Sue Grafton - C is for Corpse

She looked my I.D. over carefully and finally stepped back to let me in.

She locked the door behind me and led the way down the corridor to a room near the end. I was sneaking peeks into rooms along the way. I don't know what I anticipated- women writhing and babbling to themselves, men imitating ex-Presidents and jungle beasts. Or the lot of them in a drug-induced stupor that would swell their tongues and make their eyes roll back in their heads. Instead, as I passed each door, I saw faces raised in curiosity toward mine, as if I were a new admission who might shriek or do birdcalls while I tore off my clothes. I couldn't see any difference between them and me, which I thought was worrisome.

Kitty was up and dressed, her hair still wet from a shower. She was stretched out on her bed, pillows propped up behind her, a breakfast tray on the bed-table next to her. She wore a silk caftan that drooped on her frame as if she were a coat hanger. Her breasts were no bigger than buttons on a couch and her arms were bare bones fleshed out with skin as thin as tissue paper. Her eyes were enormous and haunted, the shape of her skull so pronounced that she looked as if she were seventy. Sally Struthers could have used her picture in an ad for foster parenting.

"You got a visitor," Natalie said.

Kittys eyes flicked to me, and for a moment, I could see how scared she was. She was dying. She had to know that. The energy was seeping out of her pores like sweat.

Natalie inspected the breakfast tray. "You know they're going to put you on an I. V. if you don't do better than this. I thought you had a contract with Dr. Kleinert."

"I ate some," Kitty said.

"Well, I'm not supposed to pester you, but he'll be doing rounds soon. Try picking away at this while you talk to her, O.K.? We're on your team, baby. Honestly."

Natalie gave us both a brief smile and left, moving into the room next door, where we could hear her talking to someone else.

Kitty's face was suffused with pink and she was fighting back tears. She reached for a cigarette and lit it, coughing some against the back of her bony hand. She shook her head, conjuring up a smile that had some sweetness to it. "God, I can't believe I got myself into this," she said, and then wistfully, "You think Glen might come see me?"

"I don't know. 1 may go over there after I talk to you. I'll mention it to her if you like."

"She kicked Daddy out."

"So I heard."

"She'll probably kick me out next."

I couldn't look at her anymore. Her longing for Glen was so tangible it hurt me to see it. I studied the breakfast tray: a fresh fruit cup, a blueberry muffin, a carton of strawberry yogurt, granola, orange juice, tea. There was no indication that she'd eaten any of it.

"You want some of that?" she asked.

"No way. You'll tell Kleinert you ate it."

Kitty had the good grace to blush, laughing uneasily.

"I don't understand why you don't eat," I said.

She made a face. "Everything just looks so gross. There's this girl two doors down and she was suffering from anorexia, you know? So they brought her in here and she finally started to eat? Now she looks like she's pregnant. She's still thin. She's just got half a basketball for a stomach. It's disgusting."

"So what? She's alive, isn't she?"

"I don't want to look like that. Nothing tastes good anyway and it just makes me throw up."

There was no point in pursuing the subject so I let it go, shifting over to something else instead. "Have you talked to your father since Glen kicked him out?"

Kitty shrugged. "He's here every day in the afternoon. He's moved into the Edgewater Hotel until he finds a place."

"Did he tell you about Bobby's will?"

"Some. He says Bobby left me all this money. Is that true?" Her tone was one of dismay as much as anything.

"As far as I know, it is."

"But why would he do that?"

"Maybe he felt like he messed up your life and wanted to do right by you. Derek tells me he left some money to Rick's parents too. Or maybe he considered it a little incentive for you to get your shit together for a change."

"I never made any deals with him."

"I don't think he meant to make a 'deal.'"

"Well, I don't like to feel controlled."

"Kitty, I think you've demonstrated the fact that you can't be controlled. We're all getting that message loud and clear. Bobby loved you."

"Who asked him to? Sometimes I wasn't even nice to him. And I didn't exactly have his best interests at heart."

"Meaning what?"

"Nothing. Skip it. I wish he hadn't left me anything is all. It makes me feel crummy."

"I don't know what to tell you," I said.

"Well, I never asked him for a thing." Her tone was argumentative, but I couldn't understand what her position was.

"What's bothering you?"

"Nothing."

"What's all the fretting about, then?"

"I'm not fretting! God. Why should I fret? He did it so he'd feel good, right? It had nothing to do with me."

"It had something to do with you or he'd have left the money to someone else."

She started gnawing on her thumbnail, temporarily abandoning the cigarette, which sat on the lip of the ashtray and sent up a tiny trail of smoke like an Indian signal on a distant mountaintop. Her mood was getting dark. I wasn't sure why she was so upset at the notion of two million dollars being dumped in her lap, but I didn't want to alienate her. I wanted information. I shifted the subject again. "What about the insurance your father took out on Bobby's life? Did he mention that?"

"Yeah. That's weird. He does stuff like that, and later, he can't understand why people get upset. He doesn't see anything wrong with it at all. To him, it just makes sense. Bobby'd cracked up his car once or twice so Daddy just figured if he died, somebody might as well benefit. I guess that's why Glen threw him out, huh?"

"I think that's a safe bet. She'd never tolerate his profiting from Bobby's death. My God, it was the worst possible move he could have made as far as she's concerned. Besides which, it sets him up as a murder suspect."

"My father wouldn't kill anyone!"

"That's what he says about you."

"Well, it's true. I didn't have any reason to want Bobby dead. Neither of us did. I didn't even know about the money and I don't want it anyway."

"Money might not be the motive," I said. "It's an obvious place to start, but it doesn't necessarily go anywhere."

"But you don't think Daddy did it, do you?"

"I haven't made up my mind about that yet. I'm still trying to figure out what Bobby was up to and I need to fill in some gaps. Something was going on back then and I can't get a line on it. What was his relationship to Sufi? You have any idea?"

Kitty picked up her cigarette, averting her gaze. She took a moment to tap the ash from the end, and then she took a last, deep drag and put it out. Her nails were bitten down so far the pads of the fingers seemed like little round balls.

She was debating something with herself. I kept my mouth shut and gave her some room. "She was a contact," she said finally, her voice low. "Bobby was doing this investigation or something for somebody else."

"Who?"

"I don't know."

"It had to be the Frakers, right? I talked to Sufi last night, and the minute I left, she hightailed it over to their place. She was in there so long, I finally had to go home."

Kitty's eyes came up to mine. "I don't know for sure what it was."

"But how'd he get into it? What was it about?"

"All I know is he told me he was looking for something and he got the job out at the morgue so he could search at night."

"Medical records? Something stored out there?"

Her face closed down again and she shrugged.

"But Kitty, when you realized someone was trying to kill him, didn't you figure it was connected to that?"