B Is for Burglar

pawned or sold." I had one of those little nagging thoughts on the subject, but I couldn't bring it into focus for the moment.
    Julia waved dismissively. "I don't believe she'd sell her coat, Kinsey. Why would she do that? She has lots of money. Stocks, bonds, mutual funds. She wouldn't need to pawn anything."
    I chewed on that one. She was right, of course. "I keep wondering if she's dead. The luggage got here, but maybe she never made it. Maybe she's in a morgue somewhere with a tag on her toe."
    "You think someone lured her off the plane and killed her?"
    I wagged my head back and forth, not wholly convinced. "I don't know. It's possible. It's also possible she never made the trip at all."
    "I thought you told me someone saw her get on the plane. The cab driver you talked about."
    "That wasn't really a positive identification. I mean, a cab driver picks up a fare and the woman claims she's Elaine Boldt. He never saw her before in his life, so who knows? He just takes her word for it, like we all do. How do you know I'm Kinsey Millhone? Because I say I am. Someone might have posed as her just to establish a trail."
    "What for?"
    "Well now, that I don't know. We've got a couple of women who might have pulled it off. Her sister Beverly for one."
    "And Pat Usher for another," Julia said.
    "Pat did benefit from Elaine's being off the scene. She gets a rent-free condo in Boca for months."
    "That's the first time I ever heard of anyone murdered for room and board," she said tartly.
    I smiled. I knew we were floundering, but maybe we'd stumble onto something. I could have used a break at that point. "Did Pat ever leave that forwarding address she promised?"
    Julia shook her head. "Charmaine says she left one, but it was humbug. She packed and took off the same day you were here and nobody's seen her since."
    "Oh shit. I knew she'd do that."
    "Well, it wasn't anything you could have prevented," she said charitably.
    I leaned my head back against the sofa frame, playing mind games. "It could have been Beverly too, you know. Maybe Bev bumped her off in the ladies' room at the St. Louis airport."
    "Or killed her in Santa Teresa and impersonated her from that point on. Maybe she was the one who packed the bags and took the plane."
    "Try it the other way," I said. "Think about Pat. I mean, what if Pat Usher were a stranger to Elaine, just someone she met on the plane. Maybe they started talking and Pat realized –" I dropped that idea when I saw the expression on Julia's face. "It does sound pretty lame," I said.
    "Oh, well – no harm done in speculating. Maybe Pat knew her in Santa Teresa and followed her from there."
    I ran that around in my head. "Well, yeah. I guess it could be. Tillie says she heard from Elaine – at least, she assumed it was Elaine – by postcard until March, but I guess somebody could have faked that too."
    I filled her in on my conversations with Aubrey and Beverly and right in the middle of it, my memory kicked in; one of those wonderful little mental jolts, like a quick electrical shock when a plug's gone bad. "Oh wait, I just remembered something. Elaine got a bill from some furrier here in Boca. What if we could track him down and find out if he's seen the coat? That might give us a lead."
    "What furrier? We have quite a few."
    "I'd have to check with Tillie. Can I make a call to California? If we can track down the coat, maybe we can get a line on her."
    Julia wagged the cane toward the telephone. Within minutes, I'd gotten Tillie on the line and told her what I needed.
    "Well, you know that bill got stolen along with the rest, but I just got another one. Hold on and I'll see what it says." She put the receiver down and went to fetch the mail.
    She got back on the line. "She's being dunned. It's a second overdue notice from a place called Jacques – seventy-six dollars for storage and two hundred dollars for having the coat recut. Wonder why she'd do that? There's a little happy face drawn by hand: 'Thanks for your business' – followed by a sad face: 'Hope the delay in payment is just an oversight.' A few more bills have come in too. Let me see what those look like."
    I could hear Tillie ripping open envelopes on her end of the line.
    "Oops. Well, these are all overdue. It looks like she's run up a lot of charges. Let's see. Oh my. Visa, MasterCard. The last date on these is about ten days ago, but I guess that was just the end of the billing period. They're asking her not to use her cards