I paused in the foyer and looked down at Wim. He was lying facedown, one hand tucked under his cheek as though he meant to nap. His flesh was swollen, the skin darkening, the bullet hole as tidy as the eyelet for a shoelace. The gun was probably a .22-not a lethal weapon as a rule, but let a slug ricochet around inside a human skull and it could turn brains into scrambled eggs in no time flat. Poor Wim. I wondered why she’d killed him. There wasn’t any doubt in my mind it was Pat. Had she killed Marty Grice as well? The autopsy hadn’t shown any gunshot wounds, only the repeated blows of an unidentified blunt instrument. What was the weapon, and where?
I went down on the elevator and left the building without talking to Tillie again. I unlocked my car and got in, suddenly aware of the crackle of paper in my jeans pocket. I pulled out the bunch of bills Tillie had given me and let out an involuntary “ooohh.” It had just dawned on me what Pat Usher might have been looking for upstairs. Elaine’s passport. I had come across it myself the second time I searched the place and I’d stuck it in the back pocket of my jeans. I couldn’t remember taking it into the office, so it must be somewhere in my apartment. Had Pat broken in to look for it? If she’d found it, she was probably already on a plane headed into the great beyond. On the other hand, Leonard hadn’t collected his insurance money yet, so maybe the two of them were still somewhere in town.
I started the car and pulled out, determined to clear the neighborhood before the cops showed up. I was thinking hard. Pat and Leonard must have eliminated Marty first, then disposed of Elaine Boldt, maybe because she’d guessed what was going on. In any event, it must have opened up a whole new possibility. They had now gained entrance to her properties and all of her bank accounts, helping themselves to her credit while Leonard waited the requisite six months for Marty’s estate to clear. The payoff there probably wasn’t large, but add it to Elaine Boldt’s assets and the profits began to mount. Once Leonard had acquired sole possession of the property on Via Madrina, he could sell it off for a hundred and fifteen thousand. The lot was probably worth more with the house gone anyway. In the meantime, all he had to do was pose as the grief-stricken spouse, feigning disinterest in the proceeds. Not only did he garner sympathy, but he deflected attention from his true motivation, which was monetary from the get-go. The scheme might have gone off without a hitch except that Beverly Danziger showed up, needing a routine signature on a minor document. Pat’s claim about Elaine being off in Sarasota with friends simply wouldn’t bear up under close scrutiny because Elaine’s whereabouts couldn’t really be accounted for. But how was I going to prove any of this? I was speculating like crazy, probably making a few wrong guesses here and there, but even if I had it right on the nose, I ‘d have to come up with some kind of concrete evidence to take to the police.
In the meantime, Leonard had effectively blocked my path, putting me in check at least where the insurance company was concerned. I didn’t dare go back and question him again and I knew I’d better be careful about any inquiries I made in the world at large. Any line I pursued was going to be interpreted as slander, harassment, or defamation from his point of view. What had I gotten myself into? Leonard Grice and Pat Usher would have to stonewall my investigation or the whole operation would come tumbling down around their ears.
I stopped off at the hardware store to pick up a pane of glass and then went back to my place. I had to find Elaine’s passport. I checked the trash bags, behind couch cushions, under furniture, and all the other niches where I tend to tuck odds and ends. I didn’t remember filing it and it hadn’t occurred to me to hide it. I knew I hadn’t thrown it out, which meant it had to be here somewhere. I kept standing there, doing a 360 degree turn, surveying every corner of the room-desk top, bookcase, coffee table, the small counter that separates the kitchenette.
I went out to the car and looked in the glove compartment, map pocket, down behind the seat, sun visor, briefcase, jacket pocket-shit. I went back into my apartment and started all over again. Where had I put the damn thing? It might be at the office. I decided to try there after CF had closed up and Andy Montycka had gone home. God, what did he know anyway? I was beginning to unravel the knots and I only hoped I could finish before he got nervous and paid off the claim.
I checked my watch. It was a little after one and I had the locksmith coming at four. I sat down at my desk and hauled out my file on Elaine Boldt. Maybe there was something I’d overlooked. I baited my hook and started to cast about randomly. I felt like I’d been through my notes a hundred times and I couldn’t believe anything new would surface. I went back and read every report I had. I tacked all my index cards to the bulletin board, first in order, then haphazardly just to see if any contradictions would appear. I reread all the material Jonah had photocopied from the homicide files and I studied glossy eight-by-tens of the murder scene until I knew every detail by heart. How had Marty been killed? A “blunt instrument” could mean just about anything.
A lot of things were bothering me-minor questions buzzing around at the back of my brain like a swarm of gnats. I had begun to believe that if Elaine was dead, she’d been killed fairly early on. I had no proof yet but I suspected that Pat Usher had masqueraded as Elaine and had staged that whole bogus departure for Florida as a sleight of hand, laying a false trail to create the illusion that Elaine was alive and well and on her way out of town when, in fact, she was already dead. But if she’d been killed in Santa Teresa, where was the body? Disposing of a corpse is no mean feat. Fling one in the ocean and it swells up and floats right back. Toss it in the bushes and a jogger will stumble across it by six A.M. What else do you do with one? You bury it. Maybe the body was concealed in the Grices’ basement. I remembered the floor down the-cracked concrete and hard-packed dirt-and I thought, now that might explain why Leonard had never had the salvage crew come in. When I’d first searched the Grices’ house, I’d just been grateful for my good luck, but even at the time it had seemed almost too good to be true. Maybe Leonard didn’t want the demolition experts knocking around down there.
Pat Usher bothered me too. Jonah hadn’t had a chance to run a check on her through the National Crime Information Center because the computer had been down. By now he’d left for Idaho, but maybe I could have Spillman run the name for me to see what he could come up with. I didn’t think Pat Usher was her real name, but it might show up as an alias-if she had a criminal record, which was uncertain at this point. I took out a legal pad and made myself a note. Maybe with some judicious backtracking, I could figure out who she was and how she’d gotten involved with Leonard Grice.
I sorted through the new stack of Elaine’s bills that Tillie had given me, tossing out the few pieces of junk mail. I came across an appointment reminder from a dentist in the neighborhood and tossed that aside. Elaine Boldt didn’t drive and I knew she patronized businesses within walking distance of her condominium. I remembered in the first batch of bills I’d seen, there was a bill from the same dentist. John Pickett, D.D.S., Inc. Where else had I run into him? I leafed back through the material from the homicide file, running my eye down each page. Ah. No wonder the name rang a bell. He was the dentist who supplied the full mouth X rays used to identify Marty Grice. There was a knock at the door and I looked up, startled. It was already four o’clock.
I glanced out through the little fish-eye peephole and opened the door. The locksmith was young, maybe twenty-two. She flashed me a smile that featured nice white teeth.
“Oh hi,” she said, “I’m Becky. Is this the right place? I tried up front and the old guy said I probably wanted you.”