X (Kinsey Millhone 24)

Cheney’s throwaway line hadn’t really registered until then. Dinner with a friend? Since when was Anna Dace a friend?

5

The next morning, the office phone was already ringing as I turned the key in the lock and pushed open the door. The phone continued to ring as I crossed the outer office in giant steps and flung my bag on my desk. I was poised to snatch up the handset when my outgoing message kicked in. “The party you’ve dialed in the 805 area code is currently unavailable . . .”

My first thought was that this might be Christian Satterfield’s parole officer, or perhaps the parolee himself. I was just about to answer when I heard Cheney’s voice. I stayed my hand, which hovered in midair as he tossed off a hasty greeting and then read aloud the phone number and the address on Dave Levine Street that Christian Satterfield had used at the time of his arrest. I picked up a pen and made a note of the information as Cheney neared the end of his recital. After he signed off, I played the message again, making certain I’d heard the numbers correctly.

I opened my bottom desk drawer and hauled out the phone book again. I flipped over to the S’s and ran a finger down the column. There were no Satterfields living on Dave Levine, but I found a match for the phone number under the name Victor Satterfield on Trace Avenue, which was not a street I knew. I removed the Santa Teresa street map from my shoulder bag and opened it to the full. I spread it across my desk and checked the street index. I found Trace at the axis of G on the horizontal and 31 on the vertical. The street was a block and a half long and butted right up against Highway 101. If I was correct in my recollection of the house numbers on Dave Levine, this address was no more than five blocks away from the one Satterfield had claimed ten years earlier.

I picked up the phone and dialed. I probably should have cooked up a ruse in advance, but sometimes action without planning makes just as much sense. And sometimes not. The phone rang three times, and then someone picked up. “Hello?” Female, gravelly voiced, and blunt.

I pictured a habitual smoker over the age of fifty. She’d uttered only one word and somehow managed to sound rude. “May I speak to Chris?”

“Who?”

“Christian?”

There was dead silence for a beat. “Honey, you’re not going to have any luck with that one,” she said.

And then she hung up.

I replaced the handset in the cradle, wondering what she meant. I wasn’t going to have any luck with that one, meaning asking for someone named Chris or Christian? Or I wasn’t going to have any luck with the man himself? Were women calling the house all day long and bombing out right and left? All I’d wanted to know was whether the number would net me one parolee. Calling again probably wasn’t going to prove any more informative. I needed to settle the issue, and Hallie wasn’t paying me enough to extend the task any longer than was absolutely necessary.

I picked up the folder in which I’d tucked the copy of the newspaper clipping that included Satterfield’s photograph. I slid the file into the outer pocket of my shoulder bag, locked the office, and trotted out to my car. I’d recently sold my 1970 Mustang, a Grabber Blue Boss 429 that was much too conspicuous for the work I do. I’m supposed to blend in to the background, which was much easier with my current boring vehicle, a Honda so nondescript that I sometimes failed to spot it in a public parking lot. The only element common to the two cars is the overnight bag I stash in the trunk in case of an emergency. My definition of an emergency is being without a toothbrush, toothpaste, and fresh underpants. I slid under the wheel and turned the key in the ignition. I missed the resounding throatiness of the Mustang’s oversize engine as it rumbled to life. It always sounded like a Chris-Craft powerboat to me.

I drove to the end of the block and turned right on Santa Teresa Street, continuing six blocks north before I cut over to Dave Levine. I took a left and followed the one-way street south toward the ocean. I spotted Trace Avenue, passed it, and then found a parking place a block away. I locked the car and walked back.

The house at 401 Trace turned out to be a small one-story frame structure on the corner of Trace and Dave Levine. A wide apron of dead grass formed an L on two sides of the property, and a plain wrought-iron fence marked the perimeter. The house itself sat on a slab of poured concrete made level by a low wall of cinder block with a planting bed along the upper edge. The shrubs, like the lawn, were so brown, they looked singed.

The windows were sliding aluminum-framed panels, tightly closed and rendered blank by lined drapes. Up close, I knew the aluminum would be pitted. The porch was small. To the right of the front door, there was an upholstered chair covered in floral cotton, blue and green blossoms on a ground of red. To the left of the door there was a houseplant, probably fake. I crossed the street at an angle, waiting until I was out of range to pause and look back. No sign of the inhabitants. The rear of the house suggested more space than I’d imagined. I was guessing three small bedrooms, one bathroom, living room, kitchen, and utility porch.