A Is for Alibi

  “I bet this isn’t even real flour in this thing,” she said. “I mean, I’ve heard people say junk food just has empty calories, but who needs full ones? I like ’em empty. That way I figure I can’t gain any more weight. That Charlie Scorsoni sure kept in touch, didn’t he? He called once from Denver and then he called from Tucson and last night from Santa Teresa. Wonder what he wants. He sounded cute.”

  “I’ll be in my room,” I said.

  “Well all right. Good enough. You want to return those calls, you just give me a buzz up here and I’ll put you through.”

  “Thanks,” I said.

  “Oh yeah, and I gave your telephone number in Las Vegas to a couple of people who didn’t want to leave messages. I hope that’s okay. You didn’t say I couldn’t refer calls.”

  “No, that’s fine,” I said. “Any idea who it might have been?”

  “Male and female, one each,” she said airily.

  When I got to my room, I kicked my shoes off and called Charlie Scorsoni’s office and talked to Ruth.

  “He was supposed to get back last night,” she said. “But he didn’t plan to come in to the office. You might try him at home.”

  “Well, if I don’t get him there, will you tell him I’m back in Los Angeles? He knows where to reach me here.”

  “Will do,” she said.

  The other message was a bonus. Apparently Garry Steinberg, the accountant at Haycraft and McNiece, had come back from New York a few days early and was willing to talk to me on Friday afternoon, which was today. I called and talked to him briefly, telling him I’d be there within the hour. Then I called Mrs. Glass and told her I should be out at her place shortly after supper. There was one more call I felt I should make, though I dreaded the necessity. I sat for a moment on the edge of the bed, staring at the phone and then I said to hell with it and dialed my friend in Las Vegas.

  “Jesus, Kinsey,” he said through his teeth. “I wish you wouldn’t do this to me. I get you the lowdown on Sharon Napier and next thing I know she’s dead.”

  I gave him the situation as succinctly as I could but it didn’t seem to ease his anxieties. Or mine. “It could have been anyone,” I said. “We don’t know that she was shot because of me.”

  “Yeah, but I got to cover myself anyway. Somebody remembers that I was asking around after this lady and then she’s found with a bullet in her throat. I mean, how does that look?”

  I apologized profusely and told him to let me know anything he found out. He didn’t seem that eager to keep in touch. I changed clothes, putting on a skirt, hose, and heels, and then I drove to the Avco Embassy building and took the elevator to the tenth floor. I was feeling bad about Sharon Napier all over again, guilt sitting in my gut like a low-level colic. How could I have missed that appointment? How could that have happened to me? She knew something and if I’d gotten there on time, I might be wrapping this investigation up instead of being where I was—which was nowhere in particular. I made my way back into the imitation barnyard of Haycraft and McNiece, staring at the dried corn on the wall while I whipped myself some more.

  Garry Steinberg turned out to be a very nice man. I guessed him to be in his early thirties, with dark curly hair, dark eyes, and a small gap between his front teeth. He was probably five feet, ten inches and his body looked soft, his waist puffing out like rising bread dough.

  “You’re noticing my waist, am I right?” he asked.

  I shrugged somewhat sheepishly, wondering if he did or did not want me to comment. He motioned me into a chair and then sat down behind his desk.

  “Let me show you something,” he said, lifting a finger. He opened his top desk drawer and took out a snapshot, which he handed to me. I glanced at it.

  “Who’s this?”

  “Perfect,” he said. “That was the perfect response. That’s me. When I weighed three hundred and ten pounds. Now I weigh two-sixteen.”

  “My God,” I said and looked at the picture again. Actually I could see now that in the old days he had looked a bit like Arlette might if she decided to cross-dress. I’m crazy about “before-and-after” shots, an avid fan of all those magazine ads showing women pumped up like tires and then magically thin, one foot arranged in front of the other, as though weight loss also involved the upsurge of charm and modeling skills. I wondered if there was anyone left in California not obsessed with self-image.

  “How’d you do it?” I asked, handing the snapshot back.

  “Scarsdale,” he said. “It was a real honest-to-God bitch but I did it. I only cheated once—well, twice. Once was when I turned thirty-five. I figured I was entitled to a bagel and cream cheese with a birthday candle. And one night I binged because my girl friend got mad at me and kicked me out. I mean, lookit, when I was three-ten I never even had a girl. Now I’m having fits when she throws me out. We made up again though, so that turned out all right. I’ve got twenty-five pounds to lose yet but I’m giving myself a break. Strictly maintenance. Have you ever done Scarsdale?”

  I shook my head apologetically. I was beginning to feel I’d never done anything. No Scarsdale, no therapy.

  “No alcohol,” he said. “That’s the hard part. On the maintenance diet, you can have like a small glass of white wine now and then, but that’s it. I figure the first fifty pounds I lost was from that. Giving up booze. You’d be surprised how much weight that adds.”

  “Sounds a lot better for you,” I said.

  “I feel good about myself,” he said. “That’s the important thing. So. Enough of that. What do you want to know about Libby Glass? The receptionist says you came about her.”

  I explained what I was up to and how I came to be involved in the matter of her death. He took it all in, asking occasional questions. “What can I tell you?” he said, finally.

  “How long had she handled Laurence Fife’s account?”

  “I’m glad you asked me that because that’s one thing I looked up when I knew you were coming over. We handled his personal finances first for about a year. The law firm of Fife and Scorsoni had only been with us six months. Actually a little less. We were just putting in our own computer system and Libby was trying to get all the records straightened out for the changeover. She was a very good accountant by the way. Real conscientious and real smart.”

  “Were you a good friend of hers?”

  “Pretty good. I was El Blimpo back then but I had a crush on her and we kind of had this brother-sister relationship—platonic. We didn’t date. Just had lunch together once a week, something like that. Sometimes a drink after work.”

  “How many accounts did she handle?”

  “All together? I’d say twenty-five, maybe thirty. She was a very ambitious girl and she really knocked herself out . . . for all the good it did.”

  “Meaning what?”

  He got up and closed the door to his office, pointing significantly to the wall of the office next door.

  “Listen, old man Haycraft was a petty tyrant, the original male chauvinist pig. Libby thought if she worked hard, she’d get a promotion and a raise, but no such thing. And these guys aren’t much better. You want to know how I get a raise? I threaten to quit. Libby didn’t even do that.”

  “How much was she paid?”

  “I don’t know. I could maybe look that up. Not enough to suit her, I can tell you that. Fife and Scorsoni was a big account—not the biggest, but big. She didn’t feel it was fair.”

  “She did more work for Fife than Scorsoni, I assume.”

  “At first. After that, it was half and half. A lot of the purpose of our taking over their business management was to keep track of all the estate work. That was a big part of their ongoing business from what she said. The dead guy, Fife, did a lot of messy divorce work, which paid big fees but didn’t require that much in the way of bookkeeping. Also, we did accounts receivable for them, paid their office bills, kept track of profits from the firm, and made suggestions about investments. Well, at that point, we weren’t doing much
in the way of investment counseling because they hadn’t been with us that long but that was the object of the exercise eventually. We like to hold off some until we see where our clients stand. Anyway, I can’t go into details on that but I can probably answer any other general questions you might have.”

  “Do you know anything about where the money from the Fife’s estate went?”

  “The kids. It was divided equally among them. I never saw the will but I helped settle the estate in terms of disbursements after probate.”

  “You don’t happen to represent Scorsoni’s new law firm, do you?”

  “Nope,” Garry said. “I met him a couple of times after Fife died. He seemed like a nice man.”

  “Is there any way I could look at the old books?”

  “Nope,” he said. “You could do it if I had Scorsoni’s written permission but I don’t know what good that would do you anyway unless you’re an accountant yourself. Our system isn’t that complicated, but I don’t think it’d make sense to you.”

  “Probably not,” I said, trying to think what else I wanted to ask him about.

  “You want coffee? I’m sorry, I should have asked you sooner.”

  “No thanks. I’m fine,” I said. “What about Libby’s personal affairs. Is there any chance that she was sleeping with Laurence Fife?”

  Garry laughed. “Now that I don’t know. She’d been going with some creepy little guy ever since high school, and I knew she’d broken up with him. On my advice, I might add.”

  “How come?”

  “He came in to apply for a job here. I was in charge of screening all applicants. He was just supposed to messenger stuff back and forth but he didn’t even look that smart. He was belligerent, too, and if you want my honest opinion, he was high.”

  “You wouldn’t still have his application on file, would you?” I asked, feeling a faint surge of excitement.

  Garry looked at me. “We’re not having this conversation, am I right?”

  “Right.”

  “I’ll see what I can find,” he said promptly. “It wouldn’t be here. It’d be over in the warehouse. We have all the old records stored there. Accountants are real pack rats. We never throw anything away and everything gets written down.”

  “Thanks, Garry,” I said. “I can’t tell you how much I appreciate this.”

  He smiled happily. “And maybe I’ll look for the old Fife files as long as I’m over there. It won’t hurt to take a peek. And to answer your question about Libby, my guess would be no. I don’t think she was having an affair with Laurence Fife.” He glanced at his watch. “I got a meeting.”

  I shook his hand across the desk, feeling good. “Thanks again,” I said.

  “No problem. Stop by again. Anytime.”

  I got back to my hotel room at 3:30. I put a pillow on the plastic chair, set my typewriter up on the wobbly desk, and spent an hour and a half typing up my notes. It had been a long time since I sat down to do paperwork but it had to be caught up. By the time I pecked my way through the last paragraph, I had a pain in my lower back and another one right between my shoulder blades. I changed into my running clothes, my body heat resurrecting the smell of old sweat and car fumes. I was going to have to find a Laundromat soon. I jogged south on Wilshire, just for variety, cutting across to San Vicente at Twenty-sixth Street. Once I got on the wide grassy divider, I could feel myself hit stride. Running always hurts—I don’t care what they say—but it does acquaint one with all of one’s body parts. This time I could feel my thighs protest and I noticed a mild aching in my shins, which I ignored, plodding on gamely. For my bravery, I netted a few rude remarks from two guys in a pickup truck. When I got back to the motel, I showered and got back into my jeans and then I stopped by McDonald’s and had a Quarter Pounder with cheese, fries, and a medium Coke. By then, it was 6:45. I filled up the car with gas and headed over the hill into Sherman Oaks.

  17

  Mrs. Glass answered the door after half a buzz. This time the living room had been picked up to some extent, her sewing confined now to a neatly folded pile of fabric on the arm of the couch. Raymond was nowhere in sight.

  “He had a bad day,” she said to me. “Lyle stopped by on his way home from work and we put him to bed.”

  Even the television set was turned off, and I wondered what she did with herself in the evenings.

  “Elizabeth’s things are in the basement,” she murmured. “I’ll just get the key to the storage bin.”

  She returned a moment later and I followed her out into the corridor. We turned left, past the stairway back to the basement door which was set into the right-hand wall. The door was locked and after she opened it, she flipped the light switch at the top of the stairs. I could already smell the dry musty scent of old window screens and half-empty cans of latex paint. I was about two steps behind her as we made our way down the narrow passageway, wooden stairs taking a sharp right-hand turn. At the landing, I caught a glimpse of concrete floor with bins of wooden lathing reaching to the low ceiling. Something wasn’t right but the oddity didn’t really register before the blast rang out. The light bulb on the landing shattered, spraying us both with thin flakes of glass and the basement was instantly blanketed in darkness. Grace shrieked and I grabbed her, pulling her back up the stairs. I lost my balance and she stumbled over me. There must have been an outside exit because I heard a wrenching of wood, a bang, and then someone taking the concrete steps outside two at a time. I struggled out from under Grace, jerking her up the stairs with me and then I left her in the corridor, racing out through the front and around the side of the building. Someone had left an old power mower in the driveway and I tripped in the darkness, sprawling forward on my hands and knees, cursing savagely as I scrambled back to my feet again. I reached the rear of the building, keeping low, my heart pounding in my ears. It was black-dark, my eyes just beginning to adjust. A vehicle started up one street over and I could hear it chirp out with a quick shift of gears. I ducked back, leaning against the building then, hearing nothing but the fading roar of a vehicle being driven away at high speed. My mouth was dry. I was drenched in sweat and belatedly I felt a shudder go through me. Both my palms stung where the gravel had bitten into the flesh. I trotted back to my car and got out my flashlight, tucking the little automatic into my windbreaker pocket. I didn’t think there was anyone left to shoot but I was tired of being surprised.

  ________

  Grace was sitting on the doorsill, her head hanging down between her knees. She was shaking from head to foot and she’d started to weep. I helped her to her feet, easing open the apartment door.

  “Lyle knew I was picking the stuff up, right?” I snapped at her. She gave me a haunted, pleading look.

  “It couldn’t have been him. He wouldn’t have done that to me,” she whimpered.

  “Your faith is touching,” I said. “Now sit. I’ll be back in a minute.”

  I went back to the basement stairs. The beam from the flashlight cut through the blackness. There was a second bulb at the bottom of the stairs and I pulled the chain. A flat dull light from the swinging bulb threw out a yellow arc that slowed to a halt. I turned off the flashlight. I knew which bin belonged to Mrs. Glass. It had been smashed open, the padlock dangling ineffectually where the lathing had been broken through. Cardboard boxes had been torn open, the contents strewn about in haste, forming an ankle-deep mess through which I picked my way. The emptied boxes all bore the name “Elizabeth,” obligingly rendered in bold Magic Marker strokes. I wondered if we’d interrupted the intruder before or after he’d found what he was looking for. I heard a sound behind me and I whirled, raising the flashlight instantly like a club.

  A man stood there staring at me with bewilderment.

  “Got a problem down here?”

  “Oh fuck. Who are you?”

  He was middle-aged, hands in his pockets, his expression sheepish. “Frank Isenberg from apartment three,” he said apologetically. “Did somebody break in? You
want me to call the police?”

  “No, don’t do that yet. Let me check upstairs with Grace. This looks like the only bin that’s been damaged. Maybe it was just kids,” I said, heart still thudding. “You didn’t have to sneak up on me.”

  “Sorry. I just thought you might need some help.”

  “Yeah, well thanks anyway. I’ll let you know if I need anything.”

  He stood there surveying the chaos for a moment and then he shrugged and went back upstairs.

  I checked the basement door at the rear. The glass had been broken out and someone had pulled back the bolt by reaching through. The door was wide open of course. I shut it, pushing the bolt back into place. When I turned around, Grace was creeping timidly down the stairs, her face still pale. She clung to the railing. “Elizabeth’s things,” she whispered. “They spoiled all of her boxes, all the things I saved.”

  She sank down on the steps, rubbing her temples. Her large dark eyes looked injured, perplexed, with a touch of something else that I could have sworn was guilt.

  “Maybe we should call the police,” I said, feeling mean, wondering just how protective of Lyle she intended to be.

  “Do you really think?” she said. Her gaze flitted back and forth indecisively and she took out a handkerchief, pressing it against her forehead as though to remove beads of sweat. “Nothing might be missing,” she said hopefully. “Maybe nothing’s gone.”

  “Or maybe we won’t know the difference,” I said.

  She pulled herself up and moved over to the bin, taking in the disastrous piles of papers, stuffed animals, cosmetics, underwear. She stopped, picking up papers randomly, trying to make stacks. Her hands still trembled but I didn’t think she was afraid. Startled perhaps, and thinking rapidly.