“A woman with tools,” she said. “Giving the rest of us a bad name.” She nudged me. “Does it make you nervous, handsome?”
“Notice I rarely get close to your bench.”
“Phobic, huh?” she said. “We could do that desensitization thing. Use the bench for other purposes.”
I said, “Long as the saw’s off.”
“Of course, darling. We do tend to move around a bit.”
I was waiting outside when the Impala sped up and came to a sharp stop.
Milo sped downhill to the Glen and turned south. Sitting tall behind the wheel, jaw jutting.
On the hunt.
I said, “How’s it going?”
“Peachy. You?”
“Great.”
One hurtling minute later: “I finally traced her as Rhonda Cronin to Albuquerque using her Social Security number.”
“She lived there before L.A.?”
“She was born there and got into trouble there. ADW when she was nineteen that landed her in jail for a month followed by another month of probation and an anger management class.”
“Pretty light for a felony attack,” I said. “What was the weapon?”
“Pool cue. She used it to smack another girl upside the head.”
He rubbed his temple. “Not your usual drunk thing in a bar, this took place in the rec room of a community center. Rhonda and the victim were both beauty contestants—Miss some kind of chili—and were there to pose for photos. Words were exchanged and all of a sudden, boom, the other girl’s down on the floor, out cold and bloody, and Rhonda’s standing over her with the cue.”
I said, “Pageant jealousy?”
“No, that’s the thing. Rhonda had already come in second, the victim, third.”
“Number One got away clean.”
“Number One was on a tour endorsing a hot sauce. Albuquerque guy I spoke to, Dick Sanchez, remembered it because it was so weird. He called it The Beauty Brawl. They never got to the bottom of what caused it, other than Rhonda accusing the victim of being a mean girl and the victim leveling the same thing at Rhonda.”
“Serious injury?”
“Concussion and hospitalization but full recovery. That and no priors is why Rhonda only got the month and Sanchez says they put her in a pretty quiet jail. He had no idea what happened to her after that but I managed to find her P.O. Nancy Odom, and she remembered Rhonda for the same reason. Gorgeous girl, no priors, just exploded, made no sense.”
“Rhonda didn’t give her an explanation?”
“Odom said she refused to talk. Then Odom got defensive, going on about caseload, meth dealers, other serious baddies.”
“Rhonda got no scrutiny because she was low priority.”
“Her sentence says she wasn’t any kind of priority. The entire probation arrangement was one meeting at the beginning of the month and another on the final day. Both of which Rhonda showed up at. She also never missed an anger class. Odom did say she asked what her plans were and Rhonda told her she was going to college in Vegas. Odom suspected it was more like trying to break in as a showgirl because Rhonda had spent years in pageants, was all about her looks.”
“Any information on her family?”
“Rhonda was an adult so Odom never met the family, relied on what Rhonda told her. Intact, no issues, Dad was in some kind of business, Mom was a stay at home who’d also done the beauty thing. Rhonda did show Odom a recent family photo with her in a tiara and the only thing that jumped out at her was all three of them were good-looking.”
“Only child.”
