Q Is for Quarry

house, where the concrete drive widened, forming a parking pad. On the right, a clothesline had been strung between a wooden pole and a bolt secured to the side of the garage. White sheets flapped lazily in the breeze. The backyard was nicely landscaped; the flower beds bordered with prefabricated foot-high sections of white picket fence. Someone had recently put in flats of pansies and petunias, now drooping from the transplant process. A sprinkler head attached to a hose sent a fan of water back and forth across the grass. The outdoor furniture had seen better days. The hollow aluminum frames were pitted in places, and the woven green-and-white nylon webbing was faded and frayed. In the far comer, I could see a large expanse of tilled ground with several young tomato plants, a row of newly planted peppers, and five empty bean poles, like teepees, waiting for the emerging tendrils to take hold. I saw no sign of kids or pets.
    I climbed six steps to the porch. She was waiting at the back door, holding it open for me. She stepped back and I entered. Her attitude had shifted in the brief time it'd taken me to circle the house. The set of her jaw now seemed stubborn or tense. There was something in her manner that made me think I'd best provide concrete proof of my identity. I handed her a business card.
    She took it and placed it on the counter without reading it. She was trim and petite, in tan Bermuda shorts, a white T-shirt, no makeup, bare feet. Her dark hair was chin length and anchored behind her ears with bobby pins.
    "Nice flowers," I said.
    "My husband takes care of those. The vegetables are mine."
    The heat in the kitchen felt like South Florida in June – not yet oppressive, but a temperature that made you think seriously about leaving the state. Two big stainless steel pressure cookers fitted with racks sat on burners over matching low blue flames. The lids were lined up on the counter nearby, their little pressure cooker caps resting on the windowsill. Freshly sterilized lids, seals, ladles, and tongs were laid out on white sackcloth towels like surgical instruments. A third kettle contained a dark red liquid, as viscous as glue. I picked up the rich, hot perfume of crushed strawberries. I counted twelve pint-capacity Mason jars lined up on the kitchen table in the middle of the room. "Sorry to interrupt."
    "That's all right." She returned to the sink. Everything about her smacked of Midwestern farm values – the canning, the sheets on the line, the truck garden, the unadorned face.
    "You remember the case?"
    "Vaguely."
    I noticed she didn't ask to have her memory refreshed, so I volunteered the help. "A sheriffs deputy took a report from you. According to his notes, you spotted a girl hitchhiking near the Fair Isle off-ramp July 29, 1969."
    "You mentioned the date before."
    I ignored the minor reprimand. "You indicated seeing a vehicle stop and pick her up. Turns out she fit the description of the murder victim found in Lompoc a couple of days later."
    Cloris Bargo's expression was modified by the appearance of two swatches of pink, like blusher applied by a department store cosmetologist. "You want iced tea? I can fix you some. It's already made."
    "That'd be great." I She opened one of the kitchen cabinets and took down a burnished blue aluminum tumbler, which she filled with ice cubes. She poured the tea from a fat glass pitcher she kept in the refrigerator. I knew she was stalling, but I wanted to give her room to declare herself. Something was going on, but I wasn't sure what. She handed me the glass.
    I murmured, "Thanks," and took a big healthy swallow before I realized it was heavily presweetened. I could feel my lips purse. This was equivalent to that noxious syrup you have to drink before blood draws designed to diagnose conditions you hope you don't have.
    She leaned against the counter. "I made it up."
    I set the tumbler aside. "Which part?"
    "All of it. I never saw the girl."
    "No hitchhiker at all?"
    She shook her head. "I'd met the deputy – the one who wrote up the report. I was new in California. My family hadn't been here six months. I hardly knew a soul. There'd been a prowler in our neighborhood, and this deputy was sent out to talk to us. He'd gone house to house, asking if anyone had seen anything strange or unusual. I was off work. I'd just had an emergency appendectomy and I was still recovering. Otherwise, I wouldn't have been home. We ended up having a long talk. I thought he