and then back into the living room.
“Do you notice anything peculiar?” I asked Ski.
“Other than the small fortune in the bank?”
“Pictures,” I said. “There aren’t any pictures of any body, except that clipping from the paper. No pictures of her, her husband, no family shots. Nothing.”
Ski stared at me blankly.
“Even the picture of her in the paper is kind of goofy. She isn’t looking at the camera. She’s staring down at the floor.”
I went back to the bathroom, stared at the broken shelf near the tub, pictured the corpse in my mind.
A very shy lady. A lady without a history for almost twenty years. No family pictures, not even a picture of her late husband. Not a wedding picture, or vacation shot with the Grand Canyon in the background.
So who was she saving the money for?
I got a queasy feeling in the pit of my stomach.
“How about the Clarks?” I said.
“The who?”
“People next door.”
“What about them?”
“You’d think if she didn’t have any family she would’ve left something to her best friends.”
He thought about that for a minute and nodded.
“Or at least left it to her dog,” I said.
“There’s a dog?”
“Out back, gnawing on a bone.”
“What happens to it?”
“The pound.”
“Well, that’s pretty shitty.”
“Want a dog?”
“I got three kids, a goldfish, two canaries, and a dachshund who hates strangers. How about you?”
“I live alone, no pets allowed.”
“Too bad, so the dog goes to the pound. What do we do now?”
“Look, we don’t know a damn thing about this woman before she moved here in 1924,” I said. “The Clarks say she came from Texas somewhere. Her license says she’s forty-seven. She didn’t just hatch seventeen years ago. Where the hell was she for the first thirty years of her life?”
“Well there ain’t anything in this house that’ll tell us the answer to that question.”
“I want the house sealed. Nobody else in or out.”
“Aw, c’mon, Zeke.”
“Tomorrow I take the bank, find out where the checks came from, and get into her safe deposit box; maybe there’s a will in there. You take the job, see if somebody down there knows anything about her that might fill in her background. Maybe we can find a survivor. Then check Motor Vehicles, see if they have any further background on her.”
Ski shook his head and rolled his eyes.
“What’re you building, Zee?”
“Precaution.”
“Precaution,” he said dejectedly. “Precaution of what?”
“Just precaution. That’s our job, Ski. Got to be cautious.”
He growled under his breath and got up.
“I’ll post a man at the door.”
“Until after the autopsy.”
“Right.”
“This lady didn’t want anyone to know her before she was thirty-or apparently since. Let’s find out why. I’ll take everything we’ve got, go over the records when I get home, put together everything we know about her.”
“How about the people next door? Maybe we should take another crack at them.”
“They’re not going anywhere. Let’s see what we come up with. Maybe it’ll jog their memories. I’ll lock the place down. Take the box out to the car. I know how the smell gets to you.”
“You’re a jewel, Zee.”
“Fourteen carat.”
“Then can we stop and get something to eat? I’m starving.”
“You’re always starving, Ski.”
“I eat for three.”
I closed and locked the windows, then went to the back door and looked outside. When I opened it, Rosebud stared at me. A nub of the bone lay at his feet.
“He’s probably hungry,” Mrs. Clark said. She was on her back porch with another drink. Jimmy sat beside her on the porch swing, sucking on a beer. “His bowl’s under the stairs. She leaves it there during the day in case he wants a snack.”
“What are you, his guardian angel?”
“Somebody has to care.”
“You’re doing more than your share,” I said. “This dog eats better than I do. By the way, do you have any photos of Verna?”
“She was funny about that. Hated to have her picture taken.”
I got the bowl, went into the kitchen, opened a can of Ken-L-Ration, and gave it to him. It vanished. He sat down and licked his chops. Then he looked over at the door. On a hook beside it was his leash.
“Ah hell.” I sighed.
I leashed him up, got the rest of the bones from the refrigerator, stuck a couple of cans of dog food in my pockets, got the front door key from under the mat, locked the front door, and we went out to the car. I opened the door and the dog jumped in the backseat without being invited.
I got behind the wheel and laid the bones on the seat beside me. Agassi didn’t say anything until we were a block or two away.
“What’s that?” he asked, nodding toward the butcher-paper bundle.
“Dog bones.”
“I’m not that hungry.”
“I thought you’d eat anything, Agassi.”
“ ‘I save the bones for Henry Jones ’cause Henry don’t eat no meat,’ ” he sang the line. It was an old blues song.
“I know, he’s an egg man,” I said, finishing the line.
We drove another block. Agassi looked at the dog.
“I thought he was headed for the pound.”
“I’ll take him tomorrow.”
“Uh-huh.”
Another block.
“What’s the hound’s name?”
“… Slugger,” I said.
CHAPTER 3
I lived on Barker Avenue, a quiet road off Sunset near La Mirado. They hadn’t paved the road in front of the house since the CCC came through in 1936, but I had learned to maneuver the potholes and ease over the six-inch ridge between the road and my driveway without breaking an axle. The driveway ended at the house. No garage. There was a weather-worn tin mailbox on an erect four-by-four beside a cement walk up to the front door, a couple
