E is for EVIDENCE Page 3

  There was still no sign of Lance Wood, but I spotted Heather on the far side of the room, her cheeks rosy with wassail. Terry Kohler caught my eye and shouldered his way in my direction. When he reached me, he leaned down close to my ear.

  “We better get your handbag before this gets out of control,” he said. I nodded vigorously and inched my way behind him through the reception area to Lance’s office. The door was standing open and his desk was being used as a bar. Liquor bottles, ice, and plastic glasses were arranged across the surface, with several people helping themselves to both the booze and the comfort of the boss’s furniture. My handbag had been tucked into a narrow slot between a file cabinet and a bookcase jammed with technical manuals. I put away my camera and sketch pad, hefting the bag onto my right shoulder. Terry offered to fetch me some punch, and after a moment of hesitation, I agreed. Hey, why not?

  My first impulse was to leave as soon as I could gracefully extricate myself. I don’t generally do well in group situations, and in this instance I didn’t know a soul. What kept me was the sure knowledge that I had nowhere else to go. This might be the extent of my holiday celebration, and I thought I might as well enjoy it. I accepted some punch, helped myself to cheese and crackers, ate some cookies with pink and green sugar on top, smiled pleasantly, and generally made myself amenable to anyone within range. By 3:00, when the party was really getting under way, I excused myself and headed out the door. I had just reached the curb when I heard someone call my name. I turned. Heather was moving down the walk behind me, holding out an envelope embossed with the Wood/Warren logo.

  “I’m glad I caught you,” she said. “I think Mr. Wood wanted you to have this before you left. He was called away unexpectedly. This was in my out box.”

  “Thanks.” I opened the flap and peered at the contents: inventory sheets. “Oh great,” I said, amazed that he’d remembered in the midst of his vanishing act. “I’ll call on Monday and set up a time to talk to him.”

  “Sorry about today,” she said. “Merry Christmas!” She waved and then moved back to the party. The door was now propped open, cigarette smoke and noise spilling out in equal parts. Ava Daugherty was watching us, her gaze fixed with curiosity” on the envelope Heather’d given me, which I was just tucking into my handbag. I returned to my car and drove back into town.

  When I stopped by the office, I passed the darkened glass doors of California Fidelity. Like many other businesses, CF had shut down early for Christmas Eve. I unlocked my door, tossed the file on my desk, and checked for messages. I put a call through to the fire chief for a quick verification of the information I had, but he, too, was gone. I left my number and was told he probably wouldn’t return the call until Monday.

  By 4:00, I was back in my apartment with the drawbridge pulled up. And that’s where I stayed for the entire weekend.

  Christmas Day I spent alone, but not unhappily.

  The day after that was Sunday. I tidied my apartment, shopped for groceries, made pots of hot tea, and read.

  Monday, December 27, I was back in harness again, sitting at my desk in a poinky mood, trying to wrestle the fire-scene inspection into a coherent narrative.

  The phone rang. I was hoping it was Mrs. Brunswick at the bank, calling back to tell me the five-thousand-dollar snafu had been cleared up. “Millhone Investigations,” I said.

  “Oh hi, Kinsey. This is Darcy, next door. I just wondered when I could pop over and pick up that file.”

  “Darcy, it’s only ten-fifteen! I’m working on it, okay?” Please note: I did not use the “F” word, as I know she takes offense.

  “Well, you don’t have to take that tone,” she said. “I told Mac the report wouldn’t be ready yet, but he says he wants to review the file first anyway.”

  “Review the file before what?”

  “I don’t know, Kinsey. How am I supposed to know? I called because there’s a note in the action file on my desk.”

  “Oh, your ‘action’ file. You should have said so before. Come pick the damn thing up.”

  Ill temper and intuition are not a good mix. Whatever inconsistency was nagging at me, I could hardly get a fix on it with Darcy breathing down my neck. My first act that morning had been to fill out a form for the Insurance Crime Prevention Unit, asking for a computer check on Lance Wood. Maybe at some point in the past I’d come across a previous fire claim and that’s what was bugging me. The computer check wouldn’t come back for ten days, but at least I’d have covered my bases. I adjusted the tabs on my machine, typed in the name of the insured, the location, date, and time of loss.

  When Darcy arrived to pick up the file, I spoke without looking up. “I dropped the film off at Speedee-Foto on my way in. They’ll have prints for me by noon. I haven’t had a chance to talk to Lance Wood or the fire chief yet.”

  “I’ll tell Mac,” she said, her tone cool.

  Oh well, I thought. She’s never been a pal of mine anyway.

  As there was no slot or box where unspecified hunches could be typed in, I kept my report completely neutral. When I finished, I rolled it out of the machine, signed it, dated it, and set it aside. I had an hour before I could pick up the photographs, so I cleaned up the sketch of the warehouse layout and attached that to the report with a paper clip.

  The phone rang. This time it was Andy. “Could you step into Mac’s office for a few minutes?”

  I quelled my irritation, thinking it best not to sass the CF claims manager. “Sure, but I won’t have the pictures for another hour yet.”

  “We understand that. Just bring what you’ve got.”

  I hung up, gathered up the report and the sketch, locked the office behind me, and went next door. What’s this “we” shit? I thought.

  The minute I stepped into Mac’s office, I knew something was wrong. I’ve know Maclin Voorhies since I started working for California Fidelity nearly ten years ago. He’s in his sixties now, with a lean, dour face. He has sparse gray hair that stands out around his head like dandelion fuzz, big ears with drooping lobes, a bulbous nose, and small black eyes under unruly white brows. His body seems misshapen: long legs, short waist, narrow shoulders, arms too long for the average sleeve length. He’s smart, capable, stingy with praise, humorless, and devoutly Catholic, which translates out to a thirty-five-year marriage and eight kids, all grown. I’ve never seen him smoke a cigar, but he’s usually chewing on a stub, the resultant tobacco stains tarnishing his teeth to the color of old toilet bowls.

  I took my cue not so much from his expression, which was no darker than usual, but from Andy’s, standing just to his left. Andy and I don’t get along that well under the best of circumstances. At forty-two, he’s an ass-kisser, always trying to maneuver situations so that he can look good. He has a moon-shaped face and his collar looks too tight and everything else about him annoys me, too. Some people just affect me that way. At that moment he seemed both restless and smug, studiously avoiding eye contact.

  Mac was leafing through the file. He glanced over at Andy with impatience. “Don’t you have some work to do?”

  “What? Oh sure. I thought you wanted me in this meeting.”

  “I’ll take care of it. I’m sure you’re overloaded as it is.”

  Andy murmured something that made it sound like leaving was his big idea. Mac shook his head and sighed slightly as the door closed. I watched him roll the cigar stub from one corner of his mouth to the other. He looked up with surprise, as if he’d just realized I was standing there. “You want to fill me in on this?”

  I told him what had transpired to date, sidestepping the fact that the file had sat on Darcy’s desk for three days before it came to me. I wasn’t necessarily protecting her. In business, it’s smarter not to badmouth the help. I told him I had two rolls of film coming in, that there weren’t any estimates yet, but the claim looked routine as far as I could see. I debated mention of my uneasiness, but discarded the idea even as I was speaking. I hadn’t identified what was bothering me and I
felt it was wiser to stick to the facts.

  The frown on Mac’s face formed about thirty seconds into my recital, but what alarmed me was the silence that fell when I was done. Mac is a man who fires questions. Mac gives pop quizzes. He seldom sits and stares as he was doing in this case.

  “You want to tell me what this is about?” I asked.

  “Did you see the note attached to the front of this file?”

  “What note? There wasn’t any note,” I said.

  He held out a California Fidelity memo form, maybe three inches by five, covered with Jewel’s curlicue script. “Kinsey… this one looks like a stinker. Sorry I don’t have time to fill you in, but the fire chief’s report spells it out. He said to call if he can give you any help. J.”

  “This wasn’t attached to the file when it came to me.”

  “What about the fire department report? Wasn’t that in there?”

  “Of course it was. That’s the first thing I read.”

  Mac’s expression was aggrieved. He handed me the file, open to the fire-department report. I looked down at the familiar STFD form. The incidental information was just as I remembered. The narrative account I’d never seen before. The fire chief, John Dudley, had summed up his investigation with a no-nonsense statement of suspected arson. The newspaper clipping now attached to the file ended with a line to the same effect.

  I could feel my face heat, the icy itch of fear beginning to assert itself. I said, “This isn’t the report I saw.” My voice had dropped into a range I scarcely recognized. He held his hand out and I returned the file.

  “I got a phone call this morning,” he said. “Somebody says you’re on the take.”

  I stared. “What?”

  “You got anything to say?”

  “That’s absurd. Who called?”

  “Let’s not worry about that for the moment.”

  “Mac, come on. Somebody’s accusing me of a criminal act and I want to know who it is.”

  He said nothing, but his face shut down in that stubborn way of his.

  “All right, skip that,” I said, yielding the point. I thought it was better to get the story out before I worried about the characters. “What did this unidentified caller say?”

  He leaned back in his chair, studying the cold coin of ash on the end of his cigar. “Somebody saw you accept an envelope from Lance Wood’s secretary,” he said.

  “Bullshit. When?”

  “Last Friday.”

  I had a quick flash of Heather calling to me as I left the plant. “Those were inventory sheets. I asked Lance Wood to have them ready for me and he left ‘em in his out box.”

  “What inventory sheets?”

  “Right there in the file.”

  He shook his head, leafing through. From where I stood, I could see there were only two or three loose papers clipped in on one side. There was nothing resembling the inventory sheets I’d punched and inserted. He looked up at me. “What about the interview with Wood?”

  “I haven’t done that yet. An emergency came up and he disappeared. I’m supposed to set up an appointment with him for today.”

  “What time?”

  “Well, I don’t know. I haven’t called him yet. I was trying to get the report typed up first.” I couldn’t seem to avoid the defensiveness in my tone.

  “This the envelope?” Mac was holding the familiar envelope with the Wood/Warren logo, only now there was a message jotted on the front. “Hope this will suffice for now. Balance to follow as agreed.”

  “Goddamn it, Mac. You can’t be serious! If I were taking a payoff, why would I leave that in the file?”

  No answer. I tried again. “You really think Lance Wood paid me off?”

  “I don’t think anything except we better look into it. For your sake as well as ours…”

  “If I took money, where’d it go?”

  “I don’t know, Kinsey. You tell me. If it was cash, it wouldn’t be that hard to conceal.”

  “I’d have to be a fool! I’d have to be an idiot and so would he. If he’s going to bribe me, do you think he’d be stupid enough to put the cash in an envelope and write a note to that effect! Mac, this whole thing has frame-up written all over it!”

  “Why would anyone do that?” At this point, his manner wasn’t accusatory. He seemed genuinely puzzled at the very idea. “Who would go to such lengths?”

  “How do I know? Maybe I just got caught in the loop. Maybe Lance Wood is the target. You know I’d never do such a thing. I’ll bring you my bank statements. You can scrutinize my accounts. Check under my mattress, for God’s sake…“I broke off in confusion.

  I saw his mouth move, but I didn’t hear the rest of what he said. I could feel the trap close and something suddenly made sense. In the morning mail, I’d gotten notice about five thousand dollars credited to my account. I think I knew now what that was about.

  Chapter 4

  *

  I packed up my personal belongings and my current files. California Fidelity had suspended our relationship until the Wood/Warren matter could be “straightened out,” whatever that meant. I had until noon to clear the premises. I called the telephone company and asked to have calls forwarded to my home until further notice. I unplugged the answering machine and placed it on top of the last cardboard box, which I toted down the back steps to my car. I had been asked to turn in my office keys before I left, but I ignored the request. I had no intention of giving up access to five years’ worth of business files. I didn’t think Mac would press the point and I didn’t think anyone would bother to have the locks changed. Screw ‘em. I know how to pick most locks, anyway.

  In the meantime, I was already analyzing the sequence of events. The Wood/Warren folder had been sitting on my desk the entire weekend so the fire department reports could have been switched at any point. I’d worked from notes that morning without reference to the file itself, so I had no way of knowing if the inventory sheets were in the file or not. I might not have registered the loss had I looked. My office door and the French doors opening out onto the balcony showed no signs of forced entry, but my handbag, along with my keys, had sat in Lance Wood’s office for three hours on Friday. Anybody could have gotten into that bag and had duplicate keys made. My checkbook was there, too, and it didn’t take a wizard to figure out how somebody could have lifted a deposit slip, filled it out, stuck it in an envelope with five grand, and put the whole of it in the night-deposit slot at my bank. Obviously my instant-teller card couldn’t be used because my code number wasn’t written down anyplace.

  I drove out to Wood/Warren, my brain clicking away, fired by adrenaline. The moment I’d understood what was going on, the anger had passed and a chill of curiosity had settled in. I’d felt my emotions disconnect and my mind had cleared like a radio suddenly tuned to the right frequency. Someone had gone to a lot of trouble to discredit me. Insurance fraud is serious damn shit, punishable by two, three, or four years in the state prison. That wasn’t going to happen to me, folks.

  Heather stared at me, startled, as I moved through the Wood/Warren reception area, scarcely slowing my pace. “Is he in?”

  She looked down at the appointment book with confusion. “Do you have an appointment this morning?”

  “Now I do,” I said. I knocked on the door once and went in. Lance was meeting with John Salkowitz, the chemical engineer I had been introduced to on my earlier visit. The two men were bending over a set of specs for an item that looked like a giant diaper pin.

  “We need to talk,” I said.

  Lance took one look at my face and then flicked a signal to Salkowitz, indicating that they’d continue some other time.

  I waited until the door closed and then leaned on Lance’s desk. “Somebody’s trying to shove one up our collective rear end,” I said. I detailed the situation to him, citing chapter and verse in a way that left no room for argument. He got the point. Some of the color left his face.

  He sank into his swivel chair. “Je
sus,” he said. “I don’t believe it.” I could see him computing possibilities the same way I had.

  I drew up a chair and sat down. “What was the emergency that pulled you out of here so fast Friday afternoon?” I asked. “It has to be connected, doesn’t it?”

  “How so?”

  “Because if I’d questioned you as I intended to, you probably would have mentioned arson, and then I’d have known the fire-department report was counterfeit.”

  “My housekeeper called. I’m in the middle of a nasty divorce and Gretchen showed up at the house with two burly guys and a moving van. By the time I got home, she’d cleared out the living room and was working on the den.”

  “Does she have the wherewithal to set up a deal like this?”

  “Why would she do that? It’s in her best interest to keep me alive and well and earning money hand over fist. Right now, she’s collecting over six grand a month in temporary support. Insurance fraud is the last thing she’d want to stick me with. Besides, she’s been in Tulsa since March of this year.”

  “Or so she claims,” I said.

  “The woman is a twit. If you knew her, you wouldn’t suspect her of anything except licking a pencil point every time she has to write her name.”

  “Well, somebody sure wanted to blacken your name,” I said.

  “What makes you think it’s me they’re after? Why couldn’t it be you?”

  “Because no one could be sure I’d be called in on this. These fire claims are assigned almost randomly, according to who’s free. If it’s me they want, they’d have to go about it differently. They’re not going to burn down your warehouse on the off-chance that I’ll be called to investigate.”

  “I suppose not,” he said.

  “What about you? What’s going on in your life, aside from the divorce?”

  He picked up a pencil and began to loop it through his fingers, end over end, like a tiny baton. He watched its progress and then shot me an enigmatic look. “I have a sister who moved back here from Paris three months ago. Rumor has it she wants control of the plant.”