you with it, I’ll deny everything and throw you to the wolves, but aside from that, I hope it helps.”
“Thanks. It’s already helped.” I shoved the photographs and reports into a big manila envelope and tucked that, in turn, in my handbag. I drove home, disturbed. Even now, there was an image of Marty’s body graven behind my eyes: features blurred by charring, mouth open, lying in a circle of ash like a pile of gray confetti. The heat had caused the tendons in her arms to retract, pulling her fists up into a pugilistic pose. It was her last fight and she had lost, but I didn’t think it was over yet.
I willed the image away, running back over what I’d learned to that point. One little detail still bothered me. Was it possible that May Snyder had been accurate when she talked about the bang-bang-bang of hammering that night? If so, what in the world could it have been?
I was almost home again when I remembered the shed in the Grices’ backyard. I slammed the brakes on and hung a hard left, heading across town.
Via Madrina was dark, heavily overhung by Italian stone pines. There wasn’t much traffic at that hour. The night sky was hazy and though the moon was full, the light that filtered down was partially blocked by the condominium next door. parked and got a little penlight out of the glove compartment. I pulled on a pair of rubber gloves and locked my car, heading up the Grices’ front walk. I cut around the side of the house, my tennis shoes making no sound at all on the concrete.
In my jacket pocket I fingered the key pick, shaped like a flattened metal mandolin. I had a set of five picks with me on a key ring and a second more elaborate set at home in a nice leather case. They’d been given to me by a nonresidential burglar who was currently serving ten months in the county jail. Last time he’d been caught, he’d hired me to keep an eye on his wife, whom he believed was misbehaving with the guy next door. Actually, she hadn’t been doing anything and he was so grateful for the good news that he gave me the key picks and taught me how to use them. He’d paid me some cash too, but then it turned out he’d stolen it and he had to ask for it back when the judge ordered him to make restitution.
It was chilly and there was a frisky little breeze making breathy sounds in the pine boughs. The house behind the Grices’ had canvas awnings that were snapping like sails, and the hollow sigh of dry grass gave the whole enterprise an eerie ambiance of its own. I was feeling jumpy anyway because I’d just been looking at pictures of a charbroiled corpse, and here I was, about to do a little breaking-and-entering number that could land me in jail and cause my license to be snatched away. If the next-door neighbors set up a howl and the cops arrived on the scene, what was I going to say? Why was I doing it anyway? Ah, because I wanted to know what was in this wee metal house and I couldn’t figure out how else to get in.
I fixed a tiny beam of light on the bottom of the padlock. In the diagram my burglar friend had drawn of a lock like this, there is a flat, hairpin spring that latches into notches in the shackle. Usually only the tip of the key actuates the spring, so it was a question of figuring out which of my picks would spread the latch apart, releasing the mechanism. In truth, I could have tried a paper clip with a small L bent on one end but that was the shape of the first pick I used and the padlock wouldn’t budge. I tried the next pick which had an H shape in the point. Nope. I tried the third, working it carefully. The lock popped open in my hand. I checked my watch. A minute and a half. I get a bit vain about these things.
The shed door made a wrenching sound when I opened it and I stood for a moment, heart thudding in my throat. I heard a motorcycle putter past in the street but I didn’t pay much attention to it because I had just understood Mike’s custodial relationship to his uncle’s property. In the shed, along with the stack of clay pots, the hand-push lawn mover, and a weed whacker were six shelves crammed with illegal drugs: Mason jars full of reds and dexies, yellow jackets, rainbows and sopers… along with some fat plastic packets of grass and hashish. Well, this was all just too yummy for words. I didn’t think Leonard Grice was the druggist, but I was willing to bet money his nephew had invested heavily in this little portable Rexall. I was so enamored of my discovery that I didn’t know he was behind me until he let out an astonished “hey!”