Sue Grafton - E Is for Evidence

Colgate is the bedroom community that adjoins Santa Teresa, providing affordable housing for average working folk. While new construction in Santa Teresa is closely regulated by the Architectural Board of Review, building in Colgate has proceeded according to no known plan, though it leans toward the nondescript. There is one major street lined with donut shops, hardware stores, fast-food establishments, beauty salons, and furniture stores that feature veneer and laminate, velour and Naugahyde. From the main thoroughfare, tract homes stretch out in all directions, housing styles appearing like concentric rings on a tree stump, spiraling out decade by decade until the new neighborhoods peter out into raw countryside, or what's left of it. In isolated patches there are still signs of the old citrus groves that once flourished there.

Wood/Warren was located on a side street that angled back toward an abandoned drive-in theater that functions as a permanent location for weekend swap sales. The lawns of the neighboring manufacturing plants were a close-clipped green, and the shrubs were trimmed into perfect rectangles. I found a parking place out front and locked up. The building was a compact story and a half of stucco and fieldstone. The address of the warehouse itself was two blocks away. I'd inspect the fire scene after I talked to Lance Wood.

The reception area was small and plain, furnished with a desk, a bookcase, and an enlarged photograph of the FIFA 5000 Hydrogen/Vacuum Furnace, the mainstay of the company fortunes. It looked like an oversized unit for an efficiency kitchen, complete with stainless-steel counter and built-in microwave. According to the data neatly framed nearby, the front-loading FIFA 5000 provided five thousand cubic inches of uniform hot zone for hydrogen or vacuum brazing, for metallizing ceramics, or manufactur-ing ceramic-to-metal seals. I should have guessed.

Behind me, the receptionist was returning to her desk with a fresh cup of coffee and a Styrofoam container that smelled of sausage and eggs. The laminated plastic sign on her desk indicated that her name was Heather. She was in her twenties and apparently hadn't yet heard about the hazards of cholesterol and fat. She would find the latter on her fanny one day soon.

"May I help you?" Her smile was quick, exposing braces on her teeth. Her complexion was still ruddy from last night's application of an acne cure that so far hadn't had much effect.

"I have an appointment with Lance Wood at nine," I said. "I'm with California Fidelity Insurance."

Her smile faded slightly. "You're the arson investiga-tor?"

"Well, I'm here on the fire claim," I said, wondering if she mistakenly assumed that "arson" and "fire" were in-terchangeable terms.

"Oh. Mr. Wood isn't in yet, but he should be here momentarily," she said. The braces infused her speech with a sibilance that amused her when she heard herself. "Can I get you some coffee while you wait?"

I shook my head. There was one chair available and I took a seat, amusing myself by leafing through a brochure on the molybdenum work rack designed specifically for metallizing alumina at 1450° C. in a bell-style hydrogen furnace. These people had about as many laughs as I do at home, where a prime source of entertainment is a text-book on practical aspects of ballistics, firearms, and foren-sic techniques.

Through a doorway to my left, I could see some of the office staff, casually dressed and busy, but glum. I didn't pick up any sense of camaraderie among them, but maybe hydrogen furnace-making doesn't generate the kind of good-natured bantering I'm accustomed to with California Fidelity. Two desks were unoccupied, bare of equipment or accouterments.

Some attempt had been made to decorate for Christ-mas. There was an artificial tree across the room from me, tall and skeletal, hung with multicolored ornaments. There didn't seem to be any lights strung on the tree, which gave it a lifeless air and only pointed up the unifor-mity of the detachable limbs stuck into pre-bored holes in the aluminum shaft. The effect was dispiriting. From the information I'd been given, Wood/Warren grossed close to fifteen million bucks a year, and I wondered why they wouldn't pop for a live pine.

Heather gave me a self-conscious smile and began to eat. Behind her was a bulletin board decorated with gar-lands of tinsel and covered with snapshots of the family and staff. H-A-P-P-Y H-O-L-I-D-A-Y-S was spelled out in jaunty store-bought silver letters.

"Mind if I look at that?" I asked, indicating the collage.

By then, she had a mouth full of breakfast croissant, but she managed assent, holding a hand in front of her mouth to spare me the sight of her masticated food. "Help yourself."

Most of the photographs were of company employees, some of whom I'd seen on the premises. Heather was fea-tured in one, her fair hair much shorter, her face still framed in baby fat. The braces on her teeth probably rep-resented the last vestige of her teens. Wood/Warren must have hired her right out of high school. In one photograph, four guys in company coveralls stood in a relaxed group on the front doorstep. Some of the shots were stiffly posed, but for the most part they seemed to capture an aura of good-will I wasn't picking up on currently. The founder of the company, Linden "Woody" Wood, had died two years be-fore, and I wondered if some of the joy had gone out of the place with his demise.

The Woods themselves formed the centerpiece in a studio portrait that looked like it was taken at the family home. Mrs. Wood was seated in a French Provincial chair. Linden stood with his hand resting on his wife's shoulder. The five grown children were ranged around their par-ents. Lance I'd never met before, but I knew Ash because I'd gone to high school with her. Olive, older by a year, had attended Santa Teresa High briefly, but had been sent off to a boarding school in her senior year. There was probably a minor scandal attached to that, but I wasn't sure what it was. The oldest of the five was Ebony, who by now must be nearly forty. I remembered hearing that she'd married some rich playboy and was living in France. The youngest was a son named Bass, not quite thirty, reckless, irresponsi-ble, a failed actor and no-talent musician, living in New York City, the last I'd heard. I had met him briefly eight years before through my ex-husband, Daniel, a jazz pian-ist. Bass was the black sheep of the family. I wasn't sure what the story was on Lance.

Seated across his desk from him sixty-six minutes later, I began to pick up a few hints. Lance had breezed in at 9:30. The receptionist indicated who I was. He introduced himself and we shook hands. He said he had a quick phone call to make and then he'd be right with me. I said "Fine" and that was the last I saw of him until 10:06. By then, he'd shed his suit coat and loosened his tie along with the top button of his dress shirt. He was sitting with his feet up on the desk, his face oily-looking under the fluorescent lights. He must have been in his late thirties, but he wasn't aging well. Some combination of temper and discontent had etched lines near his mouth and spoiled the clear brown of his eyes, leaving an impression of a man beleaguered by the Fates. His hair was light brown, thinning on top, and combed straight back from his face. I thought the business about the phone call was bullshit. He struck me as the sort of man who pumped up his own sense of importance by making people wait. His smile was self-satisfied, and the energy he radiated was charged with tension.

"Sorry for the delay," he said, "What can I do for you?" He was tipped back in his swivel chair, his thighs splayed.

"I understand you filed a claim for a recent fire loss."

"That's right, and I hope you're not going to give me any static over that. Believe me, I'm not asking for any-thing I'm not entitled to."