Free J is for Judgment by Sue Grafton

work number for him?”
    “Of course. I give his number to everyone, especially his creditors. It gives me great pleasure. Now, you’ll have to catch him during the day,” she went on to caution me. “There’s no telephone on the boat, but he’s usually there by six every evening. Most nights he has supper at the yacht club and then hangs around until midnight.”
    “What’s he look like?”
    “Oh, he’s very well known. Anyone could point him out. You just go on over there and ask for him by name. You can’t miss him.”
    “What about the name of the boat and the slip number in case he’s not at the club?”
    She gave me both the marina and the slip numbers. “The boat’s called the
Captain Stanley Lord.
It was Wendell’s,” she said.
    “Really. How did Carl end up with it?”
    “I’ll let him tell you that,” she said, and hung up.
    I did a few odds and ends and then decided to pack it in for the day. I’d felt crummy to begin with, and the antihistamine I’d taken earlier was knocking me for a loop. Since there wasn’t much else going on, I thought I might as well go home. I hiked the two blocks to my car and headed over to State Street, where I hung a left. My apartment is tucked away on a shady side street just a block off the beach. I found a parking place close by, locked the VW, and let myself in the front gate.
    The space I now occupy was formerly a single-car garage, converted into a studio, complete with a sleepingloft and spiral staircase. I have a galley-style kitchen, a living room that serves as guest quarters on occasion, one bathroom down and another one up, all of this fitting together with amazing efficiency. My landlord redesigned the floor plan after an unfortunate explosion two Christmases before, and he’d infused the “day-core” with a nautical motif. There was a lot of brass and teak, windows shaped like portholes, built-ins everywhere. The apartment has the feel of an adult-size playhouse, which is fine with me, as I’m a kid at heart.
    When I rounded the corner, moving toward the backyard, I saw that Henry’s back door was open. I crossed the flagstone patio linking my studio apartment to the main house on the property. I tapped on the screen, peering into his kitchen, which looked empty.
    “Henry? Are you there?”
    He must have been in cooking mode. I could smell the sautéed onions and garlic that Henry seems to use as the basis for anything he makes. It was a good indication that his mood had improved. In the months since his brother William moved in, Henry had ceased cooking altogether, in part because William was so finicky about what he ate. In the most self-deprecating manner imaginable, William would declare that a dish had a little bit too much salt for his hypertension or just that wee touch of fat he wasn’t permitted after his gall-bladder removal. Between his fussy bowels and his temperamental stomach, he couldn’t handle anything with too much acid or spice. Then there were his allergies, his lactose intolerance, and his heart, his hiatal hernia, his occasional incontinence, and his tendencyto pass kidney stones. Henry had taken to making sandwiches for himself, leaving William on his own.
    William began to take his meals at the neighborhood tavern his beloved Rosie had owned and operated for years. Rosie, while paying lip service to William’s maladies, insisted he eat according to her personal gastromedical dictates. She feels a glass of sherry will remedy any known debilitation. God only knew what her spicy Hungarian cooking had done to his digestive system.
    “Henry?”
    Henry said, “Yo,” his voice emanating from the bedroom. I heard footsteps and he came around the corner, his face wreathed in smiles when he caught sight of me. “Well, Kinsey. You’re home again. Come on in. I’ll be right there.”
    He disappeared. I let myself into the kitchen. He’d pulled his big soup kettle from the cupboard. There was a bunch of celery in the dish