Sue Grafton - T Is For Trespass

“Jesus, that’s cold. What kind of guy is he?”

“Try desperate. Hetty Buckwald went after Brannigan tooth and nail and couldn’t get him to back down. Lowell said it was all he could do not to bust out laughing. He thinks this is big. Huge. We just have to figure out what it means.”

“I’ll go up there again. Maybe the neighbors know something we don’t.”

“Let’s hope.”

I returned to the Fredricksons’ neighborhood and started with the two neighbors directly across the street. Their knowledge, if any, probably wouldn’t come to much, but at least I could rule them out. At the first house, the middle-aged woman who answered the door was pleasant but professed to know nothing about the Fredricksons. When I explained the situation, she said she’d moved in six months before and preferred to keep her distance from her neighbors. “That way, if I have a problem with any one of them, I can complain without worrying about someone’s feelings being hurt,” she said. “I tend to my affairs and expect them to tend to theirs.”

“Well, I can see your point. I’ve had good luck with my neighbors until recently.”

“When neighbors turn on you, there’s nothing worse. Your home is supposed to be a refuge, not a fortified encampment in a war zone.”

Amen, I thought. I gave her my card and asked her to call me if she heard anything. “Don’t count on it,” she said, as she closed the door.

I went down her walkway and up the walk leading to the house next door. This time the occupant was a man in his late twenties, thin face, glasses, underslung jaw with a tiny goatee meant to give definition to his weak chin. He wore loose jeans and a T-shirt with horizontal stripes of the sort a mother would select.

“Kinsey Millhone,” I said, holding out my hand.

“Julian Frisch. You selling something? Avon, Fuller Brush?”

“I don’t think they sell door-to-door these days.” Again, I explained who I was and my fact-finding mission with regard to the Fredricksons. “Are you acquainted with them?”

“Sure. She does my books. You want to come in?”

“I’d like that.”

His living room looked like a display for computer sales and service. Some of the equipment I could identify on sight-keyboards and the monitors that looked like clunky television screens. There were eight computers set up, with tangled cables that snaked across the floor connecting them. In addition, there were sealed cartons I assumed contained brand-new computers. The few cranky-looking models sitting in one corner might have come in for repair. I’d heard the terms “floppy disk” and “boot up” but I didn’t have a clue what they meant.

“I take it you sell or repair computers.”

“Little bit of both. What do you have?”

“A portable Smith-Corona.”

He half-smiled, as if I were making a joke, and then he wagged a finger at me. “Better catch up with reality. You’re missing the boat. Time’s going to come when computers will do everything.”

“I have trouble believing that. It just seems so unlikely.”

“You’re not a believer like the rest of us. The day will come when ten-year-olds will master these machines and you’ll be at their mercy.”

“That’s a depressing thought.”

“Don’t say I didn’t warn you. At any rate, that’s probably not why you knocked on my door.”

“True enough,” I said. I redirected my attention and went through my introduction, which I’d just about perfected by then, wrapping up with a reference to the two-car collision on May 28 of the year before. “How long has Gladys Fredrickson handled your books?”

“The past two or three years. I only know her professionally, not personally. She’s a mess right now, but she does good work.”

“Did or does?”

“Oh, she still handles my accounts. She complains about her aches and pains, but she never misses a beat.”

“She told the insurance company she couldn’t work because she can’t sit for long periods and she can’t concentrate. She said the same thing to me when I took her statement.”

His expression was pained. “That’s a pile of crap. I see the courier service over there two and three times a week.”

“Are you sure about that?”

“I work right here. I got a clear view across the street. I don’t mean to rat her out, but she’s as busy as ever.”

Maybe I was falling in love. My heart gave the same pitter-patter and my chest felt warm. I put a hand across my forehead to see if I was suffering a fever of sudden onset. “Hang on a minute. This is too good to believe. Would you mind repeating that on tape?”

“I could do that,” he said. “I was thinking about firing her, anyway. Her whining is getting on my nerves.”

I sat down on the lone metal folding chair and put my tape recorder on an unopened carton. I took out my clipboard so I could make a written record of the information as well. He didn’t have tons to contribute, but what he offered was pure gold. Gladys Fredrickson’s claims of disability were fraudulent. She hadn’t collected a cent yet, unless she was receiving state disability checks, which was entirely possible. Once he’d gone through his account for the tape recorder, I packed up my gear and shook his hand, thanking him profusely.

He said, “Not a problem. And if you change your mind about becoming computer literate, you know where I am. I could get you up and running in no time.”

“How much?”

“Ten grand.”

“You lost me there. I don’t want to pay ten grand for something that makes me feel inadequate.” I left thinking, Ten-year-old kids? Get serious.

The neighbor across the street to the right of the Fredricksons’ was no help at all. The woman never did quite grasp my purpose, thinking I was selling insurance, which she politely declined. I repeated myself twice and then thanked her and moved over to the house on the other side.

The woman who answered the door was the same woman I’d seen when I arrived at the Fredricksons’ house the first time. Given my experience with elderly persons, namely Gus, Henry, and the sibs, I placed this woman in her early eighties. She was quick and soft-spoken and seemed to have all her faculties about her. She was also as plump as a pincushion and she smelled of Joy perfume. “I’m Lettie Bowers,” she said, as she shook my hand and invited me in.

Her skin felt delicate and powdery, her palm two or three degrees warmer than my own. I wasn’t sure she should be so trusting, inviting a stranger into her house, but it suited my purposes.

Her living room was sparsely furnished, frothy curtains at the windows, faded carpet on the floor, faded paper on the walls. The Victorian-style furniture had a vaguely depressing air about it, which suggested it was authentic. The rocker I sat down in had a horsehair seat, which you couldn’t get away with now. To the right of the front door, on the Fredricksons’ side of the house, French double doors opened onto a wood balcony crowded with flowerpots. I explained who I was and that I was working as an investigator on behalf of the insurance company Gladys Fredrickson was suing in the wake of her accident. “Would you mind if I ask you a few questions.”

“Fine. I’m happy for the company. Would you like tea?”

“No, thanks. I take it you’re aware of the claim?”

“Oh yes. She told me she was suing and I said, ‘Good for you.’ You should see the poor thing hobbling around. What happened was terrible and she’s entitled to recompense.”

“I don’t know about that. These days, hitting up an insurance company is like going to Vegas to play the slot machines.”

“Exactly. All that money is paid in and very little is paid out. The insurance companies as good as dare you to try to collect. They’ve got all the power on their side. If you win, they dump you or they double your premiums.”