J is for Judgment (Kinsey Millhone 10)

I saw her right rear turn signal start to blink. I eased into the curb lane, taking my place behind her, trying to anticipate what she meant to do. A large shopping mall loomed up on our right. I saw her turn in, but before I could do likewise, someone cut in front of me. I braked abruptly, trying to avoid rear-ending the other driver while I scanned the parking lot ahead. Renata had taken a quick left and then turned down the second aisle, which seemed to extend the entire length of the mall. I turned into the entrance a full minute behind her. I sped through the parking lot on a parallel course, flying over speed bumps like a skier taking moguls. I kept thinking she would park, but she continued along the same path. There were two rows of cars between us, but in the one clear glimpse I caught, she was still on the phone. Whatever her conversation, she must have changed her mind about shopping. I saw her lean to the right, apparently replacing the handset. The next thing I knew, she reached an exit and took a left, easing into the flow of traffic again. I cut out at the exit, falling into the same lane as Renata, only two cars back. I didn’t think she’d spotted me, and I wasn’t sure she’d recognize me in a setting so different from the one in which she’d last seen me.

She passed the directional sign for Highway 101, cranking up her speed when she hit the on ramp. The driver in front of me began to slow. “Go on, go on,” I was urging under my breath. The guy was old and cautious, swinging wide to the left for a right-hand turn into the gas station on the corner. By the time I whipped around him and up the ramp, Renata’s Jaguar was no longer visible among the speeding northbound cars. She was the kind of driver who shot any gap she saw, and she’d apparently zigzagged her way out of sight. I drove the next twenty-five miles, straining for sight of her, but she was gone, gone, gone. I realized, belatedly, that I had missed the opportunity to pick off the numbers on her license plate. The only comfort I took was in the simple assumption that if Renata was in the area, Wendell Jaffe probably wasn’t far away.

12

Back in Santa Teresa, I went straight to the office, where I hauled out my portable Smith-Corona and typed up my notes, recording the events of the past two days as well as names, addresses, and miscellaneous data. Then I calculated the time I’d put in and tacked on gasoline and mileage. I was probably going to bill CF at a flat rate of fifty bucks an hour, but I wanted to have an itemized accounting ready in case Gordon Titus turned all prissy and authoritarian. Down deep, I knew this rapt attention to the paperwork was only a thinly disguised cover for my mounting excitement. Wendell had to be close by, but what was he doing and what would it take to bring him into the light? At least the Renata sighting had confirmed my hunch…unless the two of them had split up, which didn’t seem likely. He had family here. I wasn’t sure she did. On an impulse, I checked the local telephone directory, but there were no Huffs listed. Hers was probably an alias just as his name was. I would have given just about anything to lay eyes on the man, but that was beginning to feel about as likely as a UFO sighting.

At this stage of any investigation, I’m inclined to impatience. It always feels the same way to me—as though this is the case that’s finally going to do me in. So far, I haven’t blown a gig. I don’t always succeed in ways that I anticipate, but I haven’t yet failed to bring a case to resolution. The problem with being a PI is there isn’t any rule book. There’s no set procedure, no company manual, and no prescribed strategy. Every case is different, and every investigator ends up flying by the seat of her (or his) pants. If you’re doing a background check, you can always make the rounds, looking up deeds, titles, births and deaths, marriages, divorces, credit information, business and criminal records. Any competent detective quickly learns how to follow the trail of paper bread crumbs left by the private citizen wandering in the bureaucratic forest. But the success of a missing persons search depends on ingenuity, persistence, and just plain old dumb luck. The leads you develop are based on personal contact, and you better be good at reading human nature while you’re at it. I sat and thought about what I’d learned so far. It really wasn’t much, and I didn’t feel I was any closer to homing in on Wendell Jaffe. I began to transcribe my notes onto index cards. If all else failed, maybe I could shuffle them and deal myself a game of solitaire.

The next time I looked up, it was 4:35. My Spanish class met on Tuesday afternoons from 5:00 until 7:00. I really didn’t need to leave for another fifteen minutes, but I’d exhausted my little storehouse of clerical skills. I slipped the paperwork in a folder and locked the file cabinet. I locked the office door behind me, went out through the side door, and down the stairs. I had to stand on the street corner for a good sixty seconds, trying to remember where I’d parked my car. It finally occurred to me and I was just setting off when I heard Alison yoo-whooing from the window.