“I take it that you had a falling out,” Martin said.
“Not so much a falling out as a skipping out, so to speak. With the money, naturally.”
“How much?” I asked.
Grombaugh looked distinctly pained. “Nearly nine hundred thousand.”
Martin’s face went carefully bland, but I could see the effort that it was costing him not to let his jaw sag. “That’s quite a sum of money—grand larceny, and then some. Have you filed a report with the police?”
“I’m afraid not. You see, there’s a slight complication.”
“Uh, oh,” I muttered, knowing what was coming.
“The young lady in question is not my wife.”
It was really quite a simple case. He had married a woman who had gradually grown distant and cold. By the time Elaine Hinds had popped onto the scene, he was ripe for the plucking. She apparently had wasted little time reaching for the fruit.
In a matter of weeks she had a full set of keys. One to the Ferrari, one to the house, and one to a guest house that stood away from the main house. It seemed that they had met there often.
Grombaugh had made his crucial mistake when he told her the combination to the safe in his study. Like the keys, he had given it to her willingly. In retrospect, he wished he had bitten off his tongue instead.
It was not unusual for the safe to contain as much as five or ten thousand dollars, but, by coincidence, Elaine had timed things such that the proceeds from the sale of a piece of real estate were on hand. Not so coincidentally, Grombaugh had told her about it, in the usual way that human men try to impress women by mentioning large sums of money. Shortly thereafter, Elaine, the Ferrari, and the cash were all missing.
Grombaugh had covered the loss of the car by telling his wife that the cylinder head was cracked, and that it might be some time before it was repaired, as certain other necessary parts had to be ordered from Italy. The money, however, was a different matter. His wife, who went by the improbable nickname of Bird, knew that it was there. In fact, they had planned to use it to buy a house on the coast of Maine as a summer getaway. Considering that they had already made an offer on an attractive cottage, its loss was likely to be noticed sooner rather than later.
The police, of course, were out of the question. They would undoubtedly do something gauche, like mention his lover to his wife, which would complicate his life beyond all hope of recovery. That meant that Grombaugh had few options, and little time in which to exercise them. Our job was to locate Elaine of the summer hair and sapphire eyes. Presumably the Ferrari and whatever portion of the money remained would be nearby.
The trick, of course, would be to find her. Unsurprisingly, she had left no forwarding address, and, with that much cash on hand, was unlikely to be using a charge card to put fuel in the Ferrari.
We were able to get a few potentially useful bits of information out of Grombaugh, such as the fact that Elaine had mentioned a mother in New Orleans. The main problem was that the usual ways of tracking a person take time, and that was in short supply.
As soon as Grombaugh left, we got to work. I began finessing the telephone company out of copies of Elaine’s last three phone bills while Martin called the owner of the house she had been renting. He was pretending to be an agent of a moving company who needed to see her possessions before giving an estimate as to how much it would cost to move them to Chicago.
The phone bill copies would arrive by mail; there was nothing we could do to speed that process. However, Martin obtained permission to enter the house where she had been living.
Martin shook his head, looking worried. “Victor, I’ve got a feeling that we’ve lost her. With that much money and a silver Ferrari, she’s probably hallway across the country by now. Los Angeles or Miami… somewhere where there are dozens of high class sports cars and loads of pretty blondes with money.”
“Oh, we’ll find her all right. It’s just that we may not have time to do so before Bird figures out that something is amiss.”
“The most efficient thing to do would be to bring in the police. They could issue an alert for the Ferrari. That kind of car sticks out like a sore thumb. Unfortunately, that’s the one thing we can’t do.” He glanced at his watch. “Let’s get a move on. There’s just enough time to get over to Elaine’s house for our appointment.”
As Martin was strapping me into the front seat of the car with the seat belt, I said, “By the way, it’s been a couple of days since I’ve eaten. Do you think we could stop by the dump on the way home tonight?”
Martin shuddered. “What’s this we stuff, dumpster breath? Just because you think a half-rotted head of lettuce is a delicacy doesn’t mean that I intend to eat garbage with you. I prefer my food fresh.”
“But it might… bleed on you!” I croaked, my imagination reeling at the very concept.
Just as Martin has trouble with my dietary requirements, his cause my mind to derail. The idea of eating anything without a nice, healthy coating of slime is anathematic. Humans are on the right track with the idea of aged beef—they just don’t take it far enough.
Martin got in on the driver’s side and inserted the key, then looked my way. “Victor, I like you a lot, but I don’t think we’ll ever eat from the same plate.”
“You can say that again,” I muttered.
As we neared the house where Elaine Hinds had lived, the lawns got larger and greener. Weeds were fewer. Other, more subtle clues to wealth presented themselves to the trained eye. For instance, what few childrens’ toys were to be seen weren’t made of that cheap, hollow plastic that fades in the sun the first year and wears out entirely the second; more substantial steel toys took their place.
Martin slowed, squinting at the house numbers, then finally stopped. “Looks like this is the one.”
The house was smaller than most on the block, but just as tidy. There was a car in the driveway with a man leaning against the fender. As soon as he saw us pull to the curb, he began walking towards us.
Martin came around to my side of the car and began to unwind the seat belt, which he had looped loosely around my body. Were we ever to be in a serious wreck, it would more likely strangle me than save my life, but it does help me stay erect when Martin attempts to make the car corner on two wheels.
“That tickles,” I hissed.
Martin eyed me. “Do you want to stay in the car?”
“What? And let you miss all the important details?”
“Then stand still. They didn’t design this belt to hold aliens with no laps.”
“I can’t sit, as you well know. My body doesn’t bend that way.”
Martin lifted me from the seat and placed me on the ground just as Elaine’s landlord walked up. “You from the moving company?”
“That’s correct,” I said firmly before Martin could open his mouth. “This is the head of my work crew. We’re here to look over the contents of the house. See how many rooms’ worth there are, and so forth.” I began to stomp purposefully across the yard towards the front door, ignoring the horrified look that Martin was giving me.
Not hearing footsteps behind me, I turned. My arms are only wizened approximations of human arms, but I put them about where my hips would be, if I had any. “Well? I haven’t got all day, you know. Let’s get this over with.” I considered tapping my foot, but decided that it would be a little too much.
The landlord looked at Martin’s rusty derelict from a junkyard, then at Martin, then at me. Clearly we were having a credibility crisis. “For heaven’s sake, my car’s in the shop, so I had Martin drive us here in his. I know it’s an eyesore, but at least it runs.” I turned my one eye on Martin and tried to give him a contemptuous look. “And before you start in on me about wanting a raise so you can buy a better car, you’d just better think again. Next time I’ll get Harry to drive me and I’ll send you to clean out the warehouse.” I turned back to the landlord and made a snorting noise, as though to say that you just couldn’t get good help these days.