The Bessie Blue Killer. Richard A. Lupoff

and authorize checks. It was his job to get the facts, to track down the truth when a claim had a peculiar odor to it. Especially if it was a big claim.

      Trouble was, when Lindsey saved the company six-figure amounts on stolen collectibles, he outshone Harden. Ms. Johanssen at National was aware of Lindsey’s work, and of the fact that he’d done it despite Harden’s obstructionism.

      Harden had managed to squeeze Lindsey out of the district office and had replaced him with the odious Elmer Mueller. Now Lindsey was completing the training seminar for International Surety’s corporate troubleshooting team. They gave it a fancy name—Special Projects Unit/Detached Status—and a funny logo, a russet potato with SPUDS lettered across it. Everybody in SPUDS got to wear a little cloisonné potato on his lapel.

      Still, Lindsey knew that the team had been the graveyard of careers.

      Lindsey found himself standing next to a thin, pale woman from Grants Pass, Oregon. She’d hardly spoken during the course, had sat far from Lindsey. He let his eyes flash to her badge.

      Aurora Delano, right. Beneath her name, her home town. Practically a neighbor. Behind her, a white-jacketed bartender was doing slow business.

      “So, Hobart, you had enough of this? Eager to get home to California?”

      Lindsey grunted. “This is too much like being back in college. And I’m a little worried about Mother. She—”

      The bartender caught Lindsey’s attention. Aurora Delano was holding an empty glass, Lindsey noticed. The bartender flashed a question with his eye. Lindsey said, “Aurora, would you like a—”

      She turned toward the bartender and held up her glass. “Refill, sure.”

      The bartender said, “And you, sir?”

      Lindsey said, “The same. I’ll have the same as the lady.”

      The bartender made Aurora’s empty glass disappear and placed a clean ones on the bar. He turned both glasses upside down, wet the rims and dipped them in a bowl of salt. He reached under the bar for a jug and ran a blender of greenish liquid and crushed ice before he filled both glasses. Lindsey paid for the drinks. International Surety ran a no-host bar.

      Aurora said, “We never got to talk during the course. I don’t mind Denver, but I’ll be happy to get out of here.”

      Lindsey said, “And go back to Oregon. How do you feel about working in SPUDS?”

      Aurora said, “No way I’m going back to Oregon. I only went there because his work was there. I’m a southern girl.”

      Lindsey was surprised. “I would have guessed New York.”

      Aurora smiled. Her long, thin face was surrounded by a wash of auburn hair. Definitely the Katherine Hepburn type. “A lot of people think that. I was born and raised in New Orleans. That’s why I took the SPUDS job. Get out of Grant’s Pass. Get out of range of my ex. I talked Ducky into sending me back to Louisiana.”

      The way she said it, it sounded like a little girl’s name. Like Lucy Anna.

      “And your ex is going to stay in Oregon?”

      “I hope to hell he does! Besides, SPUDS will be a change. It gets pretty dull, paying body shops to pound out dented fenders and replace broken windows. Not to mention comforting grieving widows and greedy offspring with checks.”

      Lindsey smiled. He raised his glass. Aurora did the same and they touched rims. Lindsey took a sip. He could taste the salt from the rim, then the drink itself. It was bitter and pulpy. Grapefruit juice. “This what you always drink?”

      “Around International Surety, you bet it is. On my own time, that’s something different.”

      There was music coming over concealed speakers, something totally unidentifiable and equally undistinguished. Lindsey’s musical tastes had been growing in recent months, largely due to the influence of a Berkeley police officer he’d worked with on a couple of his more interesting cases.

      Now the music—Lindsey decided it was a Gershwin medley played on a soupy synthesizer—was interrupted by a polite chiming. It was the signal to proceed to the dining room. Lindsey hoped that the meal would be better than the usual corporate mass-feeding.

      Inside the private dining room Lindsey found his assigned seat. Happily, Aurora Delano was to be his dinner partner. He spotted Cletus Berry at another table, recognized the others in the room from the classes and work groups of the past weeks. The music had resumed. Either Lindsey had been mistaken or the tape had segued from Gershwin into Jerome Kern.

      The food was not as bad as Lindsey had feared, if not quite up to what he’d hoped. Aurora Delano was an interesting conversationalist, going on about her ex-husband and how they had climbed the Himalayas, rafted down the Snoqualmie, explored the Great Barrier Reef. It took her a while to get around to the reason for their split.

      Lindsey didn’t have to say much. As quiet as Aurora had been during lectures on coordination with local probate courts and investigation of motor vehicle registration records and IRS involvement in insurance claims, she had plenty to say across the lamb chops and watercress.

      There was even wine on the table, and the SPUDS in their dark suits, male and female, seemed to be allowed that much leeway. It had become a survival tactic in the corporate world. No more drunken revels. Now you stayed as sober as a judge, because if you didn’t you might let your guard down for a moment and that could be fatal.

      “Well, he was a great guy, my ex.” Aurora sipped her wine. “He was a great guy. He designed nuclear triggers for a living, and he was good at it. Made a nice living, too. Then the bottom fell out of the market for nuclear triggers. Blooey. No more Evil Empire. No more money. All of a sudden, instead of the headhunters sniffing after him, he had to start sending out résumés.”

      Lindsey didn’t have to ask a question. He popped a forkful of Lyonnais potatoes into his mouth and followed it with a sip of ice water.

      “He was hot stuff as long as the money kept rolling in. Those guys make a lot of money, you know. Nuclear trigger designers. Get treated like royalty. President of the United States comes around to the shop. Puts on a white lab coat. Gives the boys a little pep talk. Serving the cause of freedom. Making the world safe for our children and our grandchildren. Holding the forces of tyranny and oppression at bay.”

      “I’ve seen the clips,” Lindsey said.

      “They start to believe it themselves. You know that? Those Stepford Husbands with their sports cars and their big houses and their pert little wives with the big station wagons.”

      “You drive a station wagon?”

      “The Red Octopus dies and Uncle Sam doesn’t need all those weapons factories anymore and they have to start looking for an honest job.”

      Lindsey didn’t pursue the station wagon.

      “You know what?” Aurora put down her glass, picked up her fork, speared a piece of lamb chop and chomped down on it. Lindsey couldn’t tell whether she was nodding in agreement with some thought she’d had or if the motion of her head had to do with chewing the piece of lamb chop. “All of a sudden, nobody wants nuclear trigger designers. And there’s not much positive transfer of the skills.”

      “What did he do?”

      “He had a couple of offers from universities. For about a quarter what he was making.”

      “What did he do?”

      “He called some of his old buddies. You know, they network, those nuclear trigger designers. I don’t know what went wrong. Maybe he wasn’t as popular as he thought with his old buddies. Maybe they didn’t like him. Maybe there’s just no work out there.”

      “So what did he do?”

      “He took it as long as he could.”

      “Yes.”

      “Then