Case Closed (2 page)

What did he have to lose? “Sure.”

She pulled out a set of keys and began unlocking dead bolts. Six of them.

A seventh key unlocked the door itself.

She paused, then turned to him. “My home isn't a mess, exactly, but I never let anyone in here. I hope you'll forgive the condition of the living room. And it's an old house that has belonged to three generations of old people, so we've each added a layer of things to it, I'm afraid.”

Thinking of his mother, who had placed ceramic frogs and other knickknacks on virtually every surface of their home, he said, “Please don't worry about it.”

As soon as he said that, he found himself hoping she wasn't talking about a situation more along the lines of the home of his mother's sister, Aunt Alice, the super pack rat. Much to the family's dismay, Aunt Alice had been in the news over it.

He looked toward Bear, who was now frowning. Fine. Frank smiled and gave him a thumbs-up, then followed Mrs. Sarton into her home.

He was relieved. Like his mom's living room and dining room, these rooms had shelves and side tables loaded with knickknacks, although most of Mrs. Sarton's looked considerably older and more expensive than ceramic frogs. There were pictures of elegantly dressed men and women. A few of Mrs. Sarton showed her in stylish clothes. All were placed in neatly arranged groups. This house was orderly and clean.

Still, one wall of the living room had about thirty cardboard boxes lined up on it. They were tidily stacked and labeled, but each label was printed only with a series of numbers, using some kind of system that didn't give him any clue as to their contents.

Well, at least it was cooler in here than on the porch.

“Have a seat, Officer Harriman,” she said, gesturing toward the dining room table. “May I offer you a glass of iced tea or a soda?”

“I'm fine, thank you. But please get something for yourself if you'd like.”

She shook her head, and when he pulled out a chair for her to be seated first, she said, “Congratulate your mother for me. You have excellent manners.”

“Thank you. I'll tell her you said so.” He sat across from her and took his notebook out again.

She sighed. “I'll try to tell it as simply as I can. My grandparents were successful in the oil business. I was their only grandchild. I still earn money from their interest in certain wells. I inherited enough money from my grandmother's estate to make me quite the prize. I could have had any one of a number of decent men who courted me, I suppose, but I fell for a bit of a bad boy, as foolish girls do. I hadn't yet gained complete control over that money, which turned out for the best.

“My father realized I was going to marry Derek come hell or high water, and so he made a bargain with Derek. He made a complicated arrangement to help my husband start a furniture manufacturing business just before we married in 1925. My father hoped to protect me, and to make me think twice about what I would do with the money in my grandparents' trust.”

“Do you have funds of your own, completely under your own control?”

“Yes, but most of it is protected by the trust. My father invested his own money in the business, and then his interest in the company came to me. I don't want to make it sound as if money was all there was to our marriage, or that all the money we had came from my family. Far from it. Derek achieved as much as he did through hard work. We diversified. The business did well. Well enough to survive the Depression and to expand during the war.

“We opened other locations. We bought a big house in Los Angeles, but we kept this home, which had belonged to my grandparents. It's paid for, and we both liked Bakersfield. Our only child, Harold, was born here in 1930.

“When my husband reached the age of sixty, he decided to retire. Harold was thirty-five and had been raised in the business, but I wasn't sure he was ready to lead it. Still, Derek and I kept peace over the years by not interfering with each other, and he did the day-to-day running of the business. So when Derek said he wanted Harold to take over, he took over. We moved back here. We could have gone anywhere, but as I said, we liked it here.”

“So what year was that?”

“We moved back in 1965. We still owned the company, although Harold received a generous salary. I kept thinking it was nice to be back in a place where it was quiet and there wasn't so much traffic.”

“I take it Harold stayed in LA?”

“Yes. Harold married his secretary that year. Evelyn. Never liked her, but he was a grown man, free to do as he pleased. I could hardly hold my own marriage up as an example, so I kept my mouth shut. We rarely saw them.

“As for the company, things seemed to go along fine for the first four or five years. I thought I might have misjudged Harold, at least in some ways. Then in 1970, in early October, Derek received a call from the head of accounting, saying Harold had fired him, and that Derek needed to get someone in there to watch over things, because Evelyn had Harold completely under her spell.”

A twinkle came into her eye and she said in a low voice, “You know, men like to believe witchcraft is involved, when all that's really happened is that they've started thinking with something a little south of their belly buttons.”

Frank laughed, and she smiled back at him.

“Well,” she continued, “we already knew Evelyn dominated him, and had from the start. After hearing from the accountant, though, Derek called Harold to ask what the devil was going on. Harold became defensive and gave Derek an ultimatum, saying Derek needed to decide if he was really retired or else come back in and work, and if he was coming back, Harold would resign. Derek had always spoiled Harold, and he caved in to that threat. And besides, he was enjoying being retired. In some ways more than others.”

“How so?”

“He had found himself a floozy out here. She wasn't the first, and she wouldn't have been the last, but he didn't want to break things off with her.”

“You weren't upset about that?”

“I got upset the first time I found out about one of his flings. That was in 1930, when I was pregnant with Harold. I won't trouble you with all the sordid details of my marriage, Officer Harriman. I'll just say that after that day, Derek and I slept separately.” She paused. “No, I'll add that Derek doted on his son and was a charming, intelligent man. He knew how to make me laugh and how to make me forgive him, at least to some extent. We were compatible in our strange way. After forty years of being married to a man I knew to be a tomcat, I wasn't in any position to start making a fuss. Nor had any desire to do so.”

“Do you mind if I ask why not?”

“I had an independent life. I could travel where I wanted to, take up whatever interested me, and I knew he would raise no objections. I know the women in your generation expect that, but most women in mine did not. I played the corporate wife to perfection when Derek needed me to, in large part because the success of the company helped me to live a comfortable life.”

“Didn't it hurt?”

“The first times, terribly. But then . . . I realized that Derek loved being in love. The passionate, early days of it. So he'd have a crush on this one or that one, but I was the only one he kept in his life over those years. I don't delude myself. We were comfortable with each other, but he stayed for completely mercenary reasons, of course.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mentioned the complicated agreement? There was a contract signed before the marriage. My father owned most of the company. His interest in it had since come to me, and his lawyers made sure it came to me individually. It's not community property. Derek's percentage still gave him substantial wealth, but he would have lived a very different lifestyle without me.”

“So your son and daughter-in-law were ruining the company, but your husband was too busy having an affair to do anything about it?”

“Not for long. Derek decided he'd had enough. One day he rented a U-Haul, hired a couple of helpers, and made the two-hour drive down to our plant in LA.”

“When was that?”

“Friday, October 16, 1970. He came back late that same night. He was all worked up. Told me he had gone in and raided the offices. Took out boxes and boxes of paperwork from around the time his accountant had been fired. Some other things, too—chemicals and tools. Drove back up here and put them in the garage. Some he brought into the house.” She pointed to the boxes in the living room. “Made me mad as a hornet. He had the whole garage and a couple of the upstairs rooms all to himself. Why did he need to clutter up my living room? Anyway, I soon forgot all about that, because when he came back from returning the U-Haul, he told me he was going to fire Harold, and maybe even have him arrested.”

“Why?”

“Said Harold had been embezzling from us. That he'd been using cheaper chemicals that didn't come from good sources, and gave the workers inferior tools to use. But he made it look on the books as if nothing had changed. Derek was going to go through everything and find out exactly what Harold had done.”

“Did he?”

She sighed. “He started to go through the ones in here. Then Harold showed up the next day, and the two of them went out drinking, and next thing I knew, Derek came back home and said everything was going to be okay. I asked how. He said he had worked things out with Harold and wouldn't say more.

“When I pressed him, he said news of havey-cavey stuff would be bad for the business. That made sense, but I didn't like the fact that as usual, Harold would pay no penalty for wrongdoing. Derek asked me if I wanted to see my son in prison. He said Harold had made a bad marriage, and all of this was Evelyn's fault. I didn't say anything, and he got mad at me and went over to Marlena's place. His mistress's apartment.”

“You knew who he was seeing?”

“Oh yes. Marlena Gray. I'm not sure it's her real name, though.”

“You said you last saw him on Halloween?”

“Yes. Two weeks had gone by since he made that first trip to LA. He had started going through the papers here, and before long he was mad at Harold again. One morning, Derek told me he was going to go back down to LA again to tell Harold he had to rehire the accountant and kick Evelyn out. We argued over whether or not that was the best thing to do, and he told me not to wait up for him. I'd heard that plenty of times over the previous four decades. That night, I guess it was the proverbial straw that broke the camel's back. I told him maybe he should take his girlfriend with him. He said maybe he would, and maybe he wouldn't bother coming back. He'd said that before, too. Usually I'd say something in protest, but that time, I didn't.”

She sounded remorseful and depressed. She fell silent.

Frank waited. His dad had once told him that the ideal rookie would be an alien with excellent eyesight, giant ears, and no mouth.

Suddenly, Mrs. Sarton sat up straight in her chair. She came to her feet and marched over to a big bay window, then yanked open its largest blind. As the blind flew up, Bear's face appeared on the other side of the glass.

Startled, Bear jumped back, then turned bright red with embarrassment. Frank, who had reflexively stood from the moment she rose, struggled mightily for self-control.

“Shame on you!” Mrs. Sarton shouted through the glass. “Shame on you!” She brushed one forefinger along the other in the time-honored gesture.

Under other circumstances, that would have made Frank lose it. But he saw that she had started crying, and lost the urge to laugh. He put an arm around her thin shoulders and turned her away from the window, and scowled at Bear—who scowled back, but slunk off toward the picket fence. Frank guided Mrs. Sarton back to her chair.

She pulled a delicate handkerchief out of one of her pockets and tried to regain her self-control as she wiped her face. For a time, she just cried harder. “I'm sorry, I'm sorry,” she kept saying.

“I suspect you're overdue for a good cry. Don't worry about me. I grew up with two sisters. Tears don't freak me out.”

She laughed at that, and sighed gustily. “Oh, thank you. I guess I did need that cry. Lord, I'm tired of living like this.”

“What do you mean?”

“Afraid. Locks and alarms and all that.
I
might as well have gone missing. In some ways, I have—I've gone missing inside this house. I'm alone too much. I know it, but I just can't seem to make myself do anything.” She looked down at her dress. “Look at me. I used to take great care with my appearance. Now, I'm just a fright. I go nowhere, see no one. I leave boxes in the living room and I haven't gone into my own garage in years. A mouse has more nerve than I do. I'm a frightened recluse, cowering in my own home.”

“Maybe that can change.”

She didn't say anything for a while. He stayed quiet.

Finally she said, “To go back to that night, Halloween, Derek left here at about five. You've probably noticed that we're off the beaten path for trick-or-treaters, so that night, when I unexpectedly got a call from a friend inviting me out to dinner, I accepted. I was tempted to tell her about my problems, but instead I listened to hers. It was a good distraction, but after a couple of hours I tired of it and—over her protests—I told her I was going home.

“When I got back here, it was about ten o'clock, and I was surprised to find one of the company trucks parked in the driveway, back open, ramp down, and empty. The lights were on in the garage. At first, I thought it was Derek, delivering another load of documents to the garage, but then I saw a man wearing dark clothing. It was Harold. He had one of the big fifty-five-gallon drums on a dolly. I realized that I had come home just in time to see Harold breaking into the garage. He was trying to steal things back. And Evelyn was with him. She was carrying a stack of boxes.”