The Murder Book

Plum-colored Rolls Royce Corniche, black Humvee with blacked-out windows, red (what else?) Ferrari that came as close as Milo had seen to a penis on wheels, a taxi yellow Pantera, a pair of Dodge Vipers, one white with a blue center stripe, the other anthracite gray striped orange, and a white Corvette convertible. All under a drooping, makeshift canvas awning that stretched across listing metal stilts. Off to the side, in the full sun, was a ten-year-old Honda that had to be the maid's wheels.

Big house and all those cars, but no landscaping. Just the kind of eyesore a couple of teenagers would put together if they tumbled into endless cash, and Milo was willing to bet the Cossacks had six figures' worth of stereo equipment inside, along with a state-of-the-art screening room, a pub, a game room or two. He was starting to think of them as a dual case of profound arrested development.

The house was exactly the kind of eyesore that would provoke neighbor complaints in a blue-chip district, meaning now he had something to look for.

He drove downtown to the Hall of Records, made it through the traffic by 2 P.M., and combed through the zoning-board complaint files. Sure enough, three gripes had been lodged against the Cossacks, all by Carolwood residents, irritated about noise and dirt and other indignities caused by "protracted construction." All dismissed for lack of cause.

He moved over to the property files, ran searches on the Cossacks, Walt Obey, both Larners. John G. Broussard.

Obey's holdings were protected by a cadre of holding companies, a firewall that would take weeks, if not months, to break through. Same for the Larners and the Cossacks, although a few pieces of real estate were held privately by each duo. In the case of the Larners it was half a dozen condos in a Marina del Rey building owned jointly by father and son. Sixteen strip malls in low-rent exurbs were registered to the Cossack brothers.

The boys living together, working together. How touching.

Nothing was registered to Sister Caroline.

Shifting gears for a moment, he pulled up Georgie Nemerov's records. The bail bondsman and his mother co-owned a single-family dwelling in Van Nuys that Milo recognized as the family home from twenty years ago, and a six-unit apartment in Granada Hills, also jointly registered to Ivana Nemerov. Whatever Georgie had or hadn't done, building a real estate empire didn't seem part of the equation.

John G. Broussard and his wife- Bernadelle- had held on to the house in Ladera Heights as well as three contiguous lots on West 156th Street in Watts. Maybe the chief's or his wife's parents' place, an inheritance.

Once again: no empire. If John G. was trading for something, it wasn't land. Unless he was embedded somewhere in Walt Obey's corporate acreage.

He ran searches on Melinda Waters and mother Eileen and came up empty, was thinking about what else to do when the records clerk came over and told him the building was closing. He left and drove up and down Temple Street, past the place where Pierce Schwi

He drove toward home, slowly, not caring about rush-hour toxins, street-work delays, notably stupid driving by what seemed to be fifty percent of his fellow commuters. All the urban niceties that usually drove up his blood pressure and made him wonder why the hell he'd chosen to live like this.

He was sitting at a red light at Highland when his phone rang. Alex's voice said, "I got you. Good."

"What's up?"

"Maybe nothing, but my source- the woman Michael Larner molested- called me again, and I met with her last night. Seems the day Larner made his move on her, he was angry about Willie Burns. Enraged, talking to someone about Burns. Willie had been gone from Achievement House for a few days so it sounds like Larner found out who Burns was, was steamed because Burns disappeared."

"Enraged," said Milo.

"That's how she describes it. She walked into his office just as he got off the phone, said Larner was flushed and agitated. Then he composed himself and turned his attention to her. Which could be more than a coincidence. Harassers and rapists often get stoked by anger. Anyway, it's probably no big deal, but it does fit with our working hypothesis: The Cossack family contracted Larner to hide Caroline until Janie Ingalls's murder cooled down. Burns made contact with Caroline, then split, and the family panicked. But they never found him, he even managed to slip away after his dope arrest, because Boris Nemerov bailed him out immediately. Four months later he ambushed Nemerov."

"Interesting," said Milo. "Good work." He summarized what he'd seen at Sangre de Leon last night.

"Big money," said Alex. "Same old story. One more thing: When I was looking for Melinda Waters on the Internet, I got a few hits but dismissed them. Then I realized maybe I'd been too hasty about one in particular. An attorney in Santa Fe, New Mexico, specializing in bankruptcy and evictions. I'd been thinking about Melinda as a stoned-out truant, didn't see a pathway from that to a legal career, but your comment about her turning up with a family and picket fence got me thinking, so I pulled up her website again and checked her bio. She's thirty-eight years old, which would be exactly our Melinda's age. And she didn't graduate college until she was thirty-one, law school till thirty-four. Before that, she worked as a paralegal for three years but her résumé still leaves the years between eighteen and twenty-eight unaccounted for. Which would mesh with someone going through changes, pulling her life together. And get this: She was schooled in California. San Francisco State for undergrad, Hastings for law."

"Hastings is a top school," said Milo. "Bowie Ingalls described Melinda as a loser."

"Bowie Ingalls was not a sterling judge. And people change. If I didn't believe that, I'd choose another profession."

"Bankruptcy and eviction… I guess anything's possible."

"Maybe she's not our gal, but don't you think it's worth looking into?"

"Anything else interesting in her bio?"

"No. Married, two kids. Do they have picket fences in Santa Fe? Not that hard to find out. It's a ninety-minute flight to Albuquerque, another hour by car to Santa Fe, and Southwest Airlines has cheap flights."

"Calling her on the phone would be too easy," said Milo.

"If she's trying to put her past behind her, she may lie. There's a flight at seven-forty-five tomorrow morning. I booked two seats."

"Manipulative. I'm proud of you."

"It's cold there," said Alex. "Twenty to forty Fahrenheit, some snow on the ground. So bundle up."