"Cabin's empty. You can go on back if you want. There hasn't been a way to rent it since the body was found. Word gets out and nobody wants to touch it, especially the shape she was in." Burke held his nose with exaggerated distaste.
Embarrassed, Leda said, "J.D.!" as if he'd made a rude noise with his butt.
"It's the truth," he said. He opened the butcher's packet and took out a pillow of raw ground beef, which he plunked into the skillet on top of the sautéed onions. He began to break up the bulk meat with his spatula. I could still see the densely packed noodles of beef where the meat had emerged from the grinder. Looked like worms to me. The hot skillet was turning the bottom of the bulk ground beef from pale pink to gray. I'm giving up meat. I swear to God I am.
"Can you remodel the place?"
"Right now I don't have the bucks, and it probably wouldn't help. It's just a shack."
"What was she paying?"
"Three hundred a month. Might sound like a lot unless you compare it to other rentals in the area. It's really like a one-bedroom with a wood-burning stove I finally took out. People know a place is empty, and they'll steal you blind. They'll take all the lightbulbs if nothing else."
I noticed that in typical landlord assessment, the "shack" had been elevated to a "one-bedroom apartment."
"Did someone live there before she did?"
"Nope. My parents used to own the property, and I inherited when Mom died, along with some other rentals on the far side of town. I met Lorna through some people at the plant where she worked. We got talking one afternoon, and she told me she was looking for a place with some privacy. She'd heard about the cabin and asked if she could see it. She fell in love with it. I told her, 'Look, it's a mess, but if you want to fix it up, it'd be fine with me.' She moved in two weeks later without really doing much."
"Was she a party person?"
"Not to my knowledge."
"What about friends? Did she have a lot of people back there?"
"I really couldn't say. It's way back in the back. There's like this little private dirt road going in off the side street. You want to see it, you probably ought to drive your car around and come in that way. Used to be a path between the two places, but we don't use it anymore, and it's overgrown by now. Most of the time, I didn't see if she had company or not because the foliage is so dense. Winters I might catch lights, but I never paid much attention."
"Did you know she was hustling?"
He looked at me blankly.
"Turning tricks," Leda said.
J.D. looked from her face to mine. "What she did was her business. I never considered it my concern." If he was startled by the revelation, it didn't show on his face. His mouth curved down in a display of skepticism while he poked at the cooking beef. "Where'd you hear about that?" he asked me.
"From a vice detective. Apparently, a lot of hookers work the classy hotels where the high rollers hang out. Lorna had done out-call, but she upgraded to independent."
"I guess I'll have to take your word for it."
"So as far as you knew, she didn't bring clients here."
"Why would she do that? You want to impress a fella, you'd hardly bring 'em back to some little shack in the woods. You'd be better off at the hotel. That way he'd get stuck for all the drinks and stuff."
"That makes sense," I said. "I gather she was careful to keep her private life private, so she probably didn't like to mix the two, anyway. Tell me about the day you found her."
"Wasn't me. It was someone else," he said. "I'd been out of town, up at Lake Nacimiento for a couple of weeks. I don't remember the exact timetable offhand. I got home, and I was taking care of some bills came in while I was gone and realized I didn't have her rent check. I tried calling a bunch of times and never got any answer. Anyway, couple days after that, this woman came to the door. She'd been trying to get in touch with Lorna herself, and she'd gone back there to leave her a note. Soon as she got close, she picked up the stink. She came and knocked on our door and asked us to call the police. She said she was pretty sure it was a dead body, but I felt like I ought to check it out first."
"You hadn't noticed anything before?"
"I'd been aware of something smelling bad, but I didn't think much of it. I remember the guy across the street was complaining, but it wasn't like either one of us really thought it was human. Possum or something. Could have been a dog or a deer. There's a surprising amount of wildlife around here."
"Did you see the body?"
"No ma'am. Not me. I got as far as the porch and turned around and came back. I didn't even knock. Man, I knew something was wrong, and I didn't want to be the one to find out what it was. I called 911 and they sent a cop car. Even the officer had a hard time. Had to hold a handkerchief across his mouth." J.D. crossed to the pantry, where he took out a couple of cans of tomato sauce. He took the crank-style can opener from a nearby drawer and began to remove the lid on the first can.
"You think she was murdered?"
"She was too young to die without some kind of help," he said. He dumped the contents of the first can into the skillet and then cranked open the second. The warm, garlicky smell of tomato sauce wafted up from the pan, and I was already thinking maybe meat wasn't so bad. Other people's cooking always makes me faint with hunger. Must be the equivalent of lost mothering. "Any theories?"
"Not a one."
I turned to Leda. "What about you?"
"I didn't know her that well. We put the vegetable garden back in that corner of the property, so I'd sometimes see her when I went back there to pick beans."
"No friends in common?"
"Not really. J.D. knew Lorna's supervisor out at the water treatment plant. That's how she heard we had a cabin in the first place. Other than that, we didn't socialize. J.D. doesn't like to get too chummy with the tenants."
"Yeah. First thing you know they're giving you excuses instead of the rent check," he said.
"What about Lorna? Did she pay on time?"
"She was good about that. At least until the last one. Otherwise, I wouldn't have let it ride," he said. "I kept thinking she'd bring it by."
"Did you ever meet any friends of hers?"
"Not that I remember." He turned to look at Leda, who shook her head in the negative.
"Anything else you can think of that might help?"
I got murmured denials from both.
I took out a business card and jotted my home phone on the back. "If anything occurs to you, would you give me a buzz? You can call either number. I have machines on both. I'll take a look at the cabin and get back to you if there's a question."
"Watch the bugs," he said. "There's some biggies out there."
Chapter 6
* * *
I nosed the VW down the narrow dirt road that cut into the property close to the rear lot line. The lane had once been black-topped, but now the surface was cracked and graying, overgrown with crab-grass. My headlights swept along the two rows of live oaks that defined the rutted pathway. The branches, interlocking overhead, formed a tunnel of darkness through which I passed. Shrubbery that once might have been neatly trimmed and shaped now spilled in a tumble that made progress slow. Granted, my car may have seen better days, but I was reluctant to let branches snap against the pale blue paint. The potholes were already acting on my shock absorbers like a factory test.
I reached a clearing where a crude cabin loomed in the shadows. I did a three-point turn, positioning the car so I could avoid backing out. I doused the lights. The illusion of privacy was immediate and profound. I could hear crickets in the underbrush. Otherwise, there was silence. It was hard to believe there were other houses nearby, flanked by city streets. The dim illumination from streetlights didn't penetrate this far, and the sound of traffic was reduced to the mild hush of a distant tide. The area felt like a wilderness, yet my office downtown couldn't have been more than ten minutes away.
Peering toward the main house, I could see nothing but the thick gro
wth of saplings, ancient live oaks, and a few shaggy evergreens. Even with the limbs bare on the occasional deciduous tree, the distant lights were obscured. I popped open the glove compartment and took out a flashlight. I tested the beam and found that the batteries were strong. I tucked my handbag in the backseat and locked the car as I got out. About fifty feet away, between me and the main house, I could see the skeletal tepee constructions for the pole beans in the now abandoned garden. The air smelled densely of damp moss and eucalyptus.
I moved up the steps to the wooden porch that ran along the front of the cabin. The front door had been removed from its hinges and now leaned against the wall to one side of the opening. I flipped the light switch, relieved to note the electrical power was still connected. There was only one fixture overhead, with a forty-watt bulb that bathed the rooms in drab light. There was little, if any, insulation, and the place was dead cold. While all the window-panes were intact, a fine soot had settled in every crevice and crack. Dead insects lined the sills. In one corner of the window frame, a spider had wrapped a fly in a white silken sleeping bag. The air smelled of mold, corroded metal, and spoiled water sitting fallow in the plumbing joints. A section of the wooden floor in the main room had been sawed away by the crime scene unit, the gaping hole covered over with a sheet of warped plywood. I picked my way carefully around that. Just above my head, something thumped and scampered through the attic. I imagined squirrels squeezing into roof vents, building nests for their babies. The beam of my flashlight picked up countless artifacts of the ten months of neglect: rodent droppings, dead leaves, small pyramids of debris created by the termites.
The interior living space was arranged in an L, with a narrow bathroom built into its innermost angle. The plumbing was shared between the bathroom and the kitchenette, with a dining area that wrapped around the corner to the "living" room. I could see the metal plate in the floor to which the wood-burning stove had been affixed. The walls, painted white, were dotted with daddy longlegs, and I found myself keeping an uneasy eye on them as I toured the premises. To one side of the front door was the Belltone box for the doorbell, about the size of a cigarette pack. Someone had popped the housing away from the wall, and I could see that the interior mechanism was missing. An electrical wire, sheathed in green plastic, had been cut and now drooped sideways like a wilted flower stem with the blossom gone.
Lorna's sleeping area had probably been tucked into the short arm of the L. The kitchen cabinets were empty, linoleum-lined shelves still gritty with cornmeal and old cereal dust. Karo syrup or molasses had oozed onto the surface, and I could see circles where the bottoms of the canned goods had formed rings. I checked the bathroom, which was devoid of exterior windows. The toilet was old, the tank tall and narrow. The bowl itself protruded in front, like a porcelain Adam's apple. The brown wood seat was cracked and looked as if it would pinch you in places you cherished. The sink was the size of a dishpan, supported on two metal legs. I tried the cold-water faucet, jumping back with a shriek when a shot of brown water spurted out. The water pipes began to make a low-pitched humming sound, sirens in the underground announcing the crime of trespass. The bathtub rested on ball feet. Dead leaves had collected in a swirling pattern near the drain, while black swans glided across an opaque green plastic shower curtain that hung from an elliptical metal frame.
In the main room, despite the lack of furniture, I could surmise how the space had been used. Close to the front door, dents in the pine flooring suggested the placement of a couch and two chairs. I pictured a small wooden dinette set at the other end of the living room where it turned the corner into the kitchen. To one side of the sink, there was a small cabinet with a phone jack attached just above the baseboard. Lorna probably had a portable phone or a long extension cord, which would have allowed her to keep the phone in the kitchen by day and beside her bed at night. I turned and scanned the premises. Around me, shadows deepened and the daddy longlegs began to tiptoe down the walls, restless at my intrusion. I eased out of the cabin, keeping a close eye on them.
I picked at my dinner, sitting alone in my favorite booth at Rosie's restaurant half a block from my apartment. As usual, Rosie had bullied me into ordering according to her dictates. It's a phenomenon I don't seriously complain about. Beyond McDonald's Quarter Pounders with Cheese, I don't have strong food preferences, and I'm just as happy to have someone else steer me through the menu. Tonight she recommended the caraway seed soup with dumplings, followed by a braised pork dish, yet another Hungarian recipe involving meatstuffs overwhelmed by sour cream and paprika. Rosie's is not so much a restaurant as it is a funky neighborhood bar where exotic dishes are whipped up according to her whims. The place always feels as though it's on the verge of being raided by the food police, so narrowly does it skirt most public health regulations. The scent in the air is a blend of Hungarian spices, beer, and cigarette smoke. The tables in the center of the room are those chrome-and-Formica dinette sets left over from the 1940s. Booths hug the walls: stiff, high-backed pews sawed out of construction-grade plywood, stained dark brown to disguise all the knotholes and splinters.
It was not quite seven, and none of the habitual sports enthusiasts were in evidence. Most nights, especially in the summer months, the place is filled with noisy teams of bowlers and softball players in company uniforms. In winter, they're forced to improvise. Just this week a group of revelers had invented a game called Toss the Jockstrap, and a hapless example of this support garment was now snagged on the spike of a dusty marlin above the bar. Rosie, who is otherwise quite bossy and humorless, seemed to find this amusing and left it where it was. Apparently her impending nuptials had lowered her IQ several critical points. She was currently perched up on a bar stool, scanning the local papers while she smoked a cigarette. A small color television set was blaring at one end of the bar, but neither of us was paying much attention to the broadcast. Rosie's beloved William, Henry's older brother, had flown to Michigan with him. Rosie and William were getting married in a month, though the date seemed to drift.
The telephone rang from its place on the near end of the bar. Rosie glanced over at it with annoyance, and at first I thought she wouldn't answer it at all. She took her time about it, refolding the paper before she set it aside. She finally answered on the sixth ring, and after she'd exchanged a few brief remarks with the caller, her gaze jumped to mine. She held the receiver in my direction and then clunked it down on the bar top, probably devastating someone's eardrum.
I pushed my dinner plate aside and eased out of the booth, careful that I didn't snag a splinter in the back of my thigh. One day I'm going to rent a belt sander and give all the wooden seats a thorough scouring. I'm tired of worrying about the possibility of impaling myself on spears of cheap plywood. Rosie had moved to the far end of the bar, where she turned down the volume on the TV set. I crossed to the bar and picked up the receiver. "Hello?"
"Hey, Kinsey. Cheney Phillips. How are you?"
"How'd you know where I was?"
"I talked to Jonah Robb, and he told me you used to hang out at Rosie's. I tried your home number and your machine picked up, so I figured you might be having dinner."
"Good detective work," I said. I didn't even want to ask what had made him think to discuss me with Jonah Robb, who was working the Missing Persons detail at the Santa Teresa Police Department when I'd met him three years before. I'd had a brief affair with him during one of his wife's periodic episodes of spousal abandonment. Jonah and his wife, Camilla, had been together since seventh grade. She left him at intervals, but he always took her back again. It was love junior high school style, which became very tedious for those on the periphery. I hadn't known what the game was, and I didn't understand the role I'd been tagged to play. Once I got the message, I'd opted out of the situation, but it left me feeling bad. When you're single, you sometimes make those mistakes. Still, it's disconcerting to think your name is being bandied about. I didn't like the idea that I was the subject of conversati
on in the local police locker room.
"What are you up to?" I said to Cheney.
"Nothing much. I'll be going down to lower State Street later tonight, looking for a guy with some information I want. I thought you might like to ride along. An old girlfriend of Lorna's tends to hustle her butt in the same neighborhood. If we spot her, I can introduce you... if you're interested, of course."
My heart sank as visions of an early bedtime evaporated. "It sounds great. I appreciate the offer. How do you want to work it? Shall I meet you down there?"
"You can if you like, but it's probably better if I swing by and pick you up on the way. I'll be cruising a big area, and it's hard to know where I'll be."
"You know where I live?"
"Sure," he said, and rattled off my address. "I'll be there about eleven."
"That late?" I squeaked.
"The action doesn't even get rolling 'til after midnight," he said. "Is that a problem?"
"No, it's fine."
"See you then," he said, and hung up.
I glanced at my watch and noted with despair that I had about four hours to kill. All I really wanted was to hit the sack, but not if I was going to have to get up again. When I'm down, I like to stay down. Naps leave me feeling hungover without the few carefree moments of an intervening binge. If I was going to drive around with Cheney Phillips until all hours, I thought I'd be better off staying on my feet. I decided I might as well conjure up some work in the interim. I drank two cups of coffee and then paid Rosie for my dinner, taking my jacket and handbag as I headed out into the night.
The sun had set at 5:45, and the moon probably wouldn't be rising until 2:00 A.M. At this hour, everybody in the neighborhood was still wide awake. In almost every house I passed, front windows glowed as if the rooms within were aflame. Night moths like soft birds batted ineffectually against the porch bulbs. February had silenced all the summer insects, but I could still hear a few hearty crickets in the dry grass and an occasional nightbird. Otherwise, the quiet was pervasive. It seemed warmer than last night, and I knew, from the evening paper, that the cloud cover was increasing. The winds were northerly, shaking through the thatch of dried palm fronds above me. I walked the half block to my apartment and let myself in briefly to check for messages.