U Is for Undertow (Kinsey Millhone 21)

“Me, too. At least in part,” I said. “Did you have a chance to look at the old files?”

“Can’t be done. I talked to the chief and he says the case notes are sealed. Once the FBI stepped in, they put everything under lock and key.”

“Even after all this time? It’s been twenty years.”

“Twenty-one to be precise, and the answer is, definitely. You know how it goes. The case is federal and the file’s still active. If the details are leaked then any clown off his meds can walk into the department and claim responsibility.”

I caught a familiar racket out on the street. “Hang on a sec.”

I put my hand over the mouthpiece and listened, picking up the hydraulic grinding, wheeze, and hiss of a garbage truck approaching from down the block. Shit! Garbage day. The week before, I’d forgotten to take out my trash and my wastebaskets were maxed out.

“I gotta go. I’ll call you later.”

“Vaya con Dios.”

I hung up in haste and headed down the hall to the kitchenette, where I grabbed a plastic bag from a carton under the sink. I did a quick round of the wastebaskets—kitchen, bathroom, and office—shaking trash into the plastic bag until it sagged from the weight. I scurried out the back door, tossed the bag in my trash bin, and rolled it down the walkway on one side of the bungalow. By the time I reached the street, the garbage truck was idling at the curb and I just managed to catch the guy before he hopped back on. He paused long enough to add my contribution to the day’s haul. As the truck pulled away, I blew him a kiss and was rewarded with a wave.

I returned to my desk, congratulating myself on a job well done. Nothing makes a room look messier than a wastebasket full of trash. As I settled in my swivel chair, I glanced down and spotted the vellum envelope, which had apparently missed the plastic bag and now lay on the floor. I leaned over, picked it up, and stared at it. What was going on? Instead of happily winging its way to the county dump, the damn thing was back. I’m not superstitious by nature, but the envelope, coupled with Michael Sutton’s reference to his family estrangement, had set an old train of thought in motion.

I knew how treacherous and frail family bonds could be. My mother had been the eldest of five daughters born to my grandparents Burton Kinsey and Cornelia Straith LaGrand, known since as Grand. My parents had been jettisoned from the bosom of the family when my mother met my father and eloped with him four months later. She was eighteen at the time and came from money, albeit of the small-town sort. My father, Randy Millhone, was thirty-three years old and a mail carrier. In retrospect, it’s difficult to say which was worse in Grand’s eyes, his advanced age or his occupation. Apparently, she viewed civil servants right up there with career criminals as undesirable mates for her precious firstborn girl. Rita Cynthia Kinsey first clapped eyes on my father at her coming-out party, where my father was filling in as a waiter for a friend who owned the catering company. Their marriage created a rift in the family that had never healed. My Aunt Gin was the only one of her four sisters who sided with her, and she ended up raising me after my parents were killed in a car wreck when I was five.

You’d think I’d have been pleased to discover the existence of close kin. Instead, I was pissed off, convinced they’d known about me for years and hadn’t cared enough to seek me out. I was thirty-four when the first family overtures were made, and I counted their twenty-nine years’ silence as evidence of crass indifference for which I blamed Grand. I really didn’t have a quarrel with my aunts and cousins. I’d tossed them into the pit with Grand because it was simpler that way. I’ll admit it wasn’t fair, but I took a certain righteous satisfaction in my wholesale condemnation. For the past two or three years, I’d made a halfhearted attempt to modify my attitude, but it hadn’t really worked. I’m a Taurus. I’m stubborn by nature and I had my heels dug in. I shoved the invitation in my shoulder bag. I’d deal with it later.

Sutton returned after twenty minutes with five crisp one-hundred-dollar bills, for which I wrote him a receipt. Once he was gone again, I locked the cash in my office safe. Since I’d be devoting Thursday to Sutton’s business, I sat down and did a rough draft of one of the client reports on my To Do list, figuring I might as well get one chore out of the way. By the time I’d finished, it was close to 4:00 and I decided to shut down for the day. One reason I’m self-employed is so I can do as I please without consulting anyone else.

I rescued my car from the semilegal parking spot I’d found earlier. My office is on a narrow side street barely one block long. For the most part, the surrounding blocks are posted No Parking, which means I have to be inventive in finding ways to squeeze my Mustang into any available space. I was due for a parking ticket, but I hadn’t gotten one yet.