Sue Grafton - B Is For Burglar

I paused at a stand and picked up a newspaper. There was a coffee shop open and I bought scrambled eggs, bacon, toast, and juice, taking my time about breakfast while I read a human-interest story about a man who'd left all his money to a mynah bird. I can't cope with the front section before seven A.M.

At quarter to nine, having walked the airport from end to end twice, I stationed myself near Baggage Claim with a portable cart I'd rented for a buck. I could see Elaine's bags, neatly lined up at on end of the locked glass-fronted cabinets. It looked as if someone had hauled them out from the bottom of the pile in readiness. Finally, a middle-aged man in a TWA uniform, with a big set of jangling keys, unlocked the small cubicle and started turning on lights. It looked like the opening curtain of a one-act play with a modest set.

I presented myself and the baggage-claim tags and then followed him out to the storage cabinets and waited while he extracted the suitcases and stacked them on the cart. I expected him to ask for identification, but apparently he didn't care who I was. Maybe abandoned bags are like litters of unwanted kittens. He was just grateful to have someone take them off his hands.

When the Penny-Car Rental desk opened, I rented a compact car. I had given Julia a call the night before so she knew I was flying in. All I needed to do now was find the highway again and drive north. Once outside, I pushed the cart toward the slot where the rental car was parked. The drizzle settled on my skin like a layer of silk. The morning air was hot and close, smelling of rain and jet exhaust. I loaded the bags in the trunk of the car and headed toward Boca. It wasn't until I reached the condominium parking lot, unloading the suitcases one by one, that I realized all four were locked and I had no key. Well, how very cute. Maybe Julia would have a plan. I lugged them over to the elevator and went up to the third floor, hauling them to Julia's front door in two trips.

I knocked and waited a long interval while Julia thumped her way to the front door with her cane, calling encouragement.

"I'm coming. Don't give up. Six more feet to go and I'm bearing down hard."

On my side of the door, I smiled, peering over at Elaine's apartment. There was no sign of life. Even the welcome mat had been taken inside or thrown out, leaving a square of fine sand that had filtered through the bristles.

Julia's door opened. The dowager's hump sat between her shoulder blades like a weight, forcing her to bend with its burden. She seemed to be staring at my waist, tilting her head of dandelion fuzz to one side so she could peer up at me. Her skin seemed as sheer as rubber, pulled over her hands like surgical gloves. I could see veins and broken capillaries, her knuckles as knotted as rope. Age was making her transparent, crushing her from both ends like a can of soda pop.

"Well, Kinsey! I knew that was you. I've been awake since six this morning, looking forward to this. Come on in."

She hobbled to one side, making way for me. I set the four suitcases inside the door and closed it after me. She tapped one with her cane. "I recognize those."

"Unfortunately, they're locked."

Each of the four bags apparently had a combination lock, the numbers arranged on a dial embedded in the metal catch.

"We'll have to do some detective work," she said with satisfaction. "You want coffee first? How was your flight?"

"I'd love some," I said. "The flight wasn't bad."

Julia's apartment was crowded with antiques: a peculiar mix of Victorian pieces and Oriental furnishings. There was a huge carved cherry sideboard with a marble top, a black horsehair sofa, an intricate ivory screen, jade figures, a platform rocker, two cinnabar lamps, Persian rugs, a pier-glass mirror in a dark mahogany frame, a piano with a fringed shawl across the top, lace curtains, wall hangings of embroidered silk. A big portable television set with a twenty-five-inch screen loomed on the far side of the room surrounded by family photographs in heavy silver frames. The television set was turned off, its blank gray face oddly compelling in a room so filled with memorabilia. The only sound in the apartment was the steady ticking of a grandfather clock that sounded like someone tapping on Formica with a set of drumsticks.

I moved out to the kitchen, poured coffee for us both, and carried it back to the living room, the cups rattling slightly in the saucers like the tremor of a minor California earthquake. "Are these family antiques? Some of the pieces are beautiful."

Julia smiled, waggling her cane. "I'm the last person alive in my family so I've inherited all this by default. I was the youngest in a family of eleven children and my mother said I was fractious. She always swore I'd never get a thing, but I just kept my mouth shut and waited it out. Sure enough, she died, my father died. I had eight sisters and two brothers and they all died. Little by little, it all drifted down to me, though I hardly have a place to put anything at this point. Eventually you have to give it all away. You start with a ten-room house and finally you find yourself stranded in a nursing home with space for one night table and a candlestick. Not that I intend to let that happen to me."

"You've got a ways to go yet anyway from what I can see."

"Well, I hope so. I'm going to hold out as long as I can and then I'll lock and bar the door and do myself in, if nature doesn't take me first. I'm hoping I'll die in my bed one night. It's the bed I was born in and I think it'd be nice to end up there. Have you a large family?"

"No, just me. I was raised by an aunt, but she died ten years ago."

"Well then, we're in the same boat. Restful, isn't it."

"That's one way to put it," I said.

"I came from a family of shriekers and face slappers. They all threw things. Glasses, plates, tables, chairs, anything that came to hand. The air was always filled with flying missiles- objects rocketing from one end of the room to the other with howls on contact. This was mostly girls, you know, but all of us had deadly aim. I had a sister knock me out of my high chair once with a grapefruit thrown like a curve ball, oatmeal flying everywhere. Eulalie, her name was. Now that I look back on it, I see we were common as mud, but effective. We all got what we wanted in life and no one ever accused us of being helpless or fainthearted. Well now. Let's tackle those bags. If worse comes to worst, we can always hurl them off the balcony. I'm sure they'll open when they hit the pavement down below."

We approached the problem as though it were a code to be broken. Julia's theory, which proved to be correct, was that Elaine would have come up with a combination of numbers she already had in her life somewhere. Her street address, zip code, telephone number, social security, birthdate. Each of us chose one group of digits and started to work on separate bags. I hit it the third time around with the last four numbers on her social-security card. All four suitcases were coded with the same number, which simplified the task.

We opened them on the living-room floor. They were filled with exactly what one would expect: clothing, cosmetics, costume jewelry, shampoo, deodorant, slippers, bathing suit, but packed in a jumble the way they do in movies when the wife leaves the husband in the middle of a vicious snit. The hangers were still on the hanging clothes, garments folded over and bunched in, with the shoes tossed on top. It looked as if drawers had been turned upside down and emptied into the largest of the bags. Julia had hobbled over to the rocker and she sat there now, propping herself up with her cane as though she were a unwieldy plant. I sat down on the horsehair sofa, staring at the suitcases. I looked at Julia uneasily.

"I don't like this," I said. "From what I know of Elaine, she was almost compulsively neat. You should have seen the way she left her place… everything just so… clean, tidy, tucked in. Does she strike you as the type who'd pack this way?"