Sue Grafton - T Is For Trespass

“Did you talk to her?” Henry asked.

Cheney said, “That’s why I’m here. We’re wondering if the two of you would step next door with us.”

Henry said, “Certainly. Is something wrong?”

“You tell us. When we pulled up, we found the front door standing open. All the lights are on, but there doesn’t seem to be anyone there.”

Henry left with Cheney and Officer Anderson, without bothering to put a coat over his short-sleeved shirt. I paused long enough to retrieve my jacket from the back of the kitchen chair. I grabbed Henry’s as well and scooted after him. The night was chilly and the wind was picking up. There was an empty expanse of curb where Solana’s car had been. I trotted along the walk, reassured by the notion that Cheney had the situation under control. He was right about Gus’s house. Every room was ablaze with light. By the time I crossed his front yard, I could see Anderson on his way around the side of the house with his flashlight, the wand of white zigzagging across windows, the walkway, and surrounding shrubbery.

Cheney had Solana Rojas’s arrest warrant in hand and I gathered that gave him a certain leeway to check the premises in search of her. He’d also uncovered two outstanding warrants for the arrest of Tomasso Tasinato, one on charges of aggravated battery, and the other for battery with great bodily harm. He told us Tiny had twice been caught on tape shoplifting items from a Colgate minimart. The owner had identified him but then decided not to file charges, saying he didn’t want the hassle over some beef jerky and two packages of M amp;M’s.

Cheney asked us to wait outside while he went in. Henry shrugged himself into his jacket and tucked his hands in the pockets. Neither of us said a word, but he must have worried, as I did, that something awful was in store. Once Cheney assured himself the place was empty, he asked us to walk through with him to see if we noticed anything out of the ordinary.

The premises had been picked clean of personal items. In my earlier unauthorized home invasion, I hadn’t noticed how barren the house was. The living room was intact, furniture still in place: lamps, the desk, a footstool, fake roses on the coffee table. The kitchen was untouched as well, nothing out of place. If there’d been dirty dishes in the sink, they’d been washed, dried, and put away. A damp-looking linen dish towel had been folded and hung neatly across the rack. The spray bottle of cleanser was gone, but the smell was still strong. I thought Solana was taking her compulsive tidiness a bit too far.

Gus’s room was just as we’d left it. The covers were flung back, sheets and spread rumpled and looking not quite clean. Drawers still stood half-open where Peggy’d hunted up a sweater for him. The humidifier had run dry and no longer hissed with steam. I continued down the hall to the first of the two spare bedrooms.

Compared with the last view I’d had, Solana’s room was empty. The carved mahogany bed frame remained, but the other antique pieces were gone: no burled walnut rocking chair, no armoire, no plump-shouldered fruitwood chest of drawers with ornate bronze drawer pulls. She couldn’t have loaded furniture in her car in the scant hour she had available after she returned home. For one thing, the items were too cumbersome, and for another, she was in too great a hurry to bother. This meant she’d disposed of the furniture earlier, but who knew what she’d done with it? In the closet, the hangers had been shoved apart and most of her clothes were gone. Some garments had tumbled to the floor and she’d left them in a heap, indicating the haste with which she’d packed.

I moved to Tiny’s room. Henry and Cheney stood in the doorway. I kept expecting to find a body-his or hers-shot, stabbed, or hanged. Uneasily, I eased in behind Cheney, hoping he would shield me from anything gross. The air in Tiny’s room was dense with “guy” smell: testosterone, hair, sweat glands, and dirty clothes. Overlying the ripe odor was the same smell of bleach I’d noticed throughout. Had she been using the spray cleanser to wipe the surfaces free of prints?

The two heavy blankets that served as blackout curtains were still nailed to the window frames, and the overhead light was tawny and ineffectual. The television set was gone, but all of Tiny’s toiletries were still strewn across the counter in the bathroom he shared with his mom. He’d left his toothbrush behind, but he probably didn’t use it anyway so no big deal.

Officer Anderson appeared in the hallway behind us. “Anybody know what kind of car she drives?”

Cheney said, “A 1972 Chevrolet convertible with the word ‘dead’ scratched into the driver’s-side door. Pearce made a note of the plate number in his field notes.”

“I think we got it. Come take a look at this.”

He went out the back door, flipping on the porch light as he passed. We followed him down the steps and across the yard to the single-car garage at the rear of the lot. The old wooden doors were padlocked, but he held his flashlight against the dusty window. I had to stand on tiptoe to see in, but the car inside was Solana’s. The convertible top was down and the front and rear seats were empty to all appearances. It was clear Cheney’d need a search warrant before he went further.

“Did Mr. Vronsky own a vehicle?” he asked.

Henry said, “He did, a 1976 Buick Electra, metallic blue with a blue interior. His pride and joy. He hadn’t driven it for years and I’m sure the tags on the license plate expired. I don’t know the license number, but a car like that shouldn’t be hard to spot.”

“The DMV will have the information. I’ll notify the sheriff’s department and the CHP. Any idea which direction she might’ve headed?”

“No clue,” Henry said.

Before he left, Anderson secured both the house and garage with crime scene tape in anticipation of a return with a warrant and a fingerprint technician. Cheney wasn’t optimistic about recovering the cash and other valuables Solana’d stolen over the years, but there was always a chance. At the very least, latent fingerprints would tie the cases together.

“Hey, Cheney?” I said, as he was getting in his car.

He looked across the top of his car at me.

“When the techs dust for prints? Tell ’em to try the vodka bottle in the cabinet above the sink. She probably didn’t think to wipe that down before she left.”

Cheney smiled. “Will do.”

Henry and I went back to his house. “I’m heading over to the hospital and after that, I’ll hit Rosie’s,” I said. “Care to join me?”

“I’d love to, but Charlotte said she’d stop by at eight. I’m taking her to dinner.”

“Really. Well, that’s interesting.”

“I don’t know how interesting it is. I treated her poorly over the business with Gus. I was a butt and the time has come to make that right.”

I left him to get himself gussied up and walked the half block to my car. The drive to St. Terry’s took less than fifteen minutes, which gave me time to ponder Solana’s vanishing and Cheney’s reappearance. I knew it wouldn’t be smart to renew that relationship. On the other hand (there’s always that other hand, isn’t there?), I’d caught a whiff of his aftershave and nearly whimpered aloud. I parked on a side street and headed for the brightly lighted hospital entrance.

My intended visit with Gus was short-lived. When I reached the floor and identified myself, I was told he was still asleep. I chatted briefly with the charge nurse, making sure she was clear about who was allowed to see him and who was not. Peggy had laid all the necessary groundwork, and I was assured his safety was uppermost in everyone’s mind. I did peek in at him and spent half a minute watching him sleep. His color had already improved.