His attack had left me wary of doing my usual three-mile morning jog in the early morning dark, so I’d returned to the gym, mixing weight lifting with stints on the treadmill. This bored the bejesus out of me, but at least I worked out in a room full of fitness nuts, most of them male, with the occasional kick-ass female. I appreciated the bright lights, the noise, the bad music, and the muted television game shows. Most of all the sense of safety. My workouts took place in the middle of the day, and when I emerged from the gym, it was still light outside. Where possible, I took to jogging on the beach path in broad daylight, which I still preferred as long as there was a goodly number of people in evidence.
That Friday afternoon, I was writing a report on the job I’d just completed, working as a temporary front office receptionist/secretary for a general practitioner. The doctor had been subject to thefts of drugs and petty cash and she needed someone to determine who was doing it. She had two partners and twelve on staff and no clue about how to identify the perpetrator. Her office manager was out for three weeks, having surgery for a bad back, and it made sense that the doctor would hire someone to fill the gap. I was sufficiently skilled at typing, filing, and answering the phone that I could pass for an old hand at office work. Anything I didn’t know about the medical profession was easy enough to explain, given the fiction that I was from a temp agency.
In the course of the job, I’d found occasion to work late, which gave me ample opportunity to snoop. Turned out it was the office manager herself who had her hand in the till, supplementing her salary with petty cash and easing her back pain with meds she lifted from the supply cabinet. The detail men dropped off countless samples during their meetings with the doctors in the practice, so she had her choice of the latest remedies. The doctor who hired me was reluctant to pursue a criminal complaint, but my work was done and, more important, I’d been paid.
I’d just removed the last page of the report from my trusty portable Smith Corona and I was neatly separating the carbons from the originals when my phone rang. I picked up the handset and tucked it against my left ear while I stacked the pages and placed them in a file folder. “Millhone Investigations.”
“May I speak to Kinsey?”
“This is she.”
“Ah. Well, I’m glad I reached you. My name is Lauren McCabe. Lonnie Kingman gave me your name and suggested I get in touch with regard to something that’s come up.”
Lonnie had been my attorney for the past ten years, so anybody he sent my way was automatically okay in my book, at least until proven otherwise. The name Lauren McCabe set off a distant clanging of bells, but I couldn’t place the reference. “Something that’s come up” could have meant just about anything.
I said, “I appreciate Lonnie’s referring you. What can I help you with?”
“I’d prefer to discuss this in person, if that’s all right with you.”
“Fine. We can meet at your convenience. What did you have in mind?”
“I’d love to say today, but I play duplicate on Fridays and I’m gone most of the day. I was hoping you could stop by tomorrow afternoon. We’re in a condominium downtown and the place isn’t hard to find.”
“Sounds good. Why don’t you give me the address?”
I made a note of the street number on State, three blocks up from the office I’d occupied when I worked for California Fidelity Insurance. In those days, I investigated arson and wrongful death claims, which didn’t often come my way now that I worked independently.
I said, “What time would suit?”
“Let’s say four. My husband will be out and we’ll have time alone. I know it’s a Saturday and I’m sorry if I’m intruding on your weekend plans.”
“Don’t worry about it. I’ll be there.”
“Good. I appreciate your flexibility.”
As soon as I hung up the handset, the penny dropped and I remembered where I’d come across the name McCabe. There’d been an article on the front page of the local paper at some point in the past two weeks. Unfortunately, the unwieldy accumulation of newspapers was stacked up under my desk at home.
I checked my watch, noting that it was 4:15. The call was excuse enough to close up early and head out. With the job I’d just finished and a new job lined up, I felt I was entitled to the rest of the day off. The drive to my studio apartment took ten minutes, not surprising given the size of the town, which topped out at eighty-five thousand souls. Santa Teresa is wedged between the Pacific Ocean and the Santa Ynez Mountains, one of the few mountain ranges with an east/west orientation. Between the two geological boundaries, we have palm trees, red-tile roofs, bougainvillea, and Spanish architecture interlaced with Victorian. Half the rich folks live in Montebello at one end of town and the other rich folks live in Horton Ravine. The divide is usually characterized as old money versus new, but the separation isn’t that distinct.
Once home, I dug my way down through the papers. This felt like an archeological excavation, uncovering in reverse order events that had passed since the article had run. I pulled out the relevant issue and perched on a kitchen stool while I brought myself up to speed. On page one of the first section, there was an article about Lauren McCabe’s son’s mandatory release from the California Youth Authority on a charge of first-degree murder pursuant to the felony murder rule, that being a killing committed in the course of a kidnapping. Since he’d reached the age of twenty-five, the state was forced to let him go. I noted the journalist was my pal Diana Alvarez, about whom my feelings were mixed. She and I had tangled in the past and there was no love lost between us. Then again, we were both practical enough to know we might help each other on occasion.
The article gave a summary of the events that had taken place ten years before, when Fritz McCabe had been the shooter in the killing of a teenaged girl named Sloan Stevens. Both were enrolled at Climping Academy, the fancy private college-prep high school in Horton Ravine. In a highly publicized cheating scandal, two students were given a stolen copy of the California Academic Proficiency Test and used the answers in hopes of improving their scores. The Stevens girl knew about it and she was alleged to have sent a note to the school administrators naming the two—Troy Rademaker and Poppy Earl—who were subsequently suspended. As a consequence, Sloan Stevens, the purported informant, had been shunned by her fellow students.