The Best of Sisters in Crime (6 page)

“I’ll have to
ask you to leave now,” he said stiffly.

“But don’t you
want Best People featured in a piece on singles?”

“I do not. I can’t
condone the tactics of a reporter who misrepresents herself.”

“Are you sure
that’s the reason you don’t want to talk with me?”

“Of course. What
else—”

“Is there
something about Best People that you’d rather not see publicized?”

Jerry flushed.
When he spoke, it was in a flat, deceptively calm manner. “Get out of here,” he
said, “or I’ll call your editor.”

Since I didn’t
want to get J. D. in trouble with the
Chron,
I went.

Back at my office
at All Souls, I curled up in my ratty armchair—my favorite place to think. I
considered my visit to All the Best People; I considered what was wrong with
the setup there. Then I got out my list of burglary victims and called each of
them. All three gave me similar answers to my questions. Next I checked the
phone directory and called my friend Tracy in the billing office at Pacific
Bell.

“I need an
address for a company that’s only listed by number in the directory,” I told
her.

“Billing
address, or location where the phone’s installed?”

“Both, if they’re
different.”

She tapped away
on her computer keyboard. “Billing and location are the same: two-eleven Gough.
Need anything else?”

“That’s it.
Thanks—I owe you a drink.”

In spite of my
earlier determination to depart the singles scene, I spent the next few nights
on the phone, this time assuming the name of Patsy Newhouse, my younger sister.
I talked to various singles about my new VCR; I described the sapphire pendant
my former boyfriend had given me and how I planned to have it reset to erase
old memories. I babbled excitedly about the trip to Las Vegas I was taking in a
few days with Weekenders, and promised to make notes in my pocket organizer to
call people as soon as I got back. I mentioned—in seductive tones—how I loved
to walk barefoot over my genuine Persian rugs. I praised the merits of my new
microwave oven. I described how I’d gotten into collecting costly jade
carvings. By the time the Weekenders trip was due to depart for Vegas, I was
constantly sucking on throat lozenges and wondering how long my voice would
hold out.

Saturday night
found me sitting in my kitchen sharing ham sandwiches and coffee by candlelight
with Dick Morris’s security guard, Bert Jankowski. The only reason we’d chanced
the candles was that we’d taped the shades securely over the windows. There was
something about eating in total darkness that put us both off.

Bert was a
pleasant-looking man of about my age, with sandy hair and a bristly mustache
and a friendly, open face. We’d spent a lot of time together—Friday night, all
day today—and I’d pretty much heard his life story. We had a lot in common: He
was from Oceanside, not far from where I’d grown up in San Diego; like me, he
had a degree in the social sciences and hadn’t been able to get a job in his
field. Unlike me, he’d been working for the security service so long that he
was making a decent wage, and he liked it. It gave him more time, he said, to
read and to fish. I’d told him my life story, too: about my somewhat peculiar
family, about my blighted romances, even about the man I’d once had to shoot.
By Saturday night I sensed both of us were getting bored with examining our
pasts, but the present situation was even more stultifying.

I said, “Something
has
got
to happen soon.”

Bert helped
himself to another sandwich. “Not necessarily. Got any more of those pickles?”

“No, we’re out.”

“Shit. I don’t
suppose if this goes on that there’s any possibility of cooking breakfast
tomorrow? Sundays I always fix bacon.”

In spite of having
just wolfed down some ham, my mouth began to water. “No,” I said wistfully. “Cooking
smells, you know. This house is supposed to be vacant for the weekend.”

“So far no one’s
come near it, and nobody seems to be casing it. Maybe you’re wrong about the
burglaries.”

“Maybe . . . no,
I don’t think so. Listen: Andie Wyatt went to Hawaii; she came back to a
cleaned-out apartment. Janie Roos was in Carmel with a lover; she lost
everything fenceable. Kim New was in Vegas, where I’m supposed to be—”

“But maybe you’re
wrong about the way the burglar knows—”

There was a
noise toward the rear of the house, past the current construction zone on the
back porch. I held up my hand for Bert to stop talking and blew out the
candles.

I sensed Bert
tensing. He reached for his gun at the same time I did.

The noise came
louder—the sound of an implement probing the back-porch lock. It was one of
those useless toy locks that had been there when I’d bought the cottage; I’d
left the dead bolt unlocked since Friday.

Rattling sounds.
A snap. The squeak of the door as it moved inward.

I touched Bert’s
arm. He moved over into the recess by the pantry, next to the light switch. I
slipped up next to the door to the porch. The outer door shut, and footsteps
came toward the kitchen, then stopped.

A thin beam of
light showed under the inner door between the kitchen and the porch—the burglar’s
flashlight. I smiled, imagining his surprise at the sawhorses and wood scraps
and exposed wiring that make up my own personal urban-renewal project.

The footsteps
moved toward the kitchen door again. I took the safety off the .38.

The door swung
toward me. A half-circle of light from the flash illuminated the blue linoleum.
It swept back and forth, then up and around the room. The figure holding the
flash seemed satisfied that the room was empty; it stepped inside and walked
toward the hall.

Bert snapped on
the overhead light.

I stepped
forward, gun extended, and said, “All right, Jerry. Hands above your head and
turn around—slowly.”

The flash
clattered to the floor. The figure—dressed all in black—did as I said.

But it wasn’t
Jerry.

It was Morton
Stone—the nice, sad man I’d had the dinner date with. He looked as astonished
as I felt.

I thought of the
evening I’d spent with him, and my anger rose. All that sincere talk about how
lonely he was and how much he missed his dead wife. And now he turned out to be
a common crook!

“You son of a
bitch!” I said. “And I was going to fix you up with one of my friends!”

He didn’t say
anything. His eyes were fixed nervously on my gun.

Another noise on
the back porch. Morton opened his mouth, but I silenced him by raising the .38.

Footsteps
clattered across the porch, and a second figure in black came through the door.
“Morton, what’s wrong? Why’d you turn the lights on?” a woman’s voice demanded.

It was Marie,
the receptionist from All the Best People. Now I knew how she could afford her
expensive clothes.

“So I was right
about
how
they knew when to
burglarize people, but wrong about
who
was doing it,” I told Hank. We were sitting at the bar in the
Remedy Lounge, his favorite Mission Street watering hole.

“I’m still
confused. The Intro Line is part of All the Best People?”

“It’s owned by
Jerry Hale, and the phone equipment is located in the same offices. But as
Jerry—Dave Lester, whichever incarnation you prefer—told me later, he doesn’t
want the connection publicized because the Intro Line is kind of sleazy, and
Best People’s supposed to be high-toned. Anyway, I figured it out because I
noticed there were an awful lot of phones ringing at their offices, considering
their number isn’t published. Later I confirmed it with the phone company and
started using the line myself to set the burglar up.”

“So this Jerry
wasn’t involved at all?”

“No. He’s the
genuine article—a born-again single who decided to put his knowledge to turning
a profit.”

Hank shuddered
and took a sip of Scotch.

“The burglary
scheme,” I went on, “was all Marie Stone’s idea. She had access to the
addresses of the people who joined the Intro Line club, and she listened in on
the phone conversations and scouted out good prospects. Then, when she was sure
their homes would be vacant for a period of time, her brother, Morton Stone,
pulled the jobs while she kept watch outside.”

“How come you
had a date with Marie’s brother? Was he looking you over as a burglary
prospect?”

“No. They didn’t
use All the Best People for that. It’s Jerry’s pride and joy; he’s too involved
in the day-to-day workings and might have realized something was wrong. But the
Intro Line is just a profit-making arm of the business to him—he probably uses
it to subsidize his dating. He’d virtually turned the operation of it over to
Marie. But he did allow Marie to send out mail solicitations for it to Best
People clients, as well as mentioning it to the women he ‘screened,’ and that’s
how the burglary victims heard of it.”

“But it still
seems too great a coincidence that you ended up going out with this Morton.”

I smiled. “It
wasn’t a coincidence at all. Morton also works for Best People, helping Jerry
screen the female clients. When I had my date with Jerry, he found me . . .
well, he said I was peculiar.”

Hank grinned and
started to say something, but I glared.

“Anyway, he sent
Mort out with me to render a second opinion.”

“Ye gods, you
were almost rejected by a dating service.”

“What really
pisses me off is Morton’s grieving-widower story. I really fell for the whole
tasteless thing. Jerry told me Morton gets a lot of women with it—they just can’t
resist a man in pain.”

“But not McCone.”
Hank drained his glass and gestured at mine. “You want another?”

I looked at my
watch. “Actually, I’ve got to be going.”

“How come? It’s
early yet.”

“Well,
uh . . .
I have a date.”

He raised his
eyebrows. “I thought you were through with the singles scene. Which one is it
tonight—the gun nut?”

I got off the
bar stool and drew myself up in a dignified manner. “It’s someone I met on my
own. They always tell you that you meet the most compatible people when you’re
just doing what you like to do and not specifically looking.”

“So where’d you
meet this guy?”

“On a stakeout.”

Hank waited. His
eyes fairly bulged with curiosity.

I decided not to
tantalize him any longer. I said, “It’s Bert Jankowski, Dick Morris’s security
guard.”

Back to table of contents

Julie Smith,
a former reporter in New Orleans and San Francisco, is wickedly inventive as
she gets her thoroughly contemporary characters out of the sticky situations
they’ve managed to get themselves into. Julie’s wit and charm infuse the
fictional adventures of clever, attractive attorney Rebecca Schwartz (most
recently,
Other
People’s Skeletons
)
and enliven the foibles of Paul MacDonald, who appears in two
books. New Orleans detective Skip Langdon takes readers on a tour of the darker
side of town in the Edgar-winning
New
Orleans Mourning.
Skip goes into action in five
other novels, including the most recent,
Crescent City Kills.
In “Blood Types,” the irreverent Rebecca discovers just how risky a
potion the milk of human kindness can be.

“Refresh my
recollection, Counselor. Are
holographic wills legal in
California?”

Though we’d
hardly spoken in seven years or more, I recognized the voice on the phone as
easily if I’d heard it yesterday. I’d lived with its owner once. “Gary Wilder.
Aren’t you feeling well?”

“I feel fine.
Settle a bet, okay?”

“Unless you
slept through more classes than I thought, you know perfectly well they’re
legal.”

“They used to
be. It’s been a long time, you know? How are you, Rebecca?”

“Great. And you’re
a daddy, I hear. How’s Stephanie?”

“Fine.”

“And the wee
one?”

“Little
Laurie-bear. The best thing that ever happened to me.”

“You sound
happy.”

“Laurie’s my
life.”

I was sorry to
hear it. That was a lot of responsibility for a ten-month-old.

“So about the
will,” Gary continued. “Have the rules changed since we were at Boalt?”