K Is for Killer

and this is the first I've heard of it."
    "Maybe we've finally started fishing in the right swamp," I said. "You want me to ask the girls if she said anything to them?"
    "I'm not sure it matters. I have no reason to believe the story's fabricated. It's a question of filling in some blanks."
    "What else? You said there were a couple of things."
    "On the twentieth of April – the day before she died – she closed out a savings account she kept down in Simi Valley. It looks like she withdrew approximately twenty thousand dollars, either in cash or check. It's also possible she moved the money to another account, but I can't find a record of it. Is this ringing any bells with you?"
    She shook her head slowly. "No. I don't know anything about that. Mace or me didn't come across any substantial sums of money. I'd have turned it in, figuring it might be evidence. Besides, if it was Lorna's money, it'd be part of her estate and we might have to pay taxes on it. I don't cheat the government, not even the tiniest little bit. That's one thing I taught her. You don't fool around with the IRS."
    "Could she have hidden it?" I asked.
    "Why would she do that?"
    "I have no idea. She might have closed out the account and then tucked the money away someplace until she needed it."
    "You think someone stole it?"
    "I don't even know if there was really any money in the first place. It looks like there was, but I can't be sure. It's possible her landlord might have taken it. At any rate, it's a detail I need to pin down."
    "Well, I sure never saw it."
    "Was she security conscious? I didn't see a lot of locks and bolts at her place."
    "Oh, she was awful about that. She left the door wide open half the time. In fact, I've often thought somebody might have got in while she was jogging, which is why there wasn't any sign of forced entry. The police thought so, too, because they asked me about it more than once."
    "Did she ever mention a safe in the house?"
    Her tone was skeptical. "Oh, I don't think she had a safe. That doesn't seem like her at all. In that crappy little cabin? It wouldn't make any sense. She believed in banks. She had accounts everywhere."
    "What about her jewelry? Where did she keep that? Did she have a safe-deposit box?"
    "It was nothing like that. She kept a regular old jewelry box in her chest of drawers, but we didn't find anything expensive. Just some costume stuff."
    "But she must have had good pieces if she went through all the trouble and expense to insure them. She even made a point of mentioning her jewelry in her will."
    "I'll be happy to show you what we found, and you can see for yourself," Janice said.
    "What about those home security devices where people hide their valuables – you know, fake rocks or Pepsi cans or phony heads of lettuce in the vegetable bin? Did she have anything like that?"
    "I doubt it. The police never found anything in the house that I know of. I'm not sure about outside. I know they searched the yard around the cabin. If she had something like that, they'd have found it, wouldn't they?"
    "You're probably right, but I may go back over there tomorrow and take a look. Feels like a waste of time, but I don't like loose ends. Anyway, it's not like I have any better ideas."
    I went home to bed and slept fitfully, pricked by the awareness that I had work to do yet. While my body teetered toward exhaustion, my brain synapses fired at random. Ideas seemed to shoot up like rockets, exploding midair, a light show of impressions. By some curious metamorphosis, I was being drawn into the shadowy after-hours world Lorna Kepler had inhabited. Night turf, the darkness, seemed both exotic and familiar, and I felt myself waking to the possibilities. In the meantime, my system was operating on overload, and I didn't so much sleep as short myself out.
    At five twenty-five in the evening, when I finally opened my eyes, I felt so anchored to the bed I could barely move. I closed my eyes again, wondering if I'd picked up a superfluous three hundred pounds in my sleep. I checked my extremities but found no evidence of massive overnight weight gain. I rolled out of bed with a whimper, pulled myself together with minimal attention to the particulars, and headed out my front door. At the first fast-food establishment I passed, I picked up an oversize container of hot coffee and sucked on it like a baby, effectively burning my lips.
    By six, when ordinary folk were heading home from work, I was bumping down the