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EXCERPT
CHAPTER ONE
Sometimes I think about how odd it would be to catch a glimpse of the future, a quick view
of events lying in store for us at some undisclosed date. Suppose we could peer through a
tiny peephole in Time and chance upon a flash of what was coming up in the years ahead?
Some moments we saw would make no sense at all and some, I suspect, would frighten us
beyond endurance. If we knew what was looming, we'd avoid certain choices, select option B
instead of A at the fork in the road: the job, the marriage, the move to a new state,
childbirth, the first drink, the elective medical procedure, that long-anticipated ski
trip that seemed like such fun until the dark rumble of the avalanche. If we understood
the consequences of any given action, we could exercise discretion, thus restructuring our
fate. Time, of course, only runs in one direction, and it seems to do so in an orderly
progression. Here in the blank and stony present, we're shielded from the knowledge of the
dangers that await us, protected from future horrors through blind innocence.
Take the case in point. I was winding my way through the mountains in a cut-rate rental
car, heading south on 395 toward the town of Nota Lake, California, where I was going to
interview a potential client. The roadway was dry and the view was unobstructed, weather
conditions clear. The client's business was unremarkable, at least as far as I could see.
I had no idea there was any jeopardy waiting or I'd have done something else.
I'd left Dietz in Carson City, where I'd spent the last two weeks playing nurse/companion
while he recovered from surgery. He'd been scheduled for a knee replacement and I'd
volunteered to drive him back to Nevada in his snazzy little red Porsche. I make no claims
to nurturing, but I'm a practical person and the nine-hour journey seemed the obvious
solution to the problem of how to get his car back to his home state. I'm a no-nonsense
driver and he knew he could count on me to get us to Carson City without any unnecessary
side trips and no irrelevant conversation. He'd been staying in my apartment for the two
previous months and since our separation was approaching, we tended to avoid discussing
anything personal.
For the record, my last name is Millhone, first name Kinsey. I'm female, twice divorced,
seven weeks shy of thirty-six, and reasonably fit. I'm a licensed private detective,
currently residing in Santa Teresa, California, to which I'm attached like a tetherball on
a very short cord. Occasionally, business will swing me out to other parts of the country,
but I'm basically a small-town shamus and likely to remain so for life.
Dietz's surgery, which was scheduled for the first Monday in March, proceeded
uneventfully, so we can skip that part. Afterward, I returned to his condominium and
toured the premises with interest. I'd been startled by the place when I first laid eyes
on it, as it was more lavish and much better appointed than my poor digs back in Santa
Teresa. Dietz was a nomad and I'd never pictured his having much in the way of material
possessions. While I was closeted in a converted single-car garage (recently remodeled to
accommodate a sleeping loft and a second bathroom upstairs), Dietz maintained a
three-bedroom penthouse that probably encompassed three thousand square feet of living
space, including a roof patio and garden with an honest-to-god greenhouse. Granted, the
seven-story building was located in a commercial district, but the views were astounding
and the privacy profound.
I'd been too polite to pry while he was standing right there beside me, but once he was
safely ensconced in the orthopedic ward at Carson/Tahoe Hospital, I felt comfortable
scrutinizing everything in my immediate range, which necessitated dragging a chair around
and standing on it in some cases. I checked closets and files and boxes and papers and
drawers, pockets and suitcases, feeling equal parts relief and disappointment that he had
nothing in particular to hide. I mean, what's the point of snooping if you can't uncover
something good? I did have the chance to study a photograph of his ex-wife, Naomi, who was
certainly a lot prettier than he'd ever indicated. Aside from that, his finances appeared
to be in order, his medicine cabinet contained no sinister pharmaceutical revelations, and
his private correspondence consisted almost entirely of assorted misspelled letters from
his two college-age sons. Lest you think I'm intrusive, I can assure you Dietz had
searched my apartment just as thoroughly during the time he was in residence. I know this
because I'd left a few booby traps, one of which he'd missed when he was picking open my
locked desk drawers. His license might have lapsed, but (most of) his operating skills
were still current. Neither of us had ever mentioned his invasion of my privacy, but I
vowed I'd do likewise when the opportunity arose. Between working detectives, this is
known as professional courtesy. You toss my place and I'll toss yours.
He was out of the hospital by Friday morning of that week. The ensuing recovery involved a
lot of sitting around with his knee wrapped in bandages as thick as a bolster. We watched
trash television, played gin rummy, and worked a jigsaw puzzle with a picture depicting a
roiling nest of earthworms so lifelike I nearly went off my feed. The first three days I
did all the cooking, which is to say I made sandwiches,, alternating between my famous
peanut-butter-and-pickle extravaganza and my much beloved sliced hot-hard-boiled-egg
confection, with tons of Hellmann's mayonnaise and salt. After that, Dietz seemed eager to
get back into the kitchen and our menus expanded to include pizza, take-out Chinese, and
Campbell's soup --- tomato or asparagus, depending on our mood.
By the end of two weeks Dietz could pretty well fend for himself. His stitches were out
and he was hobbling around with a cane between bouts of physical therapy. He had a long
way to go, but he could drive to his sessions and otherwise seemed able to tend to his own
needs. By then, I thought it entirely possible I'd go mad from trailing after him. It was
time to hit the road before our togetherness began to chafe. I enjoyed being with him, but
I knew my limitations. I kept my farewells perfunctory; lots of airy
okay-fine-thanks-a-lot-I'll-see-you-laters. It was my way of minimizing the painful lump
in my throat, staving off the embarrassing boo-hoos I thought were best left unexpressed.
Don't ask me to reconcile the misery I felt with the nearly giddy sense of relief. Nobody
ever said emotions made any sense.
So there I was, barreling down the highway in search of employment and not at all fussy
about what kind of work I'd take. I wanted distraction. I wanted money, escape, anything
to keep my mind off the subject of Robert Dietz. I'm not good at good-byes. I've suffered
way too many in my day and I don't like the sensation. On the other hand, I'm not that
good at relationships. Get close to someone and next thing you know, you've given them the
power to wound, betray, irritate, abandon, or bore you senseless. My general policy is to
keep my distance, thus avoiding a lot of unruly emotion. In psychiatric circles, there are
names for people like me.
I flipped on the car radio, picking up a scratchy station from Los Angeles, three hundred
miles to the south. Gradually, I began to tune in to the surrounding landscape. Highway
395 cuts south out of Carson City, through Minden and Gardnerville. Just north of Topaz,
I had crossed the state line into eastern California. The backbone of the state is the
towering Sierra Nevada Range, the uptilted edge of a huge fault block, gouged out later
by a series of glaciers. To my left was Mono Lake, shrinking at the rate of two feet a year,
increasingly saline, supporting little in the way of marine life beyond brine shrimp and the
attendant feasting of the birds. Somewhere to my right, through a dark green forest of
Jeffrey pines, was Yosemite National Park, with its towering peaks and rugged canyons,
lakes, and thundering waterfalls. Meadows, powdered now in light snow, were once the
bottom of a Pleistocene lake. Later in the spring, these same meadows would be dense
with wildflowers. In the higher ranges, the winter snowpack hadn't yet melted, but the
passes were open. It was the kind of scenery described as "breathtaking" by
those who are easily winded. I'm not a big fan of the outdoors, but even I was sufficiently
impressed to murmur "wow" speeding past a scenic vista point at seventy miles
an hour.
The prospective client I was traveling to meet was a woman named Selma Newquist, whose
husband, I was told, had died sometime within the last few weeks. Dietz had done work for
this woman in the past, helping her extricate herself from an unsavory first marriage. I
didn't get all the details, but he alluded to the fact that the financial
"goods" he'd gotten on the husband had given Selma enough leverage to free
herself from the relationship. There'd been a subsequent marriage and it was this second
husband whose death had apparently generated questions his wife wanted answered. She'd
called to hire Dietz, but since he was temporarily out of commission, he suggested me. Under
ordinary circumstances, I doubted Mrs. Newquist would have considered a P.I. from the far side
of the state, but my trip home was imminent and I was heading in her direction. As it turned out,
my connection to Santa Teresa was more pertinent than it first appeared. Dietz had vouched for
my integrity and, by the same token, he'd assured me that she'd be conscientious about payment
for services rendered. It made sense to stop long enough to hear what the woman had to say.
If she didn't want to hire me, all I'd be out was a thirty-minute break in the journey.
I reached Nota Lake (population 2,356, elevation 4,312) in slightly more than three hours.
The town didn't look like much, though the setting was spectacular. Mountains towered on
three sides, snow still painting the peaks in thick white against a sky heaped with
clouds. On the shady side of the road, I could see leftover patches of snow, ice boulders
wedged up against the leafless trees. The air smelled of pine, with an underlying scent
that was faintly sweet. The chill vapor I breathed was like sticking my face down in a
half-empty gallon of vanilla ice cream, drinking in the sugary perfume. The lake itself
was no more than two miles long and a mile across. The surface was glassy, reflecting
granite spires and the smattering of white firs and incense cedars that grew on the
slopes. I stopped at a service station and picked up a one-page map of the town, which was
shaped like a smudge on the eastern edge of Nota Lake.
The prime businesses seemed to be clustered along the main street in a five-block radius.
I did a cursory driving tour, counting ten gas stations and twenty-two motels. Nota Lake
offered low-end accommodations for the ski crowd at Mammoth Lakes. The town also boasted
an equal number of fast-food restaurants, including Burger King, Carl's Jr., Jack in the
Box, Kentucky Fried Chicken, Pizza Hut, a Waffle House, an International House of
Pancakes, a House of Donuts, a Sizzler, a Subway, a Taco Bell, and my personal favorite,
McDonald's. Additional restaurants of the sit-down variety were divided equally between
Mexican, Bar-B-Que, and "Family" dining, which meant lots of screaming toddlers
and no hard liquor on the premises.
The address I'd been given was on the outskirts of town, two blocks off the main highway
in a cluster of houses that looked like they'd been built by the same developer. The
streets in the area were named for various Indian tribes; Shawnee, Iroquois, Cherokee,
Modoc, Crow, Chippewa. Selma Newquist lived on a cul-de-sac called Pawnee Way, the house a
replica of its neighbors: frame siding, a shake roof, with a screened-in porch on one end
and a two-car garage on the other. I parked in the driveway beside a dark Ford sedan. I
locked the car from habit, climbed the two porch steps, and rang the bell --- ding dong
--- like the local Avon representative. I waited several minutes and then tried again.
The woman who came to the door was in her late forties, with a small compact body, brown
eyes, and short dark tousled hair. She was wearing a red-blue-and-yellow plaid blouse over
a yellow pleated skirt.
"Hi, I'm Kinsey Millhone. Are you Selma?"
"No, I'm not. I'm her sister-in-law, Phyllis. My husband, Macon, was Tom's younger
brother. We live two doors down. Can I help you?"
"I'm supposed to meet with Selma. I should have called first. Is she here?"
"Oh, sorry. I remember now. She's lying down at the moment, but she told me she
thought you'd be stopping by. You're that friend of the detective she called in Carson
City."
"Exactly," I said. "How's she doing?"
"Selma has her bad days and I'm afraid this is one. Tom passed away six weeks ago
today and she called me in tears. I came over as quick as I could. She was shaking and
upset. Poor thing looks like she hasn't slept in days. I gave her a Valium."
"I can come back later if you think that's best."
"No, no. I'm sure she's awake and I know she wants to see you. Why don't you come on
in?"
"Thanks."
I followed Phyllis across the entrance and down a carpeted hallway to the master bedroom.
In passing, I allowed myself a quick glance into doorways on either side of the hall,
garnering an impression of wildly overdecorated rooms. In the living room, the drapes and
upholstery fabrics were coordinated to match a pink-and-green wallpaper that depicted
floral bouquets, connected by loops of pink ribbon. On the coffee table, there was a
lavish arrangement of pink silk flowers. The cut-pile wall-to-wall carpeting was pale
green and had the strong chemical scent that suggested it had been only recently laid. In
the dining room, the furniture was formal, lots of dark glossy wood with what looked like
one too many pieces for the available space. There were storm windows in place everywhere
and a white film of condensation had gathered between the panes. The smell of cigarette
smoke and coffee formed a musky domestic incense.
Phyllis knocked on the door. "Selma, hon? It's Phyllis."
I heard a muffled response and Phyllis opened the door a crack, peering around the frame.
"You've got company. Are you decent? It's this lady detective from Carson City."
I started to correct her and then thought better of it. I wasn't from Carson City and I
certainly wasn't a lady, but then what difference did it make? Through the opening I
caught a brief impression of the woman in the bed; a pile of platinum blond hair framed by
the uprights on a four-poster.
Apparently, I'd been invited in, because Phyllis stepped back, murmuring to me as I
passed. "I have to get on home, but you're welcome to call me if you need
anything."
I nodded my thanks as I moved into the bedroom and closed the door behind me. The curtains
were closed and the light was subdued. Throw pillows, like boulders, had tumbled onto the
carpet. There was a surplus of ruffles, bold multicolored prints covering walls, windows,
and puffy custom bedding. The motif seemed to be roses exploding on impact.
I said, "Sorry to disturb you, but Phyllis said it would be okay. I'm Kinsey
Millhone."
Selma Newquist, in a faded flannel nightie, pulled herself into a sitting position and
straightened the covers, reminding me of an invalid ready to accept a bedtray. I estimated
her age on the high side of fifty, judging by the backs of her hands, which were freckled
with liver spots and ropy with veins. Her skin tones suggested dark coloring, but her hair
was a confection of white-blond curls, like a cloud of cotton candy. At the moment, the
entire cone was listing sideways and looked sticky with hair spray. She'd drawn in her
eyebrows with a red-brown pencil, but any eyeliner or eye shadow had long since vanished.
Through the streaks in her pancake makeup, I could see the blotchy complexion that
suggested too much sun exposure. She reached for her cigarettes, groping on the bed table
until she had both the cigarette pack and lighter. Her hand trembled slightly as she lit
her cigarette. "Why don't you come over here," she said. She gestured toward a
chair. "Push that off of there and sit down where I can see you better."
I moved her quilted robe from the chair and placed it on the bed, pulling the chair in
close before I took a seat.
She stared at me, puffy-eyed, a thin stream of smoke escaping as she spoke. "I'm
sorry you had to see me this way. Ordinarily I'm up and about at this hour, but this has
been a hard day."
"I understand," I said. Smoke began to settle over me like the fine spray from
someone's sneeze.
"Did Phyllis offer you coffee?"
"Please don't trouble. She's on her way back to her place and I'm fine anyway. I
don't want to take any more time than I have to."
She stared at me vaguely. "Doesn't matter," she said. "I don't know if
you've ever lost anyone close, but there are days when you feel like you're coming down
with the flu. Your whole body aches and your head feels so stuffy you can't think
properly. I'm glad to have company. You learn to appreciate any distraction. You can't
avoid your feelings, but it helps to have momentary relief." She tended, in speaking,
to keep a hand up against her mouth, apparently self-conscious about the discoloration on
her two front teeth, which I could now see were markedly gray. Perhaps she'd fallen as a
child or taken medication as an infant that tinted the surface with dark. "How do you
know Robert Dietz?" she asked.
"I hired him myself a couple of years ago to handle my personal security. Someone
threatened my life and Dietz ended up working for me as a bodyguard."
"How's his knee doing? I was sorry to hear he was laid up."
"He'll be fine. He's tough. He's already up and around."
"Did he tell you about Tom?"
"Only that you were recently widowed. That's as much as I know."
"I'll fill you in then, though I'm really not sure where to start. You may think I'm
crazy, but I assure you I'm not." She took a puff of her cigarette and sighed a
mouthful of smoke. I expected tears in the telling, but the story emerged in a
Valium-induced calm. "Tom had a heart attack. He was out on the road . . . about
seven miles out of town. This was ten o'clock at night. He must have had sufficient
warning to pull over to the side. A CHP officer --- a friend of ours, James Tennyson ---
recognized Tom's truck with the hazard lights on and stopped to see if he needed help. Tom
was slumped at the wheel. I'd been to a meeting at church and came home to find two patrol
cars sitting in my drive. You knew Tom was a detective with the county sheriff's?"
"I wasn't aware of that."
"I used to worry he'd be killed in the line of duty. I never imagined he'd go like he
did." She paused, drawing on her cigarette, using smoke as a form of punctuation.
"It must have been difficult."
"It was awful," she said. Up went the hand again, resting against her mouth as
the tears began to well in her eyes. "I still can't think about it. I mean, as far as
I know, he never had any symptoms. Or let's put it this way: If he did, he never told me.
He did have high blood pressure and the doctor'd been on him to quit smoking and start
exercising. You know how men are. He waved it all aside and went right on doing as he
pleased." She set the cigarette aside so she could blow her nose. Why do people
always peek in their hankies to see what the honking noseblow
has just netted them?
"How old was he?"
"Close to retirement. Sixty-three," she said. "But he never took good care
of himself. I guess the only time he was ever in shape was in the army and right after,
when he went through the academy and was hired on as a deputy. After that, it was all
caffeine and junk food during work hours, bourbon when he got home. He wasn't an alcoholic
--- don't get me wrong --- but he did like to have a cocktail at the end of the day.
Lately, he wasn't sleeping well. He'd prowl around the house. I'd hear him up at two,
three, five in the morning, doing god knows what. His weight had begun to drop in the last
few months. The man hardly ate, just smoked and drank coffee and stared out the window at
the snow. There were times when I thought he was going to snap, but that might have been
my imagination. He really never said a word."
"Sounds like he was under some kind of strain."
"Exactly. That was my thought. Tom was clearly stressed, but I don't know why and
it's driving me nuts." She picked up her cigarette and took a deep drag and then
tapped the ash off in a ceramic ashtray shaped like a hand. "Anyway, that's why I
called Dietz. I feel I'm entitled to know."
"I don't want to sound rude, but does it really make any difference? Whatever it was,
it's too late to change, isn't it?"
She glanced away from me briefly. "I've thought of that myself. Sometimes I think I
never really knew him at all. We got along well enough and he always provided, but he
wasn't the kind of man who felt he should account for himself. His last couple of weeks,
he'd be gone sometimes for hours and come back without a word. I didn't ask where he
went. I could have, I guess, but there was something about him . . . he would bristle if I
pressed him, so I learned to back off. I don't think I should have to wonder for the rest of
my life. I don't even know where he was going that night. He told me he was staying home,
but something must have come up."
"He didn't leave you a note?"
"Nothing." She placed her cigarette on the ashtray and reached for a compact
concealed under her pillow. She opened the lid and checked her face in the mirror. She
touched at her front teeth as though to remove a fleck. "I look dreadful," she
said.
"Don't worry about it. You look fine."
Her smile was tentative. "I guess there's no point in being vain. With Tom gone,
nobody cares, including me if you want to know the truth."
"Can I ask you a question?"
"Please."
"I don't mean to pry, but were you happily married?"
A little burble of embarrassed laughter escaped as she closed the compact and tucked it
back in its hiding place. "I certainly was. I don't know about him. He wasn't one to
complain. He more or less took life as it came. I was married before . . . to someone physically
abusive. I have a boy from that marriage. His name is Brant."
"Ah. And how old is he?"
"Twenty-five. Brant was ten when I met Tom, so essentially Tom raised him."
"And where is he?"
"Here in Nota Lake. He works for the fire department as a paramedic. He's been
staying with me since the funeral though he has a place of his own in town," she
said. "I told him I was thinking about hiring someone. It's pointless in his opinion,
but I'm sure he'll do whatever he can to help." Her nose reddened briefly, but she
seemed to gain control of herself.
"You and Tom were married for what, fourteen years?"
"Coming up on twelve. After my divorce, I didn't want to rush into anything. We were
fine for most of it, but recently things began to change for the worse. I mean, he did
what he was supposed to, but his heart wasn't in it. Lately, I felt he was secretive. I don't know,
so . . . tight-lipped or something. Why was he out on the highway that night? I mean, what
was he doing? What was so precious that he couldn't tell me?"
"Could it have been a case he was working on?"
"It could have been, I suppose." She thought about the possibility while she
stubbed out her cigarette. "I mean, it might have been job-related. Tom seldom said a
word about work. Other men --- some of the deputies --- would swap stories in social
situations, but not him. He took his job very seriously, almost to a fault."
"Someone in the department must have taken over his workload. Have you talked to
them?"
"You say 'department' like it was some kind of big-city place. Nota Lake's the county
seat, but that still isn't saying much. There were only two investigators, Tom and his
partner, Rafer. I did talk to him --- not that I got anything to speak of. He was nice.
Rafer's always nice enough on the surface," she said, "but for all of the
chit-chat, he managed to say very little."
I studied her for a moment, running the conversation through my bullshit meter to see what
would register. Nothing struck me as off but I was having trouble understanding what she
wanted. "Do you think there's something suspicious about Tom's death?"
She seemed startled by the question. "Not at all," she said, "but he was
brooding about something and I want to know what it was. I know it sounds vague, but it
upsets me to think he was withholding something when it clearly bothered him so much. I
was a good wife to him and I won't be kept in the dark now he's gone."
"What about his personal effects? Have you been through his things?"
"The coroner returned the items he had on him when he died, but they were just what
you'd expect. His watch, his wallet, the change in his pocket, and his wedding ring."
"What about his desk? Did he have an office here at the house?"
"Well, yes, but I wouldn't even know where to begin with that. His desk is a mess.
Papers piled up everywhere. It could be staring me in the face, whatever it is. I can't
bring myself to look and I can't bear to let go. That's what I'd like you to do . . . see
if you can find out what was troubling him."
I hesitated. "I could certainly try. It would help if you could be more specific. You
haven't given me much."
Selma's eyes filled with tears. "I've been racking my brain and I have no idea.
Please just do something. I can't even walk in his den without falling apart."
Oh boy, just what I needed --- a job that was not only vague, but felt hopeless as well. I
should have bagged it right then, but I didn't, of course. More's the pity, as it turned
out.
Excerpted from N IS FOR NOOSE © Copyright 1998 by Sue Grafton. All rights reserved.
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