Sue Grafton - E Is for Evidence

"Could you knock off the sarcasm?"

"That's my natural way of speaking ever since you left. It's real popular with men."

He rocked slightly on his heels, looking off across the yard. "I guess people don't get a second chance with you."

I didn't bother to respond to that.

He tried a new tack. "Look. I have a therapist named Elise. She was the one who suggested I clean up the unfin-ished business in my life. She thought maybe you might benefit, too."

"Oh, hey. That's swell. Give me her address and I'll write her a bread-and-butter note."

"Can I come in?"

"Jesus Christ, Daniel, of course not! Don't you get it yet? I haven't seen you for eight years and it turns out that's not long enough."

"How can you be so hostile after all this time? I don't feel bad about you."

"Why would you feel bad? I didn't do anything to you!"

A look of injury crossed his face and his bewilderment seemed genuine. There's a certain class of people who will do you in and then remain completely mystified by the depth of your pain. He shifted his weight. This apparently wasn't going as he thought it would. He reached up to pick at a wood splinter in the door frame above my head. "I didn't think you'd be bitter. That's not like you, Kinsey. We had some good years."

"Year. Singular. Eleven months and six days, to be exact. You might move your hand before I slam the door on it."

He moved his hand.

I slammed the door and went back to bed.

After a few minutes, I heard the gate squeak.

I thrashed about for a while, but it was clear I wouldn't get back to sleep. I got up and brushed my teeth, show-ered, shampooed my hair, shaved my legs. I used to have fantasies about his showing up. I used to invent long mono-logues in which I poured out my sorrow and my rage. Now I was wishing he'd come back again so I could do a better job of it. Being rejected is burdensome that way. You're left with emotional baggage you unload on everyone else. It's not just the fact of betrayal, but the person you become… usually not very nice. Jonah had survived my tartness. He seemed to understand it had nothing to do with him. He was so blunt himself that a little rudeness didn't bother him. For my part, I really thought I'd made my peace with the past until I came face to face with it.

I called Olive Kohler and made an appointment to see her later in the day. Then I sat down at my desk and typed up my notes. At noon, I decided to get some errands done. Daniel was sitting in a car parked just behind mine. He was slouched down in the passenger seat, his booted feet propped up on the dashboard, a cowboy hat tilted over his face. The car was a ten-year-old Pinto, dark blue, dented, rusted, and stripped of its hubcaps. The sheepskin car-seat covers looked like badly matted dog. A decal on the bumper indicated that the car was from Rent-A-Ruin.

Daniel must have heard the gate squeak as I came out. He turned his head, pushing his hat back lazily. He some-times affects that aw-shucks attitude. "Feeling better (Miss Kitty)?"

I unlocked my car and got in, started the engine and pulled away. I avoided the apartment for the rest of the day. I can't remember now half of what I did. Mostly I wasted time and resented the fact that I was not only out an office but banned from my own residence.

At 5:00, with the aid of a street map, I found the Kohlers' house on an obscure leafy lane in Montebello. The property was hidden by a ten-foot hedge, the driveway barred by an electronically controlled wrought-iron gate. I parked out on the street and let myself in through a wooden gate embedded in the shrubbery. The house was a two-story, English Tudor style, with a steeply pitched shin-gled roof, half-timbered gables, and a handsome pattern of vertical beams across the front. The lot was large, shaded with sycamores and eucalyptus trees as smooth and gray as bare concrete. Dark-green ivy seemed to grow every-where. A gardener, a graduate of the Walt Disney school of landscape maintenance, was visible, trimming the shrubs into animal shapes.

The newspaper was resting on the doormat. I picked it up and then I rang the bell. I expected a maid, but Olive opened the door herself in a gray satin robe and low-heeled satin mules. I'd mostly seen those in Joan Crawford movies, and they looked like they'd be a trick to wear. I had brief visions of plopping around my apartment in backless bedroom slippers. Cigarette holder. Marcelled hair. I could have my eyebrows plucked back to ogee arches.

"Hello, Kinsey. Come in. Terry's on his way. I forgot we were due at a cocktail party at six." She stepped away from the door and I followed her in.

"We can do this another time if you like," I said. I handed her the paper.

"Thanks. No, no. This is fine. It's not for an hour any-way and the people don't live far. I've got to finish dress-ing, but we can talk in here." She glanced at the paper briefly and then tossed it on the hall table next to a pile of mail.

She clattered her way along the dark stone-tile hall-way toward the master suite at the rear of the house. Olive was slim and blond, her shoulder-length hair blunt-cut and thick. I wondered sometimes if Ash was the only sister whose hair remained its natural shade. Olive's eyes were bright blue, her lashes black, her skin tone gold. She was thirty-three or so, not as brittle as Ebony, but with none of

Ash's warmth. She was talking back over her shoulder to me.

"I haven't seen you for ten years. What have you been up to?"

"Setting up my own agency," I said.

"Married? Kids?"

"No, on both counts. You have kids?"

She laughed. "God forbid."

The bedroom we entered was spacious. Beamed ceil-ing, big stone fireplace, French doors opening onto a walled-in patio where a small deck had been added on. I could see a round two-person hot tub, surrounded by ferns. A white Persian cat was curled up on a chaise, its face tucked into the circling plume of its tail.

The bedroom floor was polished teak with area rugs of a long white wool that probably came from yaks. The en-tire wall behind the bed was mirrored and I flashed on an image of Terry Kohler's sexual performances. What did Olive stare at, I wondered, while he watched himself? I glanced at the ceiling, checking to see if there was a car-toon tacked up there, like the one in my gynecologist's examining room: "Smile. It gives your face something to do!" This does not amuse.

I eased into an easy chair and watched while Olive moved into a walk-in closet the size of a two-car garage. Quickly she began to sort through a rack of evening clothes, rejecting sequined outfits, floor-length organza gowns, beaded jackets with long, matching skirts. I could see an assortment of shoes stacked in clear plastic boxes on the shelf overhead, and at one end of the rack, several fur coats of various lengths and types. She selected a knee-length cocktail dress with spaghetti straps and returned to the bedroom where she scrutinized her reflection. The dress was avocado green, infusing her skin with sallow undertones.

"What do you think?" she said, eyes still pinned to her own image in the glass.

"Makes you look green."

She stared at herself, squinting critically. "You're right. Here. You take this. I never liked it anyway." She tossed the dress on the bed.

"I don't wear clothes like that," I said uncomfortably.

"Take it. We'll have a New Year's Eve party and you can wear it then." She pulled out a black taffeta dress cut straight across the front. She stepped into it, then zipped it up the back in a motion that snapped everything into place. She was so slender I didn't see how the globelike breasts could possibly be hers. She looked like she'd had softballs surgically implanted on her chest. Hug a woman like that and she was bound to leave dents.

She sat down on the dressing-table bench and pulled on black panty hose, then slipped her feet into four-inch black spike heels. She looked gorgeous, all curves and flaw-less skin, the pale-blond hair brushing against her bare shoulders. She sorted through her jewelry box and selected clip-on diamond earrings shaped like delicate silver branches hung with sparkling fruit.