“Higher-education folk tend to distrust the police and if they tell him no, it could take weeks.”
“Okay, I’ll see if Sharon can point him in the right direction. Too late to try now, tomorrow morning.”
“Thanks, hon.”
Milo called out, “Thanks, darling!”
Robin said, “Someone’s in a good mood. Progress?”
I said, “Small steps.”
“Like most things that matter.” I clicked off.
Milo fished out another book and shook it. “Here’s a racy one, Civilization and Power... nothing personal in this whole damn place.”
As he made a second circuit of the garage, I had my own look at the volumes Kimbee DaCosta had sequestered.
Textbooks and nonfiction for the educated layperson. A sprinkle of yellow Used stickers brought back my starving student days. But no inscriptions, stamps from campus stores, or indication where any of the books had been sold or resold.
Still, the collection felt like college reading material and I said so. “Maybe we’ll get lucky and it was the U. and Maxine can snoop around.”
“How about getting telephonic with her again?”
Voicemail at “Professor Driver’s” office and personal cell. I asked her to call.
Milo said, “Here’s another possibility: Amanda knew Kimbee from school and fixed her up with Garrett. Because she thought Baby was a dolt and figured one brain deserved another.”
I said, “Do we know for a fact that The Brain was male?”
“The girls just referred to him as a boyfriend.”
“Maybe they were assuming. A girlfriend would explain no birth control.”
“You just turned up the spotlight on Amanda. Talk about a juicy motive, Alex. Being exposed as gay at her brother’s nuptials.”
He pushed the brown cabinets back in place. “Time to get this place dusted for prints and DNA.”
I said, “There goes the neighborhood.”
“What does that mean?”
“Like the girls said, this is quiet suburbia. The tech van will attract attention. You ready to go public on a street where neighbors are used to complaining?”
He tapped a foot. “Let’s see if the lab can give me one tech in a low-profile car.”
“Peggy Cho might welcome the opportunity.”
He phoned Cho, hung up smiling.
“Inspired, Alex. She’s finishing up a robbery in Granada Hills, is thrilled to go quote unquote ‘longitudinal,’ can be here in twenty. Meanwhile, let’s see if I can do something about the A-H up on Loma Bruna.”
A phone chat with a North Hollywood lieutenant named Atkins elicited a promise to crack down on the party house.
I said, “That was easy.”
“Uniforms have been going out there for months. Each time, there’s immediate compliance so they don’t push it.”
“Now there’s a change in policy?”
“Now there’s a change in Ben Atkins’s consciousness. He just remembered a favor I did him, don’t ask.”
“The power and the glory.”
“The first is useful, the second is bullshit.”
We returned to the main house. Serena and Claire were back on the floor drinking apricot-colored smoothies.
Milo told them about Peggy Cho’s impending arrival.
Serena said, “CSI? Can we watch?”
Milo said, “Only one tech’s coming and she likes to work alone. We’d actually like to avoid being noticed, period. So no one else in the neighborhood will know.”
“A girl CSI, cool,” said Serena. “So only us is in on it.”
“If that’s okay.”
“Sure — Cee?”
Claire said, “I can keep secrets. Been doing it my whole life.”
We waited outside for Cho. When she arrived, a drape on a front window lifted and Serena gave a thumbs-up.
When we got inside, Cho’s nose wrinkled. “My brother rented something like this. Chemical john, not too hygienic.”
She began to work and we returned outside where Milo slim-jimmed the Honda and used an internal lever to pop the trunk.
Flares, a spare tire, a jack, a wrench.
He said, “And here I was expecting the Oxford English Dictionary.”
Back to the car’s interior. The clothing on the backseat was more casual than the duds in the garage. One pair of jeans; one pair of slim-cut sweats — black, not red; a red sports bra, a red baseball cap with no insignia, white athletic socks banded with red at the top, red-and-white Nikes.
I pictured Kimbee DaCosta taking a run. Exhilirated by a balmy evening breeze.
The glove compartment gave up a pair of Ray-Ban aviators in a soft case, a registration slip listing the same address, and one shred of possibility: proof of insurance, a company named BeSure.com.
Milo closed the car, googled, found the company had gone out of business last year. We returned to the garage.
Peggy Cho said, “Not much by way of prints, so far, just what look like the same set in the logical places. I can tell because the thumb’s distinctive and I remember it from Saturday.”
“My victim.”
Nod. “But not much of her,” said Cho. “Like she was here but she really wasn’t.”
We returned to the Seville. I said, “Where to?”
He said, “The world of ideas.”
Chapter 26
The nearest public library was the Studio City branch on Moorpark, white stucco under a swooping half dome of pale blue. Airy inside, gray carpeting and golden wood furniture and shelves.
We walked past a sandwich board advertising upcoming events.
L’Ecole French Conversation Group; Laughter Yoga; Rolfian Deep Tissue Massage as a Pathway to the Center of Consciousness; Baby & Toddler Story-Time.
Milo said, “Yoga can make you laugh? Yeah, probably, if you saw me in yoga pants.”
A sprinkle of people sat at tables working laptops and phones. One woman read a book: S&M porn for the middle-aged.
A single librarian, thin, brunette, around thirty, with sleeve tattoos and black, dime-sized gauges in her elongated earlobes. A slide-in sign in a slotted holder said Stevie L. Dent.
She’d watched us since we stepped in. When Milo introduced himself, her eyes narrowed. When he showed her Kimbee DaCosta’s photo she shook her head, primed to respond.
“We don’t give out information on patrons.”
“As well you shouldn’t. However, this patron is dead.”
Stevie Dent’s mouth dropped open. “You’re serious.”
“Nothing but serious. We’re trying to learn what we can about her.”
“I see... well, I guess you’ll need to prove she’s deceased, Officer. We’re a primary community data hub and our strict policy is guarding against unauthorized release of personal information.”
“Good policy,” said Milo. “And no problem proving it to you. How about we take you to the morgue? You won’t be allowed to view her body but you can examine her paperwork.”
Stevie Dent gulped. “Who murdered her?”
“That’s what we’re trying to figure out. We’ve been told by her friends that she used the library. Was it here?”
Hesitation. Minimal nod. “She came here to read.” As if clarification was necessary. Maybe, in a world of deep tissue massage and hilarious Eastern exercise, it was.
“How often?”
“Maybe once a week,” said Dent. “Sometimes less, sometimes more? I really can’t say.”
“Any particular day or time?”
“The afternoon. I figured she had a flex job, maybe an actress. Because of how she looked and dressed. All in red.”
Milo said, “A little theatrical?”