Y is for Yesterday (A Kinsey Millhone Novel, Band 25) - Softcover

Grafton, Sue

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0399185380 ISBN 13: 9780399185380

Verlag: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 2018

Inhaltsangabe

THE FINAL INSTALLMENT IN SUE GRAFTON'S ALPHABET SERIES 
WINNER OF THE ANTHONY/BILL CRIDER AWARD FOR BEST NOVEL IN A SERIES  

Private investigator Kinsey Millhone confronts her darkest and most disturbing case in this #1 New York Times bestseller from Sue Grafton.

In 1979, four teenage boys from an elite private school sexually assault a fourteen-year-old classmate—and film the attack. Not long after, the tape goes missing and the suspected thief, a fellow classmate, is murdered. In the investigation that follows, one boy turns state’s evidence and two of his peers are convicted. But the ringleader escapes without a trace.
       
Now, it’s 1989 and one of the perpetrators, Fritz McCabe, has been released from prison. Moody, unrepentant, and angry, he is a virtual prisoner of his ever-watchful parents—until a copy of the missing tape arrives with a ransom demand. That’s when the McCabes call Kinsey Millhone for help. As she is drawn into their family drama, she keeps a watchful eye on Fritz. But he’s not the only one being haunted by the past. A vicious sociopath with a grudge against Millhone may be leaving traces of himself for her to find...

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

#1 New York Times bestselling author Sue Grafton first introduced Kinsey Millhone in the Alphabet Series in 1982. Soon after, both writer and heroine became icons and international bestsellers. Ms. Grafton was a writer who consistently broke the bonds of genre while never writing the same book twice. Named a Grand Master by the Mystery Writers of America, her awards and honors included the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Private Eye Writers of America, the Ross Macdonald Literary Award, the Cartier Diamond Dagger Award from Britain's Crime Writers' Association, the Lifetime Achievement Award from Malice Domestic, a Lifetime Achievement Award from Bouchercon, three Shamus Awards, and three Anthony Awards—including the first two ever awarded. She passed away in December 2017.

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1

The Theft

January 1979

Iris stood at the counter in the school office, detention slip in hand, anticipating a hand-smack from Mr. Lucas, the vice principal. She’d already seen him twice since her enrollment at Climping Academy the previous fall. The first time, she’d been turned in for cutting PE. The second time, she’d been reported for smoking outside study hall. She’d been advised there was a smoking area set aside specifically for students, which she argued was on the far side of campus and impossible to get to between classes. That fell on deaf ears. This was now early January and she’d been reported for violating the school’s dress code.

She was willing to admit that detention slips were a poor means of establishing her place in a new school. The younger students wore uniforms, but in the upper grades, clothing was at the discretion of the individual student as long as the overall look was considered within bounds. The way Iris read it—no skirts or dresses with hemlines above the knee, no tank tops, no shorts, no T-shirts with slogans, no underwear showing, and no flip-flops or Doc Martens. As far as she was concerned, she was playing by the rules. She’d assumed she could wear anything she pleased, within reason, of course. Climp had a different point of view. In the minds of the school administrators, clothing was meant to show modesty, respect, conservatism, and seriousness of purpose.

Her choice that morning had been an ankle-length claret-colored velvet dress with a ruffled collar, long sleeves, black tights, and high-top red tennis shoes. Her hair was long and thick, a color that fell somewhere between auburn and flame red thanks to a mixture of boxed dyes. Two big silver barrettes held the mass away from her face. On each wrist she wore a wide leather cuff, studded with brass and silver nail heads. As it turned out, all of this was a great big no-no. Well, shit.

The school secretary, Mrs. Malcolm, acknowledged Iris’s presence with a nod, but clearly the woman didn’t intend to interrupt her work over the antics of a problematic ninth grader. She was busy distributing mail to various teachers’ cubbyholes. A student volunteer, Poppy, was stapling together packets of some sort. Iris was a freshman at Climping Academy, the Santa Teresa private school located in Horton Ravine, which was so la-di-da, it totally freaked her out. She was only at Climp because her father had been hired to teach advanced placement math and to coach field hockey. The tuition was twenty thousand dollars a year, which her parents could never have afforded if not for her father’s job, which allowed Climp to waive the cost of enrollment.

The last high school she’d attended was in a “mixed” neighborhood in Detroit, which was to say, drugs, thugs, and vandalism, some of which Iris had generated herself when the mood struck her. She’d been uprooted from Michigan and plunked down on the West Coast despite her protests. California was a bust. She expected surfers, dopers, and free spirits, but it was all the same old shit as far as she could tell. Climping Academy was beyond belief. Enrollment from kindergarten to twelfth grade was three hundred students total, with a pupil-to-teacher ratio of nine to one. Expectations were high and most of the students rose to the occasion. And why would they not? These were all rich kids, whose mommies and daddies gave them the best of everything: trips abroad, unlimited clothing budgets, private tennis and fencing lessons, and weekly visits with a shrink—the latter just in case some boob was gifted with a brand-new VW instead of the BMW he had his heart set on. Big boo-fucking-hoo. Her parents often expressed doubts about her private school attendance, citing the pressure to conform and the dangers of materialism. Her parents fancied themselves Bohemians.

One look at her outfit and her homeroom teacher, Mrs. Rubio, had informed her she’d have to go home and change, and when she told Mrs. Rubio she had no transportation, the woman had suggested she take a bus. Like, huh? Iris didn’t know anything about bus schedules, so what was she supposed to do? Unlike most of the other students, she didn’t live in snooty old Horton Ravine. Moving from Michigan to California had been a shock, the sticker prices for homes being exorbitant. Her parents had purchased a shabby rambling house on the Upper East Side with a mortgage that would keep them enslaved for life. How Bohemian was that? Iris was an only child. Her parents had never wanted children in the first place, a sentiment they were happy to remind her of at the drop of a hat. Her mother, at the age of ­twenty-five, went in to have her tubes tied against medical advice, and ­discovered she was pregnant. Husband and wife had agonized over whether to terminate, and in the end they decided it was acceptable to have one child. Often in Iris’s hearing, they congratulated themselves on their parenting style, which consisted largely of instilling independence in the girl, meaning an ability to entertain herself and demand precious little.

Her mother had a degree in political science and was currently teaching part time at Santa Teresa City College. She also volunteered two afternoons a week at an abortion clinic, where she felt it was incumbent on her to champion reproductive rights, women’s control over their own bodies, and the advisability of women keeping their options open instead of burdening themselves with unwanted offspring.

Meanwhile, having witnessed the sophistication of Horton Ravine, Iris was embarrassed by the way she was forced to live. On the home front, her parents favored clutter and disarray—imagining perhaps that untidiness and intellectual superiority walked hand in hand. Iris couldn’t remember the last time the three of them sat down to a meal. Dishes were left in the sink since neither her mother nor father could be bothered with such things. Dusting and vacuuming were too mundane to address. Laundry went undone. If one of them broke down and actually washed and dried a load, it was left in a pile on the living room sofa to be reclaimed as needed. Iris did her own. Her parents believed it was exploitative of the lower classes to hire household help, so those chores were best left a-begging. They were also committed to the notion of equality between the sexes, which spawned an unspoken competition to see who could force the other to knuckle under and pick up the slack. Iris’s bedroom was the only orderly room in the house and she spent most of her free time there isolated from the chaos.

Mr. Lucas appeared in the doorway to his office indicating that she should come in. He was a good-looking man, low-key, relaxed, and competent. His hair was the color of California beach sand, his face nicely creased. He was tall and trim, given to cashmere vests and dress shirts with the sleeves rolled up. He tossed a file on his desk and took a seat, lacing his fingers above his head. “Mrs. Rubio has lodged an objection to your outfit,” he remarked. “You look like you’re on your way to the Renaissance Faire.”

“Whatever that is,” she said.

“This is the third detention you’ve been cited for since you arrived. I don’t understand this pattern of defiance.”

“Why is it a pattern when I’ve only done two things wrong?”

“Counting today, that makes three. You’re here to learn, not to do battle with school authorities. I’m not sure you appreciate the opportunity you’ve been given.”

“I don’t give a shit about that,” she said. “All my friends are back in Detroit. With all due respect,...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: G.P. Putnam's Sons
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2018
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0399185380
• ISBN 13: 9780399185380
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 560
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar