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, hesniffed, 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, Shubbinformsme 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.TwoHollywood 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 Petraand turns out therealreason 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 niceho-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.”
