L Is for Lawless (3 page)

"Must have been a shock."

"It was. I felt awful. I didn't even call first. He'd written me a note a couple months before, so I was all set to surprise him. Joke's on me, I guess. If I'd known, I could have saved myself a trip. Even driving, it's not cheap."

"How long have you been here?"

"Little over a week. I didn't plan to stay, but I drove over two thousand miles to get here and didn't have the heart to turn around and drive back. I didn't think I'd like California, but it's nice." Ray finished packing one box and tucked the top flaps together, setting that box aside while I started work on the next.

"Lot of people feel it takes some getting used to."

"Not for me. I hope Bucky doesn't think I'm ghoulish because I want to move in. I hate to take advantage of someone else's misfortune, but what the heck," he said. "Might as well have
some
good come out of it. Seems like a nice area, and I like being near the beach. I don't think Johnny'd mind. Here, let me get these out of your way." Ray lifted one box and stacked it on top of another, pushing both to one side.

"Where are you now?"

"Couple blocks over. At the Lexington. Right near the beach and room doesn't even have a view. Up here, I notice you can see a little slice of ocean if you look through those trees."

I looked around the room with care but didn't see anything else worth examining. Johnny hadn't had that much, and what he owned was unrevealing. "Well, I think I'll give up." I dusted my jeans off, feeling grubby and hot. I went into the kitchen and washed my hands at the sink. The plumbing shrieked and the water was full of rust. "You want to check anything while you're here? Water pressure, plumbing? You could measure for cafe curtains before I lock up," I said.

He smiled. "I better wait until I sign some kind of rental agreement. I don't want to take the move for granted, the way Bucky's been acting. You want my opinion, the kid's not all that bright."

I agreed, but it seemed politic to keep my mouth shut for once. I returned to the main room, found my shoulder bag, and slung the strap across my shoulder, then dug the key from my jeans pocket. Ray moved out of the apartment just ahead of me, pausing on the stair below me while I locked up. Once the place was secured I followed him down the stairs and we walked down the driveway together toward the street. I made a quick detour, moving up onto the front porch, where I tucked the key into the mail slot in the middle of the front door. I rejoined him, and when we reached the street, he began to move in the opposite direction.

"Thanks for the help. I hope you and Bucky manage to work something out."

"Me too. See you." He gave a quick wave and moved off.

When I reached home, Henry's kitchen door was open and I could hear the babble of voices, which meant that Nell, Charlie, and Lewis were in. Before the day was over, they'd be into Scrabble and pinochle, Chinese checkers, and slapjack, squabbling like kids over the Parcheesi board.

By the time I unlocked my front door, it was almost eleven. The message light was blinking on my answering machine. I pressed the playback button. "Kinsey? This is your cousin Tasha, up in Lompoc. Could you give me a call?" She left a phone number, which I duly noted. The call had come through five minutes before.

This was not good, I thought.

At the age of eighteen, my mother had been estranged from her well-to-do family when she rebelled against my grandmother's wishes and ran off with a mailman. She and my father were married by a Santa Teresa judge with my aunt Gin in attendance, the only one of her sisters who dared to side with her. Both my mother and Aunt Gin had been banned from the family, an exile that continued until I was born some fifteen years later. My parents had given up any hope of offspring, but with my arrival tentative contact was made with the remaining sisters, who kept the renewed conversations a secret. When my grandparents left on a cruise to celebrate their anniversary, my parents drove up to Lompoc to visit. I was four at the time and remember nothing of the occasion. A year later, while we were driving north to another furtive reunion, a boulder rolled down the mountain and crashed through the car windshield, killing my father on impact. The car went off the road and my mother was critically injured. She died a short time later while the paramedics were still working to extract us from the wreckage.

After that, I was brought up by Aunt Gin, and to my knowledge, there was no further communication with the family. Aunt Gin had never married, and I was raised in accordance with her peculiar notions of what a girl-child should be. As a consequence, I turned out to be a somewhat odd human being, though not nearly as "bent" as some people might think. Since my aunt's death some ten years ago, I'd made my peace with my solitary state.

I'd learned about my "long-lost" relatives in the course of an investigation the year before, and so far, I'd managed to keep them at arm's length. Just because
they
wanted a relationship didn't obligate
me.
I'll admit I might have been a little crabby on the subject, but I couldn't help myself. I'm thirty-five years old and my orphanhood suits me. Besides, when you're "adopted" at my age, how do you know they won't become disillusioned and reject you again?

I picked up the phone and dialed Tasha's number before I had time to work myself into a snit. She answered and I identified myself.

"Thanks for calling so promptly. How are you?" she said.

"I'm fine," I said, desperately trying to figure out what she wanted from me. I'd never met her, but during our previous phone conversation, she'd told me she was an estate attorney, handling wills and probate. Did she need a private detective? Was she hoping to advise me about living trusts?

"Listen, dear. The reason I'm calling is we're hoping we can talk you into driving up to Lompoc to have Thanksgiving with us. The whole family's going to be here and we thought it'd be a nice time to get acquainted."

I felt my heart sink. I had zero interest in the family gathering, but I decided to be polite. I injected my voice with a phony touch of regret. "Oh, gee, thanks, Tasha, but I'm tied up. Some good friends are getting married that day and I'm a bridesmaid."

"On
Thanksgiving?
Well, that seems peculiar."

"It was the only time they could work out," I said, thinking ha ha tee hee.

"What about Friday or Saturday of that weekend?" she said.

"Ah." My mind went blank. "Mmm ... I think I'm busy, but I could check," I said. I'm an excellent liar in professional matters. On the personal side I'm as lame as everybody else. I reached for my calendar, knowing it was blank. For a split second I toyed with the possibility of saying "yes," but a primitive howl of protest welled up from my gut. "Oh, gee. Nope, I'm tied up."

"Kinsey, I can sense your reluctance, and I have to tell you how sorry we all are. Whatever the quarrel between your mother and Grand had nothing to do with you. We're hoping to make up for it, if you'll let us."

I felt my eyes roll upward. Much as I'd hoped to avoid it, I was going to have to take this on. "Tasha, that's sweet and I appreciate your saying that, but this is not going to work. I don't know what else to tell you. I'm very uncomfortable with the idea of coming up there, especially on a holiday."

"Oh, really? Why is that?"

"I don't know why. I have no experience with family, so it's not anything I miss. That's just the way it is."

"Don't you want to meet the other cousins?"

"Uh, Tasha, I hope this doesn't sound rude, but we've done all right without each other so far."

"How do you know you wouldn't like us?"

"I probably would," I said. "That isn't the issue."

"Then what is?"

"For one thing, I'm not into groups and I'm not all that crazy about being pushed," I said.

There was a silence. "Does this have something to do with Aunt Gin?" she asked.

"Aunt Gin? Not at all. What makes you ask?"

"We've heard she was eccentric. I guess I'm assuming she turned you against us in some way."

"How could she do that? She never even
mentioned
you."

"Don't you think that was odd?"

"Of course it's odd. Look, Aunt Gin was big on theory, but she didn't seem to favor a lot of human contact. This is not a complaint. She taught me a lot, and many lessons I valued, but I'm not like other people. Frankly, at this point, I prefer my independence."

"That's bullshit. I don't believe you. We'd all like to think we're independent, but no one lives in isolation. This is family. You can't repudiate kinship. It's a fact of life. You're one of us whether you like it or not."

"Tasha, let's just put it out there as long as we're at it. There aren't going to be any warm, gooey family scenes. It's not in the cards. We're not going to gather around the piano for any old-fashioned sing-alongs."

"That's not what we're like. We don't do things that way."

"I'm not talking about you. I'm trying to tell you about me."

"Don't you want anything from us?"

"Like what?"

"I gather you're angry."

"Ambivalent," I corrected. "The anger's down a couple of layers. I haven't gotten to that yet."

She was silent for a moment. "All right. I accept that. I understand your reaction, but why take it out on us? If Aunt Gin was inadequate, you should have squared that with her."

I felt my defenses rise. "She wasn't 'inadequate.' That's not what I said. She had eccentric notions about child rearing, but she did what she could."

"I'm sure she loved you. I didn't mean to imply she was deficient."

"I'll tell you one thing. Whatever her failings, she did more than Grand ever did. In fact, she probably passed along the same kind of mothering she got herself."

"So it's
Grand
you're really mad at."

"Of course! I told you
that
from the beginning," I said. "Look, I don't feel like a victim. What's done is done. It came down the way it came down, and I can live with that. It's folly to think we can go back and make it come out any different."

"Of course we can't change the past, but we can change what happens next," Tasha said. She shifted gears. "Never mind. Forget that. I'm not trying to provoke you."

"I don't want to get into a tangle any more than you do," I said.

"I'm not trying to defend Grand. I know what she did was wrong. She should have made contact. She could have done that, but she didn't, okay? It's old business. Past tense. It didn't involve any of us, so why carry it down another generation? I love her. She's a dear. She's also a bad-tempered, penny-pinching old lady, but she's not a monster."

"I never said she was a monster."

"Then why can't you just let it go and move on? You were treated unfairly. It's created some problems, but it's over and done with."

"Except that I've been marked for life and I've got two dead marriages to prove it. I'm willing to accept that. What I'm not willing to do is smooth it all over just to make her feel good."

"Kinsey, I'm uncomfortable with this ...
grudge
you've been carrying. It's not healthy."

"Oh, come off it. Why don't you let me worry about the
grudge?"
I said. "You know what I've finally learned? I don't have to be perfect. I can feel what I feel and be who I am, and if that makes you uncomfortable, then maybe
you're
the one with the problem, not me."

"You're determined to take offense, aren't you?"

"Hey, babe, I didn't call you. You called
me"
I said. "The point is, it's too late."

"You sound so
bitter"

"I'm not bitter. I'm realistic."

I could sense her debate with herself about where to go next. The attorney in her nature was probably inclined to go after me like a hostile witness. "Well, I can see there's no point in pursuing this."

"Right."

"Under the circumstances, there doesn't seem to be any reason for having lunch, either."

"Probably not."

She blew out a big breath. "Well. If there's ever anything I can do for you, I hope you'll call," she said.

"I appreciate that. I can't think what it'd be, but I'll keep that in mind."

I hung up the phone, the small of my back feeling damp from tension. I let out a bark and shook myself from head to toe. Then I fled the premises, worried Tasha would turn around and call back. I hit the supermarket, where I picked up the essentials: milk, bread, and toilet paper. I stopped by the bank and deposited a check, withdrew fifty bucks in cash, filled my VW with gas, and then came home again. I was just in the process of putting groceries away when the phone rang. I lifted the receiver with trepidation. The voice that greeted me was Bucky's.

"Hey, Kinsey? This is Bucky. I think you better get over here. Somebody broke into Pap's apartment and you might want to take a look."

Chapter 3

I knocked at Bucky's front door for the second time that day. The early afternoon sun was beginning to bake the grass, and the herbal scent of dried weeds permeated the November air. To my right, through a stucco archway opening onto a short length of porch, I could see the scalloped edge of the old red-tile roof. In Santa Teresa the roof tiles used to be handmade, the C-curve shaped by laying the clay across the tile worker's thigh. Now the tiles are all S shaped, made by machine, and the old roofs are sold at a premium. The one I was looking at was probably worth ten to fifteen grand. The break-in artists should have had a go at that instead of the old man's apartment with its cracked linoleum.

Babe opened the door. She had changed clothes, discarding her black T-shirt and black pedal pushers in favor of a shapeless cotton shift. Her eyes were enormous, the color of milk chocolate, her cheeks sprinkled with freckles. Her excess weight was evenly distributed, as if she'd zipped herself into an insulated rubber wet suit.

"Hi. I'm Kinsey. Bucky called and asked if I'd stop by."

"Oh, yeah. Nice to meet you. Sorry I missed you earlier."

"I figured we'd meet eventually. Is Bucky out back?"

She ducked her head, breaking off eye contact. "Him and his dad. Chester's been screaming ever since we got home. What a butt," she murmured. "He's all the time hollering. I can't hardly stand that. I mean, we didn't make the mess, so why's he yelling at us?"

"Did they call the police?"

"Uhn-hun, and they're on their way. Supposedly," she added with disdain. Maybe in her experience, the cops never showed up when they said. Her voice was breathy and soft. She was a bit of a mumbler, managing to speak without moving her lips. Maybe she was practicing to be a ventriloquist. She stepped back to let me enter, and then I followed her through the hallway as I had earlier with Bucky. Her rubber flip-flops made sucking noises on the hardwood floor.

"I take it you just got home," I said. I found myself talking to the back of her head, watching the bunch and release of her calves as she moved. Mentally, I put her on a weight program... something really really strict.

"Uhn-hun. Little while ago. We went out to Colgate to visit my mom. Chester got home first. He bought this ceiling light he was fixing to put in? When he went upstairs, he could see where the window was broke, all this glass laying on the steps. Somebody really tore the place up."

"Did they take anything?"

"That's what they're trying to figure out. Chester told Bucky he shouldn't have left you alone."

"Me? Well, that's dumb. Why would I tear the place apart? I'd never work that way."

"That's what Bucky said, but Chester never listens to him. By the time we got here, he was having a conniption fit. I can't wait 'til he goes back to Ohio. I'm a nervous wreck. My daddy never yelled, so I'm not used to it. My mom'd knock his block off if he ever talked to her that way. I told Bucky he better tell Chester to quit swearing at me. I don't appreciate his attitude."

"Why don't you tell him?"

"Well, I tried more'n once, but it never does any good. He's been married four times and I bet I can guess why they divorce him. Lately, his girlfriends are all twenty-four years old and even
they
get sick of him once he buys 'em a bunch of clothes."

We trooped up the steps to the garage apartment, where the door was standing open. The narrow window next to it had an irregular starburst of glass missing. The method of entry wasn't complicated. There was only one door into the place, and all the other windows were twenty feet off the ground. Most burglars aren't going to risk a ladder against the side of a building in broad daylight. It was obvious the intruder had simply come up the stairs, punched out the glass, reached around the frame, and unlocked the deadbolt from the inside. It hadn't been necessary to use a pry bar or any other tools.

Chester must have heard us because he came out to the landing, barely looking at Babe, who eased back against the wooden porch railing, trying to make herself as inconspicuous as possible. Her father-in-law had apparently dismissed her as a target ... for the moment, at any rate.

It was easy to see where Bucky got his looks. His father was big and beefy, with wavy blond hair long enough to touch his shoulders. Was that a dye job? I tried not to stare, but I could have sworn I'd seen that color in a Clairol ad. He had small blue eyes, blond lashes, and graying sideburns. His face was big and his complexion was ruddy. He wore his shirttail out, probably to disguise the extra thirty pounds he carried. He looked like a fellow who'd played in a rock-and-roll band in his youth, writing his own excruciatingly amateurish tunes. The earring surprised me: a dangling cross of gold. I also caught a glimpse of some sort of religious medal on a gold chain that disappeared under his V-neck T-shirt. His chest hair was gray. Looking at him was like seeing previews of Bucky's coming attractions.

Might as well be direct. I held my hand out. "Kinsey Millhone, Mr. Lee. I understand you're upset."

His handshake was perfunctory. "You can knock off the 'Mr. Lee' shit and call me Chester. Might as well be on a first-name basis while I chew your ass out. You better believe I'm upset. I don't know what Bucky asked you to do, but it sure wasn't this."

I bit back a tart reply and looked past him into the apartment. The place was a shambles: boxes overturned, books flung here and there, the mattress rolled back, the sheets and pillows on the floor. Half of Johnny's clothes had been pulled from the closet and piled in a heap. In the kitchen, through the doorway, I could see cabinet doors standing open, pots and pans strewn across the floor. While the disorder was extensive, nothing appeared to be damaged or destroyed. There was no sign that anyone had taken a blade to the bedding. No graffiti, no food emptied out of canisters or pipes torn from the walls. Vandals will often festoon the walls with their own fecal paint, but there was nothing like that here. It looked more like the methods big-city cops might employ at the scene of a drug bust. But what was the object of the exercise? Fleetingly, I entertained the notion that I was being set up, called in as a witness to a phony crime scene so that Bucky and his father could claim something valuable had been taken.

Bucky appeared from the kitchen and caught sight of me. In one split second we exchanged curiously guilty looks, like co-conspirators. There's something about being accused of criminal behavior that makes you feel like you did it even if you're innocent. Bucky turned to his dad. "Toilet tank's cracked. Might have been like that before, but I never noticed."

Chester pointed a finger. "You're paying for it if it has to be replaced. Bringing her into it was your bright idea." He turned to me, jerking a thumb over his shoulder toward the bathroom. "You ought to see in there. Medicine cabinet's pulled all the way out the wall...."

He droned on, pouring out the details, which seemed to give him satisfaction. He probably liked to bitch, reciting his grievances in order to justify his ill treatment of other people. His irritation was contagious, and I could feel my temper climb.

I cut into his monologue. "Hey, I didn't do this,
Chester.
You can rant and rave all you want, but the place was fine when I left. I locked up and put the key back through the mail slot like Bucky suggested. Ray Rawson was here. If you don't believe me, you can ask him."

"Everybody's innocent. Nobody did nothing. Everybody's got some kind of bullshit excuse," Chester groused.

"Dad, she didn't do it."

"You let me take care of this." He turned and looked at me narrowly. "You trying to say Ray Rawson did this?"

"Of course not. Why would he do this when he's hoping to move in?" My voice was rising in response to his, and I worked to get control.

Chester's attitude became grudging. "Well, you better have a talk with him and find out what he knows."

"Why would he know anything? He left the same time I did."

Bucky interceded, trying to introduce a note of reason. "Pappy didn't have a pot to piss in, so there's nothing here to take. Besides, he died in July. If burglars thought there was anything of value, why wait until now?"

"Maybe it was kids," I said.

"We don't have kids in this neighborhood as far as I know."

"True enough," I said. Ours was primarily a community of retirees. It was always possible, of course, that a roving band of thugs had targeted the apartment. Maybe they figured that any place this crummy looking had to be a cover for something good.

"Nuts!" Chester said with disgust. "I'm going down and wait for the police. Soon as you two crime experts finish your analysis, you can get the place cleaned up."

I gave him a look. "I'm not going to
clean
the damn place."

"I wasn't talking to you," he said. "Bucky, you and Babe get busy."

"You better wait for the cops," I said.

He swung around and stared at me. "Why is that?"

"Because this is a crime scene. The cops might want to dust for prints."

Chester's face seemed to darken. "This is bullshit. There's something not right about this." He made a motion in my direction. "You can come on down with me."

I glanced back at Bucky. "I wouldn't touch anything if I were you. You don't want to screw around with evidence."

"I hear you," he said.

Chester gestured impatiently for me to pick up the pace.

On the way down the steps, I glanced at my watch. It was 1:15 and already I was tired of taking crap from this guy. I'll take crap when I'm paid for it, but I don't like doing it without compensation.

Chester clumped into the kitchen and went straight to the refrigerator, where he jerked open the door. He took out a jar of mayonnaise, mustard, bottled hot sauce, a packet of bologna, and a loaf of Wonder white bread. Had he ordered me to come down here so I could supervise his lunch?

"I apologize if I was rough, but I don't like what's going on," he said gruffly. He wasn't looking at me, and I was tempted to do a double take to see if there was someone else in the room. He'd dropped the imperious attitude and was talking in a normal tone of voice.

"You have a theory?"

"I'll get to that in a bit. Grab a chair."

At least he had my attention. I took a seat at the kitchen table and watched in fascination as he started his preparations. Somehow in my profession I seem to spend a lot of time in kitchens looking on while men make sandwiches, and I can state categorically, they do it better than women. Men are fearless. They have no interest in nutrition and seldom study the list of chemicals provided on the package. I've never seen a man cut the crusts off the bread or worry about the aesthetics of the "presentation." Forget the sprig of parsley and the radish rosette. With men, it's strictly a grunt-and-munch operation.

Chester banged a cast-iron skillet on the burner, flipped the gas on, and tossed in a knuckle of butter, which began to sizzle within seconds. "I sent Bucky out to live with his granddad, which turned out to be a mistake. I figured the two of them could look after each other. Next thing I know, Bucky's hooked up with that gal. I got nothing against Babe ... she's a dim-wit, but so's he ... I just think the two of 'em got no business being married."

"Johnny didn't warn you?"

"Hell, he probably encouraged it. Anything to make trouble. He was a sneaky old coot."

I let that one pass, leaving him to tell the story his way. There was an interval of quiet while he tended to his cooking. The bologna was pale pink, the size of a bread-and-butter plate, a perfect circle of compacted piggie by-products. Chester tossed in the meat without even pausing to remove the rim of plastic casing. While the bologna was frying, he slathered mayonnaise on one slice of bread and mustard on the other. He shook hot sauce across the yellow mustard in perfect red polka dots.

As a child I was raised with the same kind of white bread, which had the following amazing properties: If you mashed it, it instantly reverted to its unbaked state. A loaf of this bread, inadvertently squished at the bottom of a grocery bag, was permanently injured and made very strange-shaped sandwiches. On the plus side, you could roll it into little pellets and flick them across the table at your aunt when she wasn't looking. If one of these bread boogers landed in her hair, she would slap at it, irritated, thinking it was a fly. I can still remember the first time I ate a piece of the neighbor's homemade white bread, which seemed as coarse and dry as a cellulose sponge. It smelled like empty beer bottles, and if you gripped it, you couldn't even see the dents your fingers made in the crust.

The air in the kitchen was now scented with browning bologna, which was curling up around the edges to form a little bowl with butter puddled in the center. I could feel myself getting dizzy from the sensory overload. I said, "I'll pay you four hundred dollars if you fix me one of those."

Chester glanced at me sharply, and for the first time, he smiled. "You want toasted?"

"You're the chef. It's your choice," I said.

While we chowed down, I decided to satisfy my curiosity as well. "What sort of work do you do back in Columbus?"

He snapped back the last of his sandwich like a starving dog, wiping his mouth on a paper napkin before he responded. "Own a little print shop in Bexley. Offset and letterpress. Cold and hot type. Brochures, flyers, business cards, custom stationery. I can collate, fold, bind, and staple. You name it. I just hired a guy looks after the place when I'm gone. He does good I'll let him buy me out. Time I did something else. I'm too young to retire, but I'm tired of working for a living."