She race-walked us to the living room where a pitcher of iced tea, two highball glasses, and a plate of Oreos sat on an olive-wood tray atop a tufted white leather ottoman. Settling at the short end of a rectangular coffee table, she motioned to a rock-hard sofa.
“Sit. Help yourselves,” she said. Generosity via command.
Milo said, “Thanks for meeting with us on short notice.”
“Why wouldn’t I? This is the first I’ve heard in a long time about anyone giving a hoot. In the beginning I was hopeful, the Sheriff’s detectives actually seemed to know what they were doing. Then they just lost interest. I used to call them every week, Monday at nine, on the dot. For the first month or two, they answered. After that, it was crickets. I went over their heads and complained to some captain. He put on the nice-guy act but said anything that could be done had been.So I went overhishead and tried to talk to the main sheriff who never called me back. Instead I got an email from his office bouncing it back to the captain. Obviously, all thatcouldbe donewasn’tbecause you’re here.”
“We’re here, ma’am, because there’s some indication Whitney’s murder could be related to work we’re doing in L.A.”
“Work,” said Batchelor. “What are you trying to say?”
“A case.”
“Hopefully that’ll be to my benefit. Who else got killed?”
“Two people.” He showed her Jamarcus Parmenter’s and Paul O’Brien’s headshots.
She said, “Them? Can’t see Whitney having anything to do with people like that. Even when she lived in L.A.”
“When was that?” said Milo.
“All of her life until she rented that whatever-you-want-to-call-it in Boonesville.”
Milo produced his pad.
Her posture relaxed. Someone who appreciated the transfer of facts to paper.
He said, “Where in L.A. did Whitney live?”
“Brentwood, an apartment. To make things easier for him.”
“Jay Sterling.”
Hearing the name thrust her mandible forward, bulldog-like.
“Bastard. Yes,him.He had a big house in Brentwood and she was trying to help out with his seeing Jarrod more easily so she graciously moved from Encino. And let me tell you, it was a come-down, the place in Encino was bigger and nicer and the rent was lower. But that was Whitney. Going along to get along. A lot of good it did her.”
“Whitney was a CPA.”
“Like me,” she said. “We both passed the exam the first time. It’s a toughie, believe me, I was proud of her. We were best friends, I had her at eighteen. And no, not as a single mother, Killeen and I were married. I was just starting college but he was already a CPA. He went anddied of an aneurysm and I had to pull it together. Years later, I married Batchelor. A CPAanda tax lawyer. Thenheupped and died of prostate cancer.”
She bared even white teeth. “I was thinking of myself as a jinx. Then I got actuarial and accepted that twice I’d married older guys. Twenty years in Killeen’s case, thirty-five in Batchelor’s, so what could I expect?”
She glanced at Parmenter and O’Brien and shook her head. “Definitelynother type—you don’t want tea?”
“No, thanks.”
“Your loss. Okay. My beautiful Whitney. And she was, I’m not just saying it.”
She sprang up, walked to an adjoining dining room, and removed several framed photographs from the wall. A bit of effort; something—probably museum putty—had been holding them in place.
She returned. “Here, you’ll see what I mean.”
She thrust an image at us. Full-faced, brunette teenage girl in a cheerleading uniform, lofting two pom-poms.
Next the same face, leaner, under a tasseled black graduation cap and robe of the same color.
Finally, Whitney Killeen, her hair cut and colored exactly like her mother’s, holding a dark-haired, grave-faced boy around two.
