T is for Trespass (Kinsey Millhone 20)

I held it up. “What’s this? I didn’t know Gus had a key to your place.”

“Sure. That’s why I have a key to his. Believe it or not, there was a time when he wasn’t such a grouch. He used to bring in the mail and water my plants when I went off to Michigan to visit the sibs.”

“Will wonders never cease,” I said, and returned to the task at hand while Henry carried the stack of papers to the kitchen and stuffed them in the trash. Gus’s financial dealings were well organized-paid bills in one pigeonhole, the unpaid in another. In a third, I found his checkbook, two savings account books, and his bank statements bound by rubber bands. I couldn’t help but notice the amount of cash he had in his accounts. Well, okay, I studied the numbers carefully, but I didn’t take notes. There was close to two thousand dollars in his checking account, fifteen thousand in one savings account, and twenty-two thousand in another. This might not be the whole of it. He struck me as the sort of fellow who stuck hundred-dollar bills between the pages of his books and kept untouched accounts in a number of different banks. The regular deposits he made were probably Social Security or pension checks. “Hey, Henry? What’d Gus do for a living before he retired?”

Henry stuck his head around the corner from the hallway. “He worked for the railroad back East. Might have been the L amp;N, but I’m not sure in what capacity. What makes you ask?”

“He’s got a fair amount of money. I mean, the guy’s not rich, but he has the means to live a lot better than this.”

“I don’t think money and cleanliness are connected. Did you find his address book?”

“Right here. The only person living in New York is a Melanie Oberlin, who has to be his niece.”

“Why don’t you go ahead and call?”

“You think?”

“Why not? You might as well put it on his phone bill. Meanwhile, I’ll start on the kitchen. You can take his bedroom and his bath as soon as you’re done.”

I placed the call, but as is usually the case these days, I didn’t talk to a live human being. The woman on the answering machine identified herself as Melanie, no last name, but she wasn’t able to take my call. She sounded pretty cheerful for someone who told me at the same time just how sorry she was. I gave a brief account of her uncle Gus’s fall and then left my name, my home and office numbers, and asked her to return the call. I tucked the address book in my pocket, thinking I’d try again later if I didn’t hear from her.

I toured Gus’s house as Henry had. In the hall, I could smell the fug of mouse droppings and perhaps a mouse corpse of recent vintage trapped in a wall nearby. The second bedroom was filled with an accumulation of unlabeled cardboard boxes and old furniture, some of it quite good. The third bedroom was devoted to items the old man evidently couldn’t bring himself to toss. Bundles of twine-bound newspapers had been stacked head-high, with aisles laid out between the rows for easy access in case someone needed to get in and collect all the Sunday funnies from December of 1964. There were empty vodka bottles, cases of canned goods and bottled water sufficient to withstand a siege, bicycle frames, two rusted lawn mowers, a carton of women’s shoes, and three stingy-looking TV sets with rabbit-ear antennas and screens the size of airplane windows. He’d filled an old wooden crate with tools. An old daybed was buried under jumbled mounds of clothing. An entire set of green-glass Depression-era dinnerware was stacked on a coffee table.

I counted fifteen ornate picture frames laid up against one wall. I flipped the frames forward and peered at the paintings from above, but I didn’t know what to make of them. The subject matter was varied: landscapes, portraits, one painting of a lush but drooping bouquet, another of a tabletop adorned with cut fruit, a silver pitcher, and a dead duck with its head hanging off the edge. The oil on most had darkened so much it was like looking through a tinted window. I know nothing about art, so I had no opinion about his collection, except for the dead duck, which I thought was in questionable taste.

I got busy in the bathroom, thinking to get the worst of it out of the way. I disconnected my emotional gears, much as I do at the scene of a homicide. Revulsion is useless when you have a job to do. For the next two hours, we scrubbed and scoured, dusted and vacuumed. Henry emptied the refrigerator and filled two large trash bags with unidentified rotting foodstuffs. The cupboard shelves held canned goods that bulged along the bottoms, signaling imminent explosion. He ran a load of dishes while I tossed a mound of dirty clothes in the washer and ran that as well. The bedding I left in a heap on the laundry room floor until the washer was free.