P is for Peril Read Online Free Page A

invoice as soon as I get back.” She glanced at her watch and then rose to her feet.
    I stood when she did. “I’ll need a retainer.”
    â€œA ‘retainer’?” She made a show of startlement, but I wondered if she was repeating the words for effect. Surely she didn’t do business without a written agreement and earnest money changing hands. “How much did you have in mind?”
    â€œI charge fifty an hour or a flat four hundred a day, plus expenses, so fifteen hundred dollars should cover it for now. If you give me Melanie’s address, I’ll overnight you a contract for your signature.” In truth, I could have brought one with me, but I hadn’t been sure we’d end up coming to an agreement.
    She blinked as though baffled. “I’m sorry. I didn’t picture anything so formal. Is this standard procedure in your line of work?”
    â€œActually, it is,” I said. I noticed she didn’t call it a “profession,” which meant she probably lumped me in with retail clerks, short-order cooks, and Roto-Rooter men.
    â€œWhat if you fail to find him?”
    â€œThat’s exactly the point. If I come up empty-handed, you might decide I wasn’t worth the hourly wage. Once I take a case, I persevere. I’ll follow the trail right out to the bitter end.”
    â€œI should hope so,” she said. She thought about it briefly, and then she crossed to an ebony-inlaid console. She removed her checkbook, returned to her chair, and sat down. “And I’m to make the check out to . . . ?”
    â€œMillhone Investigations.”
    I watched while she dashed off a check and tore it out of the book, scarcely bothering to disguise her irritation as she handed it to me. I noticed we were bank mates, sharing the same branch of the Santa Teresa City Bank. I said, “You’re upset.”
    â€œI operate on trust. Apparently, you don’t.”
    â€œI’ve learned the hard way. It’s nothing personal.”
    â€œI see.”
    I held out the check. “I can return this right now if you’d prefer.”
    â€œJust find him. I’ll expect a full report the minute I get home.”

2
    Before I left Fiona’s, she gave me Melanie’s home address in San Francisco, along with her home and office numbers. I couldn’t imagine the need to call Fiona up there. She also gave me Crystal’s Horton Ravine address and phone number. I’d never met Detective Odessa, whom Fiona’d mentioned in passing, but a conversation with him was the first item on my list. Driving back into town, I noticed my stomach had begun to churn with anxiety. I tried to pinpoint my doubts, laying them out one by one, though not necessarily in the order of importance.
    1. I didn’t particularly like—or trust—Fiona. She hadn’t been candid with the cops and I didn’t think she was being entirely candid with me. Under the circumstances, I probably should have declined to take the job. Already I was regretting the haste with which I’d agreed.
    2. I wasn’t sure I could be effective. I’m often uneasy at the outset of an investigation, especially one like this. Nine weeks had passed since Dr. Purcell was last seen. Whatever the circumstances surrounding a disappearance, the passage of time seldom works in your favor. Witnesses embellish. They invent. The memory grows foggy. The truth tends to blur with repetition, and details are altered to suit various personal interpretations. People want to be helpful, which means they embroider their stories, coloring events according to their biases as the situation drags on. Entering the game this late, I knew the likelihood of my making any critical discovery was almost out of the question. Fiona did have a point in that sometimes a fresh perspective can shift the focus of an investigation. All well and good, but intuition was telling me that any break in the case