N is for Noose (Kinsey Millhone 14)

"Same way I'm telling you. I figured it must have been a cop he knew."

"What about Toth's ex? Did you tell him how to get in touch with her?"

"Sure did. The woman had a regular parade coming through the door."

"Hasn't anybody suggested you shouldn't be quite so free passing out information?"

"Lady, I'm not the guardian of public safety. Some cop comes in looking for information, I don't want to get in his way."

"What about the warrant? Was that local?"

"Can't answer that. Peck doesn't pay attention to these items the same way I do. He's got the right idea we're here to cooperate. Place like this, you want the cops on your team. Fight breaks out, you want action when you hit 9-1-1."

"Not to mention help with all the bodies afterward."

"Now you're getting it."

"Could we just back up a minute and see if I got this straight? Alfie Toth was here two weeks, from sometime in the middle of May."

"Right."

"Then a plainclothes detective came in with a warrant for his arrest. Alfie heard about it and, not surprisingly, checked out later that day. The detective called back and Peck told him how to get in touch with Alfie Toth's ex-wife."

"Sure. Peck figured that's where Toth went," Estes said.

"Then around June Fifth, Tom Newquist came in and you passed the same information along to him."

"Hey, I don't show favorites, is my motto. That's why I'm giving it to you. Why say yes to one and no to someone else is the way I look at it."

"You haven't given me anything yet," I said.

He reached for a piece of scratch paper and jotted down a woman's name, address, and telephone number, apparently off the top of his head. He passed it across the counter.

I took the paper, noting at a glance the Perdido address. "Sounds like Alfie Toth was suddenly very popular."

"Yep."

"And you have no idea why?"

"Nope."

"What's Peck's first name?"

"Leland."

"Is he in the phone book if I need to talk to him?"

Estes shook his head. "Number's unlisted. Now that I wouldn't give out without getting his permission."

I thought about it for a moment, but couldn't think what other ground I should cover. I could always check with him later if something else occurred to me. "Well. Thanks for the help. You've been very generous and I appreciate that." I reached for my umbrella, shifting my handbag from my right shoulder to my left so I could manage both.

"Don't you want to hear the rest of it?"

I hesitated. "What rest?"

"The guy's dead. Murdered. Some backpacker found his body up near Ten Pines couple months ago. January Thirteen. Reason I remember is it's my great-aunt's birthday. Death. Birth. Doesn't take a wizard to make that connection. I got it locked right in here."

I stared at him, remembering a brief mention of it in the paper. "That was Alfie Toth?"

"Yep. Coroner figured he'd been dead six, seven months-since right about the time everybody came looking for him-including the fellow with the warrant and your Tom Newquist. Somebody must have caught up with him. Too bad Peck's never bothered to develop his skills. He might've been the state's star witness."

"To what?"

"Whatever comes up."

I sat in my car, trying to figure out what this meant. Everybody had wanted to talk to Alfie Toth until he turned up dead. I'd have to search back issues of the local newspaper, but as nearly as I remembered, there was precious little information. Decomposed remains had been found in a remote area of the Los Padres National Forest, but I hadn't registered the name. There was no mention of cause of death, but the presumption was of foul play. The police had been stingy with the details, but perhaps they'd told the papers everything they knew. I hadn't been aware of any other reference to the matter and I'd thought no more of it. The Angeles and Los Padres national forests are both dumping grounds for homicide victims, whose corpses one imagines littering the hiking trails like bags of garbage.

I dutifully fired up the VW and drove the eight blocks to the public library, where I turned up the relevant paragraph in a copy of the Santa Teresa Dispatch for January 15.

BODY FOUND IN LOS PADRES

THAT OF TRANSIENT

The decomposed remains discovered by a hiker in the Los Padres National Forest January 13 have been identified as a transient, Alfred Toth, 45, according to the Santa Teresa County Sheriff's Department. The body was found Monday in the rugged countryside five miles east of Manzanita Mountain. Detectives identified Toth through dental work after linking the body to a missing-persons report filed by his ex-wife, Perdido resident Olga Toth. The case is being investigated as a homicide. Anyone with information is asked to call Detective Clay Boyd at the Sheriff's Department.