“I understood this was his mother’s house.”
“It was. She was my sister, you see, and...”
Which made her Mrs. Western. In the original investigation she had been contacted in Sacramento, where she had lived in a tract house. Once started, Harriet Western was a talker.
“... still in escrow, but Marian did leave the house to Chuck, and in February he asked if I wanted to live in it. Just gave me the keys. Too many associations for him, he said. I moved in last month. He and his mother were awfully close, time he lived a life of his own. Over forty years old, big, fine-looking man — always was. Marian just couldn’t let go...”
Big, fine-looking man. Big enough to bounce a blackjack off Bart’s skull? Big enough, fine enough, to carry a 158-pound limp body into a basement garage, stuff it into a Jaguar, slide it over behind the wheel when the time came?
“When you say big, Mrs. Western...”
“Heavens, six feet tall, two-hundred-ten pounds now that he’s lost all that weight. Was two-hundred-forty. And he lifts those barbell things around — he’s strong as an ox. I remember...”
Better and better, Griffin looked. She hadn’t seen him since the first week in February when he’d given her the keys, knew nothing of California Street in Concord.
Because of that Concord lead, Ballard had gone the seven miles east to the 680 Interstate interchange instead of doubling back through Oakland. Now he was zipping north through the valley in light traffic. Very good indeed, Griffin looked. Especially after Ballard had asked Harriet Western about the cash he’d understood her sister had left to Griffin.
“Cash? Cash money?” She’d given a hearty full-throated laugh. “She had this house free and clear, and that was all. Chuck’s father was killed in a car accident in 1954, didn’t leave her a dime of insurance. Chuck was the one giving her cash, not the other way around...”
Yeah, and Ballard had a pretty good idea where the cash had been coming from, too; at least during the past few years. Have to call JRS tomorrow, find out if an audit had been talked of before Griffin had taken off. He might have known his peculations had become gross enough so they would be caught when someone else went through the books, even if none of the partners realized it.
Charles M. Griffin, age forty-one, white, single, a middle-aged swinger driving that middle-aged swinger’s car, the Thunderbird. And thief? And would-be murderer? And where, oh, where, are you, Chuckie baby?
Meanwhile, Ballard, cool goddamn private eye, got lost.
Made it all the way up through Danville and Alamo and Walnut Creek (just beds of lights laid down beside the raised 680 freeway) and then stayed on 680 when he should have veered right on California 242 just north of Pleasant Hill. He took the Concord Avenue off-ramp — the right street off the wrong freeway — and couldn’t find California Street. Dammit, where the little residential grid was supposed to be laid down, there wasn’t anything at all. Darkness. And beyond, where Concord was supposed to be, was a huge blare of lights that turned out to be an auto dealership with forty acres of used cars for sale. Then he ran out of gas, had to walk half a mile.
Shit, if he’d re-upped when his two years in the army were finished, he’d have been a sergeant by now. If he hadn’t got his ass shot off in the meantime.
It was 9:07 P.M. when he turned off Concord Avenue into the old by-passed residential area on two-block California Street. He missed 1830 on the first drive-through, finally found it to be a low ranch-style plaster affair with a red asphalt shingle roof. The old-fashioned picket fence was almost bursting with roses even prettier than those in Castro Valley.
No garage; a dusty blue Bonneville with a white hardtop was parked in the weedy yard next to a tall elm. A rope hung from a convenient limb, knotted near the end so kids could use it to swing on. Cars were whipping by down on Concord Avenue in an angry blare of horns and headlights. Almost dark, but he could still see the outlines, beyond the old live oaks and the new multiplexes, of the round-topped treeless California hills. The houses would climb them soon, too.
As he started through the weeds toward the front door, the lights went out. He paused. A woman came out, slamming the screen door behind her. She jumped and gasped when she saw him motionless in the yard.
“Jesus, you scared me, man!”
“I’m sorry. I’m trying to get hold of Griff, I thought you—”
“Griff?” The dying evening light showed her to be a big, buxom, dark-haired girl in her twenties. She wore skintight slacks over generous thighs; enough nipple poked against her red-and-white-striped T-shirt to show she wore no bra. Buxom was hardly the word. “Who the hell are you?”
“Ballard. You wouldn’t know me, I’m from the city. Griff—”
“Get to hell out of my way,” she said abruptly. She started to push past him. “I’m late for work.”
Ballard put out a detaining hand. “I’m not on the make. I—”
“Keep your paws off me!”
A clawed hand came up at his eyes. Ballard caught her wrist, turned his body sideways in case she tried to knee him, but as soon as she pulled her wrist loose she went right on talking as if there had been no interruption.
“I’m sick of that bastard’s rotten friends sucking around! This is my place now, get it? Next time I’ll slap you with so much fuzz you’ll be wearing stripes before you need a change of socks, believe me. They’re my friends in this town.”
Ballard seemed destined to never finish a sentence. “I’m not a friend of Griffin’s, I’m a private—”
“Buck private, I suppose. Last one Griff brought around was so kinky he wanted me to sit on the edge of the bed so... oh, never mind!”
Ballard stared after her in the near-darkness, then burst out laughing. What else could he do? But he had learned something: the bounteously endowed girl apparently had moved in when Griffin had moved out. Or before. So the house was a rental, and rental properties meant landladies. Somewhere close by, perhaps? Like next door?
Next door it was, a well-kept house that looked pale green in the evening light, with a wood-shingle roof and attractive brown trim. A newly polished Galaxie-500 was parked in front under an evergreen. The woman who identified herself as the owner of 1830 wore gray slacks and a thin white blouse over a mannish frame that went with her sixtyish age. Heavy-rimmed glasses made her eyes owlish. Her name was Emily Tregum.
“Griffin? Him? He left in February, good riddance, six weeks after that car smash he had on Christmas Eve—”
“With the T-Bird?”
“That’s right. They towed it away, should of kept it; but here a month later he had it back, all fixed up.” She nodded her head in tart satisfaction. “Ask me, he’s in jail — I know that’s where he should be. Left owing over two hundred dollars in rent, besides selling all of my furniture from that house. Put an ad right in the newspaper.”
“Do you know anyone who can put me in touch with him?”
She pursed meager lips, shook a finger at him in an oddly inappropriate gesture. “Someone bonded him over that auto wreck, then he jumped six hundred dollars’ bail.” She stopped, then added, “You look like a clean-cut young man, I’ll tell you this. Cheri, the girl who rents from me now, used to know him.”
“I, ah, just missed Cheri.”
“Well, she works right down the street. On Concord Avenue.” She leaned closer and lowered her voice. “In the topless place.”
Ballard thanked her and turned to leave, then remembered another question. “Has anyone else been around asking about Griffin lately?”