We walked them down the stairs and out to the street, watched as they hurried to the visitors lot.
“Nice kids,” he said. “Too bad I didn’t learn anything from them.”
I said, “The part about an absent father could’ve made her vulnerable to O’Brien. Same for what they told us about Marissa distancing herself from real relationships.”
“How so?”
“Dealing with people takes practice.”
“She got rusty.”
“That plus ambition could’ve clouded her judgment. And her going it alone, without her friends, meant there was no one to look for danger signs. And there was plenty to worry about. This wasn’t an impulsive thing on O’Brien’s part. Her clothes and purse were at his place but her phone wasn’t. Maybe he confiscated it early on and wanted to cut off any escape route. Or he tossed it after she passed out to avoid being connected with her. Either way, she was way in over her head.”
“Evil,” he said. “Even without her phone, I can get her call history. Problem is, with O’Brien dead, none of it really matters. I’ll write him up as the likely suspect but it’ll just be notes in a file.”
“O’Brien, on the other hand, remains a whodunit and Petra wants you involved.”
“She was being nice,” he said. “No way the boss is gonna allow me to get involved with a Hollywood case.”
At the station door, I said, “One question. Why’d you give the girls O’Brien’s name?”
“I figured maybe they’d go all social with it and it’d bring in a tip about the last party and that might clarify both cases. That’s what I texted Petra about. She said sure, go for it.”
He rubbed his face. “Okay, thanks as always, sorry it hasn’t been profound. Go and enjoy hearth and home while I search for a cop in Stockton I can make sad.”
Quick pat on the back. He’s turned dismissing me into an art form.
I smiled and walked away.
Robin had waited up for me and ordered take-out sushi.
Slow, quiet dinner on the front terrace, Blanche stretched on the floor to my right, waiting patiently for bits of culinary goodwill.
The air smelled of pine and jasmine. The same stars that had pocked the sky near the station were larger and brighter, freed from the harassment of city lights.
“Pretty night,” I said.
“I was going to suggest we eat by the fishpond but given the menu it seemed in poor taste.”
I laughed and kissed her.
She said, “Wasabi snog. So what have you been doing all day?”
I told her.
She said, “Poor girl, that is incredibly sad and disgusting. I get Milo’s frustration about no final justice. Though when you get down to it, I guess justice is an abstraction.”
I said, “Abstractions keep us civilized.”
She looked at me. “You say much with few words. Yet another reason.”
“For what?”
“Some serious horseradish romance.” She demonstrated.
I said, “That wasn’t in the least bit abstract.”
Chapter 10
I heard nothing from Milo on Sunday or Monday. Which was fine because Robin and I had planned to make a day of it at Huntington Gardens before returning home with some barbecue we’d picked up at a place in Pasadena.
Dinner was near the pond this time, the fish unthreatened by proximity to red meat and enjoying the occasional toss of koi pellets.
Blanche ecstatic, as always, about proximity to any type of food.
Tuesday morning, Milo phoned at eleven a.m. “Bad time for me to come by?”
I’d just handed a court courier a packet of documents, was planning to check my messages. “Not at all.”
“See you soon.”
That meant he’d phoned from the road. I was waiting on the terrace when he drove up three minutes later.
Unlike at O’Brien’s place, he vaulted up the stairs to the terrace two at a time. When he reached the top, panting and a bit flushed, he said, “My powers of prediction have failed big-time.”
I followed him into the kitchen, where he detected among the shelves of the fridge. Pulling out a half-full quart container of milk, he sniffed, then downed. Next came a chunk of rye bread. He knew where to find the right knife and plate, sliced himself a couple of slabs, retrieved marmalade from the pantry, sat down at the table and began slathering.
I said, “What didn’t you predict?”
“Bureaucratic stupidity.”
“Guess even safe bets don’t always pay off.”
He smiled but not durably. “Everything started off routine, no problem finding Marissa’s aunt in Stockton, she’s a civilian dispatcher not a cop. I did the notification over the phone, learned squat. She barely knew Marissa, said her sister — Marissa’s mom — was a loner who’d cut herself off from the family.”
“Sounds familiar,” I said.
“What — oh yeah, guess so. Anyway, then Basia calls and confirms that Marissa died of a GHB overdose augmented by Valium. The only surprise was she hadn’t had sex recently.”
“She passed out and died before O’Brien had his chance.”
“The guy was a scumbag control freak,” he said. “I’m surprised it made a difference to him. I told Basia what we found at his place and she’s gonna list Manner as Homicide. Which is obviously the right call but still sucks because it means I get an open murder on my record. But what can I do? So I go to work on my notes, am about to leave when Captain Shubb calls me in and when I get there she’s got the look — bureaucratic blankness. I’m figuring, great, now I’m gonna get chewed out because Petra requested a collab. Instead, Shubb informs me I’ll be working with Petra because new data has come up.”
“What kind of data?”
“The rifle that killed O’Brien was used in another Hollywood murder and supposedly someone atop Olympus thinks that means time for a team. Two Hollywood cases and I’m on it. Make any sense to you?”
“Not on the surface.”
“That’s ’cause the surface has nothing to do with it. I talk to Petra and turns out the real reason is that Shubb is dating Petra’s captain, Art DiMeo, hot and heavy. So when Petra tossed the idea out to DiMeo, he figured it would be a great excuse to get together with Shubb and do some ahem strategic planning at the executive level. Starting with yesterday when they were both out all day and didn’t return to their offices.”
“Motel research.”
“Their pay grades, probably a nice ho-tel.”
“Why didn’t Petra know about another Hollywood case?”
“It happened almost two years ago and she was on vacation with Eric, walking part of the Appalachian Trail.”
“The victim—”
“Has nothing obvious in common with O’Brien other than he wasn’t a model citizen. Aspiring rapper, former Crip, and convicted felon named Jamarcus Parmenter. Parmenter’s home base was Compton but he was in Hollywood for some sort of pop-up record-business thing. What they call a showcase.”
“New band showing their stuff in order to get a contract.”
“You know about it.”
“Robin’s done plenty of last-minute repairs for guitarists about to showcase.”
“Well, this wasn’t for a guitarist, it was for a deejay. Parmenter stepped outside to have a smoke and got nailed through the neck just like O’Brien. You know the obvious assumption on something like that.”
“A gang thing. What were Parmenter’s felonies?”
“Theft, burglary, one carjacking, but all years ago before he discovered his muse. Still, a gang thing was A on the list. But B was a business dispute because Parmenter had been making noise about being ripped off by his producer and manager, the same guy who’d thrown the showcase. And had fired him.”