She Didn’t Come Home
SUE GRAFTON

NAME: Kinsey Millhone, Private Investigator 
PLACE: Santa Teresa, California 
TIME: 1985

CASES: ‘A is for Alibi’ (i98z), ‘D is for Deadbeat’ (1987), ‘G is for Gumshoe’ (1990), ‘K is for Killer’ (1994) etc.

DOSSIER: The euphoniously named Kinsey Millhone, who features in an ‘alphabet’ series of novels, is the third of the trio of landmark contemporary female private eyes, and has been compared to V. I. Warshawski as ‘a sunnier-natured little sister who has the same attitude, the one-liners and the gumption, but manages to find adventure without the quota of death, destruction and dark moods of her northern compatriot,’ according to a recent Sunday Times review. She is, though, undeniably one of the most convincing private investigators in business. Introduced as a thirty-two-year-old living in a converted garage in ‘Santa Teresa’-which is quite obviously Santa Barbara-Kinsey is divorced, has no children, and is looking for fulfilment in her life. Although strong willed and feminine, she is not one for possessions, scorning cupboards full of dresses and preferring to eat out rather than cook. Flippantly described as a ‘tough cookie heroine’, she will certainly kill in a tight corner, but is also sensitive, compassionate and the deliverer of some of the best wise-cracks in the genre-‘Her impending nuptials had lowered her IQ several critical points,’ being a typical example. Kinsey is not above the odd affair and does have a sort of ongoing relationship with Rosie, the cantankerous Hungarian-American owner of the bar where she often eats. Her cases have brought her into contact with all types of criminals, from a hired killer to a porn star, but her unquenchable spirit and innate strength of character have seen her through to the middle of the alphabet... so far.

CREATOR: Sue Grafton (b. 1940) was born in Louisville, Kentucky, the daughter of mystery writer C. W. Grafton, whose novels about a series character Gil Henry included ‘The Rat Began to Gnaw the Rope’ (1943) and ‘The Rope Began to Hang the Butcher’ (1944), and who proved a formative influence on her ambition to become a novelist. One of her early books, ‘The Lolly-Madonna War’ (1969), was filmed in 1973 and this led to a career as a screenwriter until the acrimonious break-up of her marriage gave her the inspiration for the Kinsey Millhone series. As she explains, ‘For months I lay awake and plotted how to kill my ex-husband... but I knew I’d bungle it and get caught, so I wrote it in a book instead.’ Her private eye is, she says, a mixture of the hardboiled gumshoes of the ‘thirties with the perceptions of a modern woman and quite a lot of Grafton herself. The worldwide success of the series has made her set her sights on Kinsey reaching the letter Z in middle age-though not a gentle or unexciting middle age. ‘She Didn’t Come Home’, written for Redbook in 1985, is one of a small group of short stories about Millhone and, apart from revealing the acclaimed PI at the top of her form, demonstrates in its clever plotting and intriguing characters just why the private investigator has played such a vital role in the development of crime fiction... and will surely continue to do so in the foreseeable future.

THE STORY

September in Santa Teresa. I’ve never known anyone yet who doesn’t suffer a certain restlessness when autumn rolls around. It’s the season of new school clothes, fresh notebooks, and finely sharpened pencils without any teeth marks in the wood. We’re all eight years old again and anything is possible. The new year should never begin on 1 January. It begins in the fall and continues as long as our saddle oxfords remain unscuffed and our lunch boxes have no dents. My name is Kinsey Millhone. I’m female, thirty-two, twice divorced, ‘doing business’ as Kinsey Millhone Investigations in a little town ninety-five miles north of Los Angeles. Mine isn’t a walk-in trade like a beauty salon. Most of my clients find themselves in a bind and then seek my services, hoping I can offer a solution for a mere thirty bucks an hour, plus expenses. Robert Ackerman’s message was waiting on my answering machine that Monday morning at nine when I got in.
‘Hello. My name is Robert Ackerman and I wonder if you could give me a call. My wife is missing and I’m worried sick. I was hoping you could help me out.’ In the background, I could hear whiney children, my favourite kind. He repeated his name and gave me a telephone number. I made a pot of coffee before I called him back.
A little person answered the phone. There was a murmured child-size hello and then I heard a lot of heavy breathing close to the mouthpiece.
‘Hi,’ I said, ‘can I speak to your daddy?’
‘Yes.’ Long silence.
‘Today?’ I asked.
The receiver was clunked down on a tabletop and I could hear the clatter of footsteps in a room that sounded as if it didn’t have any carpeting. In due course, Robert Ackerman picked up the phone.
‘Lucy?’
‘It’s Kinsey Millhone, Mr Ackerman. I just got your message on my answering machine. Can you tell me what’s going on?’
‘Oh wow, yeah...’
He was interrupted by a piercing shriek that sounded like one of those policeman’s whistles you use to discourage obscene phone callers. I didn’t jerk back quite in time. ‘Shit, that hurt.’
I listened patiently while he dealt with the errant child.
‘Sorry,’ he said when he came back on the line. ‘Look, is there any way you could come out to the house?’ I’ve got my hands full and I just can’t get away.’
I took his address and brief directions, then headed out to my car.

Robert and the missing Mrs Ackerman lived in a housing tract that looked like it was built in the ‘forties before anyone ever dreamed up the notion of family rooms, country kitchens, and his ‘n’ hers solar spas. What we had here was a basic drywall box; cramped living-room with a dining L, a kitchen and one bathroom sandwiched between two nine-by-twelve-foot bedrooms. When Robert answered the door I could just about see the whole place at a glance. The only thing the builders had been lavish with was the hardwood floors, which, in this case, was unfortunate. Little children had banged and scraped these floors and had brought in some kind of foot grit that I sensed before I was even asked to step inside.
Robert, though harried, had a boyish appeal; a man in his early thirties perhaps, lean and handsome, with dark eyes and dark hair that came to a pixie point in the middle of his forehead. He was wearing chinos and a plain white T-shirt. He had a baby, maybe eight months old, propped on his hip like a grocery bag. Another child clung to his right leg, while a third rode his tricycle at various walls and doorways, making quite loud sounds with his mouth.
‘Hi, come on in,’ Robert said. ‘We can talk out in the back yard while the kids play.’ His smile was sweet.
I followed him through the tiny disorganised house and out to the back yard, where he set the baby down in a sandpile framed with two-by-fours. The second child held on to Robert’s belt loops and stuck his thumb in its mouth, staring at me while the tricycle child tried to ride off the edge of the porch. I’m not fond of children. I’m really not. Especially the kind who wear hard brown shoes. Like dogs, these infants sensed my distaste and kept their distance, eyeing me with a mixture of rancour and disdain.
The back yard was scruffy, fenced in, and littered with the fifty-pound sacks the sand had come in. Robert gave the children homemade-style cookies out of a cardboard box and shooed them away. In fifteen minutes the sugar would probably turn them into lunatics. I gave my watch a quick glance, hoping to be gone by then.
‘You want a lawn chair?’
‘No, this is fine,’ I said and settled on the grass. There wasn’t a lawn chair in sight, but the offer was nice anyway.
He perched on the edge of the sandbox and ran a distracted hand across his head. ‘God, I’m sorry everything is such a mess, but Lucy hasn’t been here for two days. She didn’t come home from work on Friday and I’ve been a wreck ever since.’
‘I take it you notified the police.’
‘Sure. Friday night. She never showed up at the babysitter’s house to pick the kids up. I finally got a call here at seven asking where she was. I figured she’d just stopped off at the grocery store or something, so I went ahead and picked ‘em up and brought ‘em home. By ten o’clock when I hadn’t heard from her, I knew something was wrong. I called her boss at home and he said as far as he knew she’d left work at five as usual, so that’s when I called the police.’
‘You filed a missing persons report?’
‘I can do that today. With an adult, you have to wait seventy-two hours, and even then, there’s not much they can do.’
‘What else did they suggest?’
‘The usual stuff, I guess. I mean, I called everyone we know. I talked to her mom in Bakersfield and this friend of hers at work. Nobody has any idea where she is. I’m scared something’s happened to her.’
‘You’ve checked with hospitals in the area, I take it.’
‘Sure. That’s the first thing I did.’
‘Did she give you any indication that anything was wrong?’
‘Not a word.’
‘Was she depressed or behaving oddly?’
‘Well, she was kind of restless the past couple of months. She always seemed to get excited around this time of year. She said it reminded her of her old elementary school days.’ He shrugged. ‘I hated mine.’
‘But she’s never disappeared like this before.’
‘Oh, heck no. I just mentioned her mood because you asked. I don’t think it amounted to anything.’
‘Does she have any problems with alcohol or drugs?’
‘Lucy isn’t really like that,’ he said. ‘She’s petite and kind of quiet. A homebody, I guess you’d say.’
‘What about your relationship? Do the two of you get along OK?’
‘As far as I’m concerned, we do. I mean, once in a while we get into it but never anything serious.’
‘What are your disagreements about?’
He smiled ruefully. ‘Money, mostly. With three kids, we never seem to have enough. I mean, I’m crazy about big families, but it’s tough financially. I always wanted four or five, but she says three is plenty, especially with the oldest not in school yet. We fight about that some... having more kids.’
‘You both work?’
‘We have to. Just to make ends meet. She has a job in an escrow company downtown, and I work for the phone company.’
‘Doing what?’
‘Installer,’ he said.
‘Has there been any hint of someone else in her life?’
He sighed, plucking at the grass between his feet. ‘In a way, I wish I could say yes. I’d like to think maybe she just got fed up or something and checked into a motel for the weekend. Something like that.’
‘But you don’t think she did.’
‘Unh-uh and I’m going crazy with anxiety. Somebody’s got to find out where she is.’
‘Mr Ackerman...’
‘You can call me Rob,’ he said.
Clients always say that. I mean, unless their names are something else.
‘Rob,’ I said, ‘the police are truly your best bet in a situation like this. I’m just one person. They’ve got a vast machinery they can put to work and it won’t cost you a cent.’
‘You charge a lot, huh?’
‘Thirty bucks an hour plus expenses.’
He thought for a moment, then gave me a searching look. ‘Could you maybe put in ten hours? I got three hundred bucks we were saving for a trip to the San Diego Zoo.’
I pretended to think about it, but the truth was, I knew I couldn’t say no to that boyish face. Anyway, the kids were starting to whine and I wanted to get out of there. I waived the retainer and said I’d send him an itemised bill when the ten hours were up. I figured I could put a contract in the mail and reduce my contact with the short persons who were crowding around him now, begging for more sweets. I asked for a recent photograph of Lucy, but all he could come up with was a two-year-old snapshot of her with the two older kids. She looked beleaguered even then, and that was before the third baby came along. I thought about quiet little Lucy Ackerman whose three strapping sons had legs the size of my arms. If I were she, I knew where I’d be. Long gone.

Lucy Ackerman was employed as an escrow officer for a small company on State Street not far from my office. It was a modest establishment of white walls, rust and brown plaid furniture with burnt orange carpeting. There were Gauguin reproductions all around and a live plant on every desk. I introduced myself first to the office manager, a Mrs Merriman, who was in her sixties, had tall hair, and wore lace-up boots with stiletto heels. She looked like a woman who’d trade all her pension monies for a head-to-toe body tuck.
I said, ‘Robert Ackerman has asked me to see if I can locate his wife.’
‘Well, the poor man. I heard about that,’ she said with her mouth. Her eyes said, ‘Fat chance!’
‘Do you have any idea where she might be?’
‘I think you’d better talk to Mr Sotherland.’ She had turned all prim and officious, but my guess was she knew something and was dying to be asked. I intended to accommodate her as soon as I’d talked to him. The protocol in small offices, I’ve found, is ironclad.
Gavin Sotherland got up from his swivel chair and stretched a big hand across the desk to shake mine. The other member of the office force, Barbara Hemdahl, the book-keeper, got up from her chair simultaneously and excused herself. Mr Sotherland watched her depart and then motioned me into the same seat. I sank into leather still hot from Barbara Hemdahl’s backside, a curiously intimate effect. I made a mental note to find out what she knew, and then I looked, with interest, at the company vice president. I picked up all these names and job titles because his was cast in stand-up bronze letters on his desk, and the two women both had white plastic name tags affixed to their breasts, like nurses. As nearly as I could tell, there were only four of them in the office, including Lucy Ackerman, and I couldn’t understand how they could fail to identify each other on sight. Maybe all the badges were for clients who couldn’t be trusted to tell one from the other without the proper ID’s.
Gavin Sotherland was large, an ex-jock to all appearances, maybe forty-five years old, with a heavy head of blond hair thinning slightly at the crown. He had a slight paunch, a slight stoop to his shoulders, and a grip that was damp with sweat. He had his coat off, and his once-starched white shirt was limp and wrinkled, his beige gabardine pants heavily creased across the lap. Altogether, he looked like a man who’d just crossed a continent by rail. Still, I was forced to credit him with good looks, even if he had let himself go to seed.
‘Nice to meet you, Miss Millhone. I’m so glad you’re here.’ His voice was deep and rumbling, with confidence-inspiring undertones. On the other hand, I didn’t like the look in his eyes. He could have been a conman, for all I knew. ‘I understand Mrs Ackerman never got home Friday night,’ he said.
‘That’s what I’m told,’ I replied. ‘Can you tell me anything about her day here?’
He studied me briefly. ‘Well, now I’m going to have to be honest with you. Our book-keeper has come across some discrepancies in the accounts. It looks like Lucy Ackerman has just walked off with half a million dollars entrusted to us.’
‘How’d she manage that?’
I was picturing Lucy Ackerman, free of those truck-busting kids, lying on a beach in Rio, slurping some kind of rum drink out of a coconut.
Mr Sotherland looked pained. ‘In the most straightforward manner imaginable,’ he said. ‘It looks like she opened a new bank account at a branch in Montebello and deposited ten cheques that should have gone into other accounts. Last Friday, she withdrew over five hundred thousand dollars in cash, claiming we were closing out a big real estate deal. We found the passbook in her bottom drawer.’ He tossed the booklet across the desk to me and I picked it up. The word ‘VOID’ had been punched into the pages in a series of holes. A quick glance showed ten deposits at intervals dating back over the past three months and a zero balance as of last Friday’s date.
‘Didn’t anybody else double-check this stuff?’
‘We’d just undergone our annual audit in June. Everything was fine. We trusted this woman implicitly and had every reason to.’
‘You discovered the loss this morning?’
‘Yes, ma’am, but I’ll admit I was suspicious Friday night when Robert Ackerman called me at home. It was completely unlike that woman to disappear without a word. She’s worked here eight years, and she’s been punctual and conscientious since the day she walked in.’
‘Well, punctual at any rate,’ I said. ‘Have you notified the police?’
‘I was just about to do that. I’ll have to alert the Department of Corporations, too. God, I can’t believe she did this to us. I’ll be fired. They’ll probably shut this entire office down.’
‘Would you mind if I had a quick look around?’
To what end?’
‘There’s always a chance we can figure out where she went. If we move fast enough, maybe we can catch her before she gets away with it.’
‘Well, I doubt that,’ he said. ‘The last anybody saw her was Friday afternoon. That’s two full days. She could be anywhere by now.’
‘Mr Sotherland, her husband has already authorised three hundred dollars’ worth of my time. Why not take advantage of it?’
He stared at me. ‘Won’t the police object?’
‘Probably. But I don’t intend to get in anybody’s way, and whatever I find out, I’ll turn over to them. They may not be able to get a fraud detective out here until late morning anyway. If I get a line on her, it’ll make you look good to the company and to the cops.’
He gave a sigh of resignation and waved his hand. ‘Hell, I don’t care. Do what you want.’
When I left his office, he was putting the call through to the police department.

I sat briefly at Lucy’s desk, which was neat and well organised. Her drawers contained the usual office supplies; no personal items at all. There was a calendar on her desktop, one of those loose-leaf affairs with a page for each day. I checked back through the past couple of months. The only personal notation was for an appointment at the Women’s Health Centre, 2. August, and a second visit last Friday afternoon. It must have been a busy day for Lucy, what with a doctor’s appointment and ripping off her company for half a million bucks. I made a note of the address she’d pencilled in at the time of her first visit. The other two women in the office were keeping an eye on me, I noticed, though both pretended to be occupied with paperwork.
When I finished my search, I got up and crossed the room to Mrs Merriman’s desk. ‘Is there any way I can make a copy of the passbook for that account Mrs Ackerman opened?’
‘Well, yes, if Mr Sotherland approves,’ she said.
‘I’m also wondering where she keeps her coat and purse during the day.’
‘In the back. We each have a locker in the storage room.’
‘I’d like to take a look at that, too.’
I waited patiently while she cleared both matters with her boss, and then I accompanied her to the rear. There was a door that opened on to the parking lot. To the left of it was a small rest room and, on the right, there was a storage room that housed four connecting upright metal lockers, the copy machine, and numerous shelves neatly stacked with office supplies. Each shoulder-high locker was marked with a name. Lucy Ackerman’s was still securely padlocked. There was something about the blank look of that locker that seemed ominous somehow. I looked at the lock, fairly itching to have a crack at it with my little set of key picks, but I didn’t want to push my luck with the cops on the way.
‘I’d like for someone to let me know what’s in that locker when it’s finally opened,’ I remarked while Mrs Merriman ran off the copy of the passbook pages for me.
‘This, too,’ I said, handing her a carbon of the withdrawal slip Lucy’d been required to sign in receipt of the cash. It had been folded and tucked into the back of the booklet. ‘You have any theories about where she went?’
Mrs Merriman’s mouth pursed piously, as though she were debating with herself about how much she might say.
‘I wouldn’t want to be accused of talking out of school,’ she ventured.
‘Mrs Merriman, it does look like a crime’s been committed,’ I suggested. ‘The police are going to ask you the same thing when they get here.’
‘Oh. Well, in that case, I suppose it’s all right. I mean, I don’t have the faintest idea where she is, but I do think she’s been acting oddly the past few months.’
‘Like what?’
‘She seemed secretive. Smug. Like she knew something the rest of us didn’t know about.’
‘That certainly turned out to be the case,’ I said.
‘Oh, I didn’t mean it was related to that,’ she said hesitantly. ‘I think she was having an affair.’
That got my attention. ‘An affair? With whom?’
She paused for a moment, touching at one of the hairpins that supported her ornate hairdo. She allowed her gaze to stray back towards Mr Sotherland’s office. I turned and looked in that direction, too.
‘Really?’ I said. ‘No wonder he was in a sweat,’ I thought.
‘I couldn’t swear to it,’ she murmured, ‘but his marriage has been rocky for years, and I gather she hasn’t been that happy herself. She has those beastly little boys, you know, and a husband who seems determined to spawn more. She and Mr Sotherland... Gavie, she calls him... have... well, I’m sure they’ve been together. Whether it’s connected to this matter of the missing money, I wouldn’t presume to guess.’ Having said as much, she was suddenly uneasy. ‘You won’t repeat what I’ve said to the police, I hope.’
‘Absolutely not,’ I said. ‘Unless they ask, of course.’
‘Oh. Of course.’
‘By the way, is there a company travel agent?’
‘Right next door,’ she replied.

I had a brief chat with the book-keeper, who added nothing to the general picture of Lucy Ackerman’s last few days at work. I retrieved my VW from the parking lot and headed over to the health centre eight blocks away, wondering what Lucy had been up to. I was guessing birth control and probably the permanent sort. If she were having an affair (and determined not to get pregnant again in any event), it would seem logical, but I hadn’t any idea how to verify the fact. Medical personnel are notoriously stingy with information like that.
I parked in front of the clinic and grabbed my clipboard from the back seat. I have a supply of all-purpose forms for occasions like this. They look like a cross between a job application and an insurance claim. I filled one out now in Lucy’s name and forged her signature at the bottom where it said ‘authorisation to release information’. As a model, I used the Xerox copy of the withdrawal slip she’d tucked in her passbook. I’ll admit my methods would be considered unorthodox, nay illegal, in the eyes of law-enforcement officers everywhere, but I reasoned that the information I was seeking would never actually be used in court, and therefore it couldn’t matter that much how it was obtained.
I went into the clinic, noting gratefully the near-empty waiting room. I approached the counter and took out my wallet with my California Fidelity ID. I do occasional insurance investigations for CF in exchange for office space. They once made the mistake of issuing me a company identification card with my picture right on it that I’ve been flashing around quite shamelessly ever since.
I had a choice of three female clerks and, after a brief assessment, I made eye contact with the oldest of them. In places like this, the younger employees usually have no authority at all and are, thus, impossible to con. People without authority will often simply stand there, reciting the rules like mynah birds. Having no power, they also seem to take a vicious satisfaction in forcing others to comply.
The woman approached the counter on her side, looking at me expectantly. I showed her my CF ID and made the form on the clipboard conspicuous, as though I had nothing to hide.
‘Hi. My name is Kinsey Millhone,’ I said, ‘I wonder if you can give me some help. Your name is what?’
She seemed wary of the request, as though her name had magical powers that might be taken from her by force. ‘Lillian Vincent,’ she said reluctantly. ‘What sort of help did you need?’
‘Lucy Ackerman has applied for some insurance benefits and we need verification of the claim. You’ll want a copy of the release form for your files, of course.’
I passed the forged paper to her and then busied myself with my clipboard as though it was all perfectly matter-of-fact.
She was instantly alert. ‘What is this?’
I gave her a look. ‘Oh, sorry. She’s applying for maternity leave and we need her due date.’
‘Maternity leave?’
‘Isn’t she a patient here?’
Lillian Vincent looked at me. ‘Just a moment,’ she said, and moved away from the desk with the form in her hand. She went to a file cabinet and extracted a chart, returning to the counter. She pushed it over to me. ‘The woman has had a tubal ligation,’ she said, her manner crisp.
I blinked, smiling slightly as though she were making a joke. ‘There must be some mistake.’
‘Lucy Ackerman must have made it then if she thinks she can pull this off.’ She opened the chart and tapped significantly at the 2, August date. ‘She was just in here Friday for a final checkup and a medical release. She’s sterile.’
I looked at the chart. Sure enough, that’s what it said. I raised my eyebrows and then shook my head slightly. ‘God. Well. I guess I better have a copy of that.’
‘I should think so,’ the woman said and ran one off for me on the desktop dry copier. She placed it on the counter and watched as I tucked it on to my clipboard.
She said, ‘I don’t know how they think they can get away with it.’
‘People love to cheat,’ I replied.

It was nearly noon by the time I got back to the travel agency next door to the place where Lucy Ackerman had worked. It didn’t take any time at all to unearth the reservations she’d made two weeks before. Buenos Aires, first class on Pan Am. For one. She’d picked up the ticket Friday afternoon just before the agency closed for the weekend.
The travel agent rested his elbows on the counter and looked at me with interest, hoping to hear all the gory details, I’m sure. ‘I heard about that business next door,’ he said. He was young, maybe twenty-four, with a pug nose, auburn hair and a gap between his teeth. He’d make the perfect co-star on a wholesome family TV show.
‘How’d she pay for the tickets?’
‘Cash,’ he said. ‘I mean, who’d have thunk?’
‘Did she say anything in particular at the time?’
‘Not really. She seemed jazzed and we joked some about Montezuma’s revenge and stuff like that. I knew she was married, and I was asking her all about who was keeping the kids and what her old man was going to do while she was gone. God, I never in a million years guessed she was pulling off a scam like that, you know?’
‘Did you ask why she was going to Argentina by herself?’
‘Well, yeah, and she said it was a surprise.’ He shrugged. ‘It didn’t really make sense, but she was laughing like a kid, and I thought I just didn’t get the joke.’
I asked for a copy of the itinerary, such as it was. She had paid for a round-trip ticket, but there were no reservations coming back. Maybe she intended to cash in the return ticket once she got down there. I tucked the travel docs on to my clipboard along with the copy of her medical forms. Something about this whole deal had begun to chafe, but I couldn’t figure out quite why.
‘Thanks for your help,’ I said, heading towards the door.
‘No problem. I guess the other guy didn’t get it either,’ he remarked.
I paused, midstride, turning back. ‘Get what?’
‘The joke. I heard ‘em next door and they were fighting like cats and dogs. He was pissed.’
‘Really?’ I asked. I stared at him. ‘What time was this?’
‘Five-fifteen. Something like that. They were closed and so were we, but Dad wanted me to stick around for a while until the cleaning crew got here. He owns this place, which is how I got in the business myself. These new guys were starting and he wanted me to make sure they understood what to do.’
‘Are you going to be here for a while?’
‘Sure.’
‘Good. The police may want to hear about this.’

I went back into the escrow office with mental alarm bells clanging away like crazy. Both Barbara Hemdahl and Mrs Merriman had opted to eat lunch in. Or maybe the cops had ordered them to stay where they were. The book-keeper sat at her desk with a sandwich, apple, and a carton of milk neatly arranged in front of her, while Mrs Merriman picked at something in a plastic container she must have brought in from a fast-food place.
‘How’s it going?’ I asked.
Barbara Hemdahl spoke up from her side of the room. ‘The detectives went off for a search warrant so they can get in all the lockers back there, collecting evidence.’
‘Only one of ‘em is locked,’ I pointed out.
She shrugged. ‘I guess they can’t even peek without the paperwork.’
Mrs Merriman spoke up then, her expression tinged with guilt. ‘Actually, they asked the rest of us if we’d open our lockers voluntarily, so of course we did.’
Mrs Merriman and Barbara Hemdahl exchanged a look.
‘And?’
Mrs Merriman coloured slightly. There was an overnight case in Mr Sotherland’s locker, and I guess the things in it were hers.’
‘Is it still back there?’
‘Well, yes, but they left a uniformed officer on guard so nobody’d walk off with it. They’ve got everything spread out on the copy machine.’
I went through the rear of the office, peering into the storage room. I knew the guy on duty and he didn’t object to my doing a visual survey of the items, as long as I didn’t touch anything. The overnight case had been packed with all the personal belongings women like to keep on hand in case the rest of the luggage gets sent to Mexicali by mistake. I spotted a toothbrush and toothpaste, slippers, a filmy nightie, prescription drugs, hairbrush, extra eyeglasses in a case. Tucked under a change of underwear, I spotted a round plastic container, slightly convex, about the size of a compact.
Gavin Sotherland was still sitting at his desk when I stopped by his office. His skin tone was grey and his shirt was hanging out, big rings of sweat under each arm. He was smoking a cigarette with the air of a man who’s quit the habit and has taken it up again under duress. A second uniformed officer was standing just inside the door to my right.
I leaned against the frame, but Gavin scarcely looked up.
I said, ‘You knew what she was doing, but you thought she’d take you with her when she left.’
His smile was bitter. ‘Life is full of surprises,’ he said.
I was going to have to tell Robert Ackerman what I’d discovered, and I dreaded it. As a stalling manoeuvre, just to demonstrate what a good girl I was, I drove over to the police station first and dropped off the data I’d collected, filling them in on the theory I’d come up with. They didn’t exactly pin a medal on me, but they weren’t as pissed off as I thought they’d be, given the number of civil codes I’d violated in the process. They were even moderately courteous, which is unusual in their treatment of me. Unfortunately, none of it took that long and before I knew it, I was standing at the Ackermans’ front door again.
I rang the bell and waited, bad jokes running through my head. Well, there’s good news and bad news, Robert. The good news is we’ve wrapped it up with hours to spare so you won’t have to pay me the full three hundred dollars we agreed to. The bad news is your wife’s a thief, she’s probably dead, and we’re just getting out a warrant now, because we think we know where the body’s stashed.
The door opened and Robert was standing there with a finger to his lips. ‘The kids are down for their naps,’ he whispered.
I nodded elaborately, pantomiming my understanding, as though the silence he’d imposed required this special behaviour on my part.
He motioned me in and together we tiptoed through the house and out to the back yard, where we continued to talk in low tones. I wasn’t sure which bedroom the little rugrats slept in, and didn’t want to be responsible for waking them.
Half a day of playing papa to the boys had left Robert looking dishevelled and sorely in need of relief.
‘I didn’t expect you back this soon,’ he whispered.
I found myself whispering too, feeling anxious at the sense of secrecy. It reminded me of grade school somehow: the smell of autumn hanging in the air, the two of us perched on the edge of the sandbox like little kids, conspiring. I didn’t want to break his heart, but what was I to do?
‘I think we’ve got it wrapped up,’ I said.
He looked at me for a moment, apparently guessing from my expression that the news wasn’t good. ‘Is she OK?’
‘We don’t think so,’ I said. And then I told him what I’d learned, starting with the embezzlement and the relationship with Gavin, taking it right through to the quarrel the travel agent had heard. Robert was ahead of me.
‘She’s dead, isn’t she?’
‘We don’t know it for a fact, but we suspect as much.’
He nodded, tears welling up. He wrapped his arms around his knees and propped his chin on his fists. He looked so young, I wanted to reach out and touch him. ‘She was really having an affair?’ he asked plaintively.
‘You must have suspected as much,’ I said. ‘You said she was restless and excited for months. Didn’t that give you a clue?’
He shrugged one shoulder, using the sleeve of his T-shirt to dash at the tears trickling down his cheeks. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I guess.’
‘And then you stopped by the office Friday afternoon and found her getting ready to leave the country. That’s when you killed her, isn’t it?’
He froze, staring at me. At first, I thought he’d deny it, but maybe he realised there wasn’t any point. He nodded mutely.
‘And then you hired me to make it look good, right?’
He made a kind of squeaking sound in the back of his throat and sobbed once, his voice reduced to a whisper again. ‘She shouldn’t have done it... betrayed us like that. We loved her so much...’
‘Have you got the money here?’
He nodded, looking miserable. ‘I wasn’t going to pay your fee out of that,’ he said incongruously. ‘We really did have a little fund so we could go to San Diego one day.’
‘I’m sorry things didn’t work out,’ I said.
‘I didn’t do so bad, though, did I? I mean, I could have gotten away with it, don’t you think?’
I’d been talking about the trip to the zoo. He thought I was referring to his murdering his wife. Talk about poor communication. God.
‘Well, you nearly pulled it off,’ I said. Shit, I was sitting there trying to make the guy feel good.
He looked at me piteously, eyes red and flooded, his mouth trembling. ‘But where did I slip up? What did I do wrong?’
‘You put her diaphragm in the overnight case you packed. You thought you’d shift suspicion on to Gavin Sotherland, but you didn’t realise she’d had her tubes tied.’
A momentary rage flashed through his eyes and then flickered out. I suspected that her voluntary sterilisation was more insulting to him than the affair with her boss.
‘Jesus, I don’t know what she saw in him,’ he breathed. ‘He was such a pig.’
‘Well,’ I said, ‘if it’s any comfort to you, she wasn’t going to take him with her, either. She just wanted freedom, you know?’
He pulled out a handkerchief and blew his nose, trying to compose himself. He mopped his eyes, shivering with tension. ‘How can you prove it, though, without a body? Do you know where she is?’
‘I think we do,’ I said softly. ‘The sandbox, Robert. Right under us.’
He seemed to shrink. ‘Oh, God,’ he whispered, ‘Oh, God, don’t turn me in. I’ll give you the money, I don’t give a damn. Just let me stay here with my kids. The little guys need me. I did it for them. I swear I did. You don’t have to tell the cops, do you?’
I shook my head and opened my shirt collar, showing him the mike. ‘I don’t have to tell a soul. I’m wired for sound,’ I said, and then I looked over toward the side yard.
For once, I was glad to see Lieutenant Dolan amble into view.