E is for Evidence (Kinsey Millhone 5)

Through a doorway to my left, I could see some of the office staff, casually dressed and busy, but glum. I didn't pick up any sense of camaraderie among them, but maybe hydrogen furnace-making doesn't generate the kind of good-natured bantering I'm accustomed to with California Fidelity. Two desks were unoccupied, bare of equipment or accouterments.

Some attempt had been made to decorate for Christ-mas. There was an artificial tree across the room from me, tall and skeletal, hung with multicolored ornaments. There didn't seem to be any lights strung on the tree, which gave it a lifeless air and only pointed up the unifor-mity of the detachable limbs stuck into pre-bored holes in the aluminum shaft. The effect was dispiriting. From the information I'd been given, Wood/Warren grossed close to fifteen million bucks a year, and I wondered why they wouldn't pop for a live pine.

Heather gave me a self-conscious smile and began to eat. Behind her was a bulletin board decorated with gar-lands of tinsel and covered with snapshots of the family and staff. H-A-P-P-Y H-O-L-I-D-A-Y-S was spelled out in jaunty store-bought silver letters.

"Mind if I look at that?" I asked, indicating the collage.

By then, she had a mouth full of breakfast croissant, but she managed assent, holding a hand in front of her mouth to spare me the sight of her masticated food. "Help yourself."

Most of the photographs were of company employees, some of whom I'd seen on the premises. Heather was fea-tured in one, her fair hair much shorter, her face still framed in baby fat. The braces on her teeth probably rep-resented the last vestige of her teens. Wood/Warren must have hired her right out of high school. In one photograph, four guys in company coveralls stood in a relaxed group on the front doorstep. Some of the shots were stiffly posed, but for the most part they seemed to capture an aura of good-will I wasn't picking up on currently. The founder of the company, Linden "Woody" Wood, had died two years be-fore, and I wondered if some of the joy had gone out of the place with his demise.

The Woods themselves formed the centerpiece in a studio portrait that looked like it was taken at the family home. Mrs. Wood was seated in a French Provincial chair. Linden stood with his hand resting on his wife's shoulder. The five grown children were ranged around their par-ents. Lance I'd never met before, but I knew Ash because I'd gone to high school with her. Olive, older by a year, had attended Santa Teresa High briefly, but had been sent off to a boarding school in her senior year. There was probably a minor scandal attached to that, but I wasn't sure what it was. The oldest of the five was Ebony, who by now must be nearly forty. I remembered hearing that she'd married some rich playboy and was living in France. The youngest was a son named Bass, not quite thirty, reckless, irresponsi-ble, a failed actor and no-talent musician, living in New York City, the last I'd heard. I had met him briefly eight years before through my ex-husband, Daniel, a jazz pian-ist. Bass was the black sheep of the family. I wasn't sure what the story was on Lance.

Seated across his desk from him sixty-six minutes later, I began to pick up a few hints. Lance had breezed in at 9:30. The receptionist indicated who I was. He introduced himself and we shook hands. He said he had a quick phone call to make and then he'd be right with me. I said "Fine" and that was the last I saw of him until 10:06. By then, he'd shed his suit coat and loosened his tie along with the top button of his dress shirt. He was sitting with his feet up on the desk, his face oily-looking under the fluorescent lights. He must have been in his late thirties, but he wasn't aging well. Some combination of temper and discontent had etched lines near his mouth and spoiled the clear brown of his eyes, leaving an impression of a man beleaguered by the Fates. His hair was light brown, thinning on top, and combed straight back from his face. I thought the business about the phone call was bullshit. He struck me as the sort of man who pumped up his own sense of importance by making people wait. His smile was self-satisfied, and the energy he radiated was charged with tension.

"Sorry for the delay," he said, "What can I do for you?" He was tipped back in his swivel chair, his thighs splayed.

"I understand you filed a claim for a recent fire loss."

"That's right, and I hope you're not going to give me any static over that. Believe me, I'm not asking for any-thing I'm not entitled to."

I made a noncommittal murmur of some sort, hoping to conceal the fact that I'd gone on "fraud alert." Every insurance piker I'd ever met said just that, right down to the pious little toss of the head. I took out my tape re-corder, flicked it on, and set it on the desk. "The company requires that I tape the interview," I said.