The puzzle of Violet Sullivan was dumped in my lap via a phone call from a woman named Tannie Ottweiler, whom I’d met through my friend Lieutenant Dolan, the homicide detective I’d worked with the previous spring. My name is Kinsey Millhone. I’m a licensed private investigator, typically working twelve to fifteen cases that range in nature from background checks to insurance fraud to erring spouses in the midst of acrimonious divorces. I’d enjoyed working with Dolan because he provided me a reason to leave my usual paper searches behind and get out in the field.

The minute I heard Tannie’s voice, an image popped to mind: forties, good face, little or no makeup, dark hair held back by tortoise-shell combs and framed in a halo of cigarette smoke. She was the bartender, manager, and sometime waitress at a little hole-in-the-wall known as Sneaky Pete’s. This was where Dolan had first talked me into helping him. He and his crony, Stacey Oliphant, who’d retired from the Santa Teresa County Sheriff’s Department, were investigating an unsolved homicide that had been sitting on the books for eighteen years. Neither man was in good health, and they’d asked me to do some of the legwork. In my mind, that job and Tannie Ottweiler were inextricably connected and generated feelings of goodwill. I’d seen her a couple of times since then, but we’d never exchanged more than pleasantries, which was what we did now. I could tell she was smoking, which suggested a minor level of uneasiness.

Finally, she said, “Listen, why I called is I’m wondering if you’d sit down and have a chat with a friend of mine.”

“Sure. No problem. About what?”

“Her mother. You remember Violet Sullivan?”

“Don’t think so.”

“Come on. Sure you do. Serena Station, north county? She disappeared years ago.”

“Oh, right. Gotcha. I forgot about her. That was in the ‘40s, wasn’t it?”

“Not that far back. Fourth of July, 1953.”

When I was three, I thought. This was September 1987. I’d turned thirty-seven in May and I noticed I was starting to keep track of events in terms of my age. Dimly I dredged up a fragment of information. “Why am I thinking there’s a car involved?”

“Because her husband had just bought her a Chevrolet Bel Air and that disappeared, too. Great car-a five-passenger coupe. I saw one just like it at the car show last year.” I could hear Tannie take a hit from her cigarette. “Rumor had it she was having an affair with some guy and the two ran off.”

“Happens every day.”