I wish that when I started reading Sue Grafton's Alphabet Mysteries, I would have noted more details of Kinsey's adventures from each new book. If anyone has the advantage of nine lives it is surely Kinsey Millhone. It's funny--as I often will read the description of the next book and think how pedestrian the case/mystery seems. Just how exciting is it to investigate insurance claims, which she often does, anyway? Half the time she is just doing a small, simple (it is never simple with Kinsey, though) favor for a friend of a friend. But then, wham, she is either fast talking herself out of some serious problem or being chased by someone with a gun--maybe in a deserted hospital or an empty house, or why not even while trying to navigate a burning building. Bingo.
How does she end up in a Dallas hotel, climbing catwalks and trying to avoid a man with a gun complete with silencer attached? She agrees to do a small favor for her landlord Henry Pitts is how, which is how L is for Lawless starts out. The story opens very simply and a favor she is ready to write off as soon as it looks like the case is a dead end. Anyway, the man who "hired" her (I use that term loosely) ends up firing her when a trip from Santa Teresa seems to dead end in Dallas with an empty duffel bag. Well, not empty per se, but without any money that she anticipated would be there.
Maybe I should backtrack just a little. Really this should have been a matter of a little fact checking and the untangling of a request for military benefits for a recently deceased neighbor. The dead man's family has been trying to wring out the death compensation for their war hero father, only the government agency keeps coming up empty when trying to find proof of the man's identity and proof of service. He was a war hero with all the tales of bravery to show for it. The family starts wondering if his war duties were of a clandestine nature, hence no record of his wartime service. And then there is this mysterious safe with a key hidden away. Maybe proof that the government is trying to cover up espionage activities. Only Kinsey has a few other ideas of what the man was up to.
For such a pedestrian case she has had to keep one step away from a killer (or, at the very least wife batterer who is also on their tracks for that hidden money). Only Kinsey Millhone would leave home for a quick trip to the store for milk and end up catching someone in the throes of an illegal activity--follow him and his very pregnant wife or girlfriend to the airport and then proceed to shadow the woman and the duffel bag to Dallas and then road-trip it to Kentucky. Whew. And she had not a piece of luggage, but thankfully with that reliable bag of hers complete with clean underwear and toothbrush and toothpaste. Not so pedestrian at all.
What I love most about these books, of course, is Kinsey herself. The mysteries are great, too, and Grafton rarely fails to surprise me. I mostly read this at the gym and parts of the story made me chuckle rather audibly, which meant I had to take a quick look around and see if anyone caught me. So I have to share a few excerpts here, though taken out of context they might not be quite as humorous. I mentioned she ends up in a Dallas hotel? In order to get her hands on that duffel, or at least be able to look inside at its contents, she swipes a maid's uniform . . .
"I grabbed a dust rag and a vacuum cleaner, found an electrical outlet in the corridor, and began to vacuum my way toward Laura Huckaby's room. The carpet was an extravagant meadow of geometric shapes, triangles overlapping in a bright path of high-low gold and green. Vacuuming is always restful: slow, repetitive motion accompanied by a low groaning noise and that satisfying snap when something really good gets sucked up. Never had the wall-to-wall carpet been so thoroughly cleaned. I was working up a sweat, but the effort did permit me to loiter at will."
***
"Here's what I learned being a maid: People seldom look you in the eye. Occasionally someone's gaze might accidentally glance off your face, but based on the interaction, no one could identify you later in a line up. Good news for me, although even in Texas I don't think impersonating a maid would be classified as a crime."
***
When she finally gets access to the woman's room . . . and I did wonder why she bought those peppermint patties . . .
"My uniform made an efficient little rustling sound as I folded the spread in half and then in half again. I made a hefty jelly roll of it and tucked in one corner. I turned the sheet down halfway, plumped pillows, and left one of the paper-wrapped Peppermint Patties on the bed table."
In case you were wondering. Kinsey does get a peek inside the duffel. She pulls off, not without a bit of humor, her ploy as a maid, but I suspect she best rely on her work as an investigator from here on out.
Yes, another more than satisfying cast solved by the inimitable Kinsey Millhone.