Sue Grafton - G Is For Gumshoe

To the left, uncarpeted stairs led up to a second floor. I could see a dining room with a series of decorative plates on the wall. I moved toward the rear of the house, passing a small door that probably opened onto a little storage area under the stairs. Across from that was the basement door. "Is this the kitchen through here? I need to wash my hands." But I was talking to myself- Ernie had shuffled into the living room, forgetting me entirely.

The kitchen was the prototype "before" in any home remodeling magazine. Cracked tile counters, black and white floor tiles, brown woodwork, stained sink, a dripping faucet. Someone, in a jaunty attempt to update the place, had covered the original wallpaper with a modern-day vinyl equivalent: pale green fruits and vegetables intermixed with white and yellow daisies. Along the baseboard, the vinyl strip was curling up like a party favor. I checked the walk-in pantry. The shelves were lined with industrial-size cans of hominy and peas. I went in and stood there, looking out at the kitchen with the door half-shut.

Irene Bronfen had been four when she left. I hunkered down, smelling soot, my eyes level with the doorknob. I returned to the hallway. The door to the storage space beneath the stairs was kept locked. I wondered if she'd used it as a playhouse. I hunkered there, looking left toward the kitchen. Not much visible from that vantage point. Murders are, so often, domestic affairs. Alcohol is a factor in more than sixty percent. Thirty percent of the weapons in these murders are knives, which, after all, antedate gunpowder and don't have to be registered. As a matter of convenience, the kitchen is a favored location for crimes of passion these days. You can sit there with your loved ones, grabbing beers out of the fridge, adding ice to your Scotch. Once your spouse makes a smart remark, the stakes can escalate until you reach for the knife rack and win the argument. I moved through the kitchen. At the rear of the house, there was an enclosed wooden porch, uninsulated board and batten, where an antique washer stood. The water heater was out there, looking too small and decrepit to provide much hot water to the residents.

Irene at four had been somewhere in this house. I was willing to bet she'd been playing with the tea set. What had she told me? That the paint ran down the walls and ruined all the violets. I thought about her phobias: dust, spiders, closed spaces. I stood in the doorway, looking through the kitchen toward the hall. The ceilings were high, papered overall with the same repeating pattern of violets as the hall. The kitchen walls had been repapered, but not the ceiling itself. There must have been a time when it was the same throughout. I checked the baseboard near the stretch where the old icebox had once stood. In the wall above it was the square space with the little door to the exterior where the iceman had left his delivery. The next section of wall was a straight shot, floor to ceiling.

I could feel my attention stray to the portion of the vinyl paper that was loose along the bottom. I leaned over and peeled a corner back. Under it was a paper sprigged with roses. Under that layer came the paper with the violets again. I got a grip on the lower edge of the vinyl panel and I pulled straight up. The strip made a sucking sound as it raced up the wall, taking some of the sprigged paper with it. The rust-colored streaks were showing through, drab rivulets coursing through a field of violets, spatters of dull brown that had soaked into the paper, soaked into the plaster underneath. The blood had sprayed in an arc, leaping high along the wall, penetrating everything. Attempts to clean it had failed and the second coat of paper had been layered over the first. Then a third coat over that. I wondered if current technology was sufficiently sophisticated to forge the link between the blood here and the body that was buried in the footing. Lottie was the first to go. Her death must have been passed off as natural since she was buried with the rest. Emily must have come next, her skull "crushed" by falling bricks. And Sheila after that, with a story to cover her disappearance. That must have been the killing Agnes and Irene witnessed. Bronfen had probably made up the story of Sheila's departure. I doubted there were any neighbors left who could verify the sequence of events. No telling what Bronfen had told them at the time. Some glib cover story to account for the missing.

Agnes had been in exile for years, protecting Irene. I wondered what had tempted her to return to the house. Perhaps, after over forty years, she thought the danger had passed. Whatever her motives, she was dead now, too. And Patrick-dear brother Patrick-was the only one left.

I heard the front door shut.

He stood in the kitchen doorway, a brown grocery bag in his arms. He wore a dark green sport shirt and wash pants, belted below his waist. He was wheezing from exertion, sweat beading his face. His gaze was fixed on the length of vinyl wallpaper that now lay on the floor, folded over on itself. His gaze traveled up the wall and then jerked across to mine. "What'd you do that for?"

"Time to take care of old business, my friend."

He crossed to the kitchen table and set the grocery bag down. He removed some items-toilet paper, a dozen eggs, a pound of butter, a loaf of bread-and set them on the table. I could see him try to settle on an attitude, the proper tone. He'd been rehearsing this in his mind for years, probably confident the conversation was one he could handle with a perfect air of innocence. The problem was, he'd forgotten what innocence felt like or how it was supposed to look. "What old business?"

"All the blood on the wall for one."

The pause was of the wrong length. "What blood? That's a redwood stain. I refinished a piece of porch furniture and knocked the can off on the floor. Stuff sprayed all over, went everyplace. You never saw such a mess."

"Arterial blood will do that. You get a pumping effect." I tromped over the crumpled strip of paper, with a scrabbling sound, and washed my hands at the kitchen sink.

He put a half gallon of ice cream in the freezer, taking a moment to rearrange boxes of frozen vegetables. His rhythm was off. An accomplished liar knows how important the timing is in conveying nonchalance.

I dried my hands on a kitchen towel of doubtful origin. It might have been a part of a pillow case, a paint rag, or a diaper. "I drove over to Mt. Calvary and looked for Anne's grave."

"Make your point. I got work to do. She's buried with the family on the side of the hill."

"Not quite," I said. I leaned against the counter, watching him unload canned goods. "I went into the office and asked to see the interment card. You bought her a stone, but there's no body in the grave. Anne left town with Irene in January nineteen forty."

He tried to get huffy, but he couldn't muster any heat. "I paid to bring her all the way from Tucson, Arizona. If she wasn't in the coffin, don't tell me about it. Ask the fellow on the other end who said he put her there."

"Oh, come on," I said. "Let's cut to the chase. There wasn't any husband in Arizona and there weren't any little kids. You made that stuff up. You killed Charlotte and Emily. You killed Sheila, too. Anne was alive until late last night and she told me most of it. She said Emily wanted to sell the house and you refused. She must have pressed the point and you were forced to eliminate her just to end the argument. Once you got Emily out of the way, there was only Anne to worry about. Have her declared dead and you collect the whole estate…"

He began to shake his head. "You're a crazy woman. I got nothing to say to you."

I crossed to the wall-mounted telephone near the hall door. "Fine with me. I don't care. You can talk to Lieutenant Dolan as soon as he gets here."