At six twenty, just as we were leaving for dinner, John Nguyen dropped in.
The deputy D.A. was dressed for court in a navy pinstripe, white shirt, blue tie, American flag lapel pin. Four evidence boxes were stacked on a wheeled luggage rack. Nguyen’s posture was as straight as ever, but his eyes drooped.
“John, what’s up?”
Nguyen unclasped the top case, pulled out a sheaf of printouts, and dropped it on Milo’s desk. “Mr. and Mrs. Holman’s financials. You owe me.”
Milo scanned the face page. “How’d you pull it off?”
“Been doing a robbery-gangbang trial for three days running, brand-new judge, absurdly biased toward our side so I figured she might go for your spurious logic.”
Licking a finger, Nguyen slashed air vertically. “Score one, J. N. I got one of my eager new interns to push everything through with the banks. Which, I’d like to point out, is normally your responsibility, not mine, not to mention significantly below my pay grade. But you put in the time on the marsh murder trial, so consider it an advance Christmas gift.”
Milo flipped pages. “Your stocking stuffer’s on the way, John… don’t see anything interesting.”
“That’s ’cause there isn’t any,” said Nguyen. “He’s a retired professor, she’s an unfamous architect, their income, expenditures, retirement fund, et cetera, are all commensurate with a cautious, mature lifestyle. Meaning they can probably keep their house and continue to have health insurance if they don’t get really sick or go out to eat too often.”
“This is definitely all of it, John?”
“What, some secret bank account for paying hit men? They budget tighter than my ex-wife’s-never mind.” Nguyen moved toward the door. “I can lead a judge to warrant, dude, but I can’t stop the stink.”
We walked a couple of blocks to Café Moghul, the Indian place that serves as Milo’s supplementary office. He tips huge, is dramatically omnivorous, and the owners are convinced his grumpy-mastiff demeanor wards off danger. The bespectacled woman who works the front always beams when he lumbers through the door, begins piling on the food before his chair warms.
Tonight was lamb, beef, turkey, lobster, three kinds of naan, a garden plot of vegetables.
He bore down, as if tackling a massive culinary puzzle.
I said, “Hail to the sultan of West L.A.”
He wiped sauce from his face. “Keep your geography straight, Rajah. For one brief Cinderella moment.”
“Then the pumpkin appears?”
“Then it’s back to Untouchable.”
Midway through his fourth bowl of sweet kir rice pudding, Sean Binchy strode in, bright-eyed and cheerful as ever.
“Give me some good news, kid, then you can eat.”
“No, thanks, Loot, Becky’s cooking tonight and that’s always a treat. More like good news and bad news. I got lots of names of construction workers but no Montes or anything close.”
“What’s the good news?”
“I’m going to analyze it super-carefully.”
Uttered with absolute sincerity.
“That’s great, Sean.”
Binchy said, “Anything with an M for starts, and if that doesn’t produce, I’ll just check every single name for felony records. Like you always say, tortoise beats hare.”
He left.
Milo said, “Tortoise sometimes gets squashed in the middle of the highway by an eighteen-wheeler, but sure, keep the faith, kid.”
He phoned me at eight the following morning. “Sister Ricki’s due in my office in an hour.”
“I’ll be there.”
“Thought you might also want to know that Doreen Fredd is, indeed, a real person. I searched genealogy sites last night, found a distant cousin living in Nebraska, e-mailed the photo. Family hasn’t seen Doreen for years but verified that she got sent to Seattle when she was a teenager. Naughty girl, ended up in a group home.”
“Why Seattle?”
“The family originally hailed from Tacoma, where Doreen’s daddy worked at a gas station and mommy clerked at a food store. Nice people, according to the cousin, but major alkies, no ‘parental supervision.’ Doreen started running away at an early age. Finally, the court declared her incorrigible. The home worked out for a while, but Doreen split from there, too. She stepped off the map, no one’s heard from her in all this time, she was an only child and both parents are dead.”
“Is the group home still in business?”
“It is but there’s been half a dozen changes of ownership, no staff remains from when Doreen was there, all the old records have been destroyed. Her hooking up with Des Backer makes sense, though: I back-traced his parents’ residence. South Seattle, only a few blocks from the home. Cute girl, cute guy, chemistry, kaboom.”
“Chemistry reignited years later,” I said. “The wrong kind of explosion.”
I showed up for the meet with Ricki Flatt on time, found her talking to Milo.
Des Backer’s sister was faded by grief and fatigue. Long curly hair was tied back carelessly. She wore a baggy gray sweater unsuitable for the weather, mommy jeans, white tennis shoes. A huge canvas purse the color of smog lowered her right shoulder. An overnight bag of matching hue sat on the floor.
Milo lifted the suitcase and escorted her to the same room we’d used to powwow with Moe Reed. He offered her coffee, something to eat.
She touched her belly. “I couldn’t hold anything down. Please tell me what happened to my brother.”
“Mr. Backer and Doreen Fredd were found murdered in an unfinished house in a neighborhood called Holmby Hills. Ever hear of it?”
“I haven’t.”
“Your brother never mentioned Holmby Hills?”
“Never. Where is it?”
“It’s an extremely high-end area, just west of Beverly Hills. There’s an indication your brother and Ms. Fredd had been to that location before.”
“An unfinished house?”
“A construction project.”
“Something Desi was working on?”
Instead of answering, Milo said, “So your brother and Ms. Fredd hung out in high school?”
Nod. “And during the plane ride, I remembered something else. One time, when she was at our house, my dad made a comment to Mom about her being troubled, it was good she was aiming for wholesome activities. You didn’t say if the project was one of Desi’s.”
“It doesn’t appear that way, ma’am. This was what you’d call a super-mansion.”
“Then for sure it wouldn’t be Desi’s.”
“Not into that kind of thing.”
“He would’ve considered it grotesque. But if he wasn’t working on it, why would he be there?”