A Woman’s Eye

by Sara Paretsky

  By this time my clothes were soaked and my boots caked with mud. I tried to retrace the steps Andrea and I had taken the day before, but in the darkness it was hard to see the difference between land and sky, much less between a rise and a fall in the earth. Then, through the hedges, I saw a small light. I broke through and started staggering over the land toward it. It was joined by another small light.

  The lights seemed to be dancing together, or were they struggling? One of the lights vanished. I began to hear voices. Had Andrea discovered the perpetrators; was she fighting with them?

  But then I heard a voice I thought I recognized. “Put those bones down! I’ll have you in court for this. Grave robbing is a criminal offense as well as a sin!”

  “What you did to Francine is a sin and a crime,” another even more familiar voice shot back. “Give me back my shovel. She deserves to have a better resting place than the one you gave her.”

  “I was her husband, I have a right to decide where she’s buried.”

  “You gave up your rights long ago.”

  Then there was only the sound of grunts as they grappled again.

  “Peter,” I said, “Andrea. Stop this, Stop this right now.”

  I picked up one of the flashlights and shone it at each of their faces in turn, “What’s going on here?”

  “I suspected her from the beginning,” said Peter, looking like a large wet muskrat in his brown oilskin jacket. “I’ve been keeping an eye on her. Lives right across from the churchyard; easy enough to break into the grave. Tonight I heard the car starting up and decided to follow her. Called the journalists first, they’ll be here in a minute. You’ll go to jail for this, Addlepoot!”

  “Oh, Cassandra,” groaned Andrea. “I’m sorry. I had it planned so differently.”

  But she didn’t have time to exonerate herself. The journalists were suddenly on us like a pack of hounds; there were bright lights everywhere, illuminating a stone marker that said, FRANCINE CROFTS, POET, and a muddy sheet piled, haphazardly, with thin white bones.

  Some weeks after this, when I was back in London, Andrea came up to see me. If it hadn’t been for the surprising intercession of Mrs. Putter, Peter’s mother (for she had been the woman we’d seen crying at the grave), Andrea would have been on trial now. As it was, Francine’s bones were back in the churchyard of St. Stephen’s and Andrea had closed up her cottage and was thinking of moving back to London.

  “I didn’t have completely ignoble motives,” she said. “I always did believe that Francine deserved better than a Putterized headstone or no headstone in a grim little grave under the eye of people who had hated her. But I have to admit that I saw an opportunity. When the blue plaques started to appear I thought, why not? Someone’s bound to do it, why not me? I wouldn’t say I was the one who’d done it, of course. I’d steal the bones, rebury them, erect a marker and then-with you as a witness-I’d discover the new site, and let the media know. It would have been the best kind of publicity, for me and for Francine. I would have solved a mystery, my name would be back in the news, my publisher might have decided to reissue my books … but instead …”

  “Instead the newspapers called you a grave robber and filled the pages of the tabloids with photos that made you look like a refugee from Nightmare on Elm Street And they spelled your name wrong.”

  Andrea shuddered. “I’m going to have to put all this behind me. Start over. Science fiction, perhaps. Or why not feminist horror? Skeletons that walk in the night, the ghosts of Mary Wollstonecraft and Emily Bronte that haunt us still today …”

  “I did read in the newspaper today,” I interrupted, “that the owner of the farm has decided to put up a marker to Francine himself, and to open the farm up to readings and poetry workshops. Apparently he’s something of an artist himself, in addition to being a stockbroker. He said he never knew that Francine had lived there. So something good came of it.”

  Andrea cheered up. “And Putter didn’t look so terribly fabulous in those photographs either.”

  We started to laugh, embarrassed at first, and then with gasping and teary amusement, recalling our wet night in the mud.

  And then we went out for a walk to look at some of the blue plaques that had gone up recently. For, you see, the remembering and honoring hadn’t stopped. There were now more blue plaques to women than ever.

  One of the fastest rising stars of mystery fiction, SUSAN DUNLAP has created three memorable detectives-Berkeley-based Jill Smith, in novels like Diamond in the Buff; PI Kiernan O’Shaughnessy, who works out of San Diego in books like Rogue Wave; and the only meter reader sleuth in history, Vejay Haskell, in the wonderfully named (and wonderful) The Last Annual Slugfest. Ms. Dunlap makes her home in Albany, California.

  DEATH AND DIAMONDS

  Susan Dunlap

  “The thing I like most about being a private investigator is the thrill of the game. I trained in gymnastics as a kid. I love cases with lots of action. But, alas, you can’t always have what you love,” Kiernan O’Shaughnessy glanced down at her thickly bandaged foot and the crutches propped beside it.

  “Kicked a little too much ass, huh?” The man in the seat beside her at the Southwest Airlines gate grinned. There was an impish quality to him. Average height, sleekly muscled, with the too-dark tan of one who doesn’t worry about the future. He was over forty but the lines around his bright green eyes and mouth suggested quick scowls, sudden bursts of laughter, rather than the folds of age setting in. Amid the San Diegans in shorts and T-shirts proclaiming the Zoo, Tijuana, and the Chargers, he seemed almost formal in his chinos and sports jacket and the forest green polo shirt. He crossed, then recrossed his long legs and glanced impatiently at the purser standing guard at the end of the ramp.

  The gate 10 waiting area was jammed with tanned families ready to fly from sunny San Diego to sunnier Phoenix. The rumble of conversations was broken by children’s shrill whines and exasperated parents barking their names in warning.

  “We are now boarding all passengers for Southwest Airlines flight twelve forty-four to Oakland, through gate nine,”

  A mob of the Oakland-bound crowded closer to their gate, clutching their blue plastic boarding passes.

  Beside Kiernan the man sighed. But there was a twinkle in his eyes. “Lucky them. I hate waiting around like this. It’s not something I’m good at. One of the reasons I like flying Southwest is their open seating. If you move fast you can get whatever seat you want.”

  “Which seat is your favorite?”

  “One-B or one-C. So I can get off fast. If they ever let us on.”

  The Phoenix-bound flight was half an hour late. With each announcement of a Southwest departure to some other destination, the level of grumbling in the Phoenix-bound area had grown till the air seemed thick with frustration, and at the same time old and overused, as if it had held just enough oxygen for the scheduled waiting period, and now, half an hour later, served only to dry out noses and to make throats raspy and tempers short.

  The loudspeaker announced the Albuquerque flight was ready for boarding. A woman in a rhinestone-encrusted denim jacket raced past them toward the Albuquerque gate. Rhinestones. Hardly diamonds, but close enough to bring the picture of Melissa Jessup to Kiernan’s mind. When she’d last seen her, Melissa Jessup had been dead six months, beaten and stabbed, her corpse left outside to decompose. Gone were her mother’s diamonds, the diamonds her mother had left her as security. Melissa hadn’t been able to bring herself to sell them, even to finance her escape from a life turned fearful and the man who preferred them to her. It all proved, as Kiernan reminded herself each time the memory of Melissa invaded her thoughts, that diamonds are not a girl’s best friend, that Mother (or at least a mother who says “don’t sell them”) does not know best, and that a woman should never get involved with a man she works with. Melissa Jessup had done all those things. Her lover had followed her, killed her, taken her mother’s diamonds, and left not one piece of evidence. Melissa’s brother
had hired Kiernan, hoping that with her background in forensic pathology she would find some clue in the autopsy report, or that once she could view Melissa’s body she would spot something the local medical examiner had missed. She hadn’t. The key that would nail Melissa’s killer was not in her corpse, but with the diamonds. Finding those diamonds and the killer with them had turned into the most frustrating case of Kiernan’s career.

  She pushed the picture of Melissa Jessup out of her mind. This was no time for anger or any of the emotions that the thought of Melissa’s death brought up. The issue now was getting this suitcase into the right hands in Phoenix. Turning back to the man beside her, she said “The job I’m on right now is baby-sitting this suitcase from San Diego to Phoenix. This trip is not going to be ‘a kick.’”

  “Couldn’t you have waited till you were off the crutches?” he said, looking down at her bandaged right foot.

  “Crime doesn’t wait.” She smiled, focusing her full attention on the conversation now. “Besides, courier work is perfect for a hobbled lady, don’t you think, Mr.-uh?”

  He glanced down at the plain black suitcase, then back at her. “Detecting all the time, huh?” There was a definite twinkle in his eyes as he laughed. “Well, this one’s easy. Getting my name is not going to prove whether you’re any good as a detective. I’m Jeff Siebert. And you are?”

  “Kiernan O’Shaughnessy, But I can’t let that challenge pass. Anyone can get a name. A professional investigator can do better than that. For a start, I surmise you’re single.”

  He laughed, the delighted laugh of the little boy who’s just beaten his parent in rummy. “No wedding ring, no white line on my finger to show I’ve taken the ring off. Right?”

  Admittedly, that was one factor. But you’re wearing a red eit Since it’s nowhere near Christmas, I assume the combination of red belt and green turtleneck is not intentional. You’re color-blind.”

  “Well yeah,” he said buttoning his jacket over the offending belt. But they don’t ask you to tell red from green before they’ll give you a marriage license. So?”

  “If you were married, your wife might not check you over before you left each morning, but chances are she would organize your accessories so you could get dressed by yourself, and not have strange women like me commenting on your belt.”

  “This is the final call for boarding Southwest Airlines flight twelve forty-four to Oakland at gate nine,”

  Kiernan glanced enviously at the last three Oakland-bound passengers as they passed through gate 9. If the Phoenix flight were not so late, she would be in the air now and that much closer to getting the suitcase in the right hands. Turning back to Siebert, she said, “By the same token, I’d guess you have been married or involved with a woman about my size, A blonde.”

  He sat back down in his seat, and for the first time was still

  “Got your attention, huh?” Kiernan laughed. “I really shouldn’t show off like that. It unnerves some people. Others, like you, it just quiets down. Actually, this was pretty easy. You’ve got a tiny spot of lavender eyeshadow on the edge of your lapel. I had a boyfriend your height and he ended up sending a number of jackets to the cleaners. But no one but me would think to look at the edge of your lapel, and you could have that jacket for years and not notice that.”

  “But why did you say a blonde?”

  “Blondes tend to wear violet eyeshadow.”

  He smiled, clearly relieved.

  “Flight seventeen sixty-seven departing gate ten with service to Phoenix will begin boarding in just a few minutes. We thank you for your patience.”

  He groaned, “We’ll see how few those minutes are.” Across from them a woman with an elephantine carry-on bag pulled it closer to her. Siebert turned to Kiernan, and giving her that intimate grin she was beginning to think of as his look, Siebert said, “You seem to be having a good time being a detective.”

  The picture of Melissa Jessup popped up in her mind. Melissa Jessup had let herself be attracted to a thief. She’d ignored her suspicions about him until it was too late to sell her mother’s jewels and she could only grab what was at hand and run.

  Pulling her suitcase closer, Kiernan said, “Investigating can be a lot of fun if you like strange hours and the thrill of having everything hang on one maneuver. I’ll tell you the truth-it appeals to the adolescent in me, particularly if I can pretend to be something or someone else. It’s fun to see if I can pull that off.”

  “How do I know you’re not someone else?”

  “I could show you ID, but, of course, that wouldn’t prove anything.” She laughed. “You’ll just have to trust me, as I am you. After all, you did choose to sit down next to me.”

  “Well, that’s because you were the best-looking woman here sitting by herself.”

  “Or at least the one nearest the hallway where you came in. And this is the only spot around where you have room to pace. You look to be a serious pacer.” She laughed again. “But I like your explanation better.”

  Shrieking, a small girl in yellow raced in front of the seats. Whooping gleefully, a slightly larger male version sprinted by, He lunged for his sister, caught his foot on Kiernan’s crutch and sent it toppling back as he lurched forward, and crashed into a man at the end of the check-in line, His sister skidded to a stop. “Serves you right, Jason. Mom, look what Jason did!”

  Siebert bent over and righted Kiernan’s crutch. “Travel can be dangerous, huh?”

  “Damn crutches! It’s like they’ve got urges all their own,” she said. “Like one of them sees an attractive crutch across the room and all of a sudden it’s gone. They virtually seduce underage boys.”

  He laughed, his green eyes twinkling impishly. “They’ll come home to you. There’s not a crutch in the room that holds a crutch to you.”

  She hesitated a moment before saying, “My crutches and I thank you.” This was, she thought, the kind of chatter that had been wonderfully seductive when she was nineteen. And Jeff Siebert was the restless, impulsive type of man who had personified freedom then. But nearly twenty years of mistakes-her own and more deadly ones like Melissa Jessup’s-had shown her the inevitable end of such flirtations.

  Siebert stood up and rested a foot against the edge of the table. “So what else is fun about investigating?”

  She shifted the suitcase between her feet, “Well, trying to figure out people, like I was doing with you, A lot is common sense, like assuming that you are probably not a patient driver. Perhaps you’ve passed in a no-passing zone, or even have gotten a speeding ticket.”

  He nodded, abruptly.

  “On the other hand,” she went on, “sometimes I know facts beforehand, and then I can fake a Sherlock Holmes and produce anything-but-elementary deductions. The danger with that is getting cocky and blurting out conclusions before you’ve been given evidence for them.”

  “Has that happened to you?”

  She laughed and looked meaningfully down at her foot. “But I wouldn’t want my client to come to that conclusion. We had a long discussion about whether a woman on crutches could handle his delivery.”

  “Client?” he said, shouting over the announcement of the Yuma flight at the next gate. In a normal voice, he added, “In your courier work, you mean? What’s in that bag of your client’s that so very valuable?”

  She moved her feet till they were touching the sides of the suitcase. He leaned in closer. He was definitely the type of man destined to be trouble, she thought, but that little-boy grin, that conspiratorial tone, were seductive, particularly in a place like this where any diversion was a boon. She wasn’t surprised he had been attracted to her; clearly, he was a man who liked small women. She glanced around, pleased that no one else had been drawn to this spot. The nearest travelers were a young couple seated six feet away and too involved in each other to waste time listening to strangers’ conversation. “I didn’t pack the bag. I’m just delivering it.”

  He bent down with his ear near the side of the
suitcase. “Well, at least it’s not ticking.” Sitting up, he said, “But seriously, isn’t that a little dangerous? Women carrying bags for strangers, that’s how terrorists have gotten bombs on planes.”

  “No!” she snapped. “I’m not carrying it for a lover with an M-1. I’m a bonded courier.”

  The casual observer might not have noticed Siebert’s shoulders tensing, slightly, briefly, in anger at her rebuff. Silently, he looked down at her suitcase. “How much does courier work pay?”

  “Not a whole lot, particularly compared to the value of what I have to carry. But then there’s not much work involved. The chances of theft are minuscule. And I do get to travel Last fall I drove a package up north. That was a good deal since I had to go up there anyway to check motel registrations in a case I’m working on. It took me a week to do the motels, and then I came up empty,” An entire week to discover that Melissa’s killer had not stopped at a motel or hotel between San Diego and Eureka. “The whole thing would have been a bust if it hadn’t been for the courier work.”

  He glanced down at the suitcase. She suspected he would have been appalled to know how visible was his covetous look. Finally he said, “What was in that package, the one you delivered?”

  She glanced over at the young couple. No danger from them. Still Kiernan lowered her voice. “Diamonds. Untraceable. That’s really the only reason to go to the expense of hiring a courier.”

  “Untraceable, huh?” he said, grinning. “Didn’t you even consider taking off over the border with them?”

  “Maybe,” she said slowly, “if I had known they were worth enough to set me up for the rest of my actuarial allotment, I might have.”

  “We will begin preboarding Southwest Airlines flight seventeen sixty-seven with service to Phoenix momentarily. Please keep your seats until preboarding has been completed.”