Read Online E Is for Evidence by Sue Grafton - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Sue Grafton
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much of her until I saw what she'd left him with. The lady had really done a thorough shakedown. Andy had always complained about her extravagance, making sure we all knew she shopped at the best stores in town. It was a measure of his success, of course, that she could charge with impunity. What was clear now was that she played for keeps. Andy 'd been granted a card table, four aluminum lawn chairs with webbed seats, a mattress, and some flatware with what must have been his mother's monogram. It looked like Janice had been sticking it in the dishwasher for years because the finish was dull and the silver plate was worn off the handles.
The kitchen cabinets held paper plates and insulated cups, along with a sorry assortment of canned goods. This guy ate worse than I did. Since the condos were brand-new, the appliances were up-to-date and immaculate: self-cleaning oven, big refrigerator (empty except for two six-packs of no-brand beer) with an ice-maker clattering away, dishwasher, microwave, disposal, trash compactor. The freezer was stacked with cartons of Lean Cuisine. He favored Spaghetti and Chicken Cacciatore. A bottle of aquavit lay on its side and he had a bag of frozen rock-hard Milky Way bars that were just an invitation to break off a tooth.
The dining area was actually a simple extension of the small living room, the kitchen separated by a pass-through with bi-fold shutters painted white. There was very little in the way of furnishings. The card table seemed to double as dining-room table and home office. The telephone sat there, plugged into the answering machine, which showed no messages. The surface was littered with typing supplies, but there was no typewriter in sight. His bottle of white-out was getting as sluggish as old nail polish. The wastebasket was empty.
I went back into the kitchen and slid open the com-pactor, which was loosely packed, but full. Gingerly, I rooted through, spotting crumpled sheets of paper about three layers down. I removed the liner and inserted a fresh one. I doubted Andy would remember whether he'd emp-tied his trash or not. He'd probably spent most of his mar-ried life being waited on hand and foot, and my guess was he took household chores for granted, as if the elves and fairies crept in at night and cleaned pee off the rim of the toilet bowl whenever he missed. I glanced at my watch. I'd been in the place thirty-five minutes and I didn't want to press my luck.
I closed and locked the sliding glass door again, made a final pass to see if I'd overlooked anything, and then let myself out the front, taking his trash bag with me.
By noon, I was home again, sitting on Henry's back patio with Andy 's garbage spread around me like a beg-gar's picnic. Actually, the debris was fairly benign and didn't make me feel I needed a tetanus booster just to sort through. He was heavy into pickles, olives, anchovies, jalapeno peppers, and other foodstuffs in which no germs could live. There were no coffee grounds or orange peels. No evidence whatever that he ate anything fresh. Lots of beer cans. There were six plastic Lean Cuisine pouches, layers of junk mail, six dunning notices rimmed in red or pink, a notice of a Toastmaster's roast of a local business-man, a flyer from a carwash, and a letter from Janice that must have left him incensed, as he had crumpled it into a tiny ball and bitten down on it. I could see the perfect impression of his teeth in the wadded paper. She was bug-ging him about a temporary support check that was late again, said she, underlined twice and bracketed with ex-clamation points.
At the bottom of the bag was the back end of a pad of checks, deposit slips still attached, with the name of Andy 's bank and his checking-account number neatly printed thereon. I saved that for future reference. I had set aside the crumpled papers that were shoved into the bag half-way down. I smoothed them out now-six versions of a letter to someone he referred to variously as
The kitchen cabinets held paper plates and insulated cups, along with a sorry assortment of canned goods. This guy ate worse than I did. Since the condos were brand-new, the appliances were up-to-date and immaculate: self-cleaning oven, big refrigerator (empty except for two six-packs of no-brand beer) with an ice-maker clattering away, dishwasher, microwave, disposal, trash compactor. The freezer was stacked with cartons of Lean Cuisine. He favored Spaghetti and Chicken Cacciatore. A bottle of aquavit lay on its side and he had a bag of frozen rock-hard Milky Way bars that were just an invitation to break off a tooth.
The dining area was actually a simple extension of the small living room, the kitchen separated by a pass-through with bi-fold shutters painted white. There was very little in the way of furnishings. The card table seemed to double as dining-room table and home office. The telephone sat there, plugged into the answering machine, which showed no messages. The surface was littered with typing supplies, but there was no typewriter in sight. His bottle of white-out was getting as sluggish as old nail polish. The wastebasket was empty.
I went back into the kitchen and slid open the com-pactor, which was loosely packed, but full. Gingerly, I rooted through, spotting crumpled sheets of paper about three layers down. I removed the liner and inserted a fresh one. I doubted Andy would remember whether he'd emp-tied his trash or not. He'd probably spent most of his mar-ried life being waited on hand and foot, and my guess was he took household chores for granted, as if the elves and fairies crept in at night and cleaned pee off the rim of the toilet bowl whenever he missed. I glanced at my watch. I'd been in the place thirty-five minutes and I didn't want to press my luck.
I closed and locked the sliding glass door again, made a final pass to see if I'd overlooked anything, and then let myself out the front, taking his trash bag with me.
By noon, I was home again, sitting on Henry's back patio with Andy 's garbage spread around me like a beg-gar's picnic. Actually, the debris was fairly benign and didn't make me feel I needed a tetanus booster just to sort through. He was heavy into pickles, olives, anchovies, jalapeno peppers, and other foodstuffs in which no germs could live. There were no coffee grounds or orange peels. No evidence whatever that he ate anything fresh. Lots of beer cans. There were six plastic Lean Cuisine pouches, layers of junk mail, six dunning notices rimmed in red or pink, a notice of a Toastmaster's roast of a local business-man, a flyer from a carwash, and a letter from Janice that must have left him incensed, as he had crumpled it into a tiny ball and bitten down on it. I could see the perfect impression of his teeth in the wadded paper. She was bug-ging him about a temporary support check that was late again, said she, underlined twice and bracketed with ex-clamation points.
At the bottom of the bag was the back end of a pad of checks, deposit slips still attached, with the name of Andy 's bank and his checking-account number neatly printed thereon. I saved that for future reference. I had set aside the crumpled papers that were shoved into the bag half-way down. I smoothed them out now-six versions of a letter to someone he referred to variously as
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