N Is For Noose

FIVE

I got in my car and headed back to Selma 's, still completely unenlightened. I couldn't tell if Rafer knew something or if he was simply annoyed at Selma 's hiring a private detective. Oddly enough, I found his rudeness more inspirational than daunting. Tom had died without much warning, out on the highway with no opportunity to clean up his business. For the moment, I was operating on the assumption that Selma 's intuition was correct.

I left my car out in front and crossed the lawn to the porch. Selma 'd left a note taped to the door saying she'd be over at the church until noon. I tried the door, which was unlocked, so I didn't need the key she'd given me the night before. I let myself in, calling a hello as I entered in case Brant was on the premises. There was no call in response, though several lights in the house were on. I took a few minutes to move through the empty rooms. The house was one story and most of the living space was laid out on one floor. Just off the kitchen, I found a set of stairs leading down to the basement.

I flipped on the light and descended halfway, peering over the rail. I could see woodworking equipment, a washer and dryer, a hot-water heater, and various odds and ends of furniture, including a portable barbecue and lawn chairs. A half-open door on the far wall led to the furnace room. There appeared to be ample storage. I'd nose around later, going through the cardboard boxes and built-in cabinets.

I returned to Tom's office and sat down at his desk, wondering what secrets he might have kept from view. What I was looking for-if, indeed, there was anything-didn't have to be related to Tom's work. It could have been anything: drink, drugs, pornography, gambling, an affair, an affinity for young boys, a tendency to cross-dress. Most of us have something we'd prefer to keep to ourselves. Or maybe there was nothing. I didn't like to admit it, but Rafer's attitude toward Selma was already having an effect. I'd resisted his view, but a small touch of doubt was beginning to stir.

I abandoned Tom's desk, feeling restless and bored. So far, I hadn't turned up one significant scrap of paper. Maybe Selma was nuts and I was wasting my time. I went out to the kitchen and poured myself a glass of water. I opened the refrigerator and stared at the contents while I pretended to quench my thirst. I closed the refrigerator door and checked the pantry. All the stuff she'd brought back from the store looked alarming; artificial and imitation products of the Miracle Whip variety. There was a plate of what looked like raisin oatmeal cookies on the counter, with a note that said "Help yourself." I ate several. I left the glass in the drainboard and wandered into the hall. The phone seemed to ring every fifteen minutes, but I let the machine pick up messages. Selma was much in demand, but it was all charity-related work-the church bazaar, a fund-raising auction for the new Sunday school wing.

I turned my attention to the master bedroom. Tom's clothes were still hanging in his half of the closet. I began to go through his pockets. I checked the top shelf, his shoe boxes, dresser drawers, his change caddy. I found a loaded Colt.357 Magnum in one bed table drawer, but there was nothing else of importance. The remaining content of the drawer was that embarrassing assortment of junk everyone seems to keep somewhere: ticket stubs, match books, expired credit cards, shoelaces. No dirty magazines, no sex toys. I looked under the bed, slid a hand along under the mattress, peeked behind picture frames, tapped with a knuckle across the walls in the closet, pulled up a corner of the rug, looking for hidden panels in the floor.

In the master bath, I checked the medicine cabinet, the linen closet, and the hamper. Nothing leaped out at me. Nothing seemed out of place. For a while, in despair, I stretched out on the master bedroom floor, breathing in carpet fumes and wondering how soon I could decently quit.

I went back into the den, where I finished going through the remaining junk on his shelves. Aside from feeling virtuous for cleaning out his desk drawers, I'd acquired absolutely no insights about Tom Newquist's life. I checked his credit card receipts for the past twelve months, but neither his Visa nor his MasterCard showed anything unusual. Most activity on the card could easily be matched to his desk calendar. For instance, a series of hotel and restaurant charges the previous February were related to a seminar he'd attended in Redding, California. The man was systematic. I gave him points for that. Any work-related charges to his telephone bill were later invoiced to his work and reimbursed accordingly. He didn't pad his account by so much as a penny. There was no pattern of outlandish expenses and nothing to suggest any significant or unexplained outlay of cash.

I heard a car pull into the drive. If this was Selma coming in, I'd tell her I was quitting so she wouldn't waste any more of Tom's hard-earned money. The front door opened and closed. I called a "Hello" and waited for a response. " Selma, is that you?" I waited again. "The Booger Man?"

This time I got a manly "Yo!" in response, and Selma 's son, Brant, appeared in the doorway. He was wearing a red knit cap, a red sweatsuit, and pristine white leather Reeboks, with a white towel wrapped around his neck. Brant, at twenty-five, was the kind of kid matronly housewives in the supermarket turned around and checked out in passing. He had dark hair and fierce brows over serious brown eyes. His complexion was flawless. His jaw was boxy, his cheeks as honed as if his face had been molded and shaped in clay first and then carved out of flesh. His mouth was fleshy and his color was good; a strong winter tan overlaid with the ruddy burn of snow glare and wind. His posture was impeccable: square shoulders, flat stomach, skinny through the hips. If I were younger, I might have whimpered at the sight of him. As it is, I tend to disqualify any guy that much younger than me, especially in the course of work. I've had to learn the hard way (as it were) not to mix pleasure with business.

"My mom's not here yet?" he asked, pulling the towel from around his neck. He removed his knit cap at the same time and I could see that his hair was curling slightly with the sweaty dampness of his workout. His smile showed straight white teeth.

"Should be any minute. I'm Kinsey. Are you Brant?"

"Yes ma'am. I'm sorry. I should have introduced myself." I shook hands with him across the littered expanse of his father's desk. His palm was an odd gray. When he saw that I noticed, he smiled sheepishly. "That's from weightlifting gloves. I just came from the gym," he said. "I saw the car out front and figured you were here. How's it going so far?"

"Well enough, I guess."

"I better let you get back to it. Mom comes, tell her I'm in the shower."

"Sure thing."

"See you in a bit," he said.

Selma got home at 12:15. I heard the garage door grumble up and then down. Within minutes, she'd let herself in the door that led from the garage into the kitchen. Soon afterward, I could hear the clattering of dishes, the refrigerator door opening and shutting, then the chink of flatware. She appeared in the den doorway, wearing a cotton pinafore-style apron over slacks and a matching sweater. "I'm making chicken salad sandwiches if you'd like to join us. You met Brant?"

"I did. Chicken salad sounds great. You need help?"

"No, no, but come on out and we can talk while I finish up."

I followed her to the kitchen where I washed my hands. "You know what I haven't come across yet is Tom's notebook. Didn't he take field notes when he was working an investigation?"

Surprised, Selma turned from the counter where she was putting together sandwiches. "Absolutely. It was a little loose-leaf notebook with a black leather cover, about the size of an index card, maybe a little bigger, but not much more than that. It must be around here some place. He always had it with him." She began to cut sandwiches in half, placing them on a platter with sprigs of parsley around the edge. Every time I buy parsley, it turns to slime. "Are you sure it's not there?" she asked.

"I haven't come across it. I checked his desk drawers and his coat pockets."

"What about his truck? Sometimes he left it in the glove compartment or the side pocket."

"Good suggestion. I should have thought of that myself."

I opened the connecting door and moved into the garage. I skirted Selma 's car and opened the door to the pickup on the driver's side. The interior smelled heavily of cigarette smoke. The ashtray bulged with cigarette butts buried in a shallow bed of ash. The glove compartment was tidy, bearing only a batch of road maps, the owner's manual, registration, proof of insurance, and gasoline receipts. I looked in the side pockets in both doors, looked behind the visors, leaned over and scanned the space under the bucket seats. I checked the area behind the seats, but there was only a small tool kit for emergencies. Aside from that, the interior revealed nothing. I slammed the driver's side door shut, glancing idly along the garage shelves in passing. I don't know what I thought I'd see, but there was no little black notebook within range.

I returned to the kitchen. "Scratch that," I said. "Any other ideas?"

"I'll have a look myself later on today. He could have left the notebook at work, though he seldom did that. I'll call Rafer and ask him."

"Won't he claim the notes are department property?"

"Oh, I'm sure not," she said. "He told me he'd do anything he could to help. He was Tom's best friend, you know."

But not yours, I thought. "One thing I'm curious about," I said tentatively. "The night he died… if he'd had any warning… he could have called for help if he'd had a radio. Why no CB in his truck? Why no pager? I know a lot of guys in law enforcement who have radios installed in their personal vehicles."

"Oh, I know. He meant to do that, but hadn't gotten around to it. He was always busy. I couldn't get him to take the time to drop it off and get it done. That's the sort of thing you tend way to deal with it."

Brant reappeared, wearing the blue uniform that identified him as an emergency medical technician for the local ambulance service. s. NEWQUIST was embroid ered on the left. His skin radiated the scent of soap and his hair was now shower-damp and smelled of Ivory shampoo. I allowed myself one small inaudible whine of the sort only heard by dogs; neither Brant nor his mother seemed to pick up on it. I sat at the kitchen table, just across from him, politely eating my sandwich while I listened to them chat. Midway through lunch, the telephone rang again. Selma got up. "You two go ahead. I'll pick that up in Tom's den."

Brant finished his sandwich without saying much and I realized it was going to be my job to initiate conversation.

"I take it Tom adopted you."

"When I was thirteen," Brant said. "My… I guess you'd call him a birth father… hadn't been in touch for years, since my mom and him divorced. When she married Tom, he petitioned the court. I'd consider him my real dad whether he adopted me or not."

"You must have had a good relationship."

He reached for the plate of cookies on the counter and we took turns eating them while we continued our conversation. "The last couple of years we did. Before that, we didn't get along all that great. Mom's always been easygoing, but Tom was strict. He'd been in the army and he came down real hard on the side of obeying rules. He encouraged me to get involved with Boy Scouts-which I hated-karate, and track, stuff like that. I wasn't used to having restrictions laid on me so I fought back at first. I guess I did just about anything I could think of to challenge his authority. Eventually he shaped up," he said, smiling slightly.

"How long have you been a paramedic?"

"Three years. Before that, I didn't do much of anything. Went to school for a while, though I wasn't any great shakes as a student back then."

"Did Tom talk to you about his cases?"

"Sometimes. Not lately."

"Any idea why?"

Brant shrugged. "Maybe what he was working, on wasn't that interesting."

"What about the last six weeks or so?"

"He didn't mention anything in particular."

"What about his field notes? Have you seen those?" A frown crossed his face. "His field notes?"

"The notes he kept-"

Brant interrupted. "I know what field notes are, but I don't understand the question. His are missing?"

"I think so. Or put it this way, I haven't been able to lay hands on his notebook."

"That's weird. When it wasn't in his pocket, he kept it in his desk drawer or his truck. All his old notes, he bound up in rubber bands and stored in boxes in the basement. Have you asked his partner? Might be at the office."

"I talked to Rafer once but I didn't ask about the notebook because at that point, I hadn't even thought to look."

"Can't help you on that one. I'll keep an eye out around here."

After lunch, both Selma and Brant took off. Brant had errands to run before he reported for work and Selma was involved in her endless series of volunteer positions. She'd posted a calendar on the refrigerator and the squares were filled with scribbles for most days of the week. A silence settled on the house and I felt a mild ripple of anxiety climb my frame. I was running out of things to do. I went back to the den and pulled the phone book out of Tom's top drawer. Given the size of the town, the directory was no bigger than a magazinc. I looked up James Tennyson, the CHP officer who'd found Tom that night. There was only one Tennyson, a James W, listed on Iroquois Drive in this same development. I checked my city map, grabbed my jacket and my handbag, and headed out to the car.

Iroquois Drive was a winding roadway lined with two-story houses and an abundance of evergreens. Residents were apparently encouraged to keep their garage doors closed. Backyards in this section were fully fenced or surrounded by hedges and I could see swing sets and jungle gyms as well as above-ground swimming pools, still covered for the winter. The Tennysons lived at the end of the street in a yellow stucco house with dark green shutters and a dark green roof. I parked out in front, snagging the morning paper from the lawn as I passed. I pushed the doorbell, but heard no reassuring ding dong inside. I waited a few minutes and then tried a modest knock.

The door was opened by a young woman in jeans with a sleeping baby propped against her shoulder. The child might have been six months old; sparse golden curls, flushed cheeks, flannel sleepers with feet, and a big diapered butt.

"Mrs. Tennyson?"

"That's right."

"My name is Kinsey Millhone. I was hoping to have a word with your husband. I take it he's the one who works for the CHP."

"That's right."

"Is he at work?"

"No, he's here. He works nights and sleeps late. That's why the doorbell's turned off. You want to come in and wait? I just heard him banging around.so it shouldn't be long."

"If you don't mind." I held up the newspaper. "I brought this in. I trust it's yours."

"Oh, thanks. I don't even bother until he's up. The baby gets into it and tears the whole thing to pieces if I'm not looking. Cat does the same thing. Sits there and bites on it just daring me to get mad."

She moved aside to admit me and I stepped into the entrance. Like Selma 's, this house seemed overheated, but I may have been reacting to the contrast with the outside cold. She closed the door behind me. "By the way, I'm Jo. Your name's Kimmy?"

"Kinsey," I corrected. "It was my mother's maiden name."

"That's cute," she said, flashing me a smile. "This is Brittainy. Poor baby. We call her Bugsy for some reason. Don't know how that got started, but she'll never live it down." Jo Tennyson was trim, with a ponytail and bangs, her hair a slightly darker version of her daughter's. She couldn't have been much more than twenty-one and may have become a mother before she could legally drink. The baby never stirred as we proceeded to the kitchen. Jo put the newspaper on the kitchen table, indicating a seat. She moved around the room, setting up her husband's breakfast one handed while the baby slept on. I watched with fascination as she opened a fresh cereal box, shook some of the contents in a bowl, and fetched a spoon from the drawer, which she closed with one hip. She retrieved the milk carton from the refrigerator, poured coffee into three mugs, and pushed one in my direction. "You're not in sales, I hope."

I shook my head and then murmured a thank you for the coffee, which smelled great. "I'm a private investigator. I have some questions for your husband about Tom Newquist's death."

"Oh, sorry. I didn't realize it was business or I could have called him first thing. He's just fooling around. He likes to take his time in the morning because the rest of his day's so hectic. Let me see where he's at. If you want any more coffee, help yourself. I'll be right back."

During her absence, I took the opportunity to engage in a little sit-down observation. The house was untidy I'd seen that in passing-but the kitchen was particularly disorganized. Counters were cluttered, the cabinet doors hung open, the sink piled with dishes from the last several meals. I thought the vinyl floor tile was gray with a dark mottled pattern, but on closer inspection it turned out to be white overlaid with an assortment of sooty footprints. I straightened up as she returned.

"He'll be right here. I didn't peg you for a detective. Are you local?"

"I'm from Santa Teresa."

"I didn't think you looked familiar. You should talk to Tom's wife. She lives in this subdivision, over in that direction about six blocks, on Pawnee. The snooty street we call it."

"She's the one who hired me. You know her?"

"Uh-unh. We go to the same church. She's in charge of the altar flowers and I help when I can. She's really good-hearted. She's the one who gave Bugsy her little christening dress. Here's James. I'll leave the two of you alone so you can talk."

I got to my feet as he entered the kitchen. James Tennyson was fair-haired, clean-cut, and slender, the kind of earnest young man you want assisting you on the highway when your fan belt goes funny or your rear tire's blown. He was dressed in civilian clothes: jeans, a sweatshirt, and a pair of sheepskin slippers. "James Tennyson. Nice to meet you."

"Kinsey Millhone," I said as the two of us shook hands. "I'm sorry to bother you at home, but I was over at the Newquists and it seemed so close. I saw your name on a report I picked up from the coroner and looked you up in the book."

"Not a problem. Sit down."

"Thanks. Go ahead with your breakfast. I didn't mean to intrude."

He smiled. "I guess I will if you don't mind. What can I do for you?"

While James ate his cereal, I laid out Selma 's concerns. "I take it you knew him personally?"

"Yeah, I knew Tom. Mean, we weren't real good friends… him and Selma were older and ran with a different crowd… but everybody in Nota Lake knew Tom. I tell you, his death shook me. I know he's kind of old, but he was like a fixture around here."

"Can you tell me how you found him? I know he had a heart attack. I'm just trying to get a feel for what happened."

"Well, this was… what… five, six weeks ago… and really nothing unusual. I was cruising 395 when I spotted this vehicle off to the side of the road. Hazard lights were on and the engine was running so I pulled in behind. I recognized Tom's pickup. You know he lives here in the neighborhood so I see the truck all the time. At first I thought he might be having engine problems or something like that. Both the doors were locked, but once I got close I could see him slumped over. I tapped on the window, thinking he'd pulled over and fell asleep at the wheel. I figured the heater was running because the windshield was covered with condensation, windows all cloudy."

"How'd you get in?"

"Well, the window on the driver's side was open a crack. I had a wire in my car and popped the lock up with that. I could see he's in trouble. He looked awful, his eyes open, muck in the corners of his mouth."

"Was he still alive at that point?"

"I'm pretty sure he was gone, but I did what I could. I tell you my hands were shaking so bad, I couldn't make 'em do right. I nearly busted the window and would have if I hadn't managed to snag the lock when I did. I hauled him down out of the truck onto the side of the road and did CPR right there. I couldn't pick up a heartbeat. His skin was cool to the touch, or at least it seemed like that to me. It was freezing outside and even with the heater turned on, temperature inside the truck had dropped. You know how it does. I radioed for help…got an ambulance out there as fast as I could, but there was nothing for it. Doc in ER declared him dead on arrival."

"You think he knew what was happening and pulled over to the side?"

"That'd be my guess. He must have had some kind of chest pain, maybe shortness of breath."

"Did you happen to see Tom's notebook? Black leather, about this big?"

He thought back for a moment, shaking his head slowly. "No ma'am. I don't believe so. Of course, I wasn't looking for it. It was in his truck for sure?"

"Well, no, but Selma says he kept it with him and it hasn't turned up yet. I thought maybe you spotted it and turned it into the department."

"I'da probably done that if I'd seen it. I wouldn't want my notes circulating. A lot of it looks like gibberish, but you need 'em when you type up your reports and if you're called on to testify in court. Wasn't among his personal items? The coroner's office would've returned all his clothes and anything he had on him. You know, his watch, contents of his pockets, and like that."

"I asked Selma the same thing and she hasn't seen it. Anyway, we'll keep looking. I appreciate your time. If anything comes to mind, you can reach me through her."

"I can't imagine there's anything to investigate about him. You couldn't meet a nicer fellow. He's the best. A good man and a good cop."

"So I gather."

I went back to the motel. I couldn't face another minute of sitting in Tom's den. For all we knew, Tom might have been suffering from a chemical depression. We'd been assuming his problem was situational, but it might not have been. My problem was situational. I was homesick and wanted out.

I let myself into the cabin, noting with approval that the room had been done up. The bed was made and the bathroom had been scrubbed, the toilet paper left with a point folded in the first sheet. I sat down at the table and rolled a piece of paper in my Smith-Corona. I began to type out an account of the last day's activities. Selma Newquist was just going to have to make her peace with Tom's passing. Death always leaves unfinished business in its wake, mysteries beyond fathoming, countless unanswered questions amid the detritus of life. All the stories are forgotten, the memories lost. Hire anyone you want and you're still never going to find out what a human being is made of. I could sit here and type 'til I was blue in the face. Tom Newquist was gone and I suspected no one would ever know what his final moments had been.