W is for Wasted (Kinsey Millhone 23)

“This is me,” I said, raising my hand.

He turned his attention to his guitar, trying a chord or two. In a whispery falsetto, he put together two lines of a song he was apparently composing extemporaneously. “When your daddy dies, it should come as no surprise . . .” He stopped and tried the line again. “When your daddy dies, you have to realize . . .” He shook his head, holding the guitar against him like a shield.

I said, “When did you last see your father?”

“September. A year ago, I forget the date. I heard a knock at the door and nearly fell over when I saw who it was. You knew he went to prison?”

“Someone told me about it.”

“Man was a loser, big time. What’re you going to do?” The latter wasn’t meant as a question. It was verbal filler.

“I can see why you were shocked when he showed up. Did he tell you why he was released?”

“Said his new lawyer punched all kinds of holes in the case and insisted they submit blood and semen for DNA testing. No match on any of it, so they had to let him go.”

“He was a very lucky man finding someone who’d go to bat for him.”

“Yeah, right. Want my take on it?”

“Sure.”

“Just because they let him out doesn’t mean he was innocent.”

I blinked. The statement was the last thing in the world I expected to hear from him. “That’s an odd point of view.”

“Why? You think guilty people don’t get away with murder?”

“On occasion, of course they do, but he was exonerated. There wasn’t any evidence that tied him to the crime.”

“Except Cates, the other guy.”

“Herman Cates knew he was dying and he admitted he’d implicated your father just because he could. His accomplice was someone else altogether.”

“So I heard,” he said in that tone that screamed of disbelief. “At any rate, I appreciate your going to so much trouble for someone you never met.”

“I thought it was the least I could do . . .” I was going to add “under the circumstances” but I stopped where I was. Ethan must have picked up on the missing words.

“How so?”

“I understand the two of you quarreled.”

“Says who?”

“A friend of his in Santa Teresa.”

“I wouldn’t call it a quarrel. More like a tiff.”

“He told his friend there was an ugly scene.”

“What was I supposed to do? The guy was drunk. So what else is new? Things might have got nasty, but you know how it is. Everybody calms down and life goes on.”

“You weren’t in touch with him afterward?”

“Wasn’t possible. The man lives on the street and he doesn’t have a phone. We didn’t even know for sure where he was headed when he left.”

“Were you aware he’d come into money?”

“Well, yeah. That’s what he said. We didn’t talk about it, but I got the gist. He said he filed a lawsuit.”

“He sued the state . . .”

“Right, right. Because his name was cleared. I remember now.” There was a pause while he plucked the D string and adjusted the tuning. He addressed his next question to the machine heads. “He die with a will or without?”

“With.”

“What happened to the money? I hope you’re not going to tell me he blew it.”

“No, no. It’s still in the bank.”

He smiled briefly. “That’s a relief. Man’s a bum. Never did anything right in his life. So what’s the process in a situation like this?”

“Process?”

“What happens next? Are there forms to fill out?”

I experienced a momentary jolt and I could feel the heat rise in my face. I’d just caught a flash of how this looked from his perspective. Now that I’d delivered the bad news, he thought I’d be telling him about the money he was coming into. He and his sisters. His asking what was to happen next was procedural. He hadn’t brought up the subject sooner because he didn’t want to sound greedy. Maybe he thought I’d been beating around the bush out of delicacy. Given the news of his father’s death, he didn’t want to leap on the pecuniary matters without first giving the impression of filial respect.

“He named me executor of his estate.”

“You?”

I shrugged.

Ethan thought about that briefly. “Well, I guess the job’s largely clerical, isn’t it? Filing papers and stuff like that?”