I Is for Innocent

boxes planted with drooping pansies, which on closer inspection turned out to be entirely fake. The whole neighborhood seemed dispirited, from the patchy lawns to the cracked concrete driveways where every second house had a car up on blocks. Somehow the Christmas decorations only made things worse. Most of the houses were trimmed now in multicolored lights. One of Morley's neighbors seemed to be in competition with the house across the street. Both had covered every available stretch of yard with seasonal items, ranging from plastic Santas to plastic wise men.
    This was now Tuesday morning. Morley had died on Sunday night, and while I was uneasy about intruding, it seemed important to retrieve what I could of the paperwork before some well-meaning relative went through and trashed everything he had. I knocked at the front door and waited. Morley had never cared much for detail and I noticed his house had the same slapdash quality. The blue paint on the porch rail, uneven to begin with, had begun to peel with age. I had the depressing sensation of having been here before. I could picture the shoddy interior: cracked tile on the kitchen counters, buckling vinyl tile on the floors, wall-to-wall carpeting trampled into traffic patterns that could never be cleaned of soil. The aluminum window frames would be warped, the bathroom fixtures corroded. A battered green four-door Mercury had been pulled off onto the side grass. I pegged it as Morley's, though I wasn't sure why. It was just the sort of clunker that he'd have found appealing. He had probably purchased it new in the year oughty-ought and would have driven it resolutely until the engine died. A new red Ford compact was parked in the driveway, the frame on the license plate advertising a local car rental company; probably someone from out of town....
    "Yes?" The woman was small, in her midsixties, looking energetic and competent. She wore a pink floral-print blouse with long sleeves, a tweed skirt, hose, and penny loafers. Her gray hair was honest and her makeup was light. She was in the process of drying her hands on a dish towel, her expression inquiring.
    "Hi. My name is Kinsey Millhone. Are you Mrs. Shine?"
    "I'm Dorothy's sister, Louise Mendelberg. Mr. Shine just passed away."
    "That's what I heard and I'm sorry to disturb you. He was in the middle of some work for an attorney named Lonnie Kingman. I've been asked to take over his caseload. Did I come at a bad time?"
    "There's never going to be a good time when someone's just died," she replied tartly. This was a woman who didn't take death seriously. In its aftermath, she'd come along to do the dishes and tidy up the living room, but she probably wouldn't devote a lot of time to the hymn selection for the funeral service.
    "I don't want to be more of a bother than I have to. I was sorry to hear about Morley. He was a nice man and I liked him."
    She shook her head. "I've known Morley since he and Dorothy met in college back in the Depression. We all adored him, of course, but he was such a fool. The cigarettes and his weight and all the drinking he did. You can get away with a certain amount of that when you're young, but at his age? No, ma'am. We warned him and warned him, but would he listen? Of course not. You should have seen him on Sunday. His color was awful. The doctor thinks the heart attack was aggravated by the flu he had. His electrolyte balance or something of the sort." She shook her head again, breaking off.
    "How's she doing?"
    "Not that well, to tell you the truth, which is why I came down from Fresno in the first place. My intention was to help out for a couple of weeks just to give him some relief. You know she's been sick for months."
    "I didn't know that," I said.
    "Oh, my, yes. She's a mess. She was diagnosed with stomach cancer this last June. She had extensive surgery and she's been taking chemotherapy off and on ever since. She's just skin and bone and can't keep a thing down. It's all Morley talked about and here he up and went first."
    "Will they do an autopsy?"
    "I don't know what she's decided about that. He just saw the doctor a week ago. Dorothy wanted him on a diet and he finally agreed. An autopsy's not required under the circumstances, but you know how they are. Doctors like to get in there and poke and pry. I feel so sorry for her."
    I made some sympathetic sounds.
    She gestured briskly. "Anyway, enough said. I suppose you came to take a look at his study. Why don't you step