B is for Burglar (5 page)

“I wasn't aware I'd helped so far,” she said with a smirk.

“I was trying an optimistic approach,” I snapped.

She shrugged. “Sorry to dim your little ray of hope. I've told you everything I know.”

“I guess we'll have to let it go at that. I'll leave you my card. If she calls again, would you have her contact me?”

“Hey, sure. No sweat.”

I took a card out of my wallet and put it on the table as I got up. “I understand you're getting some hassles from people here.”

“Can you believe that? I mean, what's it to them? I've paid my rent. No parties, no loud music. I hang my laundry out and the manager comes unglued. Threw a fit. I don't get it.” She got to her feet and led me to the door. The caftan billowing out behind her made her seem like a larger woman than she was. As I went past the kitchen, I caught sight of some cardboard boxes stacked up near the sink. She turned and followed my gaze.

“I'll probably find a motel close by if it comes to that. The last thing in the world I need is the sheriff on my case. That's who I thought you were, as a matter of fact. They got women sheriffs these days, did you know that? Sheriffettes.”

“So I've heard.”

“What about you?” she asked. “How'd you become a detective. That's a weird way to make a living, isn't it?”

She was becoming real chatty now that I was on my
way out and I wondered if I might pump her for more information. She seemed eager to prolong the contact, like someone who's been cooped up too long with a pack of preschool kids.

“I sort of backed into detective work,” I said, “but it beats selling shoes. You don't work yourself?”

“Not me. I'm retired. I don't ever want to work again.”

“You're lucky. I don't have much choice. If I don't work, I don't eat.”

She smiled for the first time. “I used to spend my life waiting for a break. Then I figured out I better make my own luck, you know what I mean? Nobody gives you nothing in this world, that's for sure.”

I feigned agreement, glancing down toward the parking lot.

“I better be on my way,” I said. “But could I ask you one more thing?”

“Like what.”

“Do you know Elaine's other friends? There must be someone who knows how to get in touch with her, don't you think?”

“I'm the wrong one to ask,” she said. “She used to visit me down in Lauderdale, so I don't know friends of hers up here.”

“How'd you connect up this time? I understand she flew down almost on impulse.”

She seemed momentarily perplexed at that, but regained her composure. “Yeah, that's right, she did. She called me from the airport in Miami and then picked me up on her way through.”

“In a rented car?”

“Yeah. An Oldsmobile Cutlass. White.”

“How long was she here then before she took off?”

Pat shrugged again. “I don't know. Not long. A couple of days, I guess.”

“Did she seem at all nervous or upset?”

She became faintly irritated at that. “Wait a minute. What are you getting at? Maybe I could come up with something if I knew what was on your mind.”

“I'm not sure,” I said mildly. “I'm just fishing around, trying to figure out what's going on. The people who know her in Santa Teresa think it's unusual that she'd disappear without a word.”

“But she told
me
. I've been telling you that. What is she, some kind of kid that she has to call home all the time and tell someone where she is and what time she's getting in? What's the problem?”

“There isn't one. Her sister wants her to get in touch. That's all it amounts to.”

“Yeah, all right. I get touchy now and then. I've been under a lot of pressure and I don't mean to take it out on you. She'll probably call at some point and I'll give her your name and number, okay?”

“Great. I'd appreciate that.”

I held out my hand and she shook it briefly. Her fingers were dry and cold.

“It's been nice talking to you,” I said.

“You too,” she replied.

I hesitated, glancing back at her. “If you do move into a motel, how will Elaine know where to reach you?”

The smirk was back, but there was something else in
her eyes. “How about I'll leave a forwarding address with Makowski, my friendly building manager downstairs. That way you'll know how to reach me too. Will that do the trick?”

“Probably so. Thanks much.”

 

 

 

 

I moved off toward the stairs. I could feel her eyes on my back and then I heard the door close. I continued on down to the parking lot and got in my car and drove off. I wanted to talk to Mrs. Ochsner in the next apartment, but I thought it was better to wait. Something about Pat Usher bothered me. It was not just the fact that some of what she'd told me was untrue. I'm a born liar myself and I know how it's done. You stick as close to the truth as you can. You pretend to volunteer a few bits of information, but the facts are all carefully selected for effect. Pat's problem was that she was having to wing far too much and she'd started to embroider where she should have kept her mouth shut. That business about Elaine Boldt picking her up in Fort Lauderdale in a rented white Cutlass was crap. Elaine didn't drive. Tillie had told me that. At the moment, I couldn't figure out why Pat had lied about it, but it must have been significant. What really bothered me about her was that she had no class and it struck me as odd that Elaine Boldt had chosen her for a friend. From what Tillie and Beverly told
me, I had the feeling Elaine was a bit of a snob and Pat Usher didn't seem quite glossy enough to satisfy.

I found a drugstore half a block away and bought two packs of index cards so I could make some notes and then I put in a call to Mrs. Ochsner in 317. Finally, she picked up.

“Hello?”

I identified myself and told her where I was. “I've just been up there talking to Pat Usher and I don't want her to know that I'm talking to you. Is there some way we can get together?”

“Well, what fun,” Mrs. Ochsner said. “What shall we do? I could take the elevator down to the laundry room. It's right near the parking lot, you know, and you could pick me up.”

“Let's do that,” I said. “I'll swing by in ten minutes.”

“Make it fifteen. I'm slower than you think.”

 

 

The woman whom I helped into the front seat of the car had hobbled out of the laundry room with a cane. She was small, with a dowager's hump the size of a backpack and off-white hair that stood out around her head like dandelion fuzz. Her face was as soft and withered as an apple doll and arthritis had twisted her hands into grotesque shapes, as though she intended to make geese heads in shadow on the wall. She was wearing a housedress that seemed to hang on her bony frame and her ankles were wrapped in Ace bandages. She had two garments over her left arm.

“I want to drop these off at the cleaner's,” she said.
“You can run them in. I want to stop by the market, too. I'm out of my cereal and half-and-half.” Her manner was energetic, her voice wavering but excited.

I went around to my side of the car and got in. I started the car, glancing at the third floor to make sure Pat Usher wasn't standing there watching us. I pulled out. Mrs. Ochsner peered at me avidly.

“You don't look at all like you sounded on the phone,” she said. “I thought you'd be blond with blue eyes. What are they, gray?”

“Hazel,” I said. I lowered my sunglasses so she could see for herself. “Where's the cleaner's from here?”

“Right next door to that drugstore you telephoned from. What do you call that haircut?”

I glanced at myself in the rearview mirror. “I guess I don't call it anything. I do that myself with nail scissors every six weeks. I keep my hair short because I don't like to fool with it. Why, do you think it looks bad?”

“I don't know yet. It probably suits, but I don't know you well enough to say. What about me? Do I look like I sound?”

I glanced over at her. “You sound like a hell-raiser on the phone.”

“I was when I was your age. Now, I have to be careful I'm not just written off as a crank like Ida. All my dear friends died and I got stuck with the crabby ones. What kind of luck are you having with Elaine?”

“Not a lot. Pat Usher says she was actually in Boca for a couple of days and then took off again.”

“No, she wasn't.”

“Are you sure?”

“Of course I am. She always knocked on the wall when she got in. It was like a little code. She's been doing it for years. She'd come over within the hour and make arrangements to play bridge with us because she knew how much it meant.”

I parked in front of the cleaner's and picked up the two dresses she'd placed over the seat. “I'll be right back,” I said.

I took care of both errands while Mrs. Ochsner waited and then we sat in the car and talked. I filled her in on my conversation with Pat Usher.

“What do you think of her?” I asked.

“She's too aggressive,” Mrs. Ochsner said. “She tried to cultivate me at first, you know. Sometimes I'd sit out on the balcony in the sun and she'd talk to me. She always had that sooty smell people get when they smoke too much.”

“What'd you talk about?”

“Well, it wasn't culture, I'll tell you that. She talked about food most of the time, but I never saw her put anything in her mouth except cigarettes and Fresca. She drank pop incessantly and that mouth of hers flapped all the time. So self-centered. I don't believe she ever asked me one word about myself. It simply never occurred to her. I was bored to death, of course, and began to avoid her whenever I could. Now she's rude because she knows I disapprove of her. Insecure people have a special sensitivity for anything that finally confirms their own low opinion of themselves.”

“Did she mention Elaine?”

“Oh yes. She said Elaine was off on a trip, which
struck me as odd. I'd never known her to come down here only to go someplace else. What would be the point?”

“Can you tell me who else Elaine might have kept in touch with? Any other friends or relatives down here?”

“I'll have to think about that. I don't know of anyone offhand. I assume that most of her good friends are in California, since that's where she lives most of the time.”

We talked on for a while, but mostly about other things. At 11:15, I thanked her and took her back to the parking lot, gave her my business card so she could call me if she needed to, and then watched her hobble to the elevator. Her gait was irregular, like a marionette's being worked from above by strings. She waved to me with her cane and I waved back. She hadn't told me much, but I was hoping she'd be able to report on what was happening here after I flew back.

I drove out to the beach and sat in the parking lot with my index cards, making notes of everything I could remember about my search to this point. It took an hour and my hand was cramped, but I needed to get it down while the details were fresh. When I finished, I took my shoes off and locked the car, walking the beach. It was too hot to jog and the lack of sleep had left me torpid anyway. The breeze coming in off the ocean was dense with the smell of salt. The surf seemed to roll in at half speed and there were no whitecaps. The ocean was a luminous blue and the sand was littered with exotic shells. All I'd ever seen on the California beaches were tangles of kelp and occasional Coke-bottle bottoms worn
smooth by the sea. I longed to stretch out on the beach and nap in the hot sun, but I had to be on my way.

I ate lunch at a roadside stand built of pink cinder block while a radio station blared out Spanish-language programs as foreign to me as the food. I feasted on black-bean soup and a bolsa—a sort of pouch made of pastry holding a spicy ground meat. By four o'clock that afternoon, I was on a plane, headed for California. I'd been in Florida for less than twelve hours and I wondered if I was any closer to finding Elaine Boldt. It was possible that Pat Usher was being straight with me when she claimed Elaine was in Sarasota, but I doubted it. In any event, I was anxious to get home and I slept like the dead until the plane reached LAX.

 

 

When I got to the office at nine the next morning, I filled out a routine form for the Driver's License Records at the Department of Motor Vehicles in Tallahassee, Florida, and a second form for Sacramento on the off-chance that Elaine might have been issued a driver's license in her own name sometime in the last six months. I also sent similar requests to the Vehicle Registration Records in both places, not so much with the expectation of the inquiries paying off, but just to cover my bets. I stuck all four envelopes in my out box and then I pulled out the phone book and started checking addresses for travel agents located within walking distance of Elaine's condominium. I was hoping to establish her travel arrangements and find out if a plane ticket had been used. So far, I had only Pat Usher's word
that Elaine had ever arrived in Miami. Maybe she never even reached the airport in Santa Teresa, or maybe she got off the plane at some point en route. In any event, I was going to have to check it out item by item. I felt as if I were on an assembly line, inspecting reality with a jeweler's loupe. There's no place in a P.I.'s life for impatience, faintheartedness, or sloppiness. I understand the same qualifications apply for housewives.

Most of my investigations proceed just like this. Endless notes, endless sources checked and rechecked, pursuing leads that sometimes go no place. Usually, I start in the same place, plodding along methodically, never knowing at first what might be significant. It's all detail; facts accumulated painstakingly.

It's hard to remain anonymous these days. Information is available on just about anyone: credit files on microfiche, service records, lawsuits, marriages, divorces, wills, births, deaths, licenses, permits, vehicles registered. If you want to remain invisible, pay cash for everything and if you err, don't get caught. Otherwise, any good P.I. or even a curious and persistent private citizen can find you out. It amazes me that the average person isn't more paranoid. Most of our personal data is a matter of public record. All you have to know is how to look it up. What your state and city government don't have on file, your next-door neighbor will usually share without so much as a dollar changing hands. If there was no way to get a line on Elaine Boldt directly, I'd try an oblique approach. She'd left for Boca two weeks early, traveling at night, which, according to Tillie, was something she didn't like to do. She'd told Tillie she was
ill, leaving town on doctor's orders, but at this point, there was no verification of that claim. Elaine might have lied to Tillie. Tillie might be lying to me. For all I knew Elaine had left the country, planting Pat Usher behind her to promulgate the notion that she was in Sarasota instead. I hadn't any idea why she'd do such a thing, but then I had a lot of ground to cover yet.