Not Exactly a Brahmin Read Online Free Page A

never have found a clue.”
    I looked out at the rain. So Sam Nguyen finished the car at one o’clock. It was in perfect condition. Ralph Palmerston picked it up at one-thirty. And in three hours the brake lines were cut, the car smashed, and Ralph Palmerston was lying on the sidewalk with blood in his eyes.
    I considered checking back at the station with Pereira and calling the phone number on the slip of paper in Palmerston’s glove compartment, but I hated to think of Mrs. Palmerston pacing her living room wondering where her husband was. And I was getting more anxious and more curious to see this woman.
    I made my way back via my circuitious route to Grizzly Peak Boulevard.
    But Mrs. Palmerston was not worrying, or at least she wasn’t doing it at home. The house was still dark.
    There were lights now in most of the neighbor’s houses. I started with one diagonally across the street. The householder, a woman in her fifties, hadn’t been home all day. She couldn’t tell me anything. She looked at me suspiciously. Again, I wished I had had the sense to bring an umbrella to work. It was no wonder a bedraggled, sodden woman claiming to be a Homicide officer engendered skepticism.
    The man to the right of her house had just returned from work. He didn’t know the Palmerston’s; he’d only lived there eight months.
    It wasn’t till I knocked on the door of the house across the street that I was rewarded.
    The woman who answered the door—Ellen Kershon was her name—was not much older than I was, probably in her early thirties. But in contrast to me, she had styled hair—dry—and wore a soft corduroy knickers outfit. The leather of her boots looked softer than the corduroy.
    “I’m Detective Smith,” I said, holding out my shield. “It’s about your neighbor Ralph Palmerston. He’s been in an accident.”
    She shrunk back. “An accident? Is he all right?”
    “I’m afraid not. He’s been killed.”
    Tears welled in her eyes. “But how?”
    “His car crashed into the guardrail in the Marin traffic circle.” I didn’t elaborate; I’d already told her more than I should have before the widow was notified.
    She covered her face, and in that moment she looked more like a child in knickers than an adult. Swallowing, she motioned me into the living room, a large comfortable room with thick green wall-to-wall carpeting. By the front window was a jack-o’-lantern.
    “I’m sorry,” she said, swallowing again. “I don’t usually react like this.”
    “Were you very close to Mr. Palmerston?”
    “Actually no, that’s the strange thing. I wouldn’t have thought his death would affect me so much. Sit down.” She settled on a maroon sofa and I followed. “I grew up in this house. Ralph was really a friend of my parents, a rather formal friend. They went to his Christmas open house, and he came here for my parents’ annual barbecue. Ralph didn’t have children. When I was a small child, Ralph’s wife was frail; later on she drifted into more serious illness. Eventually she died. Ralph was devoted to her. She took a lot of his time. Maybe that’s why he seemed so formal.”
    So far her explanation hadn’t explained her reaction. I waited.
    “He was a thoughtful man. Every Christmas he gave my parents a case of champagne, the winery’s private reserve—I mean their private private reserve, not the so-called private reserve you see in stores. And to me”—her eyes clouded—“his gifts were always the perfect thing. Each year it was something very special—a basketball and hoop when I was thirteen and thought I’d never lower myself to be interested in boys, and French perfume the next year when I was going on my first date. Always just the right thing. It wasn’t till I had my own child that I wondered how he could have zeroed in on what I wouldn’t have known I’d adore. Surprising for a man who never had children.”
    I nodded. The aroma of beef filled the living room. It reminded me that