Kinsey and Me (12 page)

The house on the other side of the Grissoms’ was dark.

I scanned the area, and on impulse tried the house directly behind the Grissoms’,
across an alleyway. The woman who answered the door was in her eighties and anxious
for company.

“I’m from an insurance company here in town. I’m doing a report about your neighbors,
the Grissoms. Your name is?”

“Mrs. Peterson. He crossed over, you know, in a fall from the roof. Not that she gives
a hoot.”

“Is that right,” I said. Before I got my first question out, she was telling everything
she knew.

“Well, you know, they quarreled so frightfully,” she said, and rolled her eyes, hand
against her cheek in a comic imitation of scandalized sensibilities.

“Nooo. I had no idea,” I said in disbelief. “Did you happen to be home at the time
he fell?”

“Oh, honey, I’m always home. I don’t go anywhere now that Teddy’s dead.”

“Your husband?”

“My dog. I just seemed to lose heart once he passed away. At any rate, I was sitting
in my little den upstairs, by the window where the light is good. I was doing cross-stitch,
which can ruin your eyesight, even with glasses as good as these new bifocals of mine. . . .”
She took them off and held them to the light, then put them back on again.

“You have a view of the Grissoms’ house from up there?” I cut in, trying to keep her
on track.

“Oh, yes. The view is perfect. Come on upstairs and you can see for yourself.”

I shrugged to myself and followed her dutifully, wondering if this was going to be
another dead end. People who spend too much time alone will sometimes talk your ear
off. She seemed all right, alert and well oriented. For all I knew, though, she might
be the neighborhood crackpot. We reached a small den at the rear of the house, and
she showed me the window, which looked right out at the Grissoms’ house at a distance
of perhaps one hundred yards.

“Did you happen to notice him working on the roof?” I asked.

“Certainly. I watched him for an hour,” she replied matter-of-factly.

I held my breath, almost afraid to prompt her.

She frowned. “I thought it was real odd he’d get up there in the rain,” she remarked.
“Why would anybody do that?”

“I heard there was a leak,” I said.

“But that doesn’t explain what that redheaded woman was doing up there too.”

I could feel the hair rise on the back of my neck. “What redhead?”

“Well, I don’t know who she was.”

“But she was actually on the roof?”

“She crawled right out the attic window,” she said comfortably.

“Mrs. Peterson, did you mention this to the police?”

“They never asked. I didn’t want to cause trouble, so I kept my mouth shut. I thought
if they were curious, they’d come around just like you. Now, you know, the whole thing’s
died down, and I don’t think anybody even suspects.”

“Suspects what?”

“That she pushed him.”

“Mrs. Grissom did?”

“Not her. The redhead. She slipped around the far side of the chimney, where he was
removing the tile. She gave him a push, and off he tumbled. Never made a sound. Too
surprised, I guess.”

“And you saw all this?”

“As plain as day.”

“Across both yards with the sky overcast?” I said skeptically.

“Yes, indeed. I had my little opera glasses trained on the roof.”

“Opera glasses?” I felt like I was suffering from echolalia, but I was so astonished,
I couldn’t manage much else.

“I watch everybody with those,” she said, as if I should have known. She showed me
the binoculars and I had a peep myself. Wow, the chimney looked like it was two feet
away.

“What happened then?”

“Well, the woman crawled back in the window and drove off. She had a little white
Mercedes with a scratch down the side. She was parked in the alley right out back.
That’s the last I saw of her.”

“Did you catch the license number?”

“Not from this angle. I’m up too high.”

“Why didn’t you call the police at the time?”

“Oh, no. Not me. No, ma’am. If that woman had any idea what I’d seen, I’d be next
on the list. I may be old, but I’m not dumb! And don’t think I’ll repeat this story
to the police, because I won’t. They should have asked me all this when it happened.
I’d have told ’em then. I’m not going to do it now that she’s feeling safe and has
her story down pat. Absolutely not.”

At that point she decided she’d said enough, and I couldn’t get another word out of
her, coax as I might.

I went straight over to the police station and had a chat with Lieutenant Dolan in
Homicide. He listened attentively, but his attitude was plain. He was not unwilling
to reopen the matter, if I’d just bring him a shred of proof. The cops in Santa Teresa
take a dim view of hearsay evidence, especially in a case where they’ve already decided
no crime was committed. Proving murder, and then proving insurance was the motive,
is exceedingly difficult. If I could give him corroborating evidence, he’d see what
he could do. Otherwise all we had was Mrs. Peterson’s word for what went on, and at
this point she might well deny everything. It was frustrating, but there was nothing
he could do.

I went back to the office.

As I stood in the corridor, searching through my handbag for my keys, I heard someone
call my name. “Well, Kinsey! Isn’t this a surprise!”

I looked up to see the secretary of the book club coming down the hall. She was really
quite an elegant little woman, hair perfectly coiffed, nails freshly done. I wondered
if she’d spot the
KINSEY MILLHONE INVESTIGATIONS
in big brass letters on my door. Automatically I eased myself toward the California
Fidelity offices next door, hoping to redirect her attention. I hadn’t exactly lied
to the ladies, but I hadn’t really told them the truth, either, and I didn’t want
Susie Grissom to find out what I was really up to.

“Hello, Jenny. What are you doing here?”

“I’ve just been to the dentist upstairs,” she said, glancing at the California Fidelity
logo. “Is this the company where you work? Well, isn’t that nice. I’m just so pleased
I ran into you. We’ve scheduled a special meeting tomorrow night, and we were hoping
you could come, but nobody had your home phone. Here, I’ll just make a quick note
of the address and the time. It’s at my house, and everybody’s bringing cookies, so
don’t you forget.” She jotted the information on a scrap of paper and handed it to
me.

“What’s the occasion?”

She lowered her voice. “We’re having a speaker, and the subject is murder. Won’t that
be fun?”

Actually I thought it would.

What I pondered for the rest of the day was the notion of that redhead on the roof.
Of course, the woman might have been Susie Grissom in a wig, despite everybody’s swearing
she was at the meeting of the mystery book club. It might have been somebody else,
too, but in that case, how did the redhead know he’d be up there? How did she know
the house would be empty and the setup so perfect? And how’d she get in? More important,
what was her motive? On the surface, Susie Grissom had everything to gain, and until
now, I’d been dead certain she’d done it. Now I wasn’t sure what to think. Had she
had an accomplice?

I called Harry Grissom at his office. “Did your brother have a girlfriend, by any
chance? A redhead?”

“What?” he said, outraged. “Of course not! Who—?”

“Knock it off, Harry. Nobody said that. I’m on the track of something else.”

“Well, what’s the redhead got to do with it?”

“I’m not sure. I don’t want to go into detail at the moment, but somebody’s linked
a redhead with the circumstances of your brother’s death. I just wondered who it could
have been. Did he ever mention anyone with red hair? A coworker? An old flame? Some
friend of Susie’s?”

Harry considered briefly. “I don’t think so,” he said. “At least, not that I ever
heard about.”

“Who else might have benefited?”

“No one. Believe me, I checked out every possible angle before I came to you. Why
don’t you tell me what’s going on? Maybe I can help.”

“Let me try one thing first, and then we’ll have a chat.”

After work the next day I stopped at the bakery and bought some cookies, which I arranged
on a plate when I got home. I put a dab of jam in the center of each, lightly sifted
on some powdered sugar, and covered the plate with plastic wrap. Looked homemade to
me. At ten to seven I put on some clean blue jeans, a sweater, and my tennis shoes,
grabbed the plate of cookies, my handbag, and Jenny’s address. She lived close to
the heart of town, not that far from my office.

There were so many cars in the area, I had to park a block away. Jenny’s driveway
was crammed, and I had to guess that most of the women had already assembled. I’d
forgotten to ask who the speaker was. It might have been Lieutenant Dolan for all
I knew. I rang the bell, standing on the porch while I waited for someone to let me
in. The car parked right at the end of the walk was a little white Mercedes with a
scratch down the side. I’d been staring at it idly for thirty seconds before the significance
hit me. The front door opened right at that moment, and I gave a little jump, nearly
dropping my plate. Jenny greeted me cheerfully and ushered me in.

“Nice little Mercedes,” I said. “Whose is it?”

“Mine,” a voice said behind me. I turned and found myself shaking hands with the redhead
who was standing there.

“I’m Shannon,” she said. “Ooo, cold hands.”

I remembered then that we didn’t have a dentist in our building, and I wondered what
had really brought Jenny there the day before. In the living room I could see fifteen
or twenty women all seated on folding chairs. Several turned to look at me, their
faces blank and curious and dead. My stomach gave a sudden squeeze, and I knew I was
in trouble. We were playing an elaborate game and I was “it.”

“Uh, Jenny. Do you mind if I go to the potty real quick? I got a bladder the size
of a walnut,” I said.

“Surely. Right down here,” Jenny murmured as she led the way. “Now you hurry back.
I’m just putting out refreshments.”

“I won’t be a sec,” I said. I eased the bathroom door shut behind me and flipped the
lock. It was broken, of course—probably jammed. I tried the bathroom window, but it
wouldn’t budge. Call it precognition, intuition—anything you like. I knew as surely
as I was standing there that the women of the Santa Teresa Mystery Readers had all
pitched in. Susie Grissom had a problem, and they’d helped her out, providing her
a surrogate killer and an alibi. I wondered how many other little domestic conflicts
they’d resolved the same way. Meddlesome mothers-in-law, sassy stepkids. Tragic home
accidents that everybody felt so bad about. Or maybe Don Grissom was the first, and
they were waiting to see if they’d gotten away with it.

I was ice cold, and under my sweater I could feel sweat trickle down my side. Heart
pounding, I flushed the toilet and washed my hands, trying to maintain an outward
semblance of calm. They had to know I was a private eye, and they probably guessed
I was sniffing at the traces of Don Grissom’s death. Did they realize that I’d already
figured out what was going on? My only hope was to play dumb and wait for a chance
to escape.

As I came out of the bathroom Jenny was just passing with a large cut-glass bowl of
punch. How about right now? I thought.

“Careful,” she sang.

“Oh, I will be,” I sang back.

I shoved her so hard, the punch flew back in her face, the rim of the bowl banging
into her mouth, ice flying everywhere. She yelped, going down, taking two other women
with her, in a heap. The redhead grabbed me, but I kicked her in the shin, then decked
her with a punch that caught her on the jaw. I pulled a side table over, took off
toward the kitchen, and yanked open the back door. Behind me, I could hear shrieks
and the clatter of heels. I leapt off the porch and tore around the side of the house.
In two bounds I scrambled up the neighbor’s fence and dropped into the next yard.
I took two more fences in succession, heading through another yard and out to the
street beyond.

It was fully dark by then, but the streetlights were on and I could see well enough.
I glanced back in time to see two women drop over the fence behind me, toting baseball
bats. They meant business! Even at a distance of half a block, I could hear several
cars start up, and I knew they’d be bearing down on me soon. Headlights flashed around
the corner toward me, and I doubled my speed, feet flying as I raced across the street.

I could hear someone coming up behind me, breathing hard, and I cranked up my pace
again. Images clicked through my brain like still photographs. Dark houses. No foot
traffic. No help. A car had pulled up ahead of me at the corner, four doors hanging
open now as the occupants ran toward me. I didn’t have breath to waste on calling
for help, but if somebody didn’t come to my assistance soon, I was one dead chick.
They’d pound me unconscious and toss me off a bridge, load me on a boat and dump me
in the sea, hack me up and keep me in their freezers until they figured out what to
do next. The whole street seemed to thunder with the sound of running feet. I caught
a glimpse of Susie Grissom coming up on my right. I straight-armed her like a fullback
and knocked her off balance. With an “ooomph!” she went down, but two more women took
her place, and I sensed a third angling in from the rear.

My lungs were hot and I was gasping for air, but I was beginning to recognize the
area and a plan was taking shape. I turned the corner, cutting left. I poured on the
speed, heading for the lights I could see straight ahead. My brain felt disconnected,
processing information at a leisurely rate while I ran for dear life. I was on Floresta
now, a street I knew well. Just ahead, I could see four matching cars parked at the
curb. Black-and-whites. Hot damn, I thought. The building behind them, which blazed
now with lights, belonged to my beloved Santa Teresa Police. The members of the Santa
Teresa Mystery Readers must have realized it, too, because I sensed that my pursuers
were peeling away. By the time I reached the station house, there was no one left,
and I flew up the front steps on winged feet, uncertain if I was laughing or crying
when I finally burst through the doors.