Adjusted to Death Read online

  “Did you find anything?” asked Eileen when I dove gratefully into the open back door of Maggie’s office.

  “Nothing but splinters,” I answered, pulling off the plastic gloves and holding my prickly hand out to her.

  After she had plucked the worst of the splinters out of my hand, with Maggie joining in to coo sympathy, I decided it was time to tackle the building from the inside. Just because the upstairs doors were locked now didn’t necessarily mean that they had been locked the day of the murder.

  I walked out Maggie’s door under Renee’s baleful gaze, then turned right and right again, into a second doorway which led to the inside staircase of the building. I ascended that staircase appreciatively, savoring the worn maroon carpet, the smooth wooden handrails, and the safely enclosing beige walls. I climbed all the way to the top floor. The gold and black lettering on the glass door there read peter o’hara, dentist.

  When I opened the door I was met by the dread whine of the dentist’s drill and the friendly inquiry of the receptionist.

  “Do you have an appointment?” she asked. She was young, Asian and pretty. She was also smiling. I couldn’t help but compare her style with Renee’s. But this receptionist did not have the monumental task of keeping Maggie on track, I reminded myself.

  “No appointment,” I hastened to assure her. God forbid I should have my mouth invaded any more often than I had to. “I’ve come from downstairs. I wanted to ask you a few questions about last Wednesday.” I gave her my friendliest “just between us gals” smile.

  “Oh, you mean when that man was killed?” she asked, her eyes brightening with excitement.

  “That’s right,” I said. “Did you know him?”

  “No, I didn’t,” she answered, disappointment evident in her eyes. “No one here did. The police interviewed us all, even the patients that were here that day. Are you a private investigator?” Her last question was whispered.

  “Something like that,” I whispered back. “Is there a rear door to your office?”

  “Yes, but it’s always locked,” she said. “The police asked us about that too.”

  I felt my smile fading.

  “Sorry,” she added.

  “It’s all right,” I told her and turned to leave. “Thank you for your time.”

  “Have a nice day,” she called as I walked out the door. Maybe Renee wasn’t so bad after all, I thought. At least she had never resorted to that awful phrase.

  I descended the stairway to the second floor. There were two glass doors on that landing, one that led to an acupuncturist and the other to a Rolfer. What a choice.

  I have experienced acupuncture firsthand, my friend Barbara having recommended her acupuncturist to me when I had a painful ganglionic cyst on my ankle. After an initial consultation, that acupuncturist, a Mr. Lum, had placed me on a table and asked if there was anything else bothering me physically. Glad of a sympathetic ear, I poured out a ten-minute list of complaints. At one needle per problem, I looked like my grandmother’s pincushion by the time Mr. Lum had finished skewering me. In all fairness, none of the needles had been deeply painful individually. Except, of course, for the one in my ankle.

  Rolfing was something I hadn’t tried personally. I’ve heard it described as a painful deep-tissue manipulation that restructures your posture and the accompanying mind-set. Not something I was eager to experience.

  A known evil being more acceptable, I opened the door to the acupuncturist’s office. A large blond woman sat behind a teak desk, which was covered in cacti. One glance at all those nasty little spines was enough to spur me to efficiency. Within three minutes I had ascertained that she was the acupuncturist and that, according to her, she worked alone in her office, did not know Scott Younger, and had no access to the back stairs. The back stairs were reached through the Rolfer’s office. I thanked her for the information and hurried out her doorway. Then I turned to the only office left, that belonging to Nancy Thomas, Certified Rolfer.

  - Nineteen -

  A blowup of a newspaper advertisement for Rolfing was posted on Ms. Thomas’ glass door, beneath her name and title.

  “Is your body chronically tense?” it asked. I wiggled my stiff shoulders and neck impatiently. “Do you move with ease, grace and balance?” it continued. I thought defensively of my clumsy ascent to the office rooftop. “How’s your posture?” it probed. I straightened my spine with a painful jerk. The advertisement then offered a ten-session series of “connective tissue manipulation.” That sounds harmless, I thought. Then I reminded myself that I was not here to “restructure” my body but to ask questions. I opened the door.

  Upon entering, I found myself alone in a small Spartan room, its only furnishings a desk and a chair. But I could hear sounds coming from behind the wooden door to the left. Sounds of moans and whimpers. Generally, I try to respect privacy, or to at least be subtle when invading it. But these sounds were too much to ignore in a building where murder had already been committed once.

  I crept to the door and opened it slowly. A muscular man wearing nothing but underpants lay on his back on a massage table, his knees drawn up to his stomach in a fetal position. A small dark-haired denim-clad woman was grinding her elbow slowly down the back of his left thigh with the intense concentration of a sculptor working in irreplaceable marble. I had found the source of the moans and whimpers. Was this Rolfing?

  My involuntary groan of sympathy alerted the woman to my presence. I slapped on a smile as she turned toward me. She was a middle-aged woman with intense dark eyes. Those eyes were regarding me in a most unfriendly fashion. I did have to admit she had great posture.

  “I’m sorry,” I said lamely. “There was no one at the desk.”

  “Take a break, Jason” she said in a surprisingly compassionate tone to the man on the table. “I’ll be right back to you.” He didn’t look delighted by the promise. He stretched his body out on the table and heaved a long, quivering sigh.

  She led me back to the reception area and asked in a much less compassionate tone what I wanted.

  “I’m from downstairs,” I answered, as if this explained everything. “I wanted to ask a few questions about your back door.”

  “Why?” she asked, her eyes focused unblinkingly on mine.

  “Maggie asked me to,” I said. The lie sprang out of my mouth much too easily. I shifted my weight guiltily and thought about a career in politics.

  She sighed. I took that for assent.

  “Do you have a back door?” I asked, knowing full well she did.

  “I have a back door and it’s always locked. I told the police that.”

  I opened my mouth for another question.

  “I also told the police I didn’t know the dead man and did not see clients that Wednesday,” she added, without a change in expression.

  “Well, thank you,” I said and turned to go.

  “Wait,” she commanded. I turned back hopefully. “Did you know that your left shoulder is higher than your right? Have you ever considered Rolfing?” she asked.

  “No,” I answered. She looked ready to tell me more about it. “But I read your ad. I’ll certainly consider it.”

  I turned and took my graceless, stiff, malformed body through her door, down the stairs and out onto the street with a sense of relief marred only briefly by the visions of drills, needles and elbows that lingered as I emerged into the cold bright day. Looking back at the building with new perspective, I suddenly recognized it for what it was, a New Age torture chamber.

  My relief at having escaped its upper floors gave way to a grinding sense of failure as I stood there. What had I learned? Only that it was highly unlikely that the murderer had used the back staircase. Or so the tenants would have had me think. But what if one of them had lied? Damn. There was really no way I could be sure they had told me the truth. And none of this was helping Wayne any. I returned my thoughts to my original set of suspects, focusing on Renee.

  I looked through the window
of Maggie’s office. Renee was working quietly at her desk. There were two patients in their chairs, reading magazines. I wanted to talk to Renee’s children. All I needed was an address and some luck. I opened the door and stepped in.

  “What do you want now?” she hissed when I reached her desk. I could just see the top of the sheet of paper she was working on.

  “To talk to Eileen or Maggie again,” I answered. I didn’t need to tell Renee what I wanted from them was her address. My eyes focused on the paper beneath her hand. It was her bank statement.

  “No way; they’ve spent enough time with you today,” she said, readying herself for further argument.

  But I didn’t have to argue with Renee. I could see her name and address at the top of her bank statement. I transposed the upside-down letters to right-side-up as fast as I could. Mickle, that’s right, 675 Willard Avenue, San Rafael. Renee noticed my focus and turned the paper over with a slap. But she was too late. I didn’t need her zip code.

  “Well, thank you anyway,” I said sweetly and left.

  I glanced over my shoulder as I went through the door. Renee’s mouth was gaping. She saw my glance and snapped it tightly shut. I hurried to my car, only pausing briefly to jot the address down as soon as I was out of Renee’s line of sight.

  I decided to drive to San Rafael as I thought up a plan. It was three o’clock. I hoped that Renee’s latchkey kids would be home, and that Renee would be held up at the office for at least another hour or two. It was time to strike.

  But how was I going to get them to talk to me? I considered what Renee had told me about her children as I pulled onto the highway. Her boy, John, liked punk rock, I remembered. So what could I do with punk music? And her daughter. What was her name? Something very young California. Kimberly, that was it. She liked malls. I thought, as I saw the sprawl of the Marin Shopping Center approaching on the right-hand side of the highway. And stuffed animals! I pulled my steering wheel sharply to the right and screeched toward the exit ramp. I was going shopping.

  Zoe’s Ark was aptly named. Her store sold a stuffed version of almost every beast, clean or unclean, that Noah could have had for company during the flood. Plus a few he might not have ever met, like tribbles, dinosaurs, soft robots, unicorns and wookies.

  I walked into the store and was immediately swept away by the magic of the animals. I fondled a small plush otter and patted the head of a life-sized pony. I was playing with a comically bobble-eyed cat puppet when I remembered what I was there for. Think twelve-year-old, I reminded myself. Then I turned and saw him. A six-foot-tall white Snoopy dog with black floppy ears, a black ball of a nose and black yarn eyes creased into a smile. I certainly couldn’t resist. And I was sure Kimberly wouldn’t be able to either. Of course, I made my living with joke gifts. I was predisposed toward cute.

  The cuteness began to wear off when I wrote the check. Anything over two figures always makes me a little shaky. And I was giving this away. The cuteness completely evaporated while I was lugging the dog out the door to my car. I hadn’t realize how heavy six feet of fluff could be.

  I laid him across the back seat of my Toyota, but his feet hung out the doorway. Was this how it must be to dispose of a dead body? At least rigor mortis hadn’t set in. I folded his legs up, but before I could shut the door they flopped back out. Damn. Maybe I could pull his head up. I climbed in the back seat, trying to straddle the dog without putting my weight on him, but I just sank into his considerable girth. I had a sudden flash of how sexual, not to mention bestial, this position must look and glanced back out the open door. Sure enough, a small crowd had gathered to watch me ravish the innocent dog. A tall redheaded man winked at me.

  “Let him sit up,” his little girl suggested.

  It was good advice. I pulled Snoopy up into sitting position, seat-belted him in and drove off, with all the dignity that could be expected of a woman chauffeuring a stuffed dog.

  This is the way I pictured my interview with Kimberly and John, on my way up the highway: I would bring the stuffed dog to the door and introduce myself as a friend of Renee’s, with a gift for Kimberly. The children would be so overwhelmed by the magnificence of the gift that they would invite me in for a friendly conversation. (When I was that age I would have told a stranger anything about my parents in exchange for a stuffed animal taller than myself. I just hoped Renee’s kids weren’t too hip for such an approach.) Once I got them talking I would lead them into a discussion of their mother’s feelings toward the late Scott Younger.

  A wave of ethical queasiness overtook me. What if I was successful? What if the innocence of Renee’s children led them to tell me something that might help to convict their mother? I shook the queasiness off and thought of Wayne being held by the police, perhaps because of whatever Renee had told them about him. And I was only going to question the kids. I could decide later what to do with anything of importance that they told me.

  The address on Renee’s bank statement was a modest three-storied redwood apartment building, dotted with balconies. I parked my car on the street and walked up to the front entrance. I was in luck. Nobody was in the lobby. And I found a listing of 2D for Mickle on the mail slots. I went back to my car and retrieved the stuffed dog. I dragged him up a carpeted stairway to the second floor.

  Apartment 2D was at the end of the hall. Something like music was coming from that direction, something made up of voices angrily shouting to the accompaniment of screeching amplified guitars. I hesitated, then knocked loudly. The sound of the music stopped abruptly, and I heard footsteps.

  The boy who answered the door had a shaved head that was tattooed with a red circle and a cross near his temple. He wore khaki fatigues and black lace-up boots, but he looked too young for the army. The blue eyes that stared out of his head were a match for Renee’s. He narrowed those eyes as he looked at me and then at the stuffed dog.

  “Yeah,” he said. The word was infused with enough hostility to make me step backward. There was no sign of the girl.

  “You must be John,” I answered with false cheeriness. “I have a present for Kimberly.”

  “Yeah,” he said again. “Who are you?”

  “Suzanne,” I answered, remembering Craig’s new girlfriend’s name. I only wished I had known her last name so I could really get her in trouble.

  “Yeah, so?” he snarled.

  “Is Kimberly in?” I tried.

  “No,” he answered. Damn. I looked into his glowering eyes and tried to think of an appropriate conversational gambit. Heavy metal? Neo-Nazism? Tattooing? No, I decided, I just couldn’t carry it off, not even with my new haircut. I told myself to act normal.

  “Do you think Kimberly will like this one as much as the one Scott Younger gave her?” I asked, adopting a cheerful tone again. I nodded at the dog in my arms.

  “What the fuck are you trying to pull here?” he asked, his eyes narrowing even further. Then he advanced on me, arms and shoulders stiff, hands balling into fists.

  “Never mind,” I said quickly. “Give this to your sister.”

  I shoved Snoopy into his stiff arms and left without looking back.

  As I drove away I hoped that Kimberly would actually enjoy the stuffed dog. Maybe its fluffy smile could compete with her brother’s surly scowls. Then I wondered what Scott Younger could have found attractive about John as a surrogate child. Did he identify with the boy’s anger? love him for qualities of character that I was unable to perceive upon one meeting? perhaps just view him with aloof amusement? Or was John just a boy only his real father could love? I shrugged. I would have to find a way to talk to Kimberly without John.

  Once in my front door, I walked quickly to my answering machine, hoping for a message from Wayne. But the only message was from my warehousewoman, Judy, demanding my usual daily call to Jest Gifts. I dutifully called in, but my heart was not in funny cups and Christmas ornaments that day. Judy berated me about my negligence for a while, but softened when she convinced herself that I m
ust be sick with the latest flu. I didn’t challenge her conviction. She advised me to take a hot bath and lots of aspirin, and then hung up.

  I went back to my desk to study my action-item list. I could check off one visit to Renee’s kids and the exploration of the office building’s backside. But the check marks were a poor substitute for any real discovery. I turned the list over and dropped my head into my hands. All the sadness and dread that my frantic activity had kept at bay came rolling back over me. Keep moving, I told myself sharply. I turned the list back over and sought the next action-item.

  It was time to talk to Devi again. She had known Scott, no matter how far back that connection was. She was a source of information and I was determined to pin her down. I dialed the number she had given me.

  “Hello,” answered a young voice. It had to be Tanya.

  “Is Devi there?” I asked.

  “No.” She was succinct as Devi was diffuse.

  “May I leave a message? Can you ask her to call Kate Jasper at—” She cut me off before I could leave my phone number.

  “She doesn’t want to talk to you,” Tanya said, and slammed down the phone.

  Boy, did I have a way with adolescents! I decided it was time to interview some older folks.

  I found Garza’s Nursery listed in the telephone book. It was located in San Anselmo, just as Maggie had said. My watch read four fifteen. Just enough time to visit them before they closed. I looked at my telephone longingly, willing Wayne to call me and tell me he was released, and the real murderer discovered. But it remained silent.

  On the drive to San Anselmo, I surveyed the clear weather resentfully. How could the skies have turned so bright and blue just as Wayne’s prospects had become so murky? But it was good weather for a nursery.