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Pam is petite, a bristly little chihuahua of a human being. She's the only woman I ever met who claims to be ten years older than she actually is so that everyone will tell her how young she looks. On that basis, she swears she's thirty-eight. Her face is small, her skin dusky and she applies pancake makeup in varying shades in a vain attempt to add "planes" to her cheeks. I got news for her. There's no way to disguise the bags under your eyes by the skillful use of "cover." From most angles anybody with a brain can see the bags sitting right there, only looking phantom white instead of gray. Who's fooled by this? Why not go for the dark circles and at least look exotic and worldly-wise… A
Her cubicle is near the front-a status symbol, I think. She caught sight of me and busied herself with papers and files. By the time I'd made my way over to her desk, she was on the phone. She must have been talking to a man because her ma
She turned away from me in her swivel chair, completing the telephone exchange with a murmured intimacy of some sort. On top of a stack of files on her desk, I could see a copy of Cosmo, offering articles on the G spot, cosmetic breast surgery, and social rape.
Pam hung up at long last and swiveled back, all the animation leaving her face. No point in wasting the whole show on me. "Something I can help you with, Kinsey?"
"I understand you wrote a couple of policies for Leonard and Marty Grice." "That's right."
I smiled slightly. "Could you tell me the status of the paperwork at this point?"
Pam broke eye contact, going through another quick digital survey: earring, hair, lapel. She took up a loop of gold chain, ru
"No problem," I said. "Vera Lipton's wondering about the claim on the fire loss and I need to know if there were any other policies in effect."
"Now, wait a minute. Leonard Grice is a very dear man and he's been through a terrible six months. If California Fidelity intends to make trouble, Vera better deal directly with me."
"Who said anything about trouble? Vera can't even process the claim until the proof of loss is in."
"That goes without saying, Kinsey," she said. "I still don't see what this has to do with you." I could feel my smile begin to set like a pan of fudge. I leaned forward, left hand flat on the desk, right hand resting on my hip. I thought it was time to clarify our relationship. "Not that it's any of your business, Pam, but I'm in the middle of a big investigation adjunctive to this. You don't have to cooperate, but I'm just going to turn around and present a court order to the supervisor here and somebody's going to come down on you like a ton of bricks for all the trouble it'll cause. Now is that how you want to proceed on this or what?"
Under the pancake makeup, she began to show signs of sunburn. "I hope you don't think you can intimidate me," she said.
"Absolutely not." I shut my mouth then and let her assimilate the threat. I thought it sounded pretty good.
She took up a stack of papers and rapped them on the desk, aligning the edges. "Leonard Grice was insured through
California Fidelity Life and California Fidelity Casualty Insurance. He collected twenty-five hundred dollars for the life insurance and he'll get twenty-five thousand for the structural damage to the house. The contents were uninsured."
"Why only twenty-five for the house? I thought that place was worth over a hundred grand? He won't have enough money to do the repairs, will he?"
"When he bought the place in 1962, it was worth twenty-five thousand and that's what he insured it for. He never increased the coverage and he hasn't taken out any other policies. Personally, I don't see how he can do anything with the house. It's a complete loss, which I think is what's broken him."
Now that she'd told me, I felt guilty for all the macho bullshit I'd laid on her.
"Thanks. That's a big help," I said. "Uh… by the way, Vera wanted me to ask if you'd be interested in meeting an unattached aerospace engineer with bucks."
A wonderful look of uncertainty crossed her face: suspicion, sexual hunger, greed. Was I offering her a cookie or a flat brown turd on a plate? I knew what was going through her head. In Santa Teresa, a single man is on the market maybe ten days before someone snaps him up.
She shot me a worried look. "What's wrong with him? Why didn't you take him first?"
"I just came off a relationship," I said, "I'm in retreat." Which was true.
"Maybe I'll give Vera a buzz," she said faintly.
"Great. Thanks again for the information," I said and I gave her a little wave as I moved away from her desk. With my luck, she'd fall in love with the guy and want me to be a bridesmaid. Then I'd be stuck with one of those dumb dresses with a hunk of flounce on the hip. When I glanced back at her, she seemed to have shrunk and I felt a twinge. She wasn't so bad.
Chapter 11
I ate di
Rosie herself is probably sixty-five, Hungarian, short, and top-heavy, a creature of muumuus and he
I sat down in my usual booth near the back. There was a mimeographed menu sheet slipped into a clear plastic cover stuck between the ketchup bottle and the napkin box. The selections were typed in pale purple like those notices they used to send home with us when we were in grade school. Most of the items were written in Hungarian; words with lots of accent marks and z's and double dots, suggesting that the dishes would be fierce and emphatic.