No mail piled up in front of the door.
As I stood there, the door cracked.
I backed up and watched as a tall, silver-haired man stepped out and locked the door. Three brown-paper rectangles under his arm.
I raced back to the Seville, had rolled a few yards downhill, headlights off by the time the Volvo sped out of the driveway and turned left on Benedict.
Southward, the same direction the Rolls had taken as Crispin watched.
I kept my distance as the boxy white car rolled through the red light at Sunset and turned right.
West. The same route I’d take to go home. A strange thought flashed: What if this was a neighbor?
But at Beverly Glen, where I’d normally head north, the Volvo drove south, then west.
The car hooked south on a side street and continued halfway down the block before swinging a wide arc in the center of the road and backing up into the driveway of a house. Idling as a black-iron gate twenty feet up slid open. Behind it another car facing the street; the unmistakable imperial verticality of a Rolls-Royce grille.
The Volvo took its place in front of its glitzier sib. The gate closed.
I got out of there, caught a red light at Beverly Glen, and used the time to text Milo.
Five a.m. Something to greet him when he woke.
No reply until seven thirty-four: his knock on my front door.
CHAPTER
44
Red-faced, red-eyed, back rounded, rolling his shoulders restlessly, my friend sat down in the living room, opened his attaché case, and yanked out his pad.
He dropped it in his lap, unopened. “Candace Kierstead’s place. Unreal.”
I said, “The guy looks like the picture of her husband.”
“She was playing me.”
“Probing the investigation.”
“And putting herself in the middle of it? That’s beyond high-risk, Alex.”
“Part of the thrill,” I said. “Like telling us that baby possum story. ‘I love animals.’ ”
“Jesus. Before I came here, I checked my notes. Don’t think I told her anything that matters.”
“You didn’t. And you can use her overconfidence—their overconfidence—against them.”
“Supportive therapy. I feel better already.”
He got a text, read, replied.
“Al Freeman, he found the Rolls’s owner. Sig Kierstead. I shot him a thanks with five exclamation points. Didn’t have the heart.”
He opened the pad. “Unlike the Clearwater house, there’s no corporate fog obscuring the Conrock deed. A little over two years ago it was bought by the marital trust of Stefan Sigmund Kierstead and CandaceWallsKierstead.”
I said, “Candace is related to Okash’s victim.”
“Gotta be. She’s the right age for an older sister. With a big grudge against Okash. Except why, then, would she become Okash’s landlady?”
