U Is for Undertow

returned to my car and pulled on my socks and running shoes. My feet were still wet and so grubby with sand that the cotton sawed against my flesh like a wood rasp. While I was out and about I made a quick stop at the drugstore and stocked up on blank index cards.
    At 5:00, I unlocked the studio door and let myself in. My first order of business was to strip off my damp clothes and hop in a hot shower, after which I put on my sweats and went down to the living room. For supper I made myself a peanut butter and pickle sandwich. Recently I’d been making an effort to upgrade my diet, which meant cutting down on the french fries and Quarter Pounders with Cheese that had been my mainstays. A peanut butter and pickle sandwich was never going to qualify as the pinnacle on the food pyramid, but it was the best I could do.
    I set my plate and napkin on the table at one end of the sofa, then opened a bottle of Chardonnay and poured myself a glass. I returned to the living room, a round-trip of twenty feet. I found a ballpoint pen and curled up on the sofa with a quilt tucked around my legs. I opened the first packet of index cards and started taking notes.
    I had a lot of ground to cover, consigning everything I’d learned to note cards, one item per card, which reduced the facts to their simplest form. It’s our nature to condense and collate, bundling related elements for ease of storage in the back of our brains. Since we lack the capacity to capture every detail, we cull what we can, blocking the bits we don’t like and admitting those that match our notions of what’s going on. While efficient, the practice leaves us vulnerable to blind spots. Under stress, memory becomes even less reliable. Over time we sort and discard what seems irrelevant to make room for additional incoming data. In the end, it’s a wonder we remember anything at all. What we manage to preserve is subject to misinterpretation. An event might appear to be generated by the one before it, when the order is actually coincidental. Two occurrences may be linked even when widely separated by time and place.
    My strategy of committing facts to cards allowed me to arrange and rearrange them, looking for the overall shape of a case. I was convinced a pattern would emerge, but I reminded myself that just because I wished a story were true didn’t mean that it was. As my Aunt Gin used to say, “It’s like the Singer sewing machine repairman said to the housewife, Kinsey. ‘Wishing won’t make it sew.’ I confess I didn’t get the point until I was in third grade and realized that “sew” and “so” sounded the same but served different functions. More pertinent in my experience was another saying of hers: “Wish in one hand and shit in the other and see which fills up first.” Sometimes a dog tag is just a dog tag, and two guys digging a hole are gathering worms in preparation for a fishing trip.

    I devoted most of Thursday to other business. Despite my fascination with Mary Claire Fitzhugh, I had other work-related responsibilities. I’d been asked to comb public records for hidden assets in a nasty divorce. In that case, a husband was suspected of playing fast and loose with certain real property he claimed he’d never owned. I was also in the process of tracking down a witness to a hit-and-run accident and that required a lot of knocking on doors, so I was out of the office for most of the day. I stopped by at 4:00 and spent the next forty-five minutes transcribing my field notes to rough-draft reports. I’d been so caught up in work I hadn’t noticed the message light blinking on my answering machine.
    I punched Play.
    Tasha said, “Hi, Kinsey. I’m down in Santa Teresa to meet with a client and I was wondering if you’d be available later this afternoon. I have something I think will interest you. It’s roughly noon now, so I’m hoping I’ll hear from you. I’ll be staying at the Beachcomber on Cabana until tomorrow morning.” She recited the number, which I ignored.
    I went back to typing notes, but I’d lost my train of thought. I pressed Play and listened to the message again, this time jotting down the number at her hotel. She must have known me better than I thought, because nothing is more irresistible than veiled references to a topic of interest. I couldn’t imagine what she was up to, but I was willing to give her the benefit of the doubt.
    I dialed the number and the switchboard put me through to her room. She