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She joined us at the bar and I filled her in briefly on the nature of our concerns about Gus. “Has a great-niece,” she said, promptly. “She hasn’t seen him in years so she’s very fond of him.”
“Really. That’s great. Does she live here in town?”
“New York.”
“That won’t do him any good. The doctor won’t release him unless he has someone to look after him.”
Rosie waved the notion aside. “Put in nursing home. Is what I did with my sister…”
William leaned forward. “…who died soon afterward.”
Rosie ignored him. “Is a nice place. Where Chapel crosses Missile.”
“What about his niece? Do you have any idea how I might get in touch with her?”
“He has her name in a book he keeps in his desk.”
“Well, that’s a start,” I said.
When the alarm went off Tuesday morning at 6:00, I dragged my sorry butt out of bed and pulled on my Sauconys. I’d slept in my sweats, which saved me one step in my newly inaugurated morning ritual. While I was brushing my teeth, I stared at myself in the mirror with despair. During the night, my errant hair had formed a cone on top that I had to dampen with water and flatten with my palm.
I locked my front door and tied my house key into the lace of one ru
Ordinarily, I’d have given little thought to my route, but when I reached the intersection of Cabana and State Street, I glanced to my left and realized there was something reassuring about the bright band of lights strung out on each side. There was no one else out at that hour and the storefronts were dark, but I followed my instincts and left the beach behind, heading toward downtown Santa Teresa, which was ten blocks north.
Lower State plays host to the train station, a bicycle-rental lot, and a Sea amp; Surf establishment where boards, bikinis, and snorkeling gear are sold. Half a block up, there was a T-shirt shop and a couple of fleabag hotels. The more upscale of the two, the Paramount, had been the lodging of choice in the forties when the Hollywood darlings journeyed to Santa Teresa by train. It was a short walk from the station to the hotel, which boasted a pool fed by natural hot springs. The pool had been shut down after workers discovered that seepage from an abandoned service station was leaking toxic chemicals into the aquifer. The hotel had changed hands and the new owner was rehabilitating the once-grand facility. The interior work had been completed and a new pool was now under construction. The public was invited to peek through holes in the temporary barrier erected to protect the site. I’d stopped to look myself one morning, but all I could see were piles of rubbish and sections of the old mosaic tile.
I continued ru
I skipped my shower, figuring I might as well stay grungy for the housework to come. I rounded up rubber gloves, sponges, and assorted cleaning products, all of which I tossed in a plastic bucket. I added a roll of paper toweling, rags, laundry soap, and black plastic trash bags. Thus armed, I went out to the patio, where I waited for Henry. There’s nothing like the danger and the glamour of a private eye’s life.
When Henry appeared, we went over to Gus’s place. Henry did a walkabout to assess the situation and then returned to the living room and gathered up the many weeks’ worth of newspapers scattered on the floor. For my part, I stood assessing the furnishings. The drapes were skimpy and the four upholstered pieces (one couch and three easy chairs) were encased in dark brown stretchy slipcovers of the one-size-fits-all variety. The tables were made of a chipped laminate veneer meant to look like mahogany. Just being in the room was discouraging.
My first self-assigned task was to search Gus’s rolltop desk for his address book, which was tucked in the pencil drawer, along with a house key with a round white tag marked PITTS.
I held it up. “What’s this? I didn’t know Gus had a key to your place.”
“Sure. That’s why I have a key to his. Believe it or not, there was a time when he wasn’t such a grouch. He used to bring in the mail and water my plants when I went off to Michigan to visit the sibs.”
“Will wonders never cease,” I said, and returned to the task at hand while Henry carried the stack of papers to the kitchen and stuffed them in the trash. Gus’s financial dealings were well organized-paid bills in one pigeonhole, the unpaid in another. In a third, I found his checkbook, two savings account books, and his bank statements bound by rubber bands. I couldn’t help but notice the amount of cash he had in his accounts. Well, okay, I studied the numbers carefully, but I didn’t take notes. There was close to two thousand dollars in his checking account, fifteen thousand in one savings account, and twenty-two thousand in another. This might not be the whole of it. He struck me as the sort of fellow who stuck hundred-dollar bills between the pages of his books and kept untouched accounts in a number of different banks. The regular deposits he made were probably Social Security or pension checks. “Hey, Henry? What’d Gus do for a living before he retired?”
Henry stuck his head around the corner from the hallway. “He worked for the railroad back East. Might have been the L amp;N, but I’m not sure in what capacity. What makes you ask?”
“He’s got a fair amount of money. I mean, the guy’s not rich, but he has the means to live a lot better than this.”
“I don’t think money and cleanliness are co
“Right here. The only person living in New York is a Melanie Oberlin, who has to be his niece.”
“Why don’t you go ahead and call?”
“You think?”
“Why not? You might as well put it on his phone bill. Meanwhile, I’ll start on the kitchen. You can take his bedroom and his bath as soon as you’re done.”
I placed the call, but as is usually the case these days, I didn’t talk to a live human being. The woman on the answering machine identified herself as Melanie, no last name, but she wasn’t able to take my call. She sounded pretty cheerful for someone who told me at the same time just how sorry she was. I gave a brief account of her uncle Gus’s fall and then left my name, my home and office numbers, and asked her to return the call. I tucked the address book in my pocket, thinking I’d try again later if I didn’t hear from her.
I toured Gus’s house as Henry had. In the hall, I could smell the fug of mouse droppings and perhaps a mouse corpse of recent vintage trapped in a wall nearby. The second bedroom was filled with an accumulation of unlabeled cardboard boxes and old furniture, some of it quite good. The third bedroom was devoted to items the old man evidently couldn’t bring himself to toss. Bundles of twine-bound newspapers had been stacked head-high, with aisles laid out between the rows for easy access in case someone needed to get in and collect all the Sunday fu