Vera passed along the latest of these questionable claims on a Sunday afternoon in late October. I had stopped by the office to pick up some estimated income tax files that had to go to my accountant first thing Monday morning. I parked my VW in the back lot as usual, entering the building by way of the rear stairs. I passed the darkened CF offices, let myself into my office, where I checked my answering machine for messages, did a quick sorting of Saturday's mail, and tucked the tax forms in the outside pouch of my leather shoulder bag. As I passed the CF offices on my way out again, I noticed there were lights on. I paused to peer through the glass doors, wondering if a thief was making off with all the office equipment. Vera crossed my line of vision, papers in hand, apparently on her way to the copy machine. She caught sight of me and waved, veering in my direction. She's thirty-eight, single, and the closest thing to a "best" friend I'm likely to have. The cluster of office keys was still in the lock and they jingled and clanked as she opened the door. "Hey, babe. I was looking for you Friday afternoon, but you'd already left. Must be nice knocking off at two," she said as she let me in.
"Where did you come from? The place was dark when I passed by a minute ago."
She relocked the door and continued toward the copier with me trailing along behind. She was talking over her shoulder, her manner relaxed. "I just popped by to use the Xerox machine. Don't tell anyone. This is personal business. A list of guests for the reception." She raised the lid on the Xerox machine and placed a paper on the glass, punching in instructions. She pressed the "print" button and the machine fired up. She was wearing black tights and knee-high boots with an oversize sweat shirt that hit her just below the crotch. She caught my look. "I know. It looks like I forgot to put on my pants. I'm on my way to Neil's, but I wanted to grab this while I could. What are you up to? You want to join us for a drink?"
"Thanks, but I better not. I have some work to do."
"Well, you missed the big excitement. The legendary Mr. Titus showed up Friday afternoon with three of his own hand-picked lieutenants. Two reps and a claims adjuster got canned to make room for them."
"You're kidding! Who?"
"Tony Marsden, Jack Cantheas, and Letty Bing."
"Letty? She'll sue!"
"I sincerely hope so."
"I thought he wasn't due here for another three weeks."
"Surprise, surprise. I'll probably be fired next."
"Oh, come on. You're doing a great job."
"Yeah, right. That's why claims posted six hundred thousand in losses."
"That was Andy Motycka's fault, not yours."
"Oh, who cares? I'm getting married. I can do something else. I never liked the job that much anyway. How's goes the shopping so far?"
"The shopping?" I said blankly. I was still trying to cope with the disaster at CF.
"For the wedding. A dress."
"Oooh. For the wedding. I've got a dress."
"Bullshit. You only own one dress and it's black. You're the maid of honor, not a pallbearer." Vera and her beloved were getting married in eight days, on Halloween. Everyone had given her infinite grief over her choice of dates, but Vera was adamant, claiming her natural cynicism was at war with sentiment. She'd never thought to marry. She'd been dating (she said) since she was twelve years old and had gone through countless men. Despite the fact that she was absolutely nuts about her fiancée, she was determined to turn tradition on its ear. I thought a black dress would be perfect for Halloween nuptials. Once the reception was over we could go trick-or-treating together and maybe pool the take. I wanted dibs on the Hershey's Kisses and Tootsie Rolls.
"Besides, you've had that damn dress for five years," she went on.
"Six."
"And last time you wore it you said it still smelled like a swamp."
"I washed it!"
"Kinsey, you cannot wear a six-year-old smelly black dress in my wedding. You swore you'd get a new one."
"I will."
She gave me a flat look, filled with skepticism. "Where will you go to shop? Not K Mart."
"I wouldn't go to K Mart. I can't believe you said that."
"Well, where?"
I looked at her uneasily, trying to come up with an answer that would satisfy. I knew the hesitation was just an invitation for her to step in and boss me around, but to tell you the truth, I hadn't the faintest idea what kind of dress to buy. I've never been a maid of honor. I don't have a clue what such maidens wear. Something useless, I'm sure, with big flounces everywhere.
She stepped in. "I will help you," she said, as though to a half-wit.
"You will? That's great."
Vera rolled her eyes, but I could tell she was thrilled that I was yielding control. People like to take charge of my personal life. Many seem to feel I don't do things right. "Friday. After work," she said.
"Thanks. We can have dinner afterward. My treat."
"I don't want a Quarter Pounder with cheese," she said.
I waved at her dismissively and headed toward the door. "See you in the morning. You want to let me out?"
"Hang on a minute and I'll go, too. Why don't you go ahead and pick up the case I tried to give you Friday. It's in the file in my out box. The woman's name is Bibianna Diaz. If you can nail her, maybe all of us will end up looking good."
I detoured into the glass cubicle she now occupied as claims manager, spotting the Diaz file, which was right on top. "Got it," I called.
"You can talk to Mary Bellflower once you've had a chance to review it. It was Parnel's to begin with, but she's the one who flagged it."
"I thought the cops took all his files."
"This wasn't in with the files on his desk. He'd given it to Mary the month before, so the cops never saw it." She emerged with her photocopies clamped between her teeth while she fished out her car keys.
"I'll see if there's a way to check the woman out before I talk to Mary. At least I can get the lay of the land that way first," I said.
"Suit yourself. You can work it out any way you want." Vera flipped the lights off and let us out of the office, locking the doors behind her. "If you have any questions, I'll be home by ten."
We left the building together, chatting idly as we trotted down the stairs. Ours were the only two cars in the lot, parked side by side. "One more thing," she said as she unlocked her car door. "Titus has asked to see you first thing tomorrow morning."
I stared at her across the top of her car. "Why me? I don't work for him."
"Who knows? Maybe he sees you as an 'important part of the team.' He talks like that. All this rah-rah horse-puckey. It's obnoxious." She opened the door and slid into the driver's seat, rolling the window down on the passenger side. "Take care."
"You too."
I let myself into my car, my stomach already churning. I didn't want to see Gordon Titus at all, let alone tomorrow morning. What a way to start the week...
The parking lot was empty and the downtown was quiet. We pulled out at the same time, turning in opposite directions. All the stores were closed, but the lights along State Street and the smattering of pedestrians gave the illusion of activity in the otherwise deserted business district. Santa Teresa is a town where you can still window-shop after hours without (too much) fear of attack. During tourist season the streets swarm with people, and even in the off months there's a benign air about the place. I was tempted to grab some supper in one of the little restaurants in the area, but I could hear a peanut-butter-and-pickle sandwich calling me from home.
The neighborhood was fully dark by the time I parked the car and entered my gate. Henry's kitchen light was on, but I resisted the temptation to pop in to see him. He'd want to feed me dinner, ply me with decent Chardonnay, and catch me up on all the latest gossip. At the age of eighty-two, he's a retired commercial baker, involved now in catering tea parties for little old ladies on our block. As a sideline, he writes those little crossword puzzle booklets you see in supermarket checkout lines, filled with puns, bons mots, and
spoonerisms. When he's not doing that, he's usually chiding me about my personal life, which he thinks is not only dangerous, but much too uncivilized.
I let myself into my apartment and flipped on one of the table lamps. I dropped my handbag on the counter that separates my kitchenette from the designated living room. The place had been completely redone after a bomb blast had flattened it. I'd stayed with Henry until the construction was finished, moving back into the apartment on my birthday the previous May. And what a gift it was, like a pirate ship, all teak and brass fittings, a porthole in the door, a spiral staircase leading up to a loft where I could sleep now beneath a skylight salted with stars. My bed was a platform with drawers built into the base. Downstairs, I had a galley for a kitchen, an alcove for a stacking washer/dryer, a living room with a sofa that doubled for company, and a small guest bath. Upstairs, a second bathroom had a sunken tub with a jungle of houseplants on the windowsill and a glimpse of the ocean through the treetops.
The entire apartment was fitted with little nooks and crannies of storage space, cupboards, and hidey-holes, pegs for my clothes. The design was all Henry's, and he'd taken a devilish satisfaction out of shaping my surroundings. The carpet was royal blue, the furnishings simple. Even after six months, I walked around the place as if blind, touching everything, marveling at the feel of it, the scent of the wood. After my parents died, I'd been raised by a maiden aunt, a woman whose relationship with me entailed more theory than affection. Without ever actually saying so, she conveyed the impression that I was there on approval, like a mattress, subject to return if the lumps didn't smooth out. To give her credit, her notions of child raising, if eccentric, were sound, and what she taught me in the way of worldly truths has served me well. Still, for most of my life, I've felt like an intruder and a transient, merely marking time until I was asked to move on. Now my interior world had undergone a shift. This was home and I belonged here. While the apartment was rented, I was a tenant for life. The sensation was strange and I still didn't quite trust it.
I turned on my little black-and-white TV, letting the sound keep me company while I puttered around, making supper. I sat at the counter, perched on a barstool, munching on my sandwich as I leafed through the file Vera'd given me. There were copies of the initial claim – a single-car accident with personal injuries – a sheaf of medical bills, some correspondence, and an attached summary of the salient points. The adjuster, Mary Bellflower, had flagged the claim for a variety of reasons; the injury itself was "soft tissue" and subjective, impossible to verify. Ms. Diaz was complaining of whiplash, headaches, dizziness, lower back pain, and muscle spasms, among other things. The repairs to the car were estimated at fifteen hundred dollars, with additional medical bills (all third-generation photocopies, which would permit a bit of tampering with the figures) totaling twenty-five hundred dollars. She was also claiming twelve hundred dollars in lost wages, for a total of fifty-two hundred dollars. There was no police report from the accident scene, and the adjuster was astute enough to pick up on the fact that the collision had occurred shortly after Ms. Diaz's vehicle had been registered and insured. Also questionable was the fact that the claimant was using a post office box as an address. Mary had ferreted out an actual street address, which she'd included in her notes. I noticed she'd been careful to retain copies of the envelopes (showing date stamps) in which the claim forms had been returned. If charges were filed, these would provide evidence that the U.S. mails had been used, thus opening the matter to federal investigation under mail fraud statutes. In fraudulent cases, the claimant will often hire an attorney whose job it is to stick the screws to the claims representative, pressuring for a quick settlement. Ms. Diaz hadn't (yet) engaged the services of an attorney, but she was being pushy about reimbursement. I couldn't imagine why Parnell had turned the case over to Mary Bellflower. On a case this size the temptation is to approve payment fairly quickly to avoid any suggestion of "bad faith" on the part of the insurance company. However, because California Fidelity had recently chalked up such big losses, Maclin Voorhies, the company vice president, was taking a dim view of rubber stamping. Thus, the matter had been referred to me for follow-up. With Titus on the scene, it might turn out to be too little too late, but that's where matters stood.
It was ten when I finally turned the lights out and went up to bed. I opened one of the windows and leaned my head against the frame, letting the cold air wash across my face. The moon was up. The night sky was clear and the stars were as piercing as pinpricks. A weak storm front was moving in, and a chance of showers was being predicted sometime in the next couple of days. So far, there was no sign of rain. I could hear the muffled tumble of the surf a block away. I crawled under the covers and flipped on the clock radio, staring up at the skylight. A country song began to play, Willie Nelson in a wistful account of pain and suffering. Where is Robert Dietz tonight? I asked myself. I'd hired myself a private investigator the previous May when my name showed up as one of the four finalists on somebody's hit list. I'd needed a bodyguard and Dietz turned out to be it. Once the situation was defused, he'd stayed on for three months. He'd been gone now for two. We were neither of us letter writers and too cheap to call each other very often since he'd left for Germany. His departure was wrenching, the banal and the bittersweet mingling in about equal parts.
"I'm not good at good-byes," I'd said the night before he left.
"I'm not good at anything else," he'd replied with that crooked smile of his. I didn't think his pain was any match for mine. I might have been wrong, of course. Dietz was not the sort of man given to unrestrained expressions of anguish or distress, which is not to say such feelings didn't exist for him.
The hard part about love is the hole it leaves when it's gone... which is the substance of every country-and-western song you ever heard...
The next thing I knew, it was 6:00 A.M. and my alarm was peeping like a little bird. I rolled out of bed and grabbed my running clothes, pulling on sweat pants, sweat shirt, crew socks, and Adidas. I paused to brush my teeth and then headed down the spiral stairs to my front door. The sun hadn't risen yet, but the darkness had eased up to a charcoal haze. The morning air was damp and smelled of eucalyptus. I clung to the front gate and did a couple of stretches – more form than content – using the walk over to Cabana Boulevard as a way of warming up to some extent. Sometimes I wonder why I continue to exercise with such diligence. Paranoia, perhaps... the recollection of the times when I've had to run for my life.
When I reached the bike path I broke into an awkward trot. My legs felt like wood and my breathing was choppy. The first mile always hurts; anything after that is a snap by comparison. I shut my mind off and tuned in to my surroundings. To the right of me, the ocean was pounding at the beach, a muted thunder as restful as the sound of rain. Sea gulls were screeching as they wheeled above the surf. The Pacific was the color of liquid steel, the waves a foamy mass of aluminum and chrome. The sand became a mirror where the water receded, reflecting the softness of the morning sky. The horizon turned a salmon pink as the sun crept into view. Long arms of coral light stretched out along the horizon, where clouds were beginning to mass from the promised storm front. The air was cold and richly scented with salt spray and seaweed. Within minutes, my stride began to lengthen and I could feel a mindless rhythm orchestrate all the moving parts. As it turned out, this was the last time I'd have a chance to jog for weeks. Had-I-but-known, I might have enjoyed it a lot more than I did.
Chapter 3
* * *
Somehow I sensed, long before I actually laid eyes on the man, that my relationship with Gordon Titus was not going to be a source of joy and comfort to either one of us. Since he'd proposed the meeting, I figured my choices were obvious. I could avoid the office, thus postponing our first encounter, or I could comply with his request and get it over with. Of the two, the latter seemed the wiser on the face of it. After all, it was possible the meeting was a mere formality. I didn't want my lack of enthusia
sm to be misinterpreted. Better, I thought, to appear to be cooperative. As my aunt used to say: "Always keep yourself on the side of the angels." It was only after she died that I began to wonder what that meant.
When I got to the office at nine, I put a call through to Darcy Pascoe, the receptionist in the California Fidelity offices next door to mine. "Hi, Darcy. This is Kinsey. I hear Gordon Titus wants to meet with me. From what Vera says, the guy's a real prick."
"Good morning, Miss Millhone. Nice to hear from you," she said in a pleasant singsong voice.
"Why are you talking like that? Is he standing right there?"
"That's correct."
"Oh. Well, would you ask him what time he wants me over there? I've got a few minutes now if it works for him."
"Just one moment, please."
She put me on hold long enough to convey the question and elicit a response. She clicked back in. "Right now would be fine."
"I'm so thrilled."
I hung up the phone. I can handle this, I thought. All of us are subjected to somebody else's power at some point. So once in a while you kiss ass. So what? Either you make your peace with that early, or you end up living your life as a crank and a misfit. As I headed for the door, I passed the wall-hung mirror and paused to check my reflection. I looked fine to me. Jeans, turtleneck, no dirt on my face, nothing green between my teeth. I don't wear makeup, so I never have to worry about caking or smears. I used to cut my hair myself, but I'd been growing it out of late, so it was now shoulder length, just the teeniest bit uneven. Fortunately, all I had to do was cock my head at a slight angle and it straightened right up.
It was with my head thus tilted that I entered the glass cubicle Gordon Titus was apparently using for his little get-acquainted meetings with the staff. Vera's office was located right next to his and I could see her at her desk, shooting me a profoundly cross-eyed look. She was wearing a subdued gray business suit with a plain white blouse, her hair tucked back in a bun. Mr. Titus stood up to meet me and we shook hands across the desk. "Miss Millhone."