Sue Grafton - T Is For Trespass

Gingerly, I peered in. The water was now flirting with the tops of my tennis shoes, thus soaking my socks. The place was not only empty, but thoroughly trashed. Water was gushing out of the bathroom from numerous ruptured plumbing fixtures: sink, shower, shattered toilet, and tub. The wall-to-wall carpet had been shredded with a sharp instrument, and the strands leaned away from the rush of water like long waving grass in a fast-moving stream. The kitchen cabinets had been ripped off the wall and left in a splintered pile in the middle of the floor.

If the place had come furnished, all the furniture had been stolen or sold, because aside from a few coat hangers, there was nothing else to be seen. At the rate the water was flowing, I thought it was a safe bet to anticipate a virtual rain forest in the apartment below. My tennis shoes made a squishing sound as I backed out the door.

A man said, “Hey.”

I looked up. A fellow was bending over the third-floor railing. I shaded my eyes to see him against the glare.

“Got a problem down there?” he asked.

“Can I use your phone? I need to call the police.”

“I figured as much so I called ’ em myself. If that’s your car out back, you better move it or you’ll get ticketed.”

“Thanks. Do you have any idea where I can find the water shut-off valve?”

“Clueless.”

After moving my car, I spent the next hour with the county sheriff’s deputy who’d arrived ten minutes after the call went out. While I waited, I’d gone down to Apartment 10 and knocked but couldn’t rouse anyone. The tenants were probably off at work and wouldn’t learn of the watery disaster until five o’clock that day.

The deputy managed to get the water turned off, which brought out a second round of tenants, outraged and distressed by the interruption to their service. One woman emerged, wrapped in a terry-cloth bathrobe, her hair in a helmet of bubbling shampoo.

I borrowed the upstairs neighbor’s phone and called the Hyatt in San Francisco, swearing I’d leave him money for the long-distance charges. Miraculously, Richard Compton was in his hotel room. When I told him what was going on, he said, “Shit!”

He gnawed on the problem for a moment and then said, “Okay. I’ll take care of it. Sorry to put you through this.”

“You want me to call a restoration company about the water damage? They can at least get big fans and dehumidifiers out here. If you don’t get right on it, the floors will warp and you’ll have mold growing in the walls.”

“I’ll get the manager from another building started on that. He can call the company we use. Meantime, I’ll get in touch with my insurance agent and have him send someone out.”

“I guess the Guffeys won’t be getting their deposit back.”

He laughed, but not much.

After we’d hung up, I took a moment to assess the situation.

Between Melvin Downs’s disappearance and the Guffeys’ vandalism, I didn’t see how things could get worse. Which just goes to show how little I know about life.

The rest of Monday was uneventful. Tuesday morning, I took my metaphorical hat in hand and met with Lowell Effinger to deliver the news about Melvin Downs. I’d seen Effinger on two previous occasions and our dealings thereafter had been conducted on the phone. Sitting across the desk from him, I noticed how tired he looked, smoky gray pouches under his eyes. He was a man in his early sixties with a tangle of curly hair that had turned from salt and pepper to white since I’d seen him last. He had a strong chin and jaw, but his face looked as crumpled as a paper bag. I wondered if he had personal problems, but I didn’t know him well enough to ask. He spoke in a deep voice that rumbled up from his chest. “You know where he worked?”

“Not specifically. Probably near City College because that’s where he caught the bus. When the driver told me where he lived, I was so busy trying to connect with him there, I didn’t worry about where he worked.”

“If he moved out of his room, he probably quit his job, don’t you think?”

“Well, it’s worth pursuing in any event. I’ll go back over to the hotel and talk to Mrs. Von. I’ve seen her so often she might as well adopt me by now. She claims a policy of minding her own business, but I’ll bet she knows more than she’s told me so far. I can also talk to some of the other residents while I’m there.”

“Do what you can. If nothing turns up in the next few days, we’ll revisit the issue.”

“I wish I’d been quicker. When I talked to him Saturday, he gave no indication he was planning to leave. Of course, he’d just gone out and scored a couple of cardboard boxes, but it didn’t occur to me he’d be using them to pack.”

Thirty minutes later I found myself at the residence hotel for the umpty-ninth time. This round, I caught Mrs. Von coming out of the kitchen with a cup of tea in hand. She wore a sweater over her housedress, and I could see a peek of the tissue she’d tucked up her sleeve. “You again,” she said, but with no particular animosity.

“I’m afraid so. Do you have a minute?”

“If it’s in reference to Mr. Downs, I have all the time you want. He left without giving notice so that does it for me. This is my afternoon off so if you’d care to come into my apartment, we can talk.”

“Happy to,” I said.

“Would you like a cup of tea?”

“No, thanks.”

She opened a door at the rear of the office. “This was originally the servants’ quarters,” she remarked as she went in.

I trailed behind her, taking in the rooms at a glance.

“In my grandparents’ day, servants were expected to be invisible unless they were hard at work. This was their parlor and the anteroom where they took all their meals. The cook prepared food for them, but nothing like the meals that were served in the formal dining room. The servants’ bedrooms were in the attic, above the third floor.”

She was using the two rooms as a bedroom and sitting room, both done in pinks and mauves, with a surfeit of family photographs in silver-plated frames. Four Siamese cats lounged on the furniture, barely stirring from their morning naps. Two regarded me with interest, and one eventually got up, stretched, and crossed the room to take a little sniff of my hand.

“Don’t mind them. They’re my girls,” she said. “Jo, Meg, Beth, and Amy. I’m Marmee,” she said. She took a seat on the sofa, setting her teacup to one side. “I assume your interest in Mr. Downs has to do with the lawsuit.”

“Exactly. You have any guesses about where he went? He must have family somewhere.”

“He has a daughter in town. I don’t know her married name, but I’m not sure it matters. The two are estranged and they have been for years. I don’t know the details, except that she refuses to let him see his grandsons.”

“Sounds meanspirited,” I said.

“I wouldn’t know. He only mentioned her the once. Naturally my ears pricked up.”

“Did you ever notice the tattoo on his right hand?”

“I did, though he seemed so self-conscious about it I tried not to look. What did you make of it?”

“I suspect he’d been in prison.”

“I wondered about that myself. I will say in the time he lived here, his behavior was exemplary. As far as I was concerned, as long as he kept his room neat and paid his rent on time, I saw no reason to pry. Most people have secrets.”

“So if you knew he’d been convicted of a crime, it wouldn’t have precluded your taking him as a tenant.”

“That’s what I said.”

“You know what kind of work he did?”

She thought about that briefly and then shook her head. “Nothing that required a degree. He said more than once how much he regretted not finishing high school. Wednesday nights, when he came in late, I thought he was attending night school. ‘Adult education,’ I believe they call it these days.”