Click.
Thirty-second conversation during which I’d failed to draw out anything related to a vengeful love interest. But I had learned the cover story the family had used to explain her injuries.
And the fact that she was extremely shy to the point of being unaware of her looks. Andthatmade me consider the little I did know about her family.
Sister a teacher, brother on full scholarship at a selective college.
Vicki serving drinks to rich people.
Had social anxiety resulted from failure to measure up academically? Had there been some sort of learning disability?
All that might explain vulnerability to a predator.
So what? These were the kinds of questions and answers that occupied me as a psychologist but not what Milo meant when he asked for “insight.”
Milo had no knowledge, period, of Vicki Saucedo.
With nothing to offer him, best to leave it that way.
—
I returned to Bach for an hour, was putting my guitar back in its case when Robin and Blanche came in looking buoyant.
“Good,” said Robin. “We’re all in fun mode. I’m thinking steaks and whatever.”
Blanche’s nubby tail twitched.
I said, “Perfect.”
—
Later, that night, Robin and I lay naked and entwined and kissing deeply. Her tongue sweet, her compact body smooth and tan and glossed by sweat sheen.
Guitar-shaped.
Chapter
22
Monday at ten a.m., Milo called.
“Morning, Doctor Professor. Come up with any overnight insight?”
“Nope.”
“Me neither but something different just happened. Remember that party website Marissa and O’Brien both contacted?”
“BeThere.com. They answered your email?”
“They phoned,” he said. “Actually,shedid. Nice lady at a call center in Bangalore, India. She told me they’re instructed never to answer unless it’s a paying client—as in people throwing fancy parties. Company’s business model is they supply bodies for events all over the world and take a per-head cut. She decided to contact me because two of her brothers are Bangalore cops and she wants them to be proud of her. Turns out the last party Marissa and O’Brien attended had nothing to do with music or fashion. Opening at an art gallery on Melrose. I looked it up. Some rich guy’s kid who thinks he’s an artist.”
“Let me guess,” I said. “A five-year-old could do better.”
“I was thinking Blanche could do better. Anyway, doesn’t look like Boykins—or Jay Sterling for that matter—has any connection to that night…hold on, someone’s beeping in.”
He came back moments later. “That was Buck Buxby. Too late to catch him but he left a message to call. Probably wants an update. So that’s it, the art gallery, which is basically a dead end.”
“Did she tell you who signed in first?”
