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Chapters (25)
  1. "H" is for HOMICIDE
  2. Chapter 1
  3. Chapter 2
  4. Chapter 3
  5. Chapter 4
  6. Chapter 5
  7. Chapter 6
  8. Chapter 7
  9. Chapter 8
  10. Chapter 9
  11. Chapter 10
  12. Chapter 11
  13. Chapter 12
  14. Chapter 13
  15. Chapter 14
  16. Chapter 15
  17. Chapter 16
  18. Chapter 17
  19. Chapter 18
  20. Chapter 19
  21. Chapter 20
  22. Chapter 21
  23. Chapter 22
  24. Chapter 23
  25. Epilogue

I was unsettled by the lack of media coverage. After the first splash in the papers, all reference to the homicide seemed to vanish from sight. None of the television news shows carried any follow-up. I had to assume there were no leads and no new information coming in, but it did seem odd. And depressing, to say the least. When someone you care about is murdered like that, you want other people to feel the impact. You want to see the community fired up and some kind of action being taken. Without fuel, even the talk among the CF employees began to peter out. Speculation flared and died, leaving melancholy in its place. The cops swept in and packed up everything in his desk. His active caseload was distributed among the other agents. Some relative of his flew out from the East Coast and closed his apartment, disposing of his belongings. Business went on as usual. Where Parnell Perkins had once been, there was now empty space, and none of us understood quite how to cope with that. Eventually, I would realize how all the pieces fit together, but at that point the puzzle hadn't even been dumped out of the box. Within weeks, the homicide was superseded by the reality of Gordon Titus – Mr. Tight-Ass, as we soon referred to him – the VP from Palm Springs, whose transfer to the home office was scheduled for November 15. As it turned out, even Titus played an unwitting part in the course of events.

Chapter 2

Chapter 2

CF had been buzzing about Gordon Titus since June when the quarterly report showed unusual claim activity. In an insurance office, any time the loss ratio exceeds the profit ratio by ten percent, the board begins to scrutinize the entire operation, trying to decide where the trouble lies. The fact that ours was the California Fidelity home office didn't exempt us from corporate abuse, and the general feeling was that we were headed for a shake-up. Word had it that Gordon Titus had been hired by the Palm Springs branch originally to revise their office procedures and boost their premium volume commitment. While he'd apparently done an admirable job (from the board's point of view), he'd created a lot of misery. In a world presided over by Agatha Christie, Gordon Titus might have ended up on the conference room floor with a paper spindle through his heart. In the real world, such matters seldom have such a satisfactory ending. Gordon Titus was simply being transferred to Santa Teresa, where he was destined to create the same kind of misery.