An Equal Opportunity Death (21 page)

There was nothing to do but go inside.

I tried my key in the lock on the door. I wasn’t surprised when it didn’t fit. We meter readers were bonded; PG&E went to a lot of trouble to assure customers their readers were honest. But that did not inspire many people into giving us a key to their homes. Meters were usually on porches, not in bedrooms.

If I intended to see the inside of Walucyk’s house, I’d have to break in. With a start, I realized how naturally the thought came to me—me, who only a week before had been a law-abiding woman.

Pushing self-assessment aside, I stared at the back door. It had a two-foot square window, big enough for me to hoist myself through. But the moment I’d break the glass, alarms would ring from here to Guerneville.

Gusts of wind shook the flimsy walls of the porch; the glass in the outside door rattled. The sky was dark as dusk though it was still afternoon. There were no squares of yellow in the distance, no warm lights showing through the trees. No lights were on in the other houses.

I looked closer at Walucyk’s electricity meter; the five dials stared back. All five were motionless. Walucyk said he had display cases inside. If he visited on weekends he would have left his refrigerator on. It would need power. His meter dials should have been moving. I now wished that I had read the other meters on the hillside more carefully. Were they running, or was the power off on this side of town? Or all over town?

If Walucyk’s power was off, the alarm system would be dead. I’d have to chance it. Picking up the deck chair, I broke the window.

There was no bell, no loud buzzing, nothing here to suggest the alarm had sounded. But still, it could be one of those that alerted only the sheriff.

Quickly, I hoisted myself through the window and into the kitchen. To my right was the dining room—small, but expensively decorated in old rough oak and thick oriental carpets.

I hurried into the living room. It was similar to the room I’d seen in Walucyk’s Victorian. Being much smaller, it had only one oriental carpet, one uncomfortable-looking brocade sofa, two matching chairs, and three display cases (one on the front wall and two on the interior wall across from it).

The case on the front wall, the one that had housed the Chinese plates, was empty, the scratches from its forced entry still visible.

I stood absolutely still and listened, but there was no noise outside other than the sound of trees scraping against the house and the rain pelting the windows. No sirens, no tires squealing.

Across from the empty display case, on the interior wall, was a second case that held a group of small silk Chinese screens. The case had not been touched. And apparently Walucyk had not felt it worthwhile to remove the collection after the theft of the plates.

The third and last case contained Japanese netsukes of animals and minuscule people. I stooped over, surveying the collection: an ivory puppy wrapped around a ball, the whole thing no more than two inches tall; a pile of monkeys with tails and legs intertwined. The little figures were grouped casually, but one stood apart. It was a netsuke of three old women standing back to back, and one of the women had gold teeth. Frank’s netsuke! The netsuke he sold for a tenth of its value!

Frank, who hated to be taken, had been taken by Walucyk.

I could picture Frank selling the netsuke to Walucyk and imagine Walucyk’s smug pleasure in telling Frank its true value. Frank had waited a year to get even with the man in the park. It took him more than two years to get back at Walucyk.

I realized now that I had been viewing the entire burglary scheme backwards. Frank and his partner did not come across the plates in the course of housebreaking. It was the other way around. Frank’s need for revenge prompted the burglaries.

Frank must have sold the netsuke to Walucyk in San Francisco. I could picture Walucyk telling Frank about his weekend house, just as he told me. I could imagine him showing Frank his other collections, those collections he was so proud of that he insisted that I, whom he assumed to be a thief, view them. Frank would have seen the Chinese plates there. And there, he would have sworn to get revenge.

The desire for revenge must have given birth to Frank’s move to Henderson. He came here, found a partner (he’d have to have a partner to do the actual burglaries), and bought the Place for its secret room.

No wonder Frank had asked Madge Oombs about oriental bronze right after he moved here. It must have been on his mind constantly then.

Frank was good at research. He would have read the news accounts of Walucyk, the collector, just as I did. He would have noted Professor Everson’s attempt to buy the plates from Walucyk. How Frank must have enjoyed calling and pretending to be Smithson, leading Walucyk on, and using his own arrogance to convince him to move the plates to Henderson. How he must have loved making the ransom calls and then raising the price. Frank was the one person who wouldn’t have cared if the plates were never fenced. It wasn’t money he wanted. If Walucyk agreed to the four-hundred-thousand dollar demand, would Frank have raised it to five? Would Frank ever return the plates to Walucyk?

Looking back at the little figures in Frank’s netsuke, I was surprised that Frank resisted taking it. But Frank, of course, was not the actual burglar. Frank and his red sports car were at the Place, a clear alibi.

So then the accomplice, who must have been there listening to Frank raise the ransom price, must have killed him.

I took one last look at the netsuke. Even in the dim light of the house its gold teeth glistened.

I hurried out the back door, leaving it banging in the wind and rain, and ran up the incline toward my truck. In spite of the rain, something about the truck looked odd. I was still a few feet away when I discovered what it was.

The left front window had been smashed.

I
STOOD, STARING AT
my truck. The window on the driver’s side was broken. Glass shards had fallen on the seat and the floor. Rain, heavier still now, was coming in through the broken window.

How was I going to explain this to Mr. Bobbs? While I had been on my PG&E route, housebreaking, someone smashed my truck window. Just like someone took an axe to my pickup engine. It was beginning to sound ridiculous.

Who would vandalize a PG&E truck? People cheated on their usage, people complained about rate increases, but no one broke windows on our trucks. Amongst the corporate dollar-gobblers, we were mere nibblers. No one felt that strongly about PG&E.

I reached under the seat for the whisk brush. As I cleared away the glass, the rain pelted against my back.

Replacing the brush, I noticed the empty passenger seat. My route book was gone! Frantically, I searched the truck, but the Chinese plate in its brown paper bag was still safe under the seat. Only the route book was missing.

Nothing could be so dull or useless to anyone else as a utility route book. Yet someone had stolen it. Someone had taken the chance of breaking into my truck, right here on the street, for the purpose of taking my route book.

I climbed into the truck. The seat was wet. The rain blew through the window and smacked against my face. I made a U-turn and stopped the truck, good-window side to the rain.

What could anyone—not just anyone—what could Frank Goulet’s killer want with my route book?

This day’s route, the remainder of the one I had been on Tuesday, included the town and the commercial routes on both sides of the river all the way to the west bridge. Did he, or she, know that? It would be easy enough to find out. Anyone could call the office and ask when their meter would be read. So, what did Frank’s killer need from this particular route book?

I sat back, considering Frank’s killer.

Had Frank’s killer and partner been privy to the plan to steal Walucyk’s Chinese plates when they set up the burglary operation? I doubted it. No one but Frank would take the risks involved to steal a set of plates too distinctive to fence, and then agree to toy with the one person who would pay money to get them back. A partner might steal them for ransom, but he would never raise the price one hundred thousand dollars above their value (above what the insurance would reimburse) just so Frank could enjoy his revenge. Frank apparently was willing to chance pushing Walucyk to the point where he would not or could not pay, but no partner would have acquiesced.

More likely, the partner had joined a simple, relatively safe burglary operation. It had earned him a little extra money, enough to keep the sewer system from completion.

But how did they know which places (other than Walucyk’s) to burgle? Even a simple casing of a house required more than driving by in second gear. It meant parking, getting out, checking on means of entry, on neighbors, on alarms. Who could do that time after time without drawing attention?

The most likely suspect, the one with a truck that could be parked for an hour without raising questions was, alas, me. My PG&E truck was a common sight; it had reason to be anywhere. No one noticed me. The only people who recalled seeing me were the old people across from Frank’s Monday. Monday! And then I hadn’t been working. I wasn’t driving the PG&E truck. The old people recalled seeing me at Frank’s Place Monday because I had driven my own pickup, which would not normally be there at that time of day. They remembered seeing Chris for the same reason. But the Chinese Laundry truck, which they saw every day, made no impression on them at all. They never mentioned that to the sheriff.

Suddenly, it all fell together. There was only one other truck in town that could be anywhere with good reason; one truck that could be parked by the riverbank or by Frank’s without causing any notice. The owner of that truck could easily have business there. For Frank’s killer, the risks in burglarizing houses would be worthwhile if he earned enough to stop the sewer and the urbanization of Henderson. Even with the money from the burglaries, it still might take a few days to get the cash to give to Frank for Patsy—thus the delay she complained of.

I knew who the killer was. It only made me feel sad. Had I thought about it before, I would have realized there was no way not to be distressed, no matter who the killer was. My discovery would ruin our community. The Henderson of Ned’s childhood vacations would be broken apart, the safety and the magic gone forever. It had been inevitable since Frank’s death, actually since the first burglary. I wished Frank had never come to Henderson. I wished I could forget about Frank and let the murderer go. But I, of all people, had no choice.

The sheriff was concentrating on me. In his eyes, I had motive, opportunity, and possible connections in San Francisco to fence the stolen items. I had worked in the city at twice my present salary long enough to develop expensive tastes. Once the sheriff discovered, as he inevitably would, that I had searched Frank’s Place and had possession of the Chinese devotional plate …

Still,
I
didn’t steal my own route book. But in the face of the potential evidence against me, I doubted if I could convince Wescott even of that.

Although I knew the identity of the killer, I needed to find him quickly, before the flood waters burst through town and washed away any evidence of my route book or the Chinese plate. I needed to find out why he took the route book. And I needed to get to him before he made use of it.

I put the truck in first gear and drove slowly along the hilly lanes. The wind was gusty. Rain spit in through the broken window. Oil lamps flickered in a few houses. Those with shutters folded them closed over the windows. Smoke pouring thick from chimneys mixed with the rain to form a gray paste between the land and what light there was left in the sky. I turned on the headlights.

I discovered the Chinese plate because of Frank’s electricity usage. His increased usage was necessary to run the space heaters and the dehumidifier he needed to preserve the bronze finish of the plates. The plates were no longer in Frank’s Place. Frank’s Place had been ransacked after I was there, by someone looking for those plates. It couldn’t have been Martin Walucyk. He didn’t know Frank’s name, much less where he worked. It must have been Frank’s partner.

And by the time he searched the Place, the plates were gone. Only two people knew the plates were hidden at Frank’s. The killer was looking for them. So Frank must have been the one who had moved them in the first place, to hide them from his partner, to keep his partner from contacting Walucyk himself and arranging his own deal for the plates. But where had Frank taken them?

I slammed on the brakes. I wasn’t watching the road. Ahead was a mudslide. I backed into a driveway and turned around. Frank hadn’t been out of town in a month, so he told me. As far as I knew he had been at Frank’s Place every day, even Sundays. So, wherever he took the plates, it had to be local. And it had to be a place where he could plug in his dehumidifier and heaters, someplace using electricity.

But why, then didn’t he take the dehumidifier and the heaters? They were still in the secret room beneath the Place. Did he load the plates into his sports car and have no room left for the bulky heaters? Was he murdered before he could make a second trip to his new hiding place?

Frank had been asking about restaurants for sale, but he hadn’t actually bought any other property. He would hardly have called PG&E for a hookup on property he didn’t own. So what I was looking for was a place that wasn’t listed in the route book but was using electricity. An illegal hookup. And that’s what the killer was doing. Since he had the route book, he could skip any place listed in it. He had a big advantage.

I thought back over the portion of the route I just completed, trying to recall empty houses. There were plenty this time of year. But Frank would have needed someplace where he’d be sure no owner would turn up unexpectedly, someplace that was empty and would be for a long time. And it would have to have decent enough wiring for an electrical hookup, wiring able to support two heaters and a dehumidifier. No old house would have that. I’d blown a fuse in my own house using a heater and the hair dryer at the same time. What Frank needed was commercial wiring.