Q is for Quarry (Kinsey Millhone 17)

“That’s all right.” She returned to the sink. Everything about her smacked of Midwestern farm values—the canning, the sheets on the line, the truck garden, the unadorned face.

“You remember the case?”

“Vaguely.”

I noticed she didn’t ask to have her memory refreshed, so I volunteered the help. “A sheriff’s deputy took a report from you. According to his notes, you spotted a girl hitchhiking near the Fair Isle off-ramp July 29, 1969.”

“You mentioned the date before.”

I ignored the minor reprimand. “You indicated seeing a vehicle stop and pick her up. Turns out she fit the description of the murder victim found in Lompoc a couple of days later.”

Cloris Bargo’s expression was modified by the appearance of two swatches of pink, like blusher applied by a department store cosmetologist. “You want iced tea? I can fix you some. It’s already made.”

“That’d be great.”

She opened one of the kitchen cabinets and took down a burnished blue aluminum tumbler, which she filled with ice cubes. She poured the tea from a fat glass pitcher she kept in the refrigerator. I knew she was stalling, but I wanted to give her room to declare herself. Something was going on, but I wasn’t sure what. She handed me the glass.

I murmured, “Thanks,” and took a big healthy swallow before I realized it was heavily presweetened. I could feel my lips purse. This was equivalent to that noxious syrup you have to drink before blood draws designed to diagnose conditions you hope you don’t have.

She leaned against the counter. “I made it up.”

I set the tumbler aside. “Which part?”

“All of it. I never saw the girl.”

“No hitchhiker at all?”

She shook her head. “I’d met the deputy—the one who wrote up the report. I was new in California. My family hadn’t been here six months. I hardly knew a soul. There’d been a prowler in our neighborhood, and this deputy was sent out to talk to us. He’d gone house to house, asking if anyone had seen anything strange or unusual. I was off work. I’d just had an emergency appendectomy and I was still recovering. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have been home. We ended up having a long talk. I thought he was cute.” She stopped.

“Take your time,” I said.

“A week later, the paper mentioned his name in reference to the murder investigation. I’d never told a lie in my life, but I picked up the phone and called the Sheriff’s Department and asked for him. Once he got on the line, I said the first thing that came to mind.”

“Your claim that you’d seen a girl whose description matched the victim’s was completely false,” I said, hoping I’d misunderstood.

“I just said that. A lot of people must have called in with information that didn’t pan out. All I wanted was a chance to talk to him again.”

I was silent for a moment, thinking, Shit, shit, shit. “Did it work?”

She shrugged. “I married him.”

“Well, that part’s good, at any rate.”

Her eyes strayed to the window. I saw a car pass along the driveway, cruising toward the rear. I looked back at her.

She lowered her voice. “Do me a favor.”

“Sure.”

“Don’t mention this to my husband. I never told him the truth.”

“He doesn’t know?”

She shook her head.

“Would it really matter to him after eighteen years?”

I heard the car door slam shut and her husband’s hard-soled shoes tap-tapping across the pavement between the garage and the back porch. There was a pause while he checked his pansies and petunias. In my opinion, they needed watering. He apparently agreed. I heard the shriek and squawk of the faucet handle when he turned off the water, moved the sprinkler, and turned the water on again. He continued toward the back door while she went on rapidly. “Every time someone asks how we met he tells them the story of how I took the time to call in the report. He admired I was such a conscientious citizen. Says it’s one of my best traits. He claims he fell in love with me on the phone. Then he said it seemed like fate since he’d seen me in person just the week before. He thinks I’m different. A cut above, he says.”

“Tricky.”

“You bet.”

The back door opened. Her husband came in, pausing to wipe his feet on the mat before he entered. Nice-looking guy. He was in his fifties with steel gray hair and blue eyes, his lineage probably Dutch or Scandinavian. He was tall and lean in a well-knit frame, without an ounce of fat. He wore street clothes—tan dress pants, a dark blue dress shirt, and a tie with a pattern of blue and tan. He had his badge on his belt. I wondered what his job was after twenty years with the SO. He’d already removed his gun and his holster, which he’d probably locked in the trunk of his car. “What’s tricky?”