L Is for Lawless

glass laying on the steps. Somebody really tore the place up."
    "Did they take anything?"
    "That's what they're trying to figure out. Chester told Bucky he shouldn't have left you alone."
    "Me? Well, that's dumb. Why would I tear the place apart? I'd never work that way."
    "That's what Bucky said, but Chester never listens to him. By the time we got here, he was having a conniption fit. I can't wait 'til he goes back to Ohio. I'm a nervous wreck. My daddy never yelled, so I'm not used to it. My mom'd knock his block off if he ever talked to her that way. I told Bucky he better tell Chester to quit swearing at me. I don't appreciate his attitude."
    "Why don't you tell him?"
    "Well, I tried more'n once, but it never does any good. He's been married four times and I bet I can guess why they divorce him. Lately, his girlfriends are all twenty-four years old and even
they
get sick of him once he buys 'em a bunch of clothes."
    We trooped up the steps to the garage apartment, where the door was standing open. The narrow window next to it had an irregular starburst of glass missing. The method of entry wasn't complicated. There was only one door into the place, and all the other windows were twenty feet off the ground. Most burglars aren't going to risk a ladder against the side of a building in broad daylight. It was obvious the intruder had simply come up the stairs, punched out the glass, reached around the frame, and unlocked the deadbolt from the inside. It hadn't been necessary to use a pry bar or any other tools.
    Chester must have heard us because he came out to the landing, barely looking at Babe, who eased back against the wooden porch railing, trying to make herself as inconspicuous as possible. Her father-in-law had apparently dismissed her as a target… for the moment, at any rate.
    It was easy to see where Bucky got his looks. His father was big and beefy, with wavy blond hair long enough to touch his shoulders. Was that a dye job? I tried not to stare, but I could have sworn I'd seen that color in a Clairol ad. He had small blue eyes, blond lashes, and graying sideburns. His face was big and his complexion was ruddy. He wore his shirttail out, probably to disguise the extra thirty pounds he carried. He looked like a fellow who'd played in a rock-and-roll band in his youth, writing his own excruciatingly amateurish tunes. The earring surprised me: a dangling cross of gold. I also caught a glimpse of some sort of religious medal on a gold chain that disappeared under his V-neck T-shirt. His chest hair was gray. Looking at him was like seeing previews of Bucky's coming attractions.
    Might as well be direct. I held my hand out. "Kinsey Millhone, Mr. Lee. I understand you're upset."
    His handshake was perfunctory. "You can knock off the 'Mr. Lee' shit and call me Chester. Might as well be on a first-name basis while I chew your ass out. You better believe I'm upset. I don't know what Bucky asked you to do, but it sure wasn't this."
    I bit back a tart reply and looked past him into the apartment. The place was a shambles: boxes overturned, books flung here and there, the mattress rolled back, the sheets and pillows on the floor. Half of Johnny's clothes had been pulled from the closet and piled in a heap. In the kitchen, through the doorway, I could see cabinet doors standing open, pots and pans strewn across the floor. While the disorder was extensive, nothing appeared to be damaged or destroyed. There was no sign that anyone had taken a blade to the bedding. No graffiti, no food emptied out of canisters or pipes torn from the walls. Vandals will often festoon the walls with their own fecal paint, but there was nothing like that here. It looked more like the methods big-city cops might employ at the scene of a drug bust. But what was the object of the exercise? Fleetingly, I entertained the notion that I was being set up, called in as a witness to a phony crime scene so that Bucky and his father could claim something valuable had been taken.
    Bucky appeared from the kitchen and caught sight of me. In one split second we exchanged curiously guilty looks, like co-conspirators. There's something about being accused of criminal behavior that makes you feel like you did it even if you're innocent. Bucky turned to his dad. "Toilet tank's cracked. Might have been like that before, but I never noticed."
    Chester pointed a finger. "You're paying for it if it has to be replaced. Bringing her into it was your bright idea."