"H" Is for Homicide (3 page)

It was ten when I finally turned the lights out and went up to bed. I opened one of the windows and leaned my head against the frame, letting the cold air wash across my face. The moon was up. The night sky was clear and the stars were as piercing as pinpricks. A weak storm front was moving in, and a chance of showers was being predicted sometime in the next couple of days. So far, there was no sign of rain. I could hear the muffled tumble of the surf a block away. I crawled under the covers and flipped on the clock radio, staring up at the skylight. A country song began to play, Willie Nelson in a wistful account of pain and suffering. Where is Robert Dietz tonight? I asked myself. I'd hired myself a private investigator the previous May when my name showed up as one of the four finalists on somebody's hit list. I'd needed a bodyguard and Dietz turned out to be it. Once the situation was defused, he'd stayed on for three months. He'd been gone now for two. We were neither of us letter writers and too cheap to call each other very often since he'd left for Germany. His departure was wrenching, the banal and the bittersweet mingling in about equal parts.

"I'm not good at good-byes," I'd said the night before he left.

"I'm not good at anything else," he'd replied with that crooked smile of his. I didn't think his pain was any match for mine. I might have been wrong, of course. Dietz was not the sort of man given to unrestrained expressions of anguish or distress, which is not to say such feelings didn't exist for him.

The hard part about love is the hole it leaves when it's gone… which is the substance of every country-and-westem song you ever heard…

The next thing I knew, it was 6:00 A.M. and my alarm was peeping like a little bird. I rolled out of bed and grabbed my running clothes, pulling on sweat pants, sweat shirt, crew socks, and Adidas. I paused to brush my teeth and then headed down the spiral stairs to my front door. The sun hadn't risen yet, but the darkness had eased up to a charcoal haze. The morning air was damp and smelled of eucalyptus. I clung to the front gate and did a couple of stretches – more form than content – using the walk over to Cabana Boulevard as a way of warming up to some extent. Sometimes I wonder why I continue to exercise with such diligence. Paranoia, perhaps… the recollection of the times when I've had to run for my life.

When I reached the bike path I broke into an awkward trot. My legs felt like wood and my breathing was choppy. The first mile always hurts; anything after that is a snap by comparison. I shut my mind off and tuned in to my surroundings. To the right of me, the ocean was pounding at the beach, a muted thunder as restful as the sound of rain. Sea gulls were screeching as they wheeled above the surf. The Pacific was the color of liquid steel, the waves a foamy mass of aluminum and chrome. The sand became a mirror where the water receded, reflecting the softness of the morning sky. The horizon turned a salmon pink as the sun crept into view. Long arms of coral light stretched out along the horizon, where clouds were beginning to mass from the promised storm front. The air was cold and richly scented with salt spray and seaweed. Within minutes, my stride began to lengthen and I could feel a mindless rhythm orchestrate all the moving parts. As it turned out, this was the last time I'd have a chance to jog for weeks. Had-I-but-known, I might have enjoyed it a lot more than I did.

SOMEHOW I SENSED, long before I actually laid eyes on the man, that my relationship with Gordon Titus was not going to be a source of joy and comfort to either one of us. Since he'd proposed the meeting, I figured my choices were obvious. I could avoid the office, thus postponing our first encounter, or I could comply with his request and get it over with. Of the two, the latter seemed the wiser on the face of it. After all, it was possible the meeting was a mere formality. I didn't want my lack of enthusiasm to be misinterpreted. Better, I thought, to appear to be cooperative. As my aunt used to say: "Always keep yourself on the side of the angels." It was only after she died that I began to wonder what that meant.

When I got to the office at nine, I put a call through to Darcy Pascoe, the receptionist in the California Fidelity offices next door to mine. "Hi, Darcy. This is Kinsey. I hear Gordon Titus wants to meet with me. From what Vera says, the guy's a real prick."

"Good morning, Miss Millhone. Nice to hear from you," she said in a pleasant singsong voice.

"Why are you talking like that? Is he standing right there?"

"That's correct."

"Oh. Well, would you ask him what time he wants me over there? I've got a few minutes now if it works for him."

"Just one moment, please."

She put me on hold long enough to convey the question and elicit a response. She clicked back in. "Right now would be fine."

"I'm so thrilled."

I hung up the phone. I can handle this, I thought. All of us are subjected to somebody else's power at some point. So once in a while you kiss ass. So what? Either you make your peace with that early, or you end up living your life as a crank and a misfit. As I headed for the door, I passed the wall-hung mirror and paused to check my reflection. I looked fine to me. Jeans, turtleneck, no dirt on my face, nothing green between my teeth. I don't wear makeup, so I never have to worry about caking or smears. I used to cut my hair myself, but I'd been growing it out of late, so it was now shoulder length, just the teeniest bit uneven. Fortunately, all I had to do was cock my head at a slight angle and it straightened right up.

It was with my head thus tilted that I entered the glass cubicle Gordon Titus was apparently using for his little get-acquainted meetings with the staff. Vera's office was located right next to his and I could see her at her desk, shooting me a profoundly cross-eyed look. She was wearing a subdued gray business suit with a plain white blouse, her hair tucked back in a bun. Mr. Titus stood up to meet me and we shook hands across the desk. "Miss Millhone."

"Hi. How are you? Nice to meet you," I said.

His grip was appropriately macho, firm and hearty, but not crushing, the contact maintained just long enough to show that his purpose was sincere. At first glance, I have to say he was a pleasant surprise. I pictured dry and gray, someone all nicked in and proper. He was younger than I expected, forty-two at most. He was smooth-faced, cleanshaven, his eyes blue, his hair prematurely gray and stylishly cut. Instead of a suit, he wore chinos and a blue Izod shirt. He didn't seem all that taken with me. I could tell from his glance that my professional attire was a bit of a shock. He covered it well, perhaps imagining that I'd come in to assist the charwoman with the floors before work.

"Have a seat," he said. No smile, no small talk, no social niceties.

I sat.

He sat. "We've been taking a look at the reports you submitted over the past six months. Nice work," he said. I could already sense the "but" hanging in the air above our heads. His eye traveled down the page in front of him. He leafed rapidly through the sheaf of notes clipped to the front of a manila file folder. The implication was that he had data on me going back to the first time I threw up in elementary school. There was a yellow legal pad in front of him on which he'd scribbled additional notes in ink. His handwriting was precise, the letters angular, with an emphasis on downward strokes. Occasionally, there were pits where the pen point had torn through the paper. I could picture his thoughts speeding across the page while his cursive stumped along behind, gouging out unsightly holes. He'd never forgotten how to do a formal outline. Topics were laid out with Roman numerals, subclauses neatly indented. His mind probably worked that way, too, with all the categories assigned up front and all the subordinate subjects carefully relegated to the lines below. He closed the folder and set it aside. He turned his attention to me fully.

I thought it was time to jump right in and make quick work of it. "I'm not sure if you're aware of it, but I'm not actually a California Fidelity employee," I said. "I work for the company as an independent contractor."

His smile was thin. "I understand that. However, there are several small issues we'll need to clarify for corporate purposes. I'm sure you can appreciate the fact that in a review of this sort, we need to see the whole picture."

"Of course."

He studied the first and second pages of his legal pad.

I glanced surreptitiously at my watch, under the guise of adjusting the band.

Without looking up, he said, "Have you another appointment?"

"I have a claim to investigate. I should be out in the field."

He looked up at me. His body was motionless. His blue eyes bored into mine without blinking. He was handsome, but blank, so expressionless that I wondered if he'd had a stroke or an accident that had severed all the muscles in his face.

I tried to keep my mien as dead as his. I'm a bottom-line kind of person myself. I like to cut straight to the chase.

He picked up his pen, checking item one, line one on his list. "I'm not clear whom you report to. Perhaps you can fill me in."

Oh, Jesus. "It varies," I said pleasantly. "I'm accountable to Mac Voorhies, but the cases are usually referred by individual claims adjusters." The minute I started speaking, he began to write. I'm an expert (she said modestly) at reading upside down, but he was using a shorthand code of his own. I stopped speaking. He stopped taking notes. I said nothing.

He looked up at me again. "Excuse me. I missed that. Can you describe the procedure on this? The file doesn't seem to indicate."

"Usually, I get a call. Or one of the adjusters might bring a case to my attention. I stop in the office two or three times a week." He managed to write at exactly the rate I spoke. I stopped. His pen came to a halt.

"In addition to meetings?" he asked.

"Meetings?"

"I'm assuming you attend the regularly scheduled office meetings. Budgets. Sales…"

"I've never done that."

He checked his notes, flipping back a page or two. A frown formed, but I could have sworn his confusion was pure theatrics. "I can't seem to find your 206's."

"Really," I said. "That surprises me." I hadn't the faintest idea what a 206 was, but I thought it should be his responsibility since he brought it up.

He passed a form across the desk to me. "Just to refresh your memory," he said.

There were lots of slots to be filled in. Dates, times, corporate numbers, odometer readings; clearly a formal report in which I was supposed to detail every burp and hiccup on the job. I passed the form back to him without comment. I wasn't going to play this game. Screw him.

He'd begun to make notes again, head bent. "I'll have to ask you to supply the carbons from your files so we can bring our files up to date. Drop them off with Miss Pascoe by noon, if you would. We'll set up an appointment to go over them later."

"What for?"

"We'll need documentation of your hours so we can calculate your rate of pay," he said as if it were obvious.

"I can tell you that. Thirty bucks an hour plus expenses."

He managed to convey astonishment without even raising a brow. "Less rental monies for the office space, of course," he said.

"In lieu of rental monies for the office space."

Dead silence.

Finally, he said, "That can't be the case."

"That's been my arrangement with CF from the first."

"That's absolutely out of the question."

"It's been this way for the past six years and no one's complained of it yet."

He lifted his pen from the page. "Well. We'll have to see if we can straighten this out."

"Straighten what out? That's the agreement. It suits me. It suits them."

"Miss Millhone, do you have a problem?"

"No, not at all. What makes you ask?"

"I'm not sure I understand your attitude," he said.

"My attitude is simple. I don't see why I have to put up with this bureaucratic bullshit. I don't work for you. I'm an independent contractor. You don't like what I do, hire somebody else."

"I see." He replaced the cap on the pen. He began to gather his papers, his movements crisp, his manner abrupt. "Perhaps we can meet some other time. When you're calmer."

I said, "Great. You too. I have a job to do, anyway."

He left the cubicle before I did and headed straight for Mac's office. All the CF employees within range were hard at work, their expressions studiously attentive to the job at hand.

I put the entire exchange in a mental box and filed it away. There'd be hell to pay, but at the moment I didn't care.

The address I'd been given for Bibianna Diaz turned out to be a vacant lot. I sat in my car and stared blankly at the parcel of raw dirt, crudely landscaped with weeds, palms, boulders, and broken bottles twinkling in the sunlight. A condom dangled limply from a fallen palm frond, looking like a skin shed by some anemic snake. I double-checked the information listed in the file and then scanned the house numbers on either side. No match. I flipped open the glove compartment and pulled out a city map, which I spread across the steering wheel, squinting at the street names indexed alphabetically on the back. There was no other road, drive, avenue, or lane listed with the same name or one that even came close. I'd dropped the Diaz file off at the CF offices before my meeting with Titus, so all I had with me were a few penciled notes. I figured it was time to check back with Mary Bellflower to see what else she might have in the way of a contact. I started the car and headed toward town, feeling strangely gratified. The nonexistent street address added fuel to the notion that Ms. Diaz was telling fibs, a prospect that excited the latent felon in me. In California jargon, I can "resonate" with crooks. Investigating honest people isn't half the fun.

I spotted a pay phone on the far side of a gas station. I pulled in and had my tank topped off while I called Mary at the CF offices and told her what was going on. "You have any other address for this woman?" I asked.

"Oh, Kinsey, poor thing. I heard about your meeting with Gordon Titus. I can't believe you gave him such a hard time. He was screaming at Mac so loud I could hear it back here."

"I couldn't help myself," I said. "I really meant to behave and it just popped out."

"Oh, you poor dear."

"I don't think it's that bad," I said. "Do you?"

"I don't know. I saw him go off with the corporate vice president and he seemed pretty upset. He told Darcy to take his calls. The minute he walked out the door, the tension level dropped by half."

"How can you guys put up with that stuff? He's a jerk. Has he talked to you yet?"

"No, but Kinsey, I can't afford to lose this job. I just qualified for benefits. I'm hoping to get pregnant, and Peter's group plan doesn't cover maternity."

"Well, I wouldn't take any guff," I said. "Of course, I'll be fired, but what the hell. I'll live."

Mary laughed. "If you can pull this one off, it might help."

"Let's hope so. Do you have any other address in the file?"

"I doubt it, but I can look. Hang on a sec." I listened to Mary breathe in my ear while she leafed through the file. Reluctantly, she said, "No, I don't see anything. You know, we never got a copy of the police report. Maybe she gave them the correct address."

"Good thought," I said. "I can stop by the station as long as I'm out. What about the telephone number? Can we check the crisscross?" I had the latest Polk directory in my office, detailing addresses sequentially by street and house number, a second section listing telephone numbers sequentialy. Often, if you have one good piece of information, you get a line on a subject by cross-referencing.

She said, "Won't help. It's unlisted."

"Oh, good. A crook with an unlisted number. I love that. How about the license plate on the car? DMV might have something."

"Well, that I can help you with." Mary scouted out the plate number of Bibianna's Mazda and recited it to me. "And Kinsey, if you get the address, let me know right away. I have some forms I want to send her and Mac's having a fit. You can't send registered mail to a post office box."

"Right," I said. "By the way, how come Parnell didn't handle this one himself?"

"Beats me. I assumed he was just too busy with his other cases."

"Maybe so," I said with a shrug. "Anyway, I'll call as soon as I know anything. I'm planning to pop by the office later with an update for the files."

"Good luck."

I scribbled a few hasty notes to myself after we hung up. I fished out another couple of dimes and tried Bibianna's work number, a dry cleaning establishment on Vaquero.

The man who answered the telephone was terse and impatient, probably his chronic state. The excess stomach acid was audible in his voice and I pictured him tossing Turns in his mouth like after-dinner mints. When I asked for Bibianna Diaz, he said she was out. Period.

When there was no other information forthcoming, I gave him a prompt. "Do you expect her back soon?"

"I don't expect nothin'," he shot back. "She said she'd be out all week. Back problems, she says. I'm not gonna argue anybody has a bad back. First thing you know I get slapped with a goddamn workmen's comp claim and I'm out big bucks. Nuts to that. Who's this?"

"This is her cousin, Ruth. I'm passing through town on my way to Los Angeles and I promised I'd stop and see her. Is there any way you could give me her home address? She gave it to me last week when we chatted on the phone, but I walked off without my address book so I don't have it with me."