J is for Judgment (Kinsey Millhone 10)

I wandered across the deck and down the ramp to the darkened water in the marina. I turned and looked back at the house. There were no outside stairs and no visible way to reach the second-story bedrooms. I went back through the gate, letting the latch close behind me, making sure the street was clear of approaching cars. All I needed was Renata Huff returning home, headlights picking me out of the darkness as she turned into her driveway.

As I passed the mailbox at the curb, my bad angel tapped me on the shoulder and suggested a violation of U.S. postal regulations. “Would you quit that?” I said crossly. Of course, I’d already reached out and pulled the flap down, taking out the sheaf of mail that had been delivered that day. It was too dark on the street to sort out all the good stuff, so I was forced to shove the whole batch of envelopes in my handbag. God, I’m so rotten. Sometimes I can’t believe the kind of shit I pull. Here I was, lying to the neighbor, stealing Renata’s mail. Were there no depths to which I wouldn’t sink? Apparently not. Dimly, I wondered if the penalties for mail tampering were per incident or per piece. If the latter, I was racking up a lot of jail time.

Before I headed home again, I made a detour past Dana Jaffe’s house. I doused my headlights, cruising to a stop across the street from her place. I left my keys in the ignition, making my way silently across the street. All the ground-floor lights were on. Traffic at that hour was sparse to nonexistent. There were no neighbors in evidence, no dog walkers on the street. I angled my way across the grass through the darkness. Shrubs growing at the side of the house provided sufficient cover to allow me to spy without interruption. I thought I might as well add trespass and prowling to my other sins.

Dana was watching television, her face turned toward the console between the windows in front. Shifting lights played across her face as the program continued. She lit a cigarette. She sipped white wine from a glass on the table beside her. There was no sign of Wendell and nothing to suggest she had company in the house. Occasionally she would smile, perhaps in response to the canned laughter I could hear vibrating in the wall. I realized I’d been entertaining a suspicion that she was in league with him, that she knew where he was now and where he’d been all these years. Seeing her alone, I found myself dismissing the idea. I simply couldn’t believe she’d collude in Wendell’s abandonment of her sons. Both boys had suffered in the last five years.

I went back to my car and fired up my engine, making an illegal U-turn before I flipped on my headlights. Once I reached Santa Teresa, I stopped off at the McDonald’s on Milagro and picked up a Quarter Pounder and an order of fries. For the remainder of the drive home, the air in the car was moist with the smell of steamed onions and hot pickles, meat patty nestled in melted cheese and condiments. I parked the car and toted my belated second supper with me through the squeaking back gate.

Henry’s lights were out. I let myself into my apartment. I removed the Styrofoam box and set it on the counter. I opened the lid and used the top half of the container as a receptacle for my fries, taking a few minutes to bite open the handful of ketchup packets, which I squeezed over my shoestring potatoes. I perched on a bar stool, munching junk food while I sorted through the mail I’d stolen. It’s hard to give up chronic thievery when my crimes net me such a bonanza of information. Purely on instinct, I’d managed to snag Renata’s telephone bill with her unlisted number in a box at the top and a neatly ordered list of all the numbers from which she’d charged calls in the past thirty days. The Visa bill, a joint account, was like a little road map of places she and “Dean DeWitt Huff” had stayed. For a dead man, he was apparently having himself a fine old time. There were some nice samples of his handwritting on some of the credit card receipts. The charges from Viento Negro hadn’t surfaced yet, but I could track the two of them backward from La Paz, to Cabo San Lucas, to a hotel in San Diego. All port towns easily accessible from the boat, I noticed.

I went to bed at 10:30 and slept solidly, waking at six o’clock, half a second before my alarm was set to go off. I pushed the covers aside and reached for my sweats. After hasty ablutions, I tinked down my spiral staircase and out to the street.

There was an early morning chill, but the air was curiously muggy, residual heat held in by the lowering cloud cover overhead. The early morning light was pearly. The beach looked as fine and as supple as gray leather, wrinkled by the night winds, smoothed by the surf. My cold was rapidly fading, but I didn’t dare try jogging the full three miles yet. I alternated between walking and trotting, keeping track of my lungs and the creaking protests in my legs. At that hour, I tend to keep an uneasy eye out for the unexpected. I see the occasional homeless person, sexless and anonymous, sleeping in the grass, an old woman with a shopping cart alone at a picnic table. I’m especially alert to the odd-looking men in scruffy suits, gesturing, laughing, chatting with invisible companions. I’m wary of being incorporated in those strange and fearful dramas. Who knows what part we play in other people’s dreams?