“Hold on.”
Movement behind the hole. Maybe one of those peephole cameras. Milo showed the little glass sphere his badge, then stepped back so his face was visible.
The door opened on the blond woman from the family photo, now brunette streaked with ginger.
Milo gave her his name, then mine.
“Police? Is Frank—”
“Frank’s fine, ma’am. It’s about your brother-in-law.”
“Manny? What happened to him?”
“Could we come in?”
Laura Rosales’s hand clawed her cheek. “That sounds bad. Is it—isit?”
“Unfortunately—”
“Omigod omigod. I have to callFrank!”
—
She seated us in a spotless, out-of-a-magazine living room and rushed off to get her phone. A couple of kids appeared, staring from the neighboring dining room. Familiar faces from the photo in Manny Rosales’s bedroom, a few years of maturity tacked on.
Milo said, “Hey guys.”
They scampered off.
He said, “Did I just do something scary?”
Before I could reply, Laura Rosales returned, hands shaking, and lowered herself to the edge of an overstuffed chair. Her skin was a shade paler, her eyes wide.
“You’re going to tell me Manny’s dead.”
“Sadly, we are, ma’am. So sorry for your loss.”
“My loss, the kids’ loss, and most of allFrank’sloss.” Hunching, she buried her face in her hands and cried, shoulders rising and falling.
Milo did what he always does. Waited out every painful second then produced a tissue.
Laura Rosales took thirty or so seconds before dabbing and hazarding eye contact. “Frank’s on his way, his office isn’t far from here. He’s a dentist. Periodontist…what happened?”
“At this point we don’t know much, ma’am, but it looks as if Mr. Rosales was shot leaving his backyard to take out the garbage.”
“Shot? Murdered? Oh, that’s hideous, it’s absolutelyhideous! What, a gang thing? I know they’re crawling all over Venice like vermin but Manny assured us his neighborhood was safe. What did they steal?”
“Apparently nothing, Ms. Rosales.”
“Thenwhat? You just shoot someone in cold blood who’s taking out hisgarbage? What’s thepoint? Whodoesthat?”
“As I said, ma’am, we don’t know much.”
“Oh God, this is like a bad dream…how did you locate us?”
“Manny kept a photo in his bedroom—”
“That one,” she said. “We’d gone out to dinner and Frank said, ‘Let’s memorialize this.’ Because it was so rare.”
