A Woman’s Eye

by Sara Paretsky

  She said, “Well, thanks very much,” and she started to fumble in her handbag again. I let her get her money out, and then I said, “I don’t want your money, missus, thanks all the same for the thought.”

  She said, “Oh, but you must let me give you something.”

  I just stood there shaking my head, looking pitiful.

  “What is it?” she asked, with that sorry expression on her face.

  It was the crucial time. I said. “I’ve got some money, missus, but I can’t spend it.” And I held out one of the fifty-pound notes.

  She looked at the money and she looked at me.

  I said, “I know what you’re thinking. That’s why I can’t spend it. I want to get some decent clothes because I can’t get a job looking like this. But every time I try they look at me like I stole the money and they go to call the Law. No one trusts people like me.”

  She went on looking first at me and then at the money, and said, “I don’t mean to sound suspicious, but where did you get a fifty-pound note?”

  “A nice lady give it to me,” I said. “She must’ve thought it was a fiver. She was a really nice lady because no one’s ever given me a fiver before. But when I went in to buy a cup of tea and some chips, the man went to call the Law and I saw she must have made a mistake.”

  “I see,” she said.

  “You don’t,” I said. “Having this money is worse than not having anything.”

  “I can see that,” she said. “How can I help?”

  I had her. “Please, missus,” I said. “Please help me spend it. All I want’s a good coat and some shoes. There’s a charity shop just round the corner and I been hanging around for ages but I can’t bring myself to go in on my own.”

  She was good as gold, my lady mark. She bought me a big wool coat for only a couple of quid and she talked to the women in the shop while I looked for jeans and jerseys.

  It was all quality stuff and probably it was all donated to the charity by women like her. They don’t give any old rubbish to charity. And I’ll tell you something else-my lady mark was having the time of her life. It was like a dream come true to her. Someone really and truly wanted her help with something she approved of. She didn’t have to worry I was spending her money on drink or drugs because it wasn’t her money and I was there under her nose spending it on warm clothes.

  Even the women behind the counter had a sort of glow on them when I came out from behind the racks with my arms full. She’d probably told them my story in whispers when my back was turned. And that was why I really had needed her help. Because those nice ladies behind the counter would have chased me out if I’d gone in on my own. They’d have been afraid I’d pinch their charity.

  It was still coming down in buckets when we left the shop. This time it was me carrying all the bags.

  I was about to go when she said, “Look, don’t be insulted, but what you need is a hot bath and somewhere to change.” She said it in a rush as if she really was afraid of hurting my feelings.

  “I live up the hill,” she said. “It won’t take any time at all.”

  “Nah,” I said. “I’ll get your car seats all dirty.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” she said. “Please.”

  And I thought, why not? She deserved the satisfaction.

  She ran me a hot bath and squirted loads of scented oil in. She gave me her shampoo and a whole heap of clean towels. And then my lovely lady mark left me alone in her bathroom.

  I swear she had tears in her eyes when I came out in my new clothes.

  “Crystal,” she said, “you look like a new person.” This was just what I wanted to hear.

  “You look quite like my own daughter when she was younger,” she said. Which was a good thing because the Law and the bastards who beat Marvin up weren’t looking for someone who looked like my lady mark’s daughter. And no one would bat an eyelash if she had a fifty-pound note. My lady mark’s daughter would not turn into an old woman who had to bend over to root around in dustbins.

  And nor, I thought, would I, if I could help it.

  She cooked me eggs and potatoes for my tea, and when I left she gave me a fiver and her green umbrella.

  It was a shame really to have pinched her soap. But you can’t break old habits all at once.

  She even wanted to give me another ride in her car. But I wouldn’t let her. She was a lovely lady, but I didn’t think she’d understand about Dawn. Lovely ladies don’t.

  I could give lessons about what to do when you find your mark, and the last one would be-don’t push your luck. Because if you push your luck and let them take over, they start giving you what they think you need instead of what you want. If my lady mark knew too much about Dawn and what was really going on, she’d have got in touch with the Social Services all over again. And far from being a lovely lady she’d have turned into an interfering old cow.

  I was doing her a favor, really. I’m sure she’d rather be a lovely lady than an interfering old cow.

  No one who saw me knocking at Dawn’s door in Padding-ton would have known I’d spent all day down a drain. Dawn didn’t.

  “’Struth, Crystal,” she said when she opened up. “You look like one of those girls from that snob school up the hill from ours.”

  I knew what she meant and I didn’t like it much. But I was lucky really. I’d caught her at a slack time when she was just lying around reading her comic and playing records. And now I was all clean and respectable, she didn’t mind if I sat on her bed.

  “You still need your hair cut,” Dawn said.

  She got out her scissors and manicure set, and we sat on her bed while she cut my hair and did my nails. Dawn could be a beautician if she wanted. The trouble is she’d never stand for the training and the money wouldn’t be enough. She’s used to her creature comforts now, is Dawn.

  It was a bit like the old days-Dawn and me together listening to records, and her fiddling with my hair. I didn’t want to spoil it but I had to ask about the watch.

  Because when I was in the lovely lady’s bathroom I’d had another search through Philip Walker-Jones’s wallet.

  Dawn said, “What about the watch?” And she rubbed round my thumb with her little nail file.

  “It was real gold,” I said, to remind her. “Your Christmas present.”

  “I can’t wear a man’s watch,” she said. Dawn likes to be very dainty sometimes.

  “Where is it?” I said.

  “You want it back?” she asked. “Fine Christmas present if you want it back.”

  I looked at her and she looked at me. Then she said, “Well, Crystal, if you must know, I was going to give it to my boyfriend for Christmas.”

  “It wasn’t for him,” I said. “It was for you.”

  “A man’s watch?” she said, and laughed. “I was going to get his name engraved on the back. ‘Eternal love, from Dawn.’ But there wasn’t room. There were all these numbers on the back, and the man at the jewelers said I’d lose too much gold having them rubbed down.”

  “Hah!” I said. I felt clever. Because all it takes is some good hot food to help you think. And it had come to me in a flash just after I’d put down my last mouthful of egg and potato.

  I said, “Bet there were twenty-five of them.”

  “Loads of numbers,” she said. She put the nail file back in her manicure set.

  “If you must know, Crystal,” she said, “I popped it. And I bought him a real gold cigarette lighter instead.”

  And she gave me the pawn ticket.

  She hadn’t got much for a solid gold watch. Dawn isn’t practical like I am, so the pawnbroker cheated her. Not that it mattered. It wasn’t her watch in the first place, and besides, it would cost me less to get back. If I wanted it back.

  Poor Dawn. She needs me to take care of her. She doesn’t think she does because she thinks her boyfriend’s doing it. She’s not like me. She doesn’t want to look after herself. That’s not her job. And if I told her what I’d been throu
gh today to solve my own problems she’d say I was a fool.

  But look at it this way-I’d given Detective Sergeant Michael Sussex the slip. I’d dressed up so he wouldn’t know me again if I ran slap-bang into him. Nor would Brainy Brian. So he couldn’t finger me to the bastards who beat up little Marvin. I’d had a bath and I’d had eggs and potatoes for my tea. I had enough money to sleep in a bed for as many nights as I wanted. And now I had the watch.

  Or I could have it any time I wanted. But it was safer where it was. I still didn’t know why the number was so important but I was sure it would be worth something to me sooner or later.

  I saw Dawn looking at me.

  “Don’t get too cocky, Crystal,” she said. “You might look like a girl from the snob school, but you’re still just like me.”

  That’s how much she knew.

  SUE GRAFTON’s private eye Kinsey Millhone is, along with Sara Paretsky’s V. I. Warshawski and Marcia Muller’s Sharon McCone, one of three female investigators who revolutionized crime fiction in the 1980s. Her alphabetized book titles, beginning with “A” is for Alibi sad now extending through “G” is for Gumshoe, have proved enormously popular. Ms. Grafton lives in Santa Barbara, California, a community much like Kinsey’s “Santa Teresa.”

  “FULL CIRCLE”

  A Kinsey Millhone Short Story

  Sue Grafton

  The accident seemed to happen in slow motion … one of those stop-action sequences that seem to go on forever though in truth no more than a few seconds have elapsed. It was Friday afternoon, rush hour, Santa Teresa traffic moving at a lively pace, my little VW holding its own despite the fact that it’s fifteen years out of date. I was feeling good. I’d just wrapped up a case and I had a check in my handbag for four thousand bucks, not bad considering that I’m a female private eye, self-employed, and subject to the feast-or-famine vagaries of any other free-lance work.

  I glanced to my left as a young woman, driving a white compact, appeared in my side view mirror. A bright red Porsche was bearing down on her in the fast lane. I adjusted my speed, making room for her, sensing that she meant to cut in front of me. A navy-blue pickup truck was coming up on my right, each of us jockeying for position as the late afternoon sun washed down out of a cloudless California spring sky. I had glanced in my rearview mirror, checking traffic behind me, when I heard a loud popping noise. I snapped my attention back to the road in front of me. The white compact veered abruptly back into the fast lane, clipped the rear of the red Porsche, then hit the center divider and careened directly into my path. I slammed on my brakes, adrenaline shooting through me as I fought to control the VW’s fishtailing rear end.

  Suddenly a dark green Mercedes appeared from out of nowhere and caught the girl’s car broadside, flipping the vehicle with all the expertise of a movie stunt. Brakes squealed all around me like a chorus of squawking birds and I could hear the successive thumps of colliding cars piling up behind me in a drumroll of destruction. It was over in an instant, a cloud of dust roiling up from the shoulder where the girl’s car had finally come to rest, right side up, half-buried in the shrubbery. She had sheared off one of the support posts for the exit sign that now leaned crazily across her car roof. The ensuing silence was profound.

  I pulled over and was out of my car like a shot, the fellow from the navy-blue pickup truck right behind me. There must have been five of us running toward the wreckage, spurred by the possibility of exploding gasoline, which mercifully did not ignite. The white car was accordion-folded, the door on the driver’s side jammed shut. Steam billowed out from under the hood with an alarming hiss. The impact had rammed the girl head first into the windshield, which had cracked in a star-burst effect. She was unconscious, her face bathed in blood. I willed myself to move toward her though my instinct was to turn away in horror.

  The guy from the pickup truck nearly wrenched the car door off its hinges in one of those emergency-generated bursts of strength that can’t be duplicated under ordinary circumstances. As he reached for her, I caught his arm.

  “Don’t move her,” I said. “Let the paramedics handle this.”

  He gave me a startled look but drew back as he was told. I shed my windbreaker and we used it to form a compress, stanching the flow of blood from the worst of her cuts. The guy was in his twenties, with dark curly hair and dark eyes filled with anxiety.

  Over my shoulder, someone was asking me if I knew first aid, and I realized that others had been hurt in the accident as well. The driver from the green Mercedes was already using the roadside emergency phone, presumably calling police and ambulance. I looked back at the guy from the pickup truck, who was pressing the girl’s neck, looking for a pulse.

  “Is she alive?” I asked.

  “Looks like it.”

  I jerked my head at the people on the berm behind me. “Let me see what I can do down there until the ambulance comes,” I said. “Holler if you need me.”

  He nodded in reply.

  I left him with the girl and moved along the shoulder toward a writhing man whose leg was visibly broken. A woman was sobbing hysterically somewhere close by and her cries added an eerie counterpoint to the moans of those in pain. The fellow from the red Porsche simply stood there numb, immobilized by shock.

  Meanwhile, traffic had slowed to a crawl and commuters were rubbernecking as if freeway accidents were some sort of spectator sport and this was the main event. Sirens approached. The next hour was a blur of police and emergency vehicles. I spotted my friend John Birkett, a photographer from the local paper, who’d reached the scene moments behind the paramedics. I remember marveling at the speed with which news of the pileup had spread. I watched as the girl was loaded into the ambulance. While flashbulbs went off, several of us gave our accounts of the accident to the highway patrol officer, conferring with one another compulsively as if repetition might relieve us of tension and distress. I didn’t get home until nearly seven and my hands were still shaking. The jumble of images made sleep a torment of sudden awakenings, my foot jerking in a dream sequence as I slammed on my brakes again and again.

  When I read in the morning paper that the girl had died, I felt sick with regret. The article was brief. Caroline Spurrier was twenty-two, a senior psychology major at the University of California, Santa Teresa. She was a native of Denver, Colorado, just two months short of graduation at the time of her death. The photograph showed shoulder-length blond hair, bright eyes, and an impish grin. According to the paper, six other people had suffered injuries, none fatal. The weight of the young woman’s death settled in my chest like a cold I couldn’t shake.

  My office in town was being repainted, so I worked at home that next week, catching up on reports. On Thursday, when the knock came, I’d just broken for lunch. I opened the door. At first glance, I thought the dead girl was miraculously alive, restored to health, and standing on my doorstep with all the solemnity of a ghost. The illusion was dispelled. A close look showed a blond woman in her midforties, her face etched with weariness.

  “I’m Michelle Spurrier,” she said. “I understand you were a witness to my daughter’s accident.”

  I stepped back. “Please come in. I’m sorry for your loss, Mrs. Spurrier. That was terrible.”

  She moved past me like a sleepwalker as I closed the door.

  “Please sit down. Can I get you anything?”

  She shook her head, looking around with bewilderment as if she couldn’t quite remember what had brought her here. She set her purse aside and sank down on my couch, placing her cupped hands across her nose and mouth like an oxygen mask.

  I sat down beside her, watching as she breathed deeply, struggling to speak. “Take your time,” I said.

  When the words came, her voice was so low I had to lean closely to hear her. “The police examined Caroline’s car at the impound lot and found a bullet hole in the window on the passenger side. My daughter was shot.” She burst into tears.

  I sat beside her while she poured out a g
rief tinged with rage and frustration. I brought her a glass of water and a fistful of tissues, small comfort, but all I could think to do. “What are the police telling you?” I asked when she’d composed herself.

  She blew her nose and then took another deep breath. “The case has been transferred from traffic detail to homicide. The officer I talked to this morning says it looks like a random freeway shooting, but I don’t believe it.”

  “God knows they’ve had enough of those down in Los Angeles,” I remarked.

  “Well, I can’t accept that. For one thing, what was she doing speeding down the highway at that hour of the day? She was supposed to be at work, but they tell me she left abruptly without a word to anyone.”

  “Where was she employed?”

  “A restaurant out in Colgate. She’d been waiting tables there for a year. The shift manager told me a man had been harassing her. He thinks she might have left to try to get away from him.”

  “Did he know who the guy was?”

  She shook her head. “He wasn’t sure. Some fellow she’d been dating. Apparently, he kept stopping by the restaurant, calling her at all hours, making a terrible pest of himself. Lieutenant Dolan tells me you’re a private detective, which is why I’m here. I want you to find out who’s responsible for this.”

  “Mrs. Spurrier, the police here are very competent. I’m sure they’re doing everything possible.”

  “Skip the public relations message,” she said with bitterness, “I have to fly back to Denver. Caroline’s stepfather is very ill and I need to get home, but I can’t go unless I know someone here is looking into this. Please.”

  I thought about it briefly, but it didn’t take much to persuade me. As a witness to the accident, I felt more than a professional interest in the case. “I’ll need the names of her friends,” I said.

  I made a note of Mrs. Spurrier’s address and phone number, along with the name of Caroline’s roommate and the restaurant where she’d worked. I drew up a standard contract, waiving the advance. I’d bill her later for whatever time I put in. Ordinarily I bypass police business in an attempt to stay out of Lieutenant Dolan’s way. As the officer in charge of homicide, he’s not crazy about private eyes. Though he’s fairly tolerant of me, I couldn’t imagine what she’d had to threaten to warrant the referral.