I is for Innocent (Kinsey Millhone 9)

"From what I hear, David Barney's former cellmate claims he as good as confessed once the verdict came down."

"You're talking about Curtis McIntyre. Guy's in the county jail, and if you want him, you better make it quick. He gets out this week after doing ninety days on a battery," she said. "Did you hear about Morley Shine?"

"Lonnie mentioned that last night, but I didn't hear the details. How'd it happen?"

"What I heard he just keeled over dead. He'd been in bed with the same damn flu, but I guess he was feeling better. He was having dinner Sunday night? You know Morley. He hated to miss a meal. Got up from the table and dropped in his tracks."

"He had heart trouble?"

"For years, but he never took it serious. I mean, he was under doctor's care, but it never seemed to faze him. He was always joking about his ticker."

"That's too bad," I said. "I'm really sorry to see him go."

"Me, too. I can't believe how terrible I feel. Roll call somebody told me Morley Shine died? I busted out crying. I swear to God, I surprised myself. It's not like we were close. We used to talk over at the courthouse if I was waiting to testify on a case. He was always hanging around there, chain-smoking Camels, munching Fritos or something from the vending machine. It bums me out all those old guys are dropping dead. How come they didn't take better care of themselves?"

Her phone rang and she was quickly caught up in another matter. I gave her a quick wave and moved away from her desk. In essence, she'd told me what I'd wanted to know. The cops were convinced David Barney was guilty. That didn't make it true, but it was another precinct heard from.

I stopped off in Records and asked Emerald if I could borrow the phone. I called Ida Ruth and had a quick chat with her, asking her to set up an interview for me with Curtis McIntyre at the jail later in the morning. Visiting hours are ordinarily limited to Saturday afternoons, 1:00 to 3:00, but since I was working as Lonnie Kingman's representative, I could talk to him at my convenience. Oh, the joys of the legitimate endeavor. I'd spent so many years skulking through the bushes, I could hardly get used to it.

With that taken care of, I asked her for Morley Shine's home address. Morley had lived in Colgate, the township bordering Santa Teresa on the north. Colgate consists largely of "lite" industry and tract housing with assorted businesses lined up along the main street. Where the area was once farmland and citrus groves, the uninhabited countryside has now given way to service stations, bowling alleys, funeral homes, drive-in theaters, motels, fast-food restaurants, carpet outlets, and supermarkets, with no visible attention paid to aesthetics or architectural unity.

Morley and his wife, Dorothy, owned a modest three-bedroom home off South Peterson in one of the older housing developments between the highway and the mountains. My guess was the house had gone up in the fifties before the builders really got clever about differentiating exteriors. Here, the Swiss-chalet-style trim was painted either dirt brown or blue, the two-car garages designed so they stuck out in front, overpowering the entrances. Wooden shutters matched the wooden flower boxes planted with drooping pansies, which on closer inspection turned out to be entirely fake. The whole neighborhood seemed dispirited, from the patchy lawns to the cracked concrete driveways where every second house had a car up on blocks. Somehow the Christmas decorations only made things worse. Most of the houses were trimmed now in multicolored lights. One of Morley's neighbors seemed to be in competition with the house across the street. Both had covered every available stretch of yard with seasonal items, ranging from plastic Santas to plastic wise men.

This was now Tuesday morning. Morley had died on Sunday night, and while I was uneasy about intruding, it seemed important to retrieve what I could of the paperwork before some well-meaning relative went through and trashed everything he had. I knocked at the front door and waited. Morley had never cared much for detail and I noticed his house had the same slapdash quality. The blue paint on the porch rail, uneven to begin with, had begun to peel with age. I had the depressing sensation of having been here before. I could picture the shoddy interior: cracked tile on the kitchen counters, buckling vinyl tile on the floors, wall-to-wall carpeting trampled into traffic patterns that could never be cleaned of soil. The aluminum window frames would be warped, the bathroom fixtures corroded. A battered green four-door Mercury had been pulled off onto the side grass. I pegged it as Morley's, though I wasn't sure why. It was just the sort of clunker that he'd have found appealing. He had probably purchased it new in the year oughty-ought and would have driven it resolutely until the engine died. A new red Ford compact was parked in the driveway, the frame on the license plate advertising a local car rental company; probably someone from out of town…