W Is for Wasted

over the fact of his father’s death and I wasn’t sure if that was good news or bad. At least we were having what passed for a conversation, though the small talk was making me tense. He seemed happy enough to have me sitting there with the subject matter wandering this way and that. Maybe he appreciated the company, being hemmed in all day with the little ones. He focused on his guitar, idly approximating various chords; not actually playing them, but positioning his fingers on the frets, his gaze fixed on his hands. The pads of his fingers made a faint metallic sound as he moved them across the strings. While he wasn’t being rude, it was like trying to have a conversation with someone filling in a crossword puzzle. He caught my look and smiled briefly. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to cut you off. You were talking about your father.”
    “I was explaining why I knew so little about my Bakersfield kin.”
    “How’d you hook up with my dad?”
    “We never met. The first I heard of him he was in the morgue as a John Doe. My name and number were on a slip of paper in his pocket, and the coroner’s office called, thinking I might know who he was.”
    “And you turn out to be related? That’s a hell of a coincidence, isn’t it?”
    “Not really. I’m told he came to Santa Teresa to look for me.”
    “Because of his prior relationship with your father,” he said, as though assembling the facts.
    “Exactly.”
    “Are you the only Millhone in Santa Teresa?”
    “That’s right. I’m actually a private investigator, so he might have found me in the phone book.”
    “No fooling. Well, ain’t that a kick in the pants. I never met a real private detective before.”
    “This is me,” I said, raising my hand.
    He turned his attention to his guitar, trying a chord or two. In a whispery falsetto, he put together two lines of a song he was apparently composing extemporaneously.
“When your daddy dies, it should come as no surprise . . .”
He stopped and tried the line again.
“When your daddy dies, you have to realize . . .”
He shook his head, holding the guitar against him like a shield.
    I said, “When did you last see your father?”
    “September. A year ago, I forget the date. I heard a knock at the door and nearly fell over when I saw who it was. You knew he went to prison?”
    “Someone told me about it.”
    “Man was a loser, big time. What’re you going to do?” The latter wasn’t meant as a question. It was verbal filler.
    “I can see why you were shocked when he showed up. Did he tell you why he was released?”
    “Said his new lawyer punched all kinds of holes in the case and insisted they submit blood and semen for DNA testing. No match on any of it, so they had to let him go.”
    “He was a very lucky man finding someone who’d go to bat for him.”
    “Yeah, right. Want my take on it?”
    “Sure.”
    “Just because they let him out doesn’t mean he was innocent.”
    I blinked. The statement was the last thing in the world I expected to hear from him. “That’s an odd point of view.”
    “Why? You think guilty people don’t get away with murder?”
    “On occasion, of course they do, but he was exonerated. There wasn’t any evidence that tied him to the crime.”
    “Except Cates, the other guy.”
    “Herman Cates knew he was dying and he admitted he’d implicated your father just because he could. His accomplice was someone else altogether.”
    “So I heard,” he said in that tone that screamed of disbelief. “At any rate, I appreciate your going to so much trouble for someone you never met.”
    “I thought it was the least I could do . . .” I was going to add “under the circumstances” but I stopped where I was. Ethan must have picked up on the missing words.
    “How so?”
    “I understand the two of you quarreled.”
    “Says who?”
    “A friend of his in Santa Teresa.”
    “I wouldn’t call it a quarrel. More like a tiff.”
    “He told his friend there was an ugly scene.”
    “What was I supposed to do? The guy was drunk. So what else is new? Things might have got nasty, but you know how it is. Everybody calms down and life goes on.”
    “You weren’t in touch with him afterward?”
    “Wasn’t possible. The man lives on the street and he doesn’t have a phone. We didn’t even know for sure where he was headed when he left.”
    “Were you aware he’d come into money?”
    “Well, yeah. That’s what he said. We didn’t talk about it, but