Kinsey and Me (15 page)

“What’s your point?” she said, annoyed.

I shrugged. “I figure you read the article about the unidentified dead woman in the
welfare hotel. You went out to the morgue and claimed the body as your mom’s. The
two of you agreed to split the insurance money, but your mother got worried about
a double cross, which is exactly what this is.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

The line moved up again and I stayed right next to her. “She hired me to keep an eye
on you, so when I realized you were leaving town, I called her and told her what was
going on. She really hit the roof and I thought she’d charge right out, but so far
there’s been no sign of her. . . .”

Justine showed her ticket to the agent and he motioned her on. She moved through the
metal detector without setting it off.

I gave the agent a smile. “Saying good-bye to a friend,” I said, and passed through
the wooden arch right after she did. She was picking up the pace, anxious to reach
the plane.

I was still talking, nearly jogging to keep up with her. “I couldn’t figure out why
she wasn’t trying to stop you and then I realized what she must have done—”

“Get away from me. I don’t want to talk to you.”

“She took the money, Justine. There’s probably nothing in that money belt of yours
but old papers. She had plenty of time to make the switch while you were getting your
hair done.”

“Ha, ha,” she said sarcastically. “Tell me another one.”

I stopped in my tracks. “All right. That’s all I’m gonna say. I just didn’t want you
to reach Mexico City and find yourself flat broke.”

“Blow it out your buns,” she hissed. She showed her boarding pass to the woman at
the gate and passed on through. I could hear her spike heels tip-tapping out of ear
range.

I reversed myself, walked back through the gate area and out to the walled exterior
courtyard, where I could see the planes through a windbreak of protective glass. Justine
crossed the tarmac to the waiting plane, her shoulders set. I didn’t think she’d heard
me, but then I saw her hand stray to her waist. She walked a few more steps and then
halted, dumping her belongings in a pile at her feet. She pulled her shirt up and
checked the money belt. At that distance, I saw her mouth open, but it took a second
for the shrieks of outrage to reach me.

Ah, well, I thought. Sometimes a mother’s love is like a poison that leaves no trace.
You bop along through life, thinking you’ve got it made, and next thing you know,
you’re dead.

full circle

T
HE ACCIDENT SEEMED
to happen in slow motion—one of those stop-action sequences that seem to go on forever
though in truth no more than a few seconds have elapsed. It was Friday afternoon,
rush hour, Santa Teresa traffic moving at a lively pace, my little VW holding its
own despite the fact that it’s fifteen years out of date. I was feeling good. I’d
just wrapped up a case and I had a check in my handbag for four thousand bucks, not
bad considering the fact that I’m a female private eye, self-employed, and subject
to the feast-or-famine vagaries of any other freelance work.

I glanced to my left as a young woman, driving a white compact, appeared in my driver’s-side
mirror. A bright red Porsche was bearing down on her in the fast lane. I adjusted
my speed, making room for her, sensing that she meant to cut in front of me. A navy
blue pickup truck was coming up on my right, each of us jockeying for position as
the late afternoon sun washed down out of a cloudless California spring sky. I had
glanced in my rearview mirror, checking traffic behind me, when I heard a loud popping
noise. I snapped my attention back to the road in front of me. The white compact veered
abruptly back into the fast lane, clipped the rear of the red Porsche, then hit the
center divider and careened directly into my path. I slammed on my brakes, adrenaline
shooting through me as I fought to control the VW’s fishtailing rear end.

Suddenly, a dark green Mercedes appeared out of nowhere and caught the girl’s car
broadside, flipping the vehicle with all the expertise of a movie stunt. Brakes squealed
all around me like a chorus of squawking birds and I could hear the successive thumps
of colliding cars piling up behind me in a drumroll of destruction. It was over in
an instant, a cloud of dust roiling up from the shoulder where the girl’s car had
finally come to rest, right-side up, half buried in the shrubbery. She had sheared
off one of the support posts for the exit sign, which now leaned crazily across her
car roof. The ensuing silence was profound.

I pulled over and was out of my car like a shot, the fellow from the navy blue pickup
truck right behind me. There must have been five of us running toward the wreckage.
The white car was accordion-folded, the door on the driver’s side jammed shut. Steam
billowed out from under the hood with an alarming hiss. The impact had rammed the
girl headfirst into the windshield, which had cracked in a starburst effect. She was
unconscious, her face bathed in blood. I willed myself to move toward her though my
instinct was to turn away in horror.

The guy from the pickup truck nearly wrenched the car door off its hinges in one of
those emergency-generated bursts of strength that can’t be duplicated under ordinary
circumstances. As he reached for her, I caught his arm.

“Don’t move her,” I said. “Let the paramedics handle this.”

He gave me a startled look, but drew back as he was told. I shed my windbreaker and
we used it to form a compress, staunching the flow of blood from the worst of her
cuts. The guy was in his twenties, with dark curly hair and dark eyes filled with
anxiety. Over my shoulder, someone was asking me if I knew first aid and I realized
that others had been hurt in the accident as well. The driver from the green Mercedes
was already using the roadside emergency phone, presumably calling police and ambulance.
I looked back at the guy from the pickup truck, who was pressing the girl’s neck,
looking for a pulse.

“Is she alive?” I asked.

“Looks like it.”

I jerked my head at the people on the berm behind me. “Let me see what I can do down
there until the ambulance comes,” I said. “Holler if you need me.”

He nodded in reply.

I left him with the girl and moved along the shoulder toward a writhing man whose
leg was visibly broken. A woman was sobbing hysterically somewhere close by and her
cries added an eerie counterpoint to the moans of those in pain. The fellow from the
red Porsche simply stood there numbly, immobilized by shock.

Meanwhile, traffic had slowed to a crawl and commuters were rubbernecking as if freeway
accidents were some sort of spectator sport and this was the main event. Sirens approached.
The next hour was a blur of police and emergency vehicles. I spotted my friend John
Birkett, a photographer from the local paper, who’d reached the scene moments behind
the paramedics. I remember marveling at the speed with which news of the pileup had
spread. I watched as the girl was loaded into the ambulance. While flashbulbs went
off, several of us gave our accounts of the accident to the highway patrol officer,
conferring with one another compulsively as if repetition might relieve us of tension
and distress. I didn’t get home until nearly seven and my hands were still shaking.
The jumble of images made sleep a torment of sudden awakenings, my foot jerking in
a dream sequence as I slammed on my brakes again and again.

When I read in the morning paper that the girl had died, I felt sick with regret.
The article was brief. Caroline Spurrier was twenty-two, a senior psychology major
at the University of California, Santa Teresa. She was a native of Denver, Colorado,
just two months short of graduation at the time of her death. The photograph showed
shoulder-length blond hair, bright eyes, and an impish grin. According to the paper,
six other people had suffered injuries, none fatal. The weight of the young woman’s
death settled in my chest like a cold I couldn’t shake.

My office in town was being repainted, so I worked at home that next week, catching
up on reports. On Thursday, when the knock came, I’d just broken for lunch. I opened
the door. At first glance, I thought the dead girl was miraculously alive, restored
to health and standing on my doorstep with all the solemnity of a ghost. The illusion
was dispelled. A close look showed a blond woman in her mid-forties, her face etched
with weariness.

“I’m Michelle Spurrier,” she said. “I understand you were a witness to my daughter’s
accident. I saw your name and home address on a copy of the police report.”

I stepped back. “Please come in. I’m sorry for your loss, Mrs. Spurrier. That was
terrible.”

She moved past me like a sleepwalker as I closed the door.

“Please sit down. Can I get you anything?”

She shook her head, looking around with bewilderment as if she couldn’t quite remember
what had brought her here. She set her purse aside and sank down on my couch, placing
her cupped hands across her nose and mouth like an oxygen mask.

I sat down beside her, watching as she breathed deeply, struggling to speak. “Take
your time,” I said.

When the words came, her voice was so low I had to lean close to hear her. “The police
examined Caroline’s car at the impound lot and found a bullet hole in the window on
the passenger side. My daughter was shot.” She burst into tears.

I sat beside her while she poured out a grief tinged with rage and frustration. I
brought her a glass of water and a fistful of tissues, small comfort, but all I could
think to do. “What are the police telling you?” I asked when she’d composed herself.

She blew her nose and then took another deep breath. “The case has been transferred
from Traffic detail to Homicide. The officer I talked to this morning says it looks
like a random freeway shooting, but I don’t believe it.”

“God knows they’ve had enough of those down in Los Angeles,” I remarked.

“Well, I can’t accept that. For one thing, what was she doing speeding down the highway
at that hour of the day? She was supposed to be at work, but they tell me she left
abruptly without a word to anyone.”

“Where was she employed?”

“A restaurant out in Colgate. She’d been waiting tables there for a year. The shift
manager told me a man had been harassing her. He thinks she might have left to try
to get away from him.”

“Did he know who the guy was?”

She shook her head. “He wasn’t sure. Some fellow she’d been dating. Apparently, he
kept stopping by the restaurant, calling her at all hours, making a terrible pest
of himself. Lieutenant Dolan tells me you’re a private detective, which is why I’m
here. I want you to find out who’s responsible for this.”

“Mrs. Spurrier, the police here are very competent. I’m sure they’re doing everything
possible.”

“Skip the public relations message,” she said with bitterness. “I have to fly back
to Denver. Caroline’s stepfather is very ill and I need to get home, but I can’t go
unless I know someone here is looking into this. Please.”

I thought about it briefly, but it didn’t take much to persuade me. As a witness to
the accident, I felt more than a professional interest in the case. “I’ll need the
names of her friends,” I said.

I made a note of Mrs. Spurrier’s address and phone number, along with the name of
Caroline’s roommate and the restaurant where she’d worked. I drew up a standard contract,
waiving the advance. I’d bill her later for whatever time I put in. Ordinarily I bypass
police business in an attempt to stay out of Lieutenant Dolan’s way. As the officer
in charge of Homicide, he’s not crazy about private eyes. Though he’s fairly tolerant
of me, I couldn’t imagine what she’d had to threaten to warrant the recommendation.

As soon as she left, I grabbed a jacket and my handbag and drove over to the police
station, where I paid six dollars for a copy of the police report. Lieutenant Dolan
wasn’t in, but I spent a few minutes chatting with Emerald, the clerk in Identification
and Records. She’s a heavy black woman in her fifties, usually wary of my questions,
but a sucker for gossip.

“I hear Jasper’s wife caught him with Rowena Hairston,” I said, throwing out some
bait. Jasper Sax is one of Emerald’s interdepartmental foes.

“Why tell me?” she said. She was pretending uninterest, but I could tell the rumor
cheered her. Jasper, from the crime lab, is forever lifting files from Emerald’s desk,
which only gets her in trouble when Lieutenant Dolan comes around.

“I was hoping you’d fill me in on the Spurrier accident. I know you’ve memorized all
the paperwork.”

She grumbled something about flattery that implied she felt flattered, so I pressed
for specifics. “Anybody see where the shot was fired from?” I asked.

“No, ma’am.”

I thought about the fellow in the red Porsche. He’d been in the lane to my left, just
a few yards ahead of me when the accident occurred. The man in the pickup might be
a help as well. “What about the other witnesses? There must have been half a dozen
of us at the scene. Who’s been interviewed?”

Emerald gave me an indignant look. “What’s the matter with you? You know I’m not allowed
to give out information like that!”

“Worth a try,” I said equably. “What about the girl’s professors from the university?
Has Dolan talked to them?”

“Check it out yourself if you’re so interested,” she snapped.

“Come on, Emerald. Dolan knows I’m doing this. He was the one who told Mrs. Spurrier
about me in the first place. I’ll make it easy for you. Just one name.”

She squinted at me suspiciously. “Which one’s that?”

I took a flier, describing the guy in the pickup, figuring she could identify him
from the list by age. Grudgingly, she checked the list and her expression changed.

“Uh-oh,” she said. “I might know you’d zero in on this one. Fellow in the pickup gave
a phony name and address. Benny Seco was the name, but he must have made that up.
Telephone was a fake, too. Looks like he took off and nobody’s seen him since. Might
have been a warrant out against him he was trying to duck.”

“How about the guy in the Porsche?”

I heard a voice behind me. “Well, well, well. Kinsey Millhone. Hard at work, I see.”

Emerald faded into the background with all the practice of a spy. I turned to find
Lieutenant Dolan standing in the hallway in his habitual pose, hands shoved down in
his pants pockets, rocking on his heels. He’d recently celebrated a birthday, his
baggy face reflecting every one of his sixty years.

I folded the police report and tucked it in my bag. “Mrs. Spurrier got in touch with
me and asked me to follow up on this business of her daughter’s death. I feel bad
about the girl.”

His manner shifted. “I do, too,” he said.

“What’s the story on the missing witness?”

Dolan shrugged. “He must have had some reason to give out a phony name. Did you talk
to him at the scene?”

“Just briefly, but I’d know him if I saw him again. Do you think he could be of help?”

Dolan ran a hand across his balding pate. “I’d sure like to hear what the fellow has
to say. Nobody else was aware that the girl was shot. I gather he was close enough
to have done it himself.”

“There’s gotta be a way to track him down, don’t you think?”

“Maybe,” he said. “No one remembers much about the man except the truck he drove.
Toyota, dark blue, maybe four or five years old from what they say.”