"I" is for Innocent/The Trail to Seven Pines/Who Killed My Daughter?/French Silk [antikvár]

I feel compelled to report that at the moment of death, my entire life did not pass before my eyes in a flash. There was no beckoning white light at the end of a tunnel, no warm fuzzy feeling that my long-departed loved ones were waiting on The Other Side. What I experienced was a little voice piping up in an outraged tone, "Oh, come on. You're not serious. This is really it?" Mostly, I regretted I hadn't tidied my chest of drawers the night before as I'd planned. It's painful to realize that those who mourn your untimely demise will also carry with them the indelible image of all your tatty underpants. You might question the validity of the observation since it's obvious 1 didn't die when I thought I would, but let's face it, life is trivial, and my guess is that dying imparts very little wisdom to those in process. My name is Kinsey Millhone. I'm a licensed private investigator operating out of Santa Teresa, which is ninety-five miles north of Los Angeles. For the past seven years, I'd been running my own small agency adjacent to the home offices of California Fidelity Insurance. My agreement with the company entitled me to the use of an attractive comer suite in exchange for the investigation of arson and wrongful death claims on an "as needed" basis. In early November, that arrangement was terminated when a hotshot efficiency expert was transferred to Santa Teresa from the CF office in Palm Springs. I hadn't thought I'd be affected by the change in company management since I was operating as an independent contractor. However, at our first (and only) meeting, this man and I took an instant dislike to each other. In the fifteen minutes that constituted our entire relationship, I was rude, pugnacious, and uncooperative. The next thing I knew I was out on the street with my client files packed up in assorted cardboard boxes. Let's not even mention the fact that my association with CF had culminated in the wholesale bust-up of a multimillion-dollar auto insurance scam. All that netted me was a