X (Kinsey Millhone 24)

Teddy made three trips to the house, thinking she could walk in casually and remove the painting without attracting notice. Unfortunately, Ari had instructed the staff to usher her politely to the door, which is what they did. Of one thing she was certain—she could not let Ari know of her interest in the seascape or her suspicions about its pedigree.

She thought she had plenty of time to devise a plan, but then she learned the newlyweds had leased the house for a year to a couple from New York. Ari and Stella were taking a delayed honeymoon, after which they’d move into the contemporary home that Stella owned. Ari was apparently taking the opportunity to clear out the basement. His intention was to donate the bulk of the items to a local charity for the annual fund-raiser coming up in a month.

She’d have to act and she’d have to do it soon. The task she faced was not entirely unfamiliar. She’d stolen a painting once before, but nothing even close to one of this magnitude.

1

Santa Teresa, California, Monday, March 6, 1989. The state at large and the town of Santa Teresa in particular were nearing the midpoint of a drought that had slithered into view in 1986 and wouldn’t slither off again until March of 1991, when the “miracle rains” arrived. Not that we dared anticipate relief at the time. From our perspective, the pitiless conditions were upon us with no end in sight. Local reservoirs had shrunk, leaving a wide swath of dried mud as cracked as an alligator’s hide.

My professional life was in the same state—always worrisome when you are your sole financial support. Self-employment is a mixed bag. The upside is freedom. Go to work when you like, come home when you like, and wear anything you please. While you still have bills to pay, you can accept a new job or decline. It’s all up to you. The downside is uncertainty, the feast-or-famine mentality not everyone can tolerate.

My name is Kinsey Millhone. I’m a private detective by trade, doing business as Millhone Investigations. I’m female, thirty-eight years old, twice divorced, and childless, a status I maintain with rigorous attention to my birth control pills. Despite the shortage of new clients, I had a shitload of money in the bank, so I could afford to sit tight. My savings account had been plumped by an unexpected sum that dropped into my lap some six months before. I’d invested the major chunk of it in mutual funds. The remaining cash I kept in a money market account that I designated “untouchable.” Friends, on hearing about my windfall, viewed me as certifiable. “Forget about work. Why not travel and enjoy life?”

I didn’t give the question credence. At my age, retirement is out of the question, and even temporary idleness would have driven me insane. True, I could have covered my expenses for months to come with enough in reserve for a lavish trip abroad, except for the following impediments:

1. I’m miserly and cheap.

2. I don’t have a passport because I’ve never needed one. I had traveled to Mexico some years before, but all that was required in crossing the border then was proof of U.S. citizenship.

That aside, anyone who knows me will testify to how ill-suited I am to a life of leisure. When it comes to work, it isn’t so much what we do or how much we’re paid; it’s the satisfaction we take in doing it. In broad terms, my job entails locating witnesses and missing persons, following paper trails through the hall of records, sitting surveillance on insurance scammers, and sometimes tailing the errant spouse. My prime talent is snooping, which sometimes includes a touch of breaking and entering. This is entirely naughty of me and I’m ashamed to confide how much fun it can be, but only if I don’t get caught.

This is the truth about me and you might as well know it now. I’m passionate about all manner of criminals: killers, thieves, and mountebanks, the pursuit of whom I find both engaging and entertaining. Life’s cheaters are everywhere and my mission is to eradicate the lot of them. I know this speaks volumes about the paucity of my personal life, but that’s my nature in a nutshell.

My quest for law and order began in the first grade when I ventured into the cloakroom and surprised a classmate snitching a chocolate bar from my Howdy Doody lunch box. The teacher appeared at that very moment and caught the child with my candy in hand. I anticipated due process, but the sniveling little shit burst into tears, claiming I’d stolen it from her. She received no punishment at all while I was reprimanded for leaving my seat without raising my hand and asking to be excused. My teacher turned a deaf ear to my howls of protest. From that singular event, my notion of fair play was set, and, in sum, it is this: the righteous are struck down while the sticky-fingered escape. I’ve labored all my life to see that justice plays out the other way around.