V is for Vengeance (Kinsey Millhone 22)

The only item of note—and this made me sit up straight—was a squib on page 6 in a section that listed brief reports of local crime. This was the daily summary of chicaneries too minor to warrant full-on reporting. Most were simple: a car had been jacked up and the tires removed; a wallet had been snatched from a woman on lower State Street. What caught my eye was a wee paragraph that indicated that a homeowner, returning after a weekend away, discovered someone had broken into her house and removed a fire safe, previously bolted to the closet floor. Abigail Upshaw, age twenty-six, estimated her losses (which included jewelry, cash, silverware, and assorted items of sentimental value) at approximately three thousand dollars.

Ah. Abbie Upshaw was Len Priddy’s girlfriend, and I thought it safe to assume Pinky was the one who’d burgled the place. According to what he’d told me, he’d gone in search of the damning photographs of Dodie, which he must have thought Len was hiding at his place. That jaunt was fruitless so Pinky had turned his attention to the girlfriend. I still had no idea who was featured in the second set of photographs or what made them so priceless as barter, but maybe I’d find out in due course.

Almost subliminally, I heard the squeaking of my front gate and I looked up from the paper. The arrow on my inner sensor whipped into the red zone. I set the paper aside and went to the front door, where I flipped on the porch light and looked out through the porthole. Marvin Striker appeared on my doorstep, looking impish and ill at ease.

I opened the door. “What are you doing here?”

“I need to talk to you.”

“How’d you know where I lived?”

“I asked Diana Alvarez. She knows everything. You might keep that in mind in case something comes up. May I come in?”

“Why not?” I said. I stepped aside, allowing him to enter.

“Mind if I sit down?”

I gestured at the seating in my wee living room. His choices were the sofabed or one of my two royal blue director’s chairs. He choose one chair and I sat down in the other, which caused both our canvas seats to make embarrassing noises.

I wasn’t feeling cranky with the man, but I didn’t think I should act like we were still the same good buddies we’d been before he’d tried to fire my ass. “What can I do for you?”

“I owe you an apology.”

“Really.”

He reached into his inner suit-coat pocket and pulled out a windowed envelope with a yellow strip across the bottom. The return address in the upper left-hand corner of the envelope was the Wells Fargo Bank in San Luis Obispo, complete with a tiny stagecoach. I took the envelope and read the name of the recipient. Audrey Vance. The yellow strip indicated a change of address from the little house in San Luis to Marvin’s in Santa Teresa. Vivian Hewitt had apparently filled out a form at the post office, forwarding Audrey’s mail to him as I’d asked her to do. He’d already torn open the envelope.

I said, “May I look?”

“That’s why I brought it. Help yourself.”

The statement was subdivided into numerous blocks of information, some in bold print, including phone numbers available for those who wanted to conduct a conversation in English, Spanish, or Chinese. Other nationalities were screwed. There were also columns giving dollar figures for total assets, total liabilities, available credit, interest, dividends, and other income. All of Audrey’s transactions had been itemized, deposits going back to the first of the year. To date, she had $4,000,944.44 in her account. No withdrawals. I was impressed by how quickly the minimal interest on four million added up.

“I don’t think she got that much money managing wholesale accounts,” he remarked.

“Probably not.”

“I wondered if you’d consider taking up your investigation where you left off?”

“Well, now, Marvin, that presents a problem, and I’ll tell you what it is. Your good friend and confidant Len Priddy threatened to hurt me very badly if I pursued the case.”

A flicker of a smile played across his mouth as though he was waiting for the punch line to a joke. “What do you mean, he threatened you?”

“He said he’d kill me.”

“But not literally. He didn’t actually say the words . . .”

“He did.”

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a wash of light slide across the windows looking out on the street. I’d closed the lower set of shutters, which were hinged and had a little stick in the middle that adjusted the slats at an up slant, a down slant, or completely closed. The bottom bank was fully closed, but I’d left the uppers open. A car had come to a stop outside, double-parked by my reckoning since I could hear the engine idle.