“I believe that’s it,” he said. “Just a mention of where we were going when that Lisa Ray woman ran into us. I believe you asked my wife and it’d slipped her mind.”

“That’s right,” I said. He fidgeted slightly and his voice had changed so I knew a whopper was about to escape his lips. I leaned forward attentively, pen poised over the page.

“The market.”

“Ah, the market. Well, that makes sense. Which one?”

“That one on the corner at the bottom of the hill.”

I nodded, taking notes. “And the trip was to buy what?”

“Lottery ticket for Saturday’s draw. I’m sorry to say we didn’t win.”

“Too bad.”

I turned off the tape recorder and anchored my pen in the top of my clipboard. “This has been a big help. I’ll stop by with the transcript as soon as I have it done.”

I drove back to my place without much hope. It was 2:45 and Solana and Gus would probably be back from the doctor’s office. If Solana went into the living room and spotted the empty cubbyhole, she’d know what I’d done. I pulled up in front of my place, parked the car, and scanned the cars on both sides of the street. No sign of Solana’s. I could feel my heart rate accelerate. Was it possible I still had time? All I needed was to nip inside, shove everything back in the desk, and make a hasty getaway.

I put my car keys in my bag and crossed Gus’s grass, following the walkway to the back door. The checkbook register and the savings passbook were in the bowels of my bag. I had my hand on the documents as I climbed the back steps. I could see the note for the Meals on Wheels volunteer still taped to the glass. I peered in the window. The kitchen was dark.

Ten or fifteen seconds was all I required, assuming the goon wasn’t waiting for me in the living room. I took out the key, inserted it in the lock, and turned it. No deal. I held the knob and wiggled the key, by way of coaxing. I looked down in puzzlement, thinking Henry’d given me the wrong key. Not so.

The locks had been changed.

I moaned to myself as I headed down the stairs double-time, worried I’d be caught when I hadn’t actually accomplished anything. I cut through the hedge between Gus’s backyard and Henry’s, and let myself into the studio. I locked my door and sat down at my desk, panic rising in my throat like bile. If Solana realized the check register and passbook were missing, she’d know I’d taken them. Who else? I was the only one who’d been in the house except for the fellow in the bed. Henry’d been there a couple of days before so he’d come under suspicion as well. The dread in my gut felt like a bomb about to go off, but there was nothing to be done. I sat quietly for a moment until I’d caught my breath. What difference did it make now? What was done was done and as long as I was screwed, I might as well see what my thievery had netted me.

I spent the next ten minutes looking at the figures in Gus’s bank accounts. It didn’t take an accountant to see what was going on. The account that had originally held twenty-two thousand dollars had been reduced by half, all of this in the space of a month. I flipped back through the earlier pages of the passbook. It looked like Gus, in his pre-Solana days, was making deposits of two to three thousand dollars at regular intervals. His check register showed that since January 4, money had been transferred from the one savings account into his checking account with a number of checks then written to Cash. None of the canceled checks were available for inspection, but I’d have bet money his signatures were forged. At the back of the passbook, I came across the pink slip to his car that must have migrated from its proper file. To date, she hadn’t transferred ownership from his name to hers. I reviewed the numbers with a shake of my head. It was time to quit cocking around.

I pulled out the phone book and turned to the listings for county offices. I found the number for the Domestic/Elder Abuse Telephone Hotline, which I couldn’t help but notice spelled the word “DEATH.” It had finally dawned on me that I didn’t have to prove Solana was doing anything abusive or illegal. It was up to her to prove she wasn’t.

22

The woman who answered the phone at the Tri-Counties Agency for the Prevention of Elder Abuse listened to my brief explanation of the reason for my call. I was transferred to a social worker named Nancy Sullivan and I ended up having a fifteen-minute conversation with her while she took the report. She sounded young and her phone manner suggested she was asking questions from a form she had in front of her. I gave her the relevant information: Gus’s name, age, address, Solana Rojas’s name and description.