G is for Gumshoe (Kinsey Millhone 7)

Dietz turned right onto Concorde. The nursing home was visible above the treetops, half a block away. I was watching house numbers march upward toward the eleven-hundred mark, my gut churning with a mixture of anticipation and dread. Please let it be there, I thought. Please let us get to the bottom of this…

Dietz slowed and pulled into the curb. He turned the engine off while I stared at the house. It was right next door to the place where Mark Messinger had caught up with me and sprayed the porch with gunfire.

I held a hand out to Dietz without even looking at him. "Pay up," I said, gaze still pinned on the three-story clapboard house. "I met Bronfen yesterday. I just figured out how I know him. He turned the place into a board-and-care. I met him once before when a friend of mine was looking for a facility for her sister in a wheelchair." I saw a face appear briefly at a second-floor window. I opened the car door and grabbed my handbag. "Come on. I don't want the guy to scurry out the back way."

Dietz was right behind me as we pushed through the shrieking iron gate and went up the front walk, taking the porch steps two at a tune. "I'll jump in if you need me," he murmured. "Otherwise, you're the boss."

"You may be the only man I ever met who'd concede that without a fight."

"I can't wait to see how you do this."

"You and me both." I rang the bell. The owner took his sweet time about answering. I really hadn't even formulated what I meant to say to him. I could hardly pretend to be doing a marketing survey.

He opened the door, a heavyset man in his seventies, diffuse light shining softly on his balding pate. It was strange how different he looked to me. Yesterday, his elongated forehead had lent him a babylike air of innocence. Today, the furrowed brow suggested a man who had much to worry him. I had to make a conscious effort not to stare at the mole on his cheek. "Yes?"

"I'm Kinsey Millhone. Do you remember me from yesterday?"

His mouth pulled together sourly. "With all the gun battles going on, it'd be hard to forget." His gaze shifted. "I don't remember this gent."

I tilted a nod at Dietz. "This is my partner, Robert Dietz."

Dietz reached past me and shook hands with Bronfen. "Nice to meet you, sir. Sorry about all the uproar." He put his left hand behind his ear. "I don't believe I caught your name."

"Pat Bronfen. If you're still looking for that old woman, I'm afraid I can't help. I said I'd keep an eye out, but that's the best I can do." He moved as though to close the door.

I held a finger up. "Actually, this is about something else." I took the birth certificate from my handbag and held it out to him. He declined to take it, but he scanned the face of it. His expression shifted warily when he realized what it was. "How'd you get this?"

The inspiration came to me in a flash. "From Irene Bronfen. She was adopted by a couple in Seattle, but she's instituted a search for her birth parents."

He squinted at me, but said nothing.

"I take it you're the Patrick Bronfen mentioned on her birth certificate?"

He hesitated. "What of it? "

"Can you tell me where I might find Mrs. Bronfen?"

"No, ma'am. That woman left me more than forty years ago, and took Irene with her," he said, with irritation. "I never knew what happened to the child, let alone what became of Sheila. I didn't even know she put the child up for adoption. Nobody told me the first thing about it. That's against the law, isn't it? If I wasn't even notified? You can't sign someone's child away without so much as a by-your-leave."

"I'm not really sure about the legalities," I said. "Irene hired me to see what I could find out about you and your ex-wife."

"She's not my ex-wife. I'm still married to the woman in the eyes of the law. I couldn't divorce her if I didn't know where she was." He gestured impatiently, but he was running out of steam and I could see his mood shift. "That wasn't Irene, sitting on my front porch steps yesterday, was it?"

"Actually, it was."

He shook his head. "I can't believe it. I remember her when she was this high. Now she'd have to be forty-seven years old." He stared down at the porch, brow knitting parallel stitches between his eyes. "My own baby girl and I didn't recognize her. I always thought I'd be able to pick her out of a crowd."

"She wasn't well. You really never got a good look at her," I said. He looked up at me wistfully. "Did she know who I was?"