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“Great. That’s great.”
“I don’t know how great it is, but it’s the best I can do. When you get back, if I happen to be out, you can stick the money through the mail slot. In the meantime, give me a contact number so I’ll know how to reach you.”
I handed him my yellow pad and watched while he scribbled down his address and telephone number. In return I handed him my business card with my office number and address.
He said, “I really appreciate this. I don’t know what I’d have done if you hadn’t agreed.”
“I’ll probably regret it, but what the hell? It’s only one day,” I said. If I’d been listening closely, I’d have caught the sound of the gods having a great big old tee-hee at my expense.
I said, “You’re sure you don’t want to make the trip up to Climp? It would save you a few bucks.”
“I don’t want to. They probably wouldn’t talk to me in any event.”
“I see.” I studied him. “You want to tell me what’s going on here? You can’t talk to your siblings and now you can’t talk to your prep school pals?”
“I already told you I didn’t have pals. It has more to do with the administration.”
“How come?”
“There were some difficulties. I had a problem.”
“Like what, you were expelled?” I love stories about flunking and expulsions. With my history of screwups, those are like fairy tales.
“It’s not something I want to get into. It has nothing to do with this.” A stubborn note had crept into his voice. “You go up there. They’ll let you see yearbooks as easily as me.”
“I doubt it. Educational institutions hate handing over information about their students. Especially with the words ‘private investigator’ thrown into the mix.”
“Don’t tell ’em you’re a PI. Think of something else.”
“I didn’t even attend Climping Academy so why would I want to see a yearbook? It makes no sense.”
He shook his head. “I won’t do it. I have my reasons.”
“Which you’re not about to share.”
“Right.”
“Okay, fine. It’s no skin off my nose. If that’s how you want to spend your five hundred bucks, I can live with it. I love driving through Horton Ravine.”
I got up, and as we shook hands again, I realized what was bothering me. “One more question.”
“What’s that?”
“The article came out two weeks ago. Why’d you wait so long before you went to the police?”
He hesitated. “I was nervous. All I have is a hunch. I didn’t want the police to write me off as a crank.”
“Nuh-uh. That’s not all of it. What else?”
He was silent for a moment, color rising in his cheeks again. “What if the guys find out I remembered them? I might have been the only witness and I told them my name. If they’re the ones who killed Mary Claire, why wouldn’t they kill me?”
2
While Sutton and I were chatting, the mail had been delivered. Walking him to the door, I paused to collect the scattering of envelopes the postman had pushed through the slot. Once he’d gone off to the bank, I moved into my office, sorting and separating the stack as I sat down at my desk. Junk, bill, another bill, junk, junk, bill. I came to a square vellum envelope with my name and address written in calligraphy: Ms. Kinsey Millhone, with lots of down strokes and flourishes, very lah-di-dah. The postmark was Lompoc, California, and the return address was printed in the center of the back flap. Even without the sender’s name in evidence, I knew it was a Kinsey family member, one of numerous kin whose existence I’d first learned about four years before. Until that strange turn of events, I’d prided myself on my loner status. There was a benefit to my being an orphan in the world, explaining as it did (at least to my way of thinking) my difficulties in forming close bonds with others of my species.
Looking at the envelope, I could guess what was coming up-a christening, a wedding, or a cocktail party-some formal affair heralded by expensive embossing on heavy card stock. Whatever the occasion, I was either being informed of, or invited to, an event I didn’t give a rat’s ass about. At times, I’m a sentimental little thing, but this wasn’t one. I tossed the envelope on my desk, then thought better of it, and threw it in the wastebasket, which was already brimming with trash.
I picked up the phone and punched in the number for Cheney Phillips at the STPD. When he picked up, I said, “Guess who?”
“Hey, Kinsey. What’s up?”
“I just had a chat with Michael Sutton and thought I better touch base with you before I did anything else. What’s the deal with him?”
“Beats me. That story sounded just screwy enough to be true. What was your impression?”
“I’m not sure. I’m willing to believe he saw two guys digging a hole. What I’m skeptical about is the relevance to Mary Claire Fitzhugh. He says the dates line up because he went back and checked his recollections against the articles in the paper, but that doesn’t prove anything. Even if the two events happened at the same time, that doesn’t mean they’re related.”
“Agreed, but his recollections were so specific he pretty much talked me into it.”
“Me, too. At least in part,” I said. “Did you have a chance to look at the old files?”
“Can’t be done. I talked to the chief and he says the case notes are sealed. Once the FBI stepped in, they put everything under lock and key.”
“Even after all this time? It’s been twenty years.”
“Twenty-one to be precise, and the answer is, definitely. You know how it goes. The case is federal and the file’s still active. If the details are leaked then any clown off his meds can walk into the department and claim responsibility.”
I caught a familiar racket out on the street. “Hang on a sec.”
I put my hand over the mouthpiece and listened, picking up the hydraulic grinding, wheeze, and hiss of a garbage truck approaching from down the block. Shit! Garbage day. The week before, I’d forgotten to take out my trash and my wastebaskets were maxed out.
“I gotta go. I’ll call you later.”
“Vaya con Dios.”
I hung up in haste and headed down the hall to the kitchenette, where I grabbed a plastic bag from a carton under the sink. I did a quick round of the wastebaskets-kitchen, bathroom, and office-shaking trash into the plastic bag until it sagged from the weight. I scurried out the back door, tossed the bag in my trash bin, and rolled it down the walkway on one side of the bungalow. By the time I reached the street, the garbage truck was idling at the curb and I just managed to catch the guy before he hopped back on. He paused long enough to add my contribution to the day’s haul. As the truck pulled away, I blew him a kiss and was rewarded with a wave.
I returned to my desk, congratulating myself on a job well done. Nothing makes a room look messier than a wastebasket full of trash. As I settled in my swivel chair, I glanced down and spotted the vellum envelope, which had apparently missed the plastic bag and now lay on the floor. I leaned over, picked it up, and stared at it. What was going on? Instead of happily winging its way to the county dump, the damn thing was back. I’m not superstitious by nature, but the envelope, coupled with Michael Sutton’s reference to his family estrangement, had set an old train of thought in motion.
I knew how treacherous and frail family bonds could be. My mother had been the eldest of five daughters born to my grandparents Burton Kinsey and Cornelia Straith LaGrand, known since as Grand. My parents had been jettisoned from the bosom of the family when my mother met my father and eloped with him four months later. She was eighteen at the time and came from money, albeit of the small-town sort. My father, Randy Millhone, was thirty-three years old and a mail carrier. In retrospect, it’s difficult to say which was worse in Grand’s eyes, his advanced age or his occupation. Apparently, she viewed civil servants right up there with career criminals as undesirable mates for her precious firstborn girl. Rita Cynthia Kinsey first clapped eyes on my father at her coming-out party, where my father was filling in as a waiter for a friend who owned the catering company. Their marriage created a rift in the family that had never healed. My Aunt Gin was the only one of her four sisters who sided with her, and she ended up raising me after my parents were killed in a car wreck when I was five.