B Is for Burglar

yet."
    "You tell him I want to meet him sometime. He has a very twisted sense of humor, but I like that. He did one all made up of botanical oddities, remember that? I went crazy. I was up all night. I can't believe the guy lives here in Santa Teresa. I thought he was a full professor at MIT, someplace like that."
    "I'll tell him you said that. He'll be thrilled to hear he has a fan."
    "You tell him to stop by here anytime. Tell him Nelson Acquistapace is at his service. He needs a cab, just call Tip Top and ask for me."
    "I'll do that," I said.
    "You got the trip sheet? Ron said you were looking for some lady who disappeared. Is that right?"
    I took the trip sheet out of my purse and passed it over to him.
    "Don't get too close, sweetheart," he said. He took a handkerchief out of his robe pocket and dusted his nose with it, honking into it before he put it back. He unfolded the sheet, holding it at arm's length to look at it. "I left my glasses inside. Which one?"
    I pointed to the Via Madrina address.
    "Yeah, I remember her, I think. I took her to the airport and dropped her off. I remember she was picking up that last flight from here to L.A. Where was she going, I forget now."
    "Miami, Florida."
    "Yeah, that's right. I remember now."
    He was studying the trip sheet as though it were a pack of Tarot cards in some tricky configuration. "You know what this is?" He was tapping the paper. "You want to know why this fare is so high? Look at that. Sixteen bucks. It doesn't cost that much to go from Via Madrina to the airport. She made a stop and had me wait maybe fifteen minutes with the meter running. An intermediate stop. Now, just let me think where it was. Not far. Some place on Chapel. Okay, yeah, I got it now. That clinic down near the freeway."
    "A clinic?" That took me by surprise.
    "Yeah, you know. An emergency facility. For the cat. She dropped him off for some kind of emergency treatment and then she got back in the cab and we took off."
    "I don't suppose you actually saw her get on the plane, did you?"
    "Sure. I was done for the night. You can see for yourself from the trip sheet. She was my last fare so I went upstairs to the airport bar and had a couple of beers out on the patio. I told her I was gonna be up there so she even turned around and waved at me when she was walkin' out to the plane."
    "Was she alone?"
    "As far as I could tell."
    "Had you ever picked her up before?"
    "Not me. I just moved up here from L.A. in November last year. This is paradise. I love this town."
    "Well," I said, "I appreciate your help. At least, we know she got on the plane. I guess now the question is, did she ever reach Boca Raton?"
    "That's where she said she was going," he said, "though I tell you somethin'. With that fur coat, I told her she ought to head someplace cold. Get some use out of it. She laughed."
    I felt myself hit the pause button mentally, a quick freeze frame. It was odd, that image, and it bothered me. I pictured Elaine Boldt with her fur coat and turban, on her way to warmth and sunshine, waving back over her shoulder – to the taxi driver who'd taken her to the airport. It was disturbing somehow, that last glimpse of her, and I realized that until now I hadn't really pictured that at all. I'd been weighing the possibility that she was on the run, but in my heart of hearts,
    I'd pictured her dead. I'd kept thinking that whoever killed Marty Grice killed her too. I just couldn't figure out why. Now the uncertainty had crept in again. Something was off, but I couldn't figure out what it was.

Chapter 16
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    Well, at least now I had a tiny mission in life. When I left Nelson, he was taking his temperature with a digital thermometer, confessing sheepishly a secret addiction to gadgets like that. I wished him a speedy recovery and hopped in my car, circling back around to Chapel.
    The veterinary clinic is a small box of glass and cinderblock painted the color of window putty and tucked into the dead end formed when Highway 101 was cut through. I love that whole series of dead-end streets – relics of the town as it used to be, a refreshing departure from the pervading Spanish look. The small frame houses in that neighborhood are actually Victorian cottages built for the working class, with hand-turned porch rails, exotic trim, wooden shutters, and peaked roofs. They look like shabby antiques now, but it's still possible to imagine a day when they were newly constructed and covered with fresh paint, the