X (Kinsey Millhone 24)

“Sure. I’ll make a point of being back by nine forty-five and I’ll hang out until you get home.”

•   •   •

Ruthie had pulled her car into her garage while I parked mine along the rear property line. I retrieved a flashlight from the glove compartment, locked the car, and followed the back walk to the porch, doing a cursory visual survey in the unrelenting morning light. The house probably dated back to the early 1900s; a story and a half of wood frame, bereft of the usual gingerbread trim that might have lent it some character. The structure was serviceable, incorporating all of the relevant elements, minus style, personality, and appeal. I tapped at the door and she let me in.

Aside from my brief visit the night before, I hadn’t been in the house in months, and I was struck by its shabbiness. Pete hadn’t been blessed with handyman talents, so if something needed repairing, either Ruthie took care of it or it was left in its funky state. Pete had also been averse to hiring outside help because his pride prevented his admitting that even the simplest job was beyond his poor skills. To spare him, Ruthie had learned to make do. Drawer handles were missing. In the kitchen window, cracked wood putty had pulled away from the glass and short sections were gone. The vinyl tile flooring in the kitchen had buckled in places, as though water had seeped in and loosened the underlying mastic. Now that Ruthie was alone, what difference did it make? Pete’s clutter was gone, so the house was tidier. She’d also removed the stained and threadbare area rugs in the downstairs hall and waxed the pale hardwood floors to a high shine.

She’d removed a drawer and placed it on the counter, where she’d unloaded the contents. She’d been sorting the miscellany and tossing the discards in a wastebasket. She’d bought drawer dividers to organize the salvageable items.

“I’ll put some coffee on,” she said. “Don’t mind the mess. I decided to tackle some of Pete’s crapola.”

“A good idea,” I said. “Mind if I go ahead and look around?”

“Please.”

I dropped my shoulder bag on a chair and shoved my flashlight in my back pocket while I made a circuit of the first floor, checking window latches, locks, and door hardware. Ruthie had made the same search the night before and she’d sworn the house was secure, which did seem to be the case.

I climbed the stairs to the second floor, peering out of windows as I moved through a small guest bedroom with an adjoining bathroom, a hallway, and a second bedroom currently used for storage. This must be the junk room. Ruth had relegated miscellaneous furniture, hanging clothes, and seasonal items to the ten-by-twelve-foot space. There were also short stacks of assorted cardboard boxes with scarcely room to walk in between. The wallpaper was pink and blue, with tiny floral bouquets tied with ribbons, which suggested this might have been a nursery once upon a time. Now it was essentially a closet jammed wall to wall with articles better suited to a charity donation box. We’d both faulted Pete for being disorganized when, in truth, this wasn’t much of an improvement. Looking out the window, I couldn’t see any trees growing close enough to allow an intruder to shinny up and enter a second-story window.

I returned to the first floor. The smell of fresh coffee was strong in the downstairs hall, but I didn’t want to interrupt the search for a coffee break. The front door was solid wood, not one of the flimsy hollow-core doors so popular in residential construction these days. The back door was also solid wood, with mullions in the upper third separating four small panes of glass. The side door was fashioned along similar lines, with solid wood below and the top half made up of six equal-size six-by-eight-inch panes of glass. The knob was sturdy and the lock was a double-keyed dead bolt. In the interests of fire safety, the key had been left in the lock on the inside should a hasty exit be required.

I unlocked the door and went outside. No tool marks to suggest that someone had forced the lock. A dense twenty-foot hedge along the walk separated Ruth’s house from her neighbor’s. I turned to my right and toured the exterior, looking for signs of a breach. Like many California homes of this era, there was a crawl space below the house, but no basement. A scrim of trellising had been affixed to the framing to shield the space from urban wildlife, but sections had been chewed away. A tuft of coarse hair was caught in the splintered wood where a beast had squeezed through the gap.

I took out my flashlight and got down on my hands and knees, peering into the space under the house. I allowed the beam of my flashlight to illuminate the area, which stretched its length and width. The “floor” was rubble and exposed dirt with cinder block footers at irregular intervals. Metal brackets secured plumbing to the floor joists, and a large furnace duct, wrapped in shiny insulation, shot across at an angle and disappeared into a large hole cut into a concrete wall.