Mystery Read Free

splendor.
    We walked Blanche for an hour, then Robin headed to her studio and I sat down to finish some child custody reports for the court. By noon, I was done and emailing recommendations to various judges. A few were likely to listen. As I put the hard copy in a drawer and locked up, the doorbell buzzed.
    Shave and a haircut, six bits, followed by three impatient beeps.
    I padded to the living room. “It’s open, Big Guy.”
    Milo pushed the door open and stomped in swinging his battered, olive-vinyl attaché case wide, as if preparing to fling it away. “Step right in, Mr. Manson, then hold the door for Mr. Night Stalker.”
    “Morning.”
    “All these years I still can’t convince you to exercise normal caution.”
    “I’ve got you as backup.”
    “That and a Uzi won’t buy you a Band-Aid if you ignore common sense.” He marched past me. “Where’s the pooch?”
    “With Robin.”
    “Someone’s thinking right.”
    My best friend is a gay LAPD homicide lieutenant with inconsistent social skills. He’s had a key to the house for years but refuses to use it unless Robin and I are traveling and he checks the premises, unasked.
    By the time I made it to the kitchen, he’d commandeered a loaf of rye bread, a jar of strawberry preserves, a half gallon of orange juice, and the butt-end of a four-day-old rib roast.
    I said, “Hey kids, beef ’n’ jam, the new taste sensation.”
    He cast off a gray windbreaker, loosened a tie the color of strained peas, and settled his bulk at the table. “First conundrum of the day: carbs or protein. I opt for both.”
    Brushing coarse black hair off a lumpy brow, he continued to stare at the food. Bright green eyes drooped more than usual. Where the light hit him wrong, his acne-pocked pallor was a hue no painter had ever blended.
    I said, “Long night?”
    “The night was fine, it was the damn morning that screwed things up. Four a.m., why can’t people get their faces blown off at a civil hour?”
    “People as in multiple victims?”
    Instead of answering, he troweled heaps of jam on three slices of bread, chewed the first piece slowly, inhaled the remaining two. Uncapping the juice, he peered inside, muttered, “Not much left,” and drained the container.
    Contemplating the roast, he sliced, cubed, popped morsels of meat like candy. “Got any of that spicy mayo?”
    I fetched some aioli from the fridge. He dipped, chewed, wiped his mouth, snorted, exhaled.
    I said, “Male or female bodies?”
    “One body, female.” Crumpling the juice carton, he created a waxed paper pancake that he pulled out like an accordion, then compressed. “And for my next number, ‘Lady of Spain.’ ”
    A dozen more pieces of roast before he said, “Female, and from her figure, young. Then again, this is L.A. so maybe all that tone came courtesy of surgery, let’s see what the coroner has to say. No purse or I.D., the blood says she was done right there. No tire tracks or footprints. No jewelry or purse and her duds were expensive looking, some designer I never heard of. Patrice Lerange. Ring a bell?”
    I shook my head. “Robbery?”
    “Looks like it. She had on fancy undies, too, silk lace—Angelo Scuzzi, Milano. So maybe she’s European, some poor tourist who got waylaid. The shoes were Manolo Blahnik, that I heard of.”
    He chewed hard and his jaw bunched. “Looks like we’re talking two killers. The C.I.’s found shotgun pellets and wadding in the wound but also a .45 cartridge on the ground and the slug behind her, exactly where you’d expect it to be after blowing out the back of her skull.”
    He ate more roast, contemplated a rare piece, put it aside.
    “The major damage was to the face with a little pellet spray at the top of the chest. But they left her hands intact, so I’m not sure the face thing was hiding her identity, just plain old evil.”
    “Your money or I shoot,” I said. “On second thought, I shoot anyway.”
    “Goddamn savages … I know the