V Is for Vengeance

with a felony or a misdemeanor. The two pairs of pajamas at full price (including tax) would have pushed her over the four-hundrd-dollar limit, shifting her offense from petit to grand theft. But what about the sale? Was she more or less culpable in the eyes of the law? At 75 percent off, was a felony discounted down to a lesser charge?
    In either case, the poor woman was dead and that seemed bizarre. Maybe she’d suffered from a chronic medical condition that left her vulnerable to stress. Or maybe she’d experienced chest pains and (like so many women) had decided to say nothing because she didn’t want to make a fuss. Even if she was under a doctor’s care, death might have come as a surprise. She might have appeared to be in perfect health, asymptomatic, and still toppled over dead with little apparent provocation. I’d been a witness, standing by in the final days of her life, with no idea how little time she had left. It was freakish to contemplate and I could hardly get it out of my mind.
    I grabbed my jacket and car keys, taking the paper with me. I drove to the office in hopes of distracting myself with the business of doing business. Once at my desk, I caught up with my paperwork. I was doing okay until the telephone rang. “Millhone Investigations.”
    “Kinsey?” A woman’s voice.
    “Yes, ma’am.”
    “This is Claudia Rines. Did you see the article in this morning’s paper?”
    I put an automatic hand against my heart. “I did and I feel like such a turd . What are the odds of a heart attack? Jesus. I wonder if she knew what was happening to her.”
    There was a moment of quiet. “You didn’t see the article.”
    “I did too. Audrey Vance, sixty-three years old. Two grown kids and she was engaged to some guy. I have the newspaper right here.”
    “Fine, but she didn’t die of a heart attack. She jumped off the Cold Spring Bridge.”
    “What?”
    “The Dispatch . Front page of the second section, just below the fold. If you have it handy, I can wait.”
    “Hang on.” I tucked the receiver against my ear and secured it with one shoulder while I dragged my bag from under the desk and pulled out the paper I’d brought from home. The obituaries were uppermost. The photograph of Audrey still occupied center stage. I put the phone down on the desk and used both hands to flap the pages back to their original configuration. I leaned close to the mouthpiece, saying, “Sorry about that. Hang on a minute.”
    First page, bottom left. There was no photograph of the victim and Audrey’s name wasn’t mentioned. According to the article, a Santa Teresa man was coming over the pass Sunday afternoon when he noticed a car parked on the berm. He stopped to investigate, thinking the vehicle was disabled and the motorist might need help. There was no sign of a flat tire and no note on the windshield indicating the driver had gone in search of the nearest service station. The car was unlocked and he could see the keys in the ignition. What caught his attention was the handbag on the front seat. A pair of high heels had been placed neatly on the seat beside the bag. This was not good.
    He’d walked to the nearest call box and notified the county sheriff’s department. An officer arrived seven minutes later and assessed the situation in much the same way the motorist had. He called for backup and a ground search was instigated. The chaparral below the bridge was so dense that both the Santa Teresa County Sheriff’s K-9 unit and a search-and-rescue team were brought in. Once the dog had located the body, it was a forty-five-minute struggle across treacherous terrain to bring it out. Since the bridge was completed in 1964, seventeen people had made the leap and none had survived the four-hundred-foot drop. The victim’s driver’s license was in her handbag. Identification was withheld, pending notification of the next of kin.
    “Are you sure it was her?”
    “I am now. When I first read the article, I didn’t put it together with the obit. The police made the connection when they ran her name through their computer system. They called and talked to Mr. Koslo, who’d filed the charges against her. Mr. Koslo mentioned it to the guy who monitors the closed-circuit security cameras. Ricardo rang me up as soon as Mr. Koslo was out the door.”
    “This is terrible ,” I said. I could see where someone in the throes of mental or physical anguish might view suicide as a form of relief. The problem was,