Liar

I wondered what he’d think of Pete Baird when he met him. I had a feeling he was in for a shock. I’m fond of Pete, but a page off the Hunk-A-Day Calendar he ain’t.

“So you’ll give Irene the keys to the apartment?” Mary asked.

He rubbed his chin, then said, “Sure, but I don’t have the keys with me. I tell you what, I’ll meet you and Rachel over there.”

“But we go through the apartment on our own,” I said.

Again he hesitated, looking at me curiously before he said, “All right, meet you there at ten o’clock. But you’ll tell me if you come across anything that has a bearing on this case?”

“If someone murdered my aunt, Detective McCain, I’ll do everything in my power to help you find her killer.”

“Good. And no trying to get in there before ten, all right?”

“Fine. I’ll see you then.”

“You sure Rachel can make it?” he asked.

“I’m almost certain,” I said, praying Rachel wouldn’t mind giving up sailing, too.

“Families,” Rachel said on a sigh, her eyes not leaving the heavy traffic in front of us. “My brothers, we might not speak to each other for years, but one of ‘em calls up and says, ”Hey, Rach, I need a little something from the dark side of the moon,“ and even though my mouth might say, ”Are you nuts? I’m not going to any damned moon,“ I’m already thinking, Gee, wonder how I’ll look in a spacesuit?”

“You’re just as good to your friends as you are to your family,” I said. “Thanks for giving up the sailing trip.”

Uneasy about McCain’s suspicion of me, Frank had talked about canceling, too-but Rachel had shooed him out the door with the other men. When we first mentioned McCain to her, she frowned a little, glancing over at Pete, then said, “Yeah, I think I remember him.”

She helped me gather up some empty boxes, and offered to drive us over in her Plymouth sedan, which was better suited to hauling boxes than my Karma

Now we were on the Vincent Thomas Bridge, high above LA Harbor. Rachel hit the brakes as a pickup truck made a sudden lane change into the space in front of us, and I heard her muttering something in Italian.

“Starting to regret this?” I asked.

“Aw, I don’t mind this at all. Glad to come along. You think I’d be happier stuck on a sailboat all day with those clowns? No way.”

“If you needed an alternative, you could probably think of something more fun than going through a dead stranger’s possessions.”

“Hell, I’m used to it.”

“I guess you are,” I said. Rachel had retired in her early forties from her job in Phoenix homicide, after putting in twenty years in the department-where she’d started as a meter maid, back when they called them that.

“Am I horning in on something you’d rather do alone?” she asked.

“No-not at all. Even if you hadn’t been so willing to offer your car or to help pack boxes, I’d be grateful just to have you with me. I’m glad I’m not facing this alone.”

“That’s understandable. You said you don’t know how much stuff is in this apartment, right?”

“Aunt Mary said the place is small and that it wouldn’t take long to pack up, but she’s never moved from the first house she bought in Las Piernas, so I’m not sure she’s much of a judge.”

After McCain left her house, Aunt Mary said she hoped we didn’t mind the way she’d rescheduled our Saturday. Apparently it was her guilt over this that led her to make a generous offer-to call my sister and explain a few matters to her about the cemetery. But I had a score to settle with Barbara, so I told Mary that I would make the call myself.

Barbara’s an early riser, so I called before leaving for San Pedro, and started by telling her that the “stranger” in what she thought of as her grave was our mother’s sister.

That led to a brief bout of hysterical exclamations regarding Briana’s unworthiness to be buried in the same cemetery as our mother, let alone in an adjoining plot. Listening to Barbara’s version of family history, it would have been more appropriate to bury Benedict Arnold in Arlington National Cemetery.

I nocked my first arrow. “Then you should call the person who owns the gravesite and tell her off.”

“I will!” Barbara fumed. “Who is it?”

I let the arrow fly. “Aunt Mary.”

Utter silence. Bull’s-eye.

I loosed the next one by saying, “Of course, if you make too much of a fuss about it, you might be the one who ends up buried in some other cemetery. Aunt Mary owns most of the nearest plots.”

“She does?”

“Yes, she does. And Barbara? If I ever hear from Mary that only one half of our parents’ gravestone is being cared for? I’m going to beg her to sell those remaining plots to me. And I think she’ll do it, don’t you?”

She hung up on me. William Tell never had a better day.

Briana’s apartment was on the east side of San Pedro, an area named by Juan Cabrillo when he sailed into its bay in 1542. San Pedro was once a city itself, but became part of Los Angeles near the turn of the century; Briana’s apartment was near the old downtown, an area once known as Vinegar Hill, on one of the streets between Gaffey and the harbor.

We turned onto Sixth Street, driving past an old theater and Vinegar Hill Books. At the corner of Centre and Sixth was Papadakis Taverna, Frank’s favorite Greek restaurant. We had dined there not long ago, and now I thought of how close we had been to Briana’s home that night.

We turned off Sixth and drove through the surrounding neighborhood, a mix of homes and apartments that ranged in style from Victorian mansion to postwar crackerbox. Briana’s apartment wasn’t hard to find: there was a black-and-white LAPD patrol car sitting in front of it.

“Old Mac didn’t trust us to wait for him,” Rachel laughed.

“Mac?”

“McCain. He called me ‘Pazzi, I suppose? He picked that up from those boneheads I worked with in Phoenix.”

“How well do you know this guy?” I asked.

“Well enough,” she answered, in a tone that made me change the subject. She was doing me a big favor and her past was none of my business-my own is by no means sterling. I was curious about her co

The apartment was in a run-down fourplex. The crown of the building was a flat roof skirted by three irregular rows of red Spanish tile. The exterior walls were sun-faded brown with white pockmarks; as we came closer, we could see that the stucco was coming off-large, broken, dry bubbles of it clung to the walls-wounds in the building’s hide.

The windows at the side of the building were barred. Four large picture windows faced the street; at the center of the building, a wide doorway opened onto a concrete porch. Inside this door were a short entryway and a steep set of stairs; at the top and bottom of the stairs, apartment doors faced one another. On the right-hand side of the entry, a short row of black mailboxes was attached to the wall. Self-adhesive gold numbers-the type one might find in a hardware store-adorned the locking mailbox doors, numbering them one through four. Three of the four boxes also had red-and-white tape labels bearing the occupant’s first initial and last name.

The officer in the patrol car waved at us. Rachel smiled and waved back, saying under her breath, “Yeah, putz, we know you’re watching us.” I glanced at my watch. We were only about fifteen minutes early.

The building was quiet; I decided to see if any of Briana’s neighbors were home. I knocked on the door across from Briana’s and heard a parrot squawk, but no one came to the door. I heard a phone ring in one of the upstairs apartments; it rang about ten times. I climbed the stairs anyway, but got nothing but a little exercise.

When-right at ten o’clock-Rachel saw McCain’s car pull into an empty parking spot down the street, she glanced at me nervously and took a deep breath. I had never seen her less than ready to take on the world, so I was surprised by her reaction. But when McCain stepped out of his car, dramatically clutched his chest and shouted, “Married? Married?” she was already gri