J is for Judgment (Kinsey Millhone 10)

There was a time, long before the earth’s folding caused the mountains to buckle upward, when the Perdido basin was a hundred miles long and much of California was a lowland covered by vast Eocene seas. Back then this whole region was under water as far as the Arizona border. The petroleum deposits were actually derived from marine organisms, the sediment, in places, nearly thirteen thousand feet thick. There are times when I feel the hairs rising up along my arms at the vision of a world so wildly different from ours. I imagine the changes, millions of years speeded up like time-lapse photography, in which the land heaves and snaps, thrusting, plunging, and shifting in a thunderous convulsion.

I glanced out at the horizon. Twenty-four of the thirty-two platforms along the California coast are near Santa Teresa and Perdido counties, nine of them within three miles of shore. I’d heard the dispute about whether those old platforms could withstand a big 7.0-magnitude trembler. The experts were divided. On one side of the debate were the geologists and representatives of the state Seismic Safety Commission, who kept pointing out that the oldest off-shore oil platforms were built between 1958 and 1969 before the petroleum industry adopted uniform design codes. Reassuring us of our comfort and security were spokesmen for the oil companies who owned the rigs. Gosh, it was baffling. I tried to picture the effect: all those rigs collapsing, oil spewing into the ocean in a gathering storm of black. I thought about the current contamination of beaches, raw sewage spilling into oceans and streams, the hole in the ozone, forests being stripped, the toxic-waste dumps, the merry plunder of mankind added to the drought and the famine that nature dishes up annually as a matter of course. It’s hard to know what’s actually going to get us first. Sometimes I think we should just blow the whole planet and get it over with. It’s the suspense that’s killing me.

I passed a stretch of state beach and rounded the point, sliding into the town of Perdido from its westernmost edge. I took the first Perdido off ramp, cruising through the downtown business district while I got my bearings. The wide main street was edged with diagonal head-in parking—lots of pickup trucks and recreational vehicles in evidence. A convertible proceeded slowly down the street behind me with its car radio booming. The combination of brass instruments and thunderous bass reminded me of the thumping passage of a Fourth of July parade. The windows on every other business seemed to be decked with handsome canvas awnings, and I wondered if the mayor had a brother-in-law in the business.

The housing tract where Dana Jaffe now lived was probably developed in the seventies when Perdido enjoyed a brief real estate boom. The house itself was a story and a half, charcoal-gray stucco with white wood trim. Most of the homes in the neighborhood had three and four vehicles parked in the driveways, suggesting a population more dense than the “single-family residential” zoning implied. I pulled into the drive behind a late-model Honda.

Twilight was deepening. Zinnias and marigolds had been planted in clusters along the walk. In the dim illumination from an ornamental fixture, I could see that the shrubs had been neatly trimmed, the grass mowed, and some effort made to distinguish the house from its mirror-image neighbors. Trellising had been added along the fence line. The honeysuckle vines trained up the latticework lent at least the illusion of privacy, perfuming the air with incredible sweetness. As I rang the bell, I extracted a business card from the depths of my handbag. The front porch was stacked high with moving cartons, all packed and sealed. I wondered where she was headed.

After a pause, Dana Jaffe answered the door with a telephone receiver tucked in the crook of her neck. She’d toted the instrument across the room, trailing twenty-five feet of cord. She was the kind of woman I’ve always found intimidating, with her honey-colored hair, her smoothly sculpted cheekbones, her gaze cool and level. She had a straight, narrow nose, a strong chin, and a slight overbite. A glint of very white teeth peeped out from full lips that, at rest, wouldn’t quite close. She put the face of the receiver against her chest, muffling our conversation for the person on the other end. “Yes?”

I held out my card so she could read my name. “I’d like to talk to you.”

She glanced at the card with a little frown of puzzlement before she handed it back. She held up an index finger, making an apologetic face as she gestured me in. I crossed the threshold and stepped into the living room just ahead of her, my gaze following the path of the telephone cord into a dining room that had been converted into office space. Apparently she did some kind of wedding consulting. I could see bridal magazines stacked everywhere. A bulletin board that hung above the desk was covered with photographs, sample invitations, illustrations of wedding bouquets, and articles about honeymoon cruises. A schedule with fifteen to twenty names and dates indicated upcoming nuptials that she needed to keep abreast of.