REVIEW: "H IS FOR HOMICIDE" by SUE GRAFTON
In this eighth book in the Kinsey Millhone, Private Investigator series, Kinsey has just arrived home from a three-week job in San Diego. She goes to work on Saturday morning at her office in the California Fidelity Insurance building and finds police all over the parking lot, because there’s a dead body on the ground. When she glimpses the man, she realizes it is her friend Parnell Perkins, an adjuster at CFI. She gives Lieutenant Con Dolan of the Homicide Division of Santa Teresa Police Department as much information as she can about Mr. Perkins.
CFI adjusters hire her to find out the status of a claimant named Bibianna Diaz, who they believe is running an insurance scam. There’s a new CFI Vice President efficiency expert in the office and he confronts Kinsey to demand that she follow the same rules on documentation and form submission that the employees do. She reminds him that she’s an independent contractor and doesn’t work for him. She senses she’s on thin ice here.
Kinsey tracks Bibianna to her employment at a dry cleaner, but she’s not at work, because of her purported back injury. She locates Bibianna’s apartment and stakes it out until she spots her on her way out. She introduces herself as “Hannah Moore” and tells her she’s interested in renting the apartment if Bibianna moves, which seems to be imminent.
Then she tails Bibianna to a dance club, where Bibianna meets her new lover, a man named Jimmy Tate, whom Kinsey has known since junior high. He’s a recently retired cop, and she hopes he doesn’t blow her cover. The two of them invite her to go with them to the restaurant three doors down. Suddenly, a man and woman show up and move toward their table. The man shoves a gun in Bibianna’s back and they drag her out the door to the alley into a waiting car. Tate pulls out his gun and runs after them. He fires several shots into the back window of their moving car and shoots out a tire. When the car stops, the man climbs out and crawls along the sidewalk to a spot where the paramedics find him when they arrive.
Police arrive on the scene and arrest Tate. While a female officer is questioning Bibianna, Bibianna punches the cop in the mouth, which gets her instantly arrested. Kinsey, in an effort to keep pace and maintain her cover, socks the same officer in the mouth and gets herself handcuffed and transported in a squad car with Bibianna to jail. They’re both booked and put into a cell with other women.
Lieutenant Dolan and Lieutenant Santos show up at the jail and arrange to have Kinsey pulled from the cell to an interview room. They tell her a deputy at intake recognized her and called them. They’re working on the same case and want her to run undercover for them. They promise to post bail and will provide a wire for her to wear with a police detail close by, monitoring her whereabouts. She reluctantly agrees and they set up the time of her bailout as 8 A.M., when they will get her set up. At 6 A.M., she and Bibianna are released and she senses something’s gone amiss, because the release is too early, and the detectives are nowhere to be seen.
Outside the jail Raymond Maldonado is waiting in his tricked-out Ford with his bodyguard Luis. Bibianna freaks out, because he’s someone she used to date, and he’s the brother of the man who was shot by Tate in the attempted kidnapping. He slobbers all over Bibianna and tells her they are getting married right away. She’s frantic to get away from him. He and Luis drive them to an apartment in a rough neighborhood south of Los Angeles. The apartment is filthy and full of trash and populated by Raymond’s gang and a ferocious dog. He tells Bibianna he rented the apartment for them to live in when they’re married. As the days pass, no matter what strategies they implement, Kinsey and Bibianna can’t get away from Raymond.
Raymond takes her on a “drive-down” to run his scams. Driving random streets, he deliberately rams into a car, hitting the left rear quadrant, and takes down the other driver’s insurance info, which he then turns into a bogus claim with multiple passengers and contrived injuries. They run four of these accidents. Kinsey asks for medical help because her neck is stiff from so many collisions, so Raymond takes her to their gang doctor where she receives a neck and back treatment. She learns much from poking around his medical office, mostly, that she’s just uncovered another facet of the multi-million-dollar insurance fraud organization she and Dolan are looking for. She proves again, no matter what the circumstances, Kinsey Millhone, Private Investigator, singularly focuses on her job and her mission.
One afternoon, when Raymond goes into the bathroom to shoot heroin, Kinsey throws his car keys to Bibianna and instructs her to flee. She drives away in Raymond’s Cadillac. After that, all hell breaks loose.
Regardless that she was left to fend for herself, she solved the case, she saved lives, she cornered the leaders of the insurance fraud gang, and she saved CFI hundreds of thousands of dollars in fraudulent claims. Perhaps, a metaphor is buried in here in this complex story by Sue Grafton: Never count on backup, because no matter what anyone promises you, you’re on your own to handle trouble. … Pam Wilder …