V is for Vengeance (Kinsey Millhone 22)

I was already thinking about whizzing back over to the Hatch to catch a bite to eat before the kitchen closed for the night. I returned my focus to the job at hand. “Where did she do her banking?”

“No idea. I never saw her write a check.”

“Did she cover her share of the living expenses?”

“Sure, but she paid me in cash.”

“No checking account?”

“Not as far as I know. She might have had a checkbook in her purse, but the cops still have that and I doubt they’d provide us an inventory.”

“Did she pitch in on groceries?”

“When she was in town. I covered the household because my name’s on the mortgage and I have to pay water and electric whether she’s here or not.”

“What about when you went out to dinner?”

“I’m old-school. I don’t believe a lady should pay. If I invited her for a meal, it was my treat.”

“Did she explain her reliance on cash? Seems quirky to me.”

“She said she got into debt at one point, overdrawing her account, and the only way she could curb her spending was to switch to all cash.”

“What about credit card statements?”

“No cards.”

“Not even a credit card for gas when she was on the road?”

“Not that I ever saw.”

“How about telephone bills? Surely, she made business calls on days she worked from home.”

He considered the question. “You’re right. I should have thought of that myself. I’ll pull the phone bills for the months she was living here and mark any numbers I don’t recognize.”

“Don’t worry about it until I’ve checked the house in San Luis. That might be a gold mine of information.”

“Anything else I can be doing?”

“You could put a notice in the newspapers—the Dispatch, the San Francisco Chronicle, the San Luis Obispo Tribune, and the Chicago papers. “Seeking information about Audrey Vance . . .” Use my phone number in case we get crank calls, which are all too common in these situations.”

“And if no one comes forward?”

“Well, if the house in San Luis doesn’t net more than this, I’d say we were up shit creek.”

“But overall, this is good, right? I mean, so far, you haven’t uncovered any evidence she was a master criminal.”

“Ah. Funny you should say that. I forgot to mention my talk with the vice detective. Audrey’s been convicted of grand theft on at least five prior occasions, which suggests she was into retail theft up to her pretty little neck.”

“Saints preserve us,” he said, which was a phrase I hadn’t heard in years.

13

The drive from Santa Teresa to San Luis Obispo took an hour and forty-five minutes. I was on the road by 8:00 A.M., which put me in S.L.O. at 9:45 on the nose. The late-April weather was sunny and cool with a breeze blowing flirtatiously through the trees along the side of the road. Traffic was light. The winter months had generated sufficient rainfall to transform the low rolling hills from the usual honey and gold hues to a vibrant green. San Luis Obispo is the county seat, the home of Mission San Luis Obispo de Tolosa, the fifth in the string of twenty-one missions that dot the California coast from San Diego de Alcala, at the southernmost point, to San Francisco Solana de Sonoma, to the north. The charm of the town was completely lost on me. I’m single-minded when it comes to the hunt and I was interested in what I might find in Audrey’s house. The fact that I didn’t have a key in my possession only added to the fun. Maybe I’d have the opportunity to use the key picks Pinky had given me.

I left the 101 at Marsh Street, cleared the off-ramp, and pulled over to the curb. I’d tossed a city map on the passenger seat beside me and now I spent a few minutes getting my bearings. I was looking for Wood Lane, which the street index indicated was somewhere on the grid designated as J-8. I followed the coordinates, taking the dog-leg from Marsh to Broad Street, one of the main arteries through town. Closer to the airport in the southeastern section of the city, Broad became Edna Road. Wood Lane was an offshoot as delicate as an eyelash and just about that long.

The area was mixed use, industrial and agricultural. I could imagine a city planner or a developer many years before with vision enough to realize the land would be more valuable vacant than given over to subdivisions. A few single-family dwellings had cropped up in what was otherwise a flat countryside. Aside from the fields under cultivation for spring planting, the landscape was hard-packed dirt, sparse vegetation, and the occasional fence. Here and there I could see an outcropping of boulders as big as sandstone sedans. In the absence of trees, the wind swept across the bare acreage, throwing up eddies of dust.