K is for Killer (7 page)

“You have any idea who was in her life besides you?”

“I wasn't
in
her life. I was on the fringe. Way out here. She had a day job, part-time at the water treatment plant. You might talk to them, see if they can fill you in. Most times, I never even saw her before three
A.M.
She might've had some other kind of life entirely when the sun was up.”

“Ah. Well. Food for thought,” I said. “Anything else I should know?”

“Not that I can think of offhand. If something occurs to me, I can get in touch. You have a card?”

I fished one out and placed it on the console. He looked at it briefly and left it where it was.

I said, “Thanks for your time.”

“I hope I've been of help. I hate the idea someone got away with murder.”

“This is a start, at any rate. I may be back at some point.” I hesitated, glancing at the dog still lying there between us. The minute she sensed my look, she rose to her feet, which put her head just about level with the stool where I was perched. She kept her eyes straight ahead, gazing intently at the flesh on my hip, possibly with an eye toward a late evening snack.

“Beauty,” he murmured with scarcely any change of tone.

She sank to the floor, but I could tell she was still thinking about a jaw full of gluteus maximus.

“Next time I'll bring her a bone,” I said. Preferably not mine.

I headed home through the business district, following a trail of stoplights that winked from red to green. The storefronts had been secured, plate-glass windows ablaze with fluorescent lighting. The streets were bleached white with the spill of illumination. I passed a lone man on a bike, dressed in black. It was almost 1:30
A.M.
, traffic minimal, intersections wide and deserted. Most of the bars in town were still open, and in another half hour or so, all the drunks would emerge, heading for the various downtown parking structures. Many buildings were dark. The homeless, bundled in sleep, blocked the doorways like toppled statues. For them, the night is like a vast hotel where there's always a room available. The only price they pay, sometimes, is their lives.

At 1:45 I finally stripped off my jeans, brushed my teeth, and doused the lights, crawling into bed without bothering to remove my T-shirt, underpants, and socks.
These February nights were too cold to sleep naked. As I eased toward unconsciousness, I found myself mentally replaying select portions of Lorna's tape. Ah, the life of the single woman in a world ruled by sexually transmitted diseases. I lay there, trying to think back to when I'd last had sex. I couldn't even remember, which was
really
worrisome. I fell asleep wondering if there was a cause-and-effect relationship between memory loss and abstinence. Apparently so, as that was the last thing I was aware of for the next four hours.

When the alarm went off at 6:00
A.M.
, I rolled out of bed before my resistance came up. I pulled on my sweats and my running shoes, then headed into the bathroom, where I brushed my teeth, avoiding the sight of myself in the mirror. One ill-advised glance had revealed a face fat with sleep and hair as stiff and matted as a derelict's. I'd snipped it off six months before with a trusty little pair of nail scissors, but I hadn't done much to it since. Now the sections that weren't sticking straight up were either flat or adrift. I was really going to have to do something about it one of these days.

Given the four hours of sleep, my run was a bit on the perfunctory side. Often I tune in to the look of the beach, letting sea birds and kelp scent carry me along. Jogging becomes a meditation, shifting time into high gear. This was one of those days when exercise simply failed to uplift. In lieu of euphoria, I had to make my peace with three hundred calories' worth of sweat, screaming thighs, and burning lungs. I tacked on an extra half mile to atone for my indifference and then did a fast walk back to my place as a way of cooling down. I showered and slipped into fresh jeans and a black turtleneck, over which I pulled a heavy gray cotton sweater.

I perched on a wooden stool at the kitchen table and ate a bowl of cereal. I scanned the local paper in haste. No surprises there. While floods threatened the Midwest, the Santa Teresa rainfall averages were down and there was already speculation of another drought in the making. January and February were usually rainy, but the weather had been capricious. Storms approached the coast and then hovered, as if flirting, refusing us the wet kiss of precipitation. High-pressure systems held all the rains at bay. The skies clouded over, brooding, but yielded nothing in the end. It was frustrating stuff.

Turning to happier items, I read that one of the big oil companies was talking about building a new refinery somewhere on the south coast. That would be a handsome addition to the local landscape. A bank robbery, a conflict between land developers and opposing members of the county board of supervisors. I scanned the funnies while I sucked down my coffee and then headed into the office, where I spent the next several hours assembling the balance of my tax receipts. Obnoxious. Having finished, I pulled out a standard boilerplate contract and typed in the details of my agreement with the Keplers. I spent the bulk of the day finishing the final report on a case I'd just done. The closing bill, with expenses, was something over two thousand bucks. It wasn't much, but it kept the rent paid and my insurance intact.

At five, I put a call through to Janice, figuring she'd be up by then. Trinny, the younger of the two daughters, answered the telephone. She was a chatty little thing. When I identified myself, she said her mother's alarm was set to go off any minute. Berlyn was making a run to the bank, and her father was on his way home from a job. That took care of just about everyone. Janice had given me the
address, but Trinny filled in directions, sounding pleasant enough.

I retrieved my car from the public lot several blocks away. A steady stream of moving cars spiraled down the ramp as shoppers and office workers headed home. As I drove up Capillo Hill, the very air seemed gray, sueded with twilight. Streetlights flicked on like a series of paper lanterns strung festively from pole to pole.

Janice and Mace Kepler owned a little house on the Bluffs in a neighborhood that must have been established for merchants and tradesmen in the early fifties. Many streets overlooked the Pacific, and in theory the area should have been pricey real estate. In reality there was too much fog. Painted exteriors peeled, aluminum surfaces became pitted, and wooden roof shingles warped from the constant damp. Wind whistled off the ocean, forcing lawns into patchiness. The neighborhoods themselves were comprised almost entirely of tract housing—single-family dwellings thrown up in an era when construction was cheap and the floor plans could be purchased by mail from magazines.

The Keplers had apparently done what they could. The yellow paint on the board-and-batten siding looked as if it had been applied within the year. The shutters were white, and a white split-rail fence had been constructed to define the yard. The lawn had been replaced by dense ivy, which seemed to be growing everywhere, including halfway up the two trees in the yard.

In the driveway, there was a blue panel truck emblazoned with a large cartoon replica of a faucet. A big teardrop of water hung from the spout. M
ACE
K
EPLER'S
P
LUMBING
• H
EATING
• A
IR
was lettered in white across the truck body. A small oblong emblem indicated that Kepler was a member of PHCC, the National Association
of Plumbing, Heating, and Cooling Contractors. His state license number was listed along with the twenty-four-hour emergency repairs he provided (water leaks, sewer drains, gas leaks, and water heaters) and the credit cards he took. These days doctors don't offer services that comprehensive.

I pulled into the gravel driveway and parked my vehicle behind his. I left the car unlocked and peered briefly into the backyard before I climbed the low concrete steps to the front porch. Somebody in the family had a passion for fruit trees. A veritable orchard of citrus had been planted at the rear of the lot. At this season all the branches were bare, but come summer the dark green foliage would be lush and dense, fruit tucked among the leaves like Christmas ornaments.

I rang the bell. There were muddy work shoes by the door mat. There was only a brief pause before Mace Kepler opened the door. I had to guess he'd been alerted to watch for my arrival. Given my incurable inclination to snoop, I was happy I hadn't paused to riffle through his mailbox.

We introduced ourselves, and he stepped back to admit me. Even in his leather bedroom slippers, he was probably six feet four to my five feet six. He wore a plaid shirt and work pants. He was in his sixties, quite hefty, with a broad face and a receding hairline. His deeply cleft chin seemed to have a period buried at its center, and a vertical worry line, like a slash mark, dissected the space between his eyes. On residential jobs he probably hired younger, smaller guys to navigate the crawl space underneath the house. “Janice's in the shower, but she'll be right out. Can I offer you a beer? I'm having one myself. I just got home from a hell of a day.”

“No thanks,” I said. “I hope I haven't picked a bad time.”
I waited by the door while he lumbered toward the kitchen to fetch himself a beer.

“Don't worry about it. This is fine,” he said. “I just haven't had a chance to unwind yet. This is my daughter Trinny.”

Trinny glanced up with a brief smile and then went about her work, pouring a cocoa-brown batter into a nine-by-thirteen aluminum cake pan. The hand mixer, its beaters still dripping brown goo, sat on the kitchen counter beside an open box of Duncan Hines chocolate cake mix. Trinny tucked the pan in the oven and set a timer shaped like a lemon. She'd already opened a cardboard container of ready-mix fudge frosting, and I'd have bet money she'd helped herself to a fingerful. While my aunt had never really taught me to bake, she'd warned me repeatedly about the ignominy of the commercial cake mix, which she ranked right up there with instant coffee and bottled garlic salt.

Trinny was barefoot, wearing an oversize white T-shirt and a pair of ragged blue jean cutoffs. Judging from the size of her butt, she'd conjured up quite a few homemade cakes in her day. Mace opened the refrigerator door and took out a beer. He found the flip in a drawer and levered off the cap, tossing the bottle top in a brown paper trash bag as he passed it.

Trinny and I murmured a “Hi” to one another. Berlyn, the older daughter, emerged from the hallway, wearing a pair of black tights with a man's white broadcloth dress shirt over them. Again, Mace introduced us, and we exchanged inconsequential greetings of the “Hi, how are you” type. She was intent on rolling up her sleeves as she crossed into the open kitchen. She paused beside Trinny and held her arm out for assistance. Trinny wiped her hands and began to roll up Berlyn's sleeve.

At first glance, they were sufficiently similar to be mistaken
for twins. They seemed to favor their father, both big girls and buxom with heavy legs and thighs. Berlyn was a dyed blonde, with big blue eyes framed in dark lashes. She had a clear, pale complexion and a lush full mouth, vibrant with glossy pink lipstick. Trinny had opted for her natural hair color: a double fudge brown, probably the shade Berlyn was born with. Both had bright blue eyes and dark brows. Berlyn's features were the coarser, or perhaps it was the bleached hair that gave her the appearance of tartishness. Without Lorna's delicate beauty in the family for contrast, I would have said they were pretty in a slightly vulgar way. Even knowing what I knew about Lorna's promiscuity, she seemed to have had a classiness about her that the other two lacked.

Berlyn moved over to the refrigerator and pulled out a Diet Pepsi. She popped the tab and ambled out the back door onto a wooden deck that ran along the back of the house. Through the window, I watched as she settled on a chaise made of interwoven plastic strips. It seemed too chilly to be sitting out there. Her eyes caught mine briefly before she looked away.

Beer in hand, Mace moved through the kitchen toward the den, indicating that I was to follow. As he closed the door behind us, I picked up the chemical scent of baking chocolate cake.

T
he den had been added onto the house by framing in one-half of the two-car garage. Subflooring had been laid over the original concrete, and look-like-oak tongue-and-groove vinyl planks had been installed on top of that. Even with the addition of an area rug, the room smelled like motor oil and old car parts. A sofa bed, coffee table, four chairs, an ottoman, and a rolling cart for the television set had been arranged in the space. In one corner was a filing cabinet and a desk piled high with papers. All of the furniture looked like garage sale purchases: mismatched fabrics, worn upholstery, someone else's discards given another chance in life.

Mace sank onto a battered brown Naugahyde lounger, activating the mechanism that flipped the footrest into place. His mouth was crowded with bad teeth. The flesh along his jaw had softened with age, and he now had parentheses setting off the thin line of his mouth. He picked up the TV remote, punched the mute button, and then clicked his way through several channels until he found a basketball game in progress. Silently, guys bounded up and
down the court, leapt, fell, and bumped one another sideways. If the sound had been turned up, I knew I'd hear the high-pitched shriek of rubber soles on the hardwood floor. The ball sailed into the basket as if magnetized, not even touching the rim half the time.

Without invitation, I perched on the nearby ottoman, arranging myself so I was in his line of sight. “I take it Janice has told you about our conversation last night.” I was prepared to make soothing noises about Lorna's participation in the pornographic film. Mace made no response. A fast-food commercial came on, a fifteen-by-twenty-inch full-color burger filling the TV screen. The sesame seeds were the size of rice grains, and a slice of bright orange cheese drooped invitingly from the edge of the bun. I could see Mace's eyes fix on the picture. I'd always known I wasn't as compelling as a flame-broiled beef patty, but it was deflating nonetheless to see his attention displaced. I moved my head to the left, entering his visual frame of reference.