"D" Is for Deadbeat
Cover of the book "D" Is for Deadbeat by Sue Grafton.
|
|
| Author | Sue Grafton |
|---|---|
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Series | Alphabet Mysteries |
| Genre | Mystery |
| Published | 1987 (Henry Holt and Company) |
| Media type | Print (Hardcover) |
| Pages | 229 pp (first edition) |
| ISBN | |
| OCLC | 14413876 |
| 813/.54 19 | |
| LC Class | PS3557.R13 D2 1987 |
| Preceded by | "C" Is for Corpse |
| Followed by | "E" Is for Evidence |
"D" Is for Deadbeat is the fourth novel in Sue Grafton's "Alphabet" series of mystery novels and features Kinsey Millhone, a private eye based in Santa Teresa, California. The novel follows the development of Kinsey's relationship with Jonah Robb, the police officer she met in B is for Burglar.
"D is for Deadbeat" begins as Kinsey receives a contract from ex-con Alvin Limardo to deliver a check for twenty-five thousand dollars to a fifteen-year-old boy named Tony Gahan. According to Limardo, Tony helped him through a tough time in his life, leaving Limardo indebted. However, when the retainer check Limardo made out to Kinsey for four hundred dollars bounces, she learns that Alvin Limardo is actually John Daggett, a man known by all and liked by few, recently released from a local prison. He is also a bigamist. His first wife Essie's fanatical religious views have kept her married to Daggett, while Daggett, in disregard of his marital status, underwent a second marriage to Lovella on his release from prison, but has subjected her to repeated violence.
In her search to find Daggett and get her money back, she discovers that he was found dead on the beach only a few days after hiring her. Through Daggett's daughter Barbara, Kinsey learns that Tony Gahan was the sole survivor of a family killed in a car accident caused by Daggett, for which he received a conviction on charges of vehicular manslaughter. Tony's been a wreck since the death of his family, rarely sleeping and doing poorly in school. He now lives with his uncle and aunt, Ramona and Ferrin Westfall. Also killed in the accident was a friend of Tony's young sister, and a boy called Doug Polokowski, who had hitched a ride in the car. Kinsey tracks down an ex-con friend of Daggett's, Billy Polo, now living in a trailer park with his sister, Coral. Billy is the one who introduced Lovella to Daggett. Kinsey finds out that Doug Polokowski was Billy and Coral's brother. There's no shortage of people with a motive for Daggett's death, but the police are classifying it as an accident.
Kinsey discovers that shortly before his death Daggett was staggering about drunk at the marina in the company of a blonde woman in a green outfit. She sets out to discover which of the numerous blonde women in the case might be the killer. She also suspects that Billy Polo is not giving her the full truth about his involvement with Daggett, a suspicion confirmed when Polo is also murdered at the beach, shot with Kinsey's own gun, stolen from her car a few days earlier. Coral finally levels with Kinsey: she, Billy, and Lovella were plotting together to rob Daggett of money he had come by illicitly in prison, not knowing that Daggett had given the money to Kinsey to pass on to Tony.
...
Wikipedia