Sue Grafton - B Is For Burglar

With the three-hour time difference, I felt like I got back to California roughly one hour after I left Florida and my body had trouble dealing with that. I had to wait an hour at LAX to catch the short hop to Santa Teresa, but even so it was only seven in the evening when I got home, toting Elaine's bags with me like a packhorse. It was still light outside, but I was exhausted. I'd never eaten lunch and all I'd had on the plane were some square things wrapped in cellophane that I was almost too tired to pick open. It was one of those lurching flights with sudden inexplicable drops in altitude that make napping tough. Most of us were too worried about how they'd collect and identify all the body parts once we'd crashed and burned. Some woman behind me had two kids of the whining and screeching sort and she spent most of the flight having long ineffectual chats with them about their behavior. "Kyle, honey, 'member Mommy told you she didn't want you to bite Brett because that hurts Brett. Now, how would you like it if Mommy bit you?" I thought a quick chop in the ear would go a long way toward parent effectiveness training, but she never consulted me.

At any rate, when I got home, I headed straight for the couch and fell asleep, still in my clothes. Which is why it took me until morning to figure out that somebody had been in my apartment searching discreetly for God knows what. I got up at eight and did a run, came home, showered, and dressed. I sat down at my desk and started to unlock the top drawer. It's a standard-issue desk with a lock on the top drawer that controls the bank of drawers to the right. Somebody had apparently slipped a knife blade into the lock and jimmied it open. The realization that someone had been there made the nape of my neck feel like I'd just applied an ice pack.

I pushed back from the desk and got up, turning abruptly so that I could survey the room. I checked the front door, but there was no indication that anyone had tampered with the double-key dead bolt. It was possible that someone had made a duplicate of the key, though, and I'd have to have the lock replaced. I've never worried about security, and I don't run around doing tricky things to assume that my domain is inviolate-no talcum powder on the floor near the entrance-way, no single strands of hair affixed across the window crack. I resented the fact I was going to have to deal with this break-in, surrendering a sense of safety I'd always taken for granted. I checked the windows, moving carefully around the perimeter of the room. Nothing. I went into the bathroom and examined the window there. Someone had used a glass cutter to make a small square opening just above the lock. Electrical tape had evidently been used to eliminate any sound of breaking glass. Where the strips of tape had been peeled off, I could still see remnants of adhesive. The aluminum screen was skewed in one corner. It had probably been popped out and then put back. The job had been cleverly done, set up in such a way that I might not have discovered it for weeks. The hole was large enough to allow someone to unlock the window, sliding it up to permit ingress and egress. There's a curtain at that window and with the panels in place, the small hole in the glass wasn't even visible.

I went back into the other room and did a thorough search. Nothing seemed to be missing. I could see that someone had eased sly fingers between my folded clothes in the chest of drawers, had deftly gone through the files, leaving everything much as it had been, but with faint disarrangements here and there. I hated it. I hated the cunning and the care with which it had all been done, the satisfaction somebody must have felt at pulling it off. And what was the point? For the life of me, I couldn't see that anything was gone. I didn't own anything of value and the files themselves were not worth much. Most of the ones I kept at home had been closed out anyway and my notes on Elaine Boldt were at the office. What else did I have that someone might want? What worried me too was the suspicion that this might be Pat Usher's handiwork. Somehow she seemed much more dangerous if, along with savagery, she was also capable of craftiness and stealth.

I called a locksmith and made an appointment to have her come out later in the day to change all the locks. I could replace the window glass myself. I did some quick measurements and then headed out to the street. Fortunately, no one had broken into my car, but I didn't like the idea that someone might try that too. I took my.32 out of the glove compartment and tucked it into the waistband of my jeans at the small of my back. I was going to have to lock it in my office file cabinet and leave it there for the time being. I was relatively certain that my office was secure. Since I'm on the second floor with a balcony right out in plain view, I didn't think anyone would risk a break-in from that vantage point. The building is kept locked at night and the door from the hallway is solid oak two inches thick with a double-key dead bolt that could only be breached if the lock itself were cored out with a power saw. Still, I was feeling apprehensive when I pulled into the parking lot behind the office and I ended up taking the back stairs two at a time. I didn't relax until I unlocked the office door and saw for myself that no one had been there.

I put the gun away and took out the file on Elaine Boldt. I typed up additional notes, bringing everything up to date. Inwardly, I was still fuming that someone had been in my apartment. I should have called the police and reported it, but I didn't want to stop for that. I tried to concentrate on the matter at hand. I had a lot of unanswered questions and I wasn't even sure which ones mattered at this point. Why, for instance, had Pat Usher closed up shop so abruptly in Boca after my first trip down there? I had to guess that once she knew I was looking for Elaine, she'd had to scuttle her plans. I was assuming, of course, that she'd headed to Santa Teresa and that it was she who'd broken into Tillie's apartment and stolen that stack of bills. But to what end? The bills had continued to arrive and if pertinent information might be gleaned from inspecting them, all we had to do was wait for the next batch.

Then I had Mike's account of what he saw on the night of his aunt's murder. I still wasn't sure how that fit in, if indeed it did. The fact remained that his estimate of the time of Marty Grice's death differed by thirty minutes from the time her husband and sister-in-law claimed they'd spoken to her. Were Leonard and Lily in cahoots?

There was still the minor matter of May Snyder next door who'd reported the sound of hammering at the Grices' house that night. Orris swore she was deaf and had it all confused with something else, but I wasn't quite willing to write her off like that.

When the phone rang, I jumped, snatching up the receiver automatically. It was Jonah. He didn't even bother to identify himself. All he said was,"I've got a response from the DMV in Tallahassee. You want to take a look?"

"I'll be right there," I said and hung up, heading out.

Jonah was waiting for me in the small reception area as I came into the police station and he walked me through the locked doors to the corridor leading back to Missing Persons.

"How'd you get the information so fast?" I asked. He held the gate open for me and I passed into the bullpen, where he had his desk.

He smiled faintly. "That's why cops are so much better at this business than private eyes," he said. "We've got access to information you can't even touch."

"Listen, I was the one who put in the original request! It's public record. I can't get it as fast as you can, but I was on the right track and you know it."

"Don't get so hot," he said. "I was just ragging you."

"Very cute. Lemme see it," I said, holding my hand out. He passed me a computer printout, a magnetic image of a driver's license issued to Elaine Boldt in January, with the Florida condominium address. I stared at the picture of the woman staring back at me and uttered a quick, involuntary "ah!" I knew the face. It was Pat Usher: same green eyes, same tawny hair. There were a few glaring differences. I'd seen her after an automobile accident, when her face was still a bit bruised and swollen. The resemblance was clear enough, though. Hot damn.