“Didn’t we have this conversation earlier? There’s nothing to understand, Mort.”
“How about, ‘Why me?’ ”
She leaned back and looked at me. “Why not you? You’re an attractive man.”
“Trust me, I’m not getting anywhere with that.”
“Okay, truth is, it’s because you’re a private eye and terribly mysterious, bordering on sinister and dangerous, very Bondlike, sexy as all get-out. You make my knees feel weak. My heart flutters when I’m in the same room as you. I get all dizzy just thinking about—”
“You forgot your Prozac again, right?”
She moved out of my arms, grinning. “You’re hopeless.”
“Want some coffee?”
She shook her head. “Milk, fruit, toast. I’ll get it.”
I stared openly at her barely concealed chest. “The sights in this kitchen have improved a lot since yesterday.”
She looked down at herself and grinned. “Should I button up another one or two of these guys?”
“No. I think you’ve got it just right.”
“Uh-huh. Thought so.”
“How well did you know your grandfather?” I asked, giving the coffeepot a longing look, willing it to hurry the hell up.
“My grandfather?” She paused with a hand on the refrigerator door. “Which one?”
“Jonnie’s dad. Wendell.”
She shrugged, got out the milk. “He was gruff and overbearing, didn’t have any idea how to be around kids. He’d shake my hand like I was a business acquaintance, just about crush my fingers. I was thirteen when he was murdered. That was a huge mess.”
“Do you remember much of it?”
“Not a lot. Just that Dad was shook up and all kinds of legal stuff was going on afterward, him taking over his father’s businesses and everything. And the funeral. Black dresses and flowers, depressing organ music, everyone somber and quiet. I guess murder is like that.”
“Any idea who Wendell’s lawyer was at the time?”
“Not a clue.”
“Chances are, whoever it was would’ve become Jonnie’s lawyer after Wendell’s death.”
Kayla pursed her lips. “I guess so. I wasn’t paying any attention to that kind of thing back then. I was past Barbie dolls, somewhere around thinking boys might be more interesting than I’d thought in the past.” She put bread in the toaster, pushed the lever down. “All these questions. Does this mean we’re sleuthing now?”
“We?” I asked.
“Well, you might like me better if I’m mysterious and sinister too.”
“I like you fine the way you are, especially dressed like that, I might add. And who the hell says you’re not mysterious or sinister?”
She smiled brightly. “Think so?”
“I found you in my bed. No name. No ID. No expiration date. Even now I’m taking your word for everything you’ve said. What do you think?”
“Well, darn. I’ve been found out. My real name is Mata Hari.”
“I wouldn’t be surprised, except her real name was Gertrud Zelle and she was executed by the French during World War I, so you’d not only be older than I give you credit for, you’d be embalmed. Not my type. So—about your father’s lawyer?”
“Is it important?”
“I’m wondering how Edna Woolley ended up in that house back in 1976, or thereabouts. An arrangement of some kind was made. Wendell and his family moved out, Edna moved in. She’s been there ever since. I imagine lawyers were involved.”
“All of which happened years before I was born, Mort.”
“Your father never said anything about it?”
“No, never.”
“Think you’d recognize a lawyer’s name from a list if I got you one?”
“It’s possible. Especially if the lawyer was one of his friends, like a golfing buddy or something. I imagine I met most of them at one time or another, or heard their names.”
“Let’s find out.” I told her to stay put, then went out the back, through the fence, and rapped on Velma’s back door.
I’d given some thought to the problem last night. Last time I’d been up in Velma’s attic, helping her look for a set of china she hadn’t seen in years, I’d gone through a zillion boxes. Two of them held old phone books Velma’s husband Orrin had stashed up there, God knows why. I remembered seeing over a dozen of them. It had meant nothing to me at the time, but now I saw them as a window into the past. Something of yesterday must’ve sunk in.
Velma was awake, of course, eager for information about Kayla and me and the husband we were dodging. Was he big? Did he have a temper? Did he know anything about guns? I fended her off as best I could as I climbed a ladder into her attic and spoke to her through the opening, raising clouds of dust as I pawed through boxes.
“You gonna do the right thing by her, Mortimer?” Velma called up to me.
I sneezed explosively, which raised even more dust. “What’s the right thing?”
“You know.” She let fly a few bars of “Here Comes the Bride.”
“You never know, Velma.” I couldn’t have answered yes or no. If I had, I would’ve been in big trouble, one way or the other.
“Divorce still only takes six weeks here in Reno,” she said.
“Know that, thanks.”
More of the wedding march came from below. I found a phone book for 1977, two years before Kayla was born. Good enough. With promises to tell all soon, I escaped back to my house.
I plopped the book down on the dinette, opened it to the attorney section in the yellow pages. Back then there weren’t quite seven pages of lawyers—now there are fifty-five, and personal injury lawyers have monster full-page ads. Another sign of the times. Munching toast with marmalade, still wearing my partly open shirt and nothing else, Kayla perused the names of law firms, tracking downward with a finger. I drank coffee and waited. With so few pages to go through it didn’t take long.
“Okay,” she said, brightening. “Here. Oleson & Critchen. I don’t know about Critchen, but the other one, Oleson, was my dad’s lawyer. Frank Oleson.”
With any luck, he’d been Wendell’s lawyer, too.
Kayla peered over my shoulder as I
