I is for Innocent (Kinsey Millhone 9)

She moved to the doorway and looked in on the class. I saw one of the students, a man in his sixties, turn a befuddled face toward her. He put a tentative hand up. "Hang on a sec," she said, "I better earn my paycheck."

The man who'd summoned her launched into a long-winded question. Rhe used hand gestures as she made her response, almost like American Sign Language for the deaf. Whatever her point, he didn't seem to get it at first. The model had changed her pose and was perched again on the stool, one bare foot resting on the second rung. I could see the angle of her hip and the line where her buttock was flattened out by the wood. Rhe had moved on. I waited while she completed the circuit, making her way from one easel to the next.

I heard footsteps behind me and I turned, glancing back. A young woman was approaching in tight jeans and high-heeled cowboy boots. She wore a Western-cut shirt and a big leather bag slung across her shoulder like a mail pouch. Her face was a clumsier version of Rhe's, though I suspected the maturation process would refine her features somewhat. At the moment, she looked like a rough pencil sketch for a portrait in oil. Her face was wide, her cheeks still rounded with the last vestiges of baby fat, but she had the same green eyes, the same long, dark hair pulled up in a braid. I placed her in her late teens or very early twenties. Bright-looking, good energy. She flashed me a smile.

"Is my mother in there?"

"She'll be out in a minute. Are you Tippy?"

"Yes," she said, surprised. "Do I know you?"

"I was just talking to your mom and she said you'd be stopping by. My name is Kinsey."

"You teach here, too?"

I shook my head. "I'm a private investigator."

She half smiled, getting ready for the punch line. "For real?"

"Yep."

"Cool. Investigating what?"

"I'm working for an attorney on a case going into court."

Her smile faded. "Is this about my aunt Isabelle?"

"Yes."

"I thought that already went to court and the guy got away with it."

"We're trying again. A different angle this time. We may nail him if we're lucky."

Tippy's expression seemed to darken. "I never liked him. What a creep."

"What do you remember?"

She made a face… reluctance, resistance, a touch of regret perhaps. "Nothing much, except we all cried a bunch. Like for weeks. It was awful. I was sixteen when she died. She wasn't my real aunt, but we were really close."

Rhe emerged from the classroom with her key ring in her hand. "Hi, baby. I thought that was you out here. I see you met Miss Millhone."

Tippy gave her mother's cheek a kiss. "We were just waiting for you. Yon look tired."

"I'm okay. How was work?"

"Work was fine. Corey says I might get a raise, but it's only like three percent."

"Don't knock it. Way to go," Rhe said. "What time are you picking Karen up?"

"Fifteen minutes ago. I'm already late."

Tippy and I watched while Rhe slipped the car key from the ring and then pointed toward the parking lot. "It's in the third row, to the left. I want the car back by midnight."

"We're not even out until quarter of!" Tippy yelped in protest.

"As soon as possible after that. And don't run me out of gas the way you did last time."

"It was empty when you gave it to me!"

"Would you just do what I say?"

"Why, you have a date?" Tippy asked impishly.

"Tippy…"

"I'm just teasing," she said. She plucked the key from her mother's hand and started off across the parking lot, bootheels clacking.

" 'Gee, Mom, I hope this isn't inconvenient,' " Rhe called toward her departing form. "'Thank you, darling mother.' "

"You're welcome," Tippy called back.

Rhe shook her head with the kind of mock disgust that only a totally smitten parent indulges in. "Twenty years they're totally self-involved, then they turn around and get married."

"I know people must say this to you all the time, but you really don't look old enough to be her mother."

Rhe smiled. "I was sixteen when she was born."

"She seems like a neat kid."

"Well, she is, thanks to AA, which she joined when she was sixteen."

"Alcoholics Anonymous? Are you serious?"

"The drinking started when she was ten. I was working to support us and the baby-sitter was a lush. Tip would go there after school and guzzle beer every chance she got. I never had a clue! Here I am thinking it's neat because my child is so docile and obedient. She never once complained. She never whined if I was late or had to leave her overnight. I had other friends who were single moms like me. They had a bitch of a time. Their kids ran away, or caused trouble. Not my little Tippy. She was so easy to get along with. She didn't do well in school and she had the 'flu' a lot, but otherwise she seemed fine. I guess I was in denial, because I know now she was drunk or hung over half the time."