E Is for Evidence

have disapproved of my hospital defection. I spotted my little VW parked two doors down and I was glad somebody'd had the foresight to drive it back to my place. I wasn't up to driving yet, but it was nice to know the car was there.
    Darcy drove us over to the office. There was scarcely any traffic. The whole downtown area seemed deserted, as if in the wake of nuclear attack. The parking lot was empty, except for a series of beer bottles clustered near the kiosk, the dregs of a New Year's Eve revelry.
    We went up the back stairs. "You know what bothers me?" I asked Darcy as we climbed.
    She unlocked the door to the building, glancing back at me. "What's that?"
    "Well, suppose we assume Andy 's guilty of conspiracy in this. It does look that way even though we don't have proof at this point, right?"
    "I'd say so."
    "I can't figure out why he agreed to it. We're talking major insurance fraud. He gets caught, it's his livelihood. So what's in it for him?"
    "It has to be a payoff," Darcy said. "If Janice hosed him, he's probably desperate for cash."
    "Maybe," I said. "It means somebody knew him well enough to think he'd tumble to a bribe. Andy 's always been a jerk, but I never really thought of him as dishon-est."
    We'd reached the glass doors of California Fidelity. "What are you saying?" she asked as she unlocked the door and let us in. She flipped the overhead lights on and tossed her handbag on a chair.
    "I don't really know. I'm wondering if something else was going on, I guess. He's in a perfect position to fiddle with the claim forms, but it's still a big risk. And why the panic? What went wrong?"
    "He probably didn't count on Olive getting killed. That's gotta fit in somewhere," she said.
    We went into Andy 's office. Darcy watched with inter-est as I went through a systematic search. It looked like his business files were still intact, but all of his personal effects had been removed: the photograph of his kids that had sat on his desk, his leather-bound appointment calendar, ad-dress book, Rolodex, even the framed APSCRAP and MDRT awards he'd gotten some years before. He'd left a studio portrait of Janice, a five-by-seven color head shot, showing bouffant blond hair, a heart-shaped face, and a pointed chin. She did have a spiteful look about her, even grinning at the camera. Andy had blackened one front tooth and penned in some handsome hairs growing out of her nose. By widening her nostrils slightly, he'd created a piggy effect. The ever-mature Andy Motycka expressing his opinion of his ex-wife.
    I sat in his swivel chair and surveyed the place, won-dering how I was going to get a line on him. Where would he go and why take off like that? Had he made the bomb? Darcy was quiet, not wanting to interrupt my thought processes, such as they were.
    "You have a number for Janice?" I asked.
    "Yeah, at my desk. You want me to call and see if she knows where he is?"
    "Let's do that. Make up an excuse if you can, and don't give anything away. If she doesn't know he's skipped out, let's don't tip it at this point."
    "Right," Darcy said. She moved out to the reception area. I picked up the file I'd brought and pulled out all the papers. It was clear that Andy was in serious financial straits. Between Janice's harangue over the late support check, and the pink- and red-rimmed dunning notices, it was safe to assume that the pressure was on. I reread the various versions of his love letter to his inamorata. That must have been quite a Christmas eve they'd had. Maybe he'd run away with her.
    Andy 's calendar pad still sat at the uppermost edge of his blotter, two date sheets side by side, connected by arched clips that allowed the pages to lie flat. He'd taken his leather month-by-month appointment book, but he'd left this behind. Apparently he made a habit of noting appointments on both places so his secretary could keep track of his whereabouts. I leafed back through the week, day by day. On Friday, December 24, he'd circled 9:00 P.M. and penciled in the initial L. Was this his beloved? I worked my way back through the last six months. The initial cropped up at irregular intervals, with no pattern that I could discern.
    I went out to the reception area, taking the calendar pad and the file folder with me.
    Darcy was on the phone, in the midst of a chat with Janice, from what I gathered.
    "Uh-hun. Well, I wouldn't know anything about that. I don't know him all that well. Uh-hun. What's your attor-ney telling you? I guess