C is for Corpse

"Thanks," I said. I shifted the cat off my lap and got up, shaking hands with him.

I went out to my car, brushing at my jeans, picking cat hair off my lip. It was now ten o'clock at night and I should have headed home, but I was feeling wired. The episode at Moza's and the sudden appearance of Bobby's address book were acting on me like a stimulant. I wanted to talk to Sufi. Maybe I'd stop by her place. If she was up, we could have a little chat. She'd tried once to steer me away from this investigation and I wondered now what that was about.

Chapter 19

I pulled into the shadows across the street from Sufi's place on Haughland Road in the heart of Santa Teresa. For the most part, the houses I had passed were two-story frame-and-stone on large lots complete with junipers and oaks. Many lawns sported the ubiquitous California crop of alarm-company signs, warning of silent surveillance and armed patrols.

Sufi's yard was darkened by the interlacing tree branches overhead, the property stretching back in a tangle of shrubs and surrounded by a picket fence with wide pales. The house was done in a dark shingle siding, possibly a muted brown or green, though it was hard to tell which at this hour of the night. The side porch was narrow and deeply recessed with no exterior light visible. A dark green Mercedes was parked in the drive to the left.

It was a quiet neighborhood. The sidewalks were deserted and there was no traffic. I got out of my car and crossed to the front of the house. Up close, I could see that the place was massive, the kind being converted now to bed-and-breakfast establishments with odd names: The Gull and Satchel, The Blue Tern, The Quackery. They're all over town these days: renovated Victorian mansions impossibly quaint, where for ninety bucks a night, you can sleep in a bed with a fake brass frame and struggle, the next morning, with a freshly baked croissant that will drop pastry flakes in your lap like dandruff.

From the look of it, Sufi's was still a single-family dwelling, but it had a shabby air. Maybe, like many single women her age, she'd reached that point where the absence of a man translates out to dripping faucets and rain gutters in need of repair. A single woman my age would haul out a crescent wrench or shinny up the down spout, feeling that odd joyousness that comes with self-sufficiency. Sufi had let her property decline to a state of lingering disrepair and it made me wonder what she did with her salary. I thought surgical nurses made good money.

At the rear of the house, there was a glass-enclosed porch, the windows flickering with the blue/gray reflections of a television set. I fumbled my way up several crumbling concrete steps and tapped on the door. After a moment, the porch light came on and Sufi looked through the curtain.

"Hi, it's me," I said. "Can I talk to you?"

She leaned closer to the glass, peering around, apparently checking to see whether I was accompanied by roving bands of thugs.

She opened the door in her robe and slippers, clutching the lapels together at her throat, one arm circling her waist. "Oh my God, you scared me to death," she said. "What are you doing here at this hour? Is something wrong?"

"Not at all. Sorry to alarm you. I was in the neighborhood and I needed to talk to you. Can I come in?"

"I was on my way to bed."

"We can talk out here on the porch, then."

She gave me a grudging look, stepping back reluctantly so I could enter. She was half a head shorter than I and her blond hair was so thin, I could see stretches of scalp underneath. I hadn't pegged her as the type who'd lounge around in a slinky peach satin wrapper and matching mules with dandelion fuzz across the instep. This was hotsy-totsy stuff. I wanted to say, "Hubba-hubba" but I was afraid she'd take offense.

Once inside, I took a quick mental picture and stored it away for future assessment. The room was cluttered, disorganized, and probably unclean judging from the used dishes piled here and there, the dead flowers in a vase, and the wastebasket spilling trash out onto the floor. The water in the bottom of the vase was cloudy with bacteria and probably smelled like the last stages of some disease. There was a crumpled cellophane packet on the arm of the easy chair and I saw that she'd been sneaking Ding Dongs. A Reader's Digest condensed book was open facedown on the ottoman. The place smelled like pepperoni pizza, some of which I spied sitting in a box on top of the television set. The heat from the circuitry was keeping it warm, the scent of oregano and mozzarella cheese mingling with the odor of hot cardboard. God, I thought, when did I last eat?

"You live alone?" I asked.

She looked at me as if I were casing the joint. "What of it?"