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SUE GRAFTON (b. 1940)
In the evolution of American detective fiction, the rise of the well-wrought, believable female private eye may be the most important trend of the past twenty years. There can be no doubt about Sue Grafton's contribution to this development as the creator of Kinsey Millhone, a self-confident, independent, smart divorcee in her thirties whose outlook on life, Grafton says, is patterned after her own. After all, Grafton admits to having turned to mystery writing as a means of getting her aggressions out on the page at a particularly difficult time in her life.
Millhone's clients-Californians who work for a living-and their problems are also realistic. In her novels, memorably titled after successive letters of the alphabet, Grafton's sleuth deals with issues that have directly affected the author's own life. For instance, in «D Is for Deadbeat» Grafton deals with alcoholism, a problem that she knew firsthand as the daughter of two alcoholics. Grafton says that her family was "classically dysfunctional," but it was also a household that revered the written word. Grafton's father was C. F. Grafton, a lawyer who wrote the classic courtroom novel Beyond a Reasonable Doubt.
It has been said that Grafton's work takes that of Ross Macdonald into another dimension. As did Macdonald, Grafton lives in Santa Barbara, California. And in homage to Macdonald, Grafton has Kinsey Millhone, like Lew Archer, reside in the fictional Santa Teresa.
Grafton notes that «The Parker Shotgun» grew out of reading that a long-defunct firearms company had made only two copies of a particular model, of which one had been lost. "I know nothing at all about guns, but here was a chance to make the murder weapon also the motive," Grafton says. The story displays another of the strengths that make her work notable: the minor characters have personalities of their own-something difficult to accomplish in short fiction. And while the reader is more likely to remember the grimness of this dysfunctional family than the detection involved, the doer of the fatal deed is nicely concealed until the end.
The Parker Shotgun
The Christmas holidays had come and gone, and the new-year was under way. January, in California, is as good as it gets-cool, clear, and green, with a sky the colour of wisteria and a surf that thunders like a volley of gunfire in a distant field. My name is Kinsey Millhone. I'm a private investigator, licensed, bonded, insured; white, female, age thirty-two, unmarried, and physically fit. That Monday morning, I was sitting in my office with my feet up, wondering what life would bring, when a woman walked in and tossed a photograph on my desk. My introduction to the Parker shotgun began with a graphic view of its apparent effect when fired at a formerly nice-looking man at close range. His face was still largely intact, but he had no use now for a pocket comb. With effort, I kept my expression neutral as I glanced up at her.
"Somebody killed my husband."
"I can see that," I said.
She snatched the picture back and stared at it as though she might have missed some telling detail. Her face suffused with pink, and she blinked back tears. "Jesus. Rudd was killed five months ago, and the cops have done shit. I'm so sick of getting the runaround I could scream."
She sat down abruptly and pressed a hand to her mouth, trying to compose herself. She was in her late twenties, with a gaudy prettiness. Her hair was an odd shade of brown, like cherry Coke, worn shoulder length and straight. Her eyes were large, a lush mink brown; her mouth was full. Her complexion was all warm tones, ta
"That's a crime lab photo. How'd you come by it?" I said when the preliminaries were disposed of.
She fumbled in her handbag for a tissue and blew her nose. "I have my little ways," she said morosely. "Actually I know the photographer and I stole a print. I'm going to have it blown up and hung on the wall just so I won't forget. The police are hoping I'll drop the whole thing, but I got news for them." Her mouth was starting to tremble again, and a tear splashed onto her skirt as though my ceiling had a leak.
"What's the story?" I said. "The cops in this town are usually pretty good." I got up and filled a paper cup with water from my Sparklett's dispenser, passing it over to her.
She murmured a thank-you and drank it down, staring into the bottom of the cup as she spoke. "Rudd was a cocaine dealer until a month or so before he died. They haven't said as much, but I know they've written him off as some kind of small-time punk. What do they care? They'd like to think he was killed in a drug deal-a double cross or something like that. He wasn't, though. He'd given it all up because of this."
She glanced down at the swell of her belly. She was wearing a Kelly green T-shirt with an arrow down the front. The word "Oops!" was written across her breasts in machine embroidery.
"What's your theory?" I asked. Already I was leaning toward the official police version of events. Drug dealing isn't synonymous with longevity. There's too much money involved and too many amateurs getting into the act. This was Santa Teresa-ninety-five miles north of the big time in L. A., but there are still standards to maintain. A shotgun blast is the underworld equivalent of a bad a
"I don't have a theory. I just don't like theirs. I want you to look into it so I can clear Rudd's name before the baby comes."
I shrugged. "I'll do what I can, but I can't guarantee the results. How are you going to feel if the cops are right?"
She stood up, giving me a flat look. "I don't know why Rudd died, but it had nothing to do with drugs," she said. She opened her handbag and extracted a roll of bills the size of a wad of socks. "What do you charge?"
"Thirty bucks an hour plus expenses."
She peeled off several hundred-dollar bills and laid them on the desk.
I got out a contract.
My second encounter with the Parker shotgun came in the form of a dealer's appraisal slip that I discovered when I was nosing through Rudd Osterling's private possessions an hour later at the house. The address she'd given me was on the Bluffs, a residential area on the west side of town, overlooking the Pacific. It should have been an elegant neighbourhood, but the ocean generated too much fog and too much corrosive salt air. The houses were small and had a temporary feel to them, as though the occupants intended to move on when the month was up. No one seemed to get around to painting the trim, and the yards looked like they were kept by people who spent all day at the beach. I followed her in my car, reviewing the information she'd given me as I urged my ancient VW up Capilla Hill and took a right on Presipio.
The late Rudd Osterling had been in Santa Teresa since the sixties, when he migrated to the West Coast in search of sunshine, good surf, good dope, and casual sex. Lisa told me he'd lived in vans and communes, working variously as a roofer, tree trimmer, bean picker, fry cook, and forklift operator-never with any noticeable ambition or success. He'd started dealing cocaine two years earlier, apparently netting more money than he was accustomed to. Then he'd met and married Lisa, and she'd been determined to see him clean up his act. According to her, he'd retired from the drug trade and was just in the process of setting himself up in a landscape maintenance business when someone blew the top of his head off.