J is for Judgment (Kinsey Millhone 10)

I took a steaming hot shower to loosen my bronchial passages and emerged from the bathroom feeling somewhat restored. I changed my sheets, emptied trash, ate a breakfast of fruit and yogurt, and went into the office with a file folder full of clippings. I found a parking space down the street, hoofed the block and a half, then hit the stairs. My usual pace is two stairs at a time, but today I had to pause at every landing on the way up. The downside of fitness, which takes years to achieve, is how quickly it vanishes—almost instantly. After three days of inactivity I was back to square one, huffing and puffing like a rank amateur. The shortness of breath inspired a renewed round of coughs. I entered through the side door and paused to blow my nose.

As I passed Ida Ruth’s desk, I stopped for a chat. When I first met Lonnie’s secretary, I found the double name unwieldy. I tried shortening it to Ida, but I found it didn’t suit. The woman is in her mid-thirties, a robust outdoor type who looks as if a day of typing would drive her round the bend. Her hair is white blond, combed away from her face as if blown by a strong wind. Her complexion is sun-scrubbed, her lashes white, her eyes an ocean blue. Her clothing is conservative: straight medium-length skirts, boxy jackets in muted tones, her blouses a boring succession of the long-sleeved, button-down sort. She looks like she’d prefer to be paddling a kayak or climbing the face of a rock in some national park. I’ve heard that in her spare time she does precisely that—backpacking trips to the High Sierras, fifteen-mile day hikes in the local mountain range. She’s undeterred by ticks, steep inclines, venomous snakes, poison oak, sticks, sharp rocks, mosquitoes, or any of the other joyous aspects of nature I avoid at all costs.

She flashed a smile when she saw me. “You’re back. How was Mexico? You turned orange, I see.”

I was in the process of blowing my nose, my cheeks suffused with pink from the climb to the third floor. “Great. I had a ball, picked up a cold on the plane coming back. I’ve been in bed for two days. That’s my faux tan,” I said.

She opened her pencil drawer and took out a mint dish filled with big white pills. “Vitamin C. Take a handful. It’ll help.”

Dutifully I plucked up a pill, which I held to the light. It was easily an inch long and looked like it would require surgical removal if it got lodged going down.

“Go on. Help yourself. And try zinc if your throat hurts. How was Viento Negro? Did you get up to see the ruins?”

I picked up another couple of vitamin C’s. “Pretty good. A little windy. What ruins?”

“You’re kidding. The ruins are famous. There was a huge volcano that blew …oh, I don’t know …in 1902? It was something like that. In a matter of hours, the entire town was buried in a blanket of ash.”

“I saw the ash,” I said helpfully.

Her telephone rang and she took the call while I continued across the hall, pausing at the water cooler to fill a paper cup. I tossed down the vitamin C, adding an antihistamine for good measure. Better living through chemistry. I moved on to my office, unlocked the door, and opened one of the windows, letting in some fresh air after the week away. There was a pile of mail on my desk: a few checks for accounts receivable and the rest of it junk. I checked my answering machine for messages—there were six—and I spent the next thirty minutes getting life in order. I made up a file for Wendell Jaffe and tucked in the newspaper articles about his son’s escape and recapture.

At 9:00 I put a call through to the Santa Teresa Police Department. I asked for Sergeant Robb, belatedly aware that my heart had begun to thump. I hadn’t seen Jonah for a year by my calculation. I’m not sure our relationship could ever have been classified as an “affair.” At the time I first met him, he was separated from his wife, Camilla. She’d walked out on the marriage, taking both their daughters, leaving Jonah with a freezer full of home-cooked meals that she’d placed in recycled TV dinner trays. In roughly three hundred foil-wrapped tins, she’d assembled an entrée and two vegetables. The directions taped to the top, always said the same thing: “Bake in 350 oven for 30 minutes. Remove foil and eat.” Like he was really going to try to eat with the foil in place. Jonah didn’t seem to think that was weird, which should have been a clue. In theory, he was a free man. In truth, she kept him on a tight rein. She’d come back at intervals, insisting that the two of them see a therapist. She’d find a new marriage counselor for each reconciliation, thus assuring that no real progress was ever made. If they came anywhere close to working out a relationship, she would split again. I finally decided that I had troubles enough, so I removed myself from the situation. Not that either of them seemed to notice. They’d been together since the seventh grade, when both were thirteen years old. One day I would read about them in the local paper, celebrating the wedding anniversary where etiquette suggests gifts made of recycled aluminum.