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Phones continued to ring, men and women with intent expressions talked on the phone, clicked computer keys. Del Hardy caught Moe's eye and gave a little salute.
Moe half expected him to come over, ask how Aaron was doing.
Waving back, he returned to Adella's murder book, not expecting to find anything, just wanting to look as preoccupied as he felt.
His eyes kept returning to the photo.
Pretty dead girl caught smiling. All that joy because of a tiny blue-swaddled form.
Gabriel, a tiny bud of humanity, with an angel's name.
Four grand in Adella's bank, despite no job. Had the challenges of single motherhood led Adella to work for Ramone W?
Moe thought about how she'd dropped in on her folks with the baby, snuck out soon after without saying good-bye. Not unlike Ra-mone's una
So maybe the visit had been Adella's idea.
A girl who liked to play games.
Was that why she refused to say who'd fathered the kid? Because Daddy was useless, so why get him involved?
Or just the opposite: Daddy was real useful because he was rich and famous, had paid Adella off not to go public.
Then why whore?
Because more was more?
Or whoring had conceived the baby-Moe shut the file to get the pictures out of his head, concentrated on setting up a logical sequence of events.
Adella parties with Rich Industry Guys, maybe at a gig set up by Ramone W She gets pregnant, figures out which RI.G. is the daddy, asks for money to keep her mouth shut. Gets some.
At the time of her murder, the baby was five months old and she'd died with 4K in her account. Less than a grand for each month of Gabriel's existence. Maybe it had taken a while to come to an agreement-two months, for argument's sake, making two and a half K per month. But that was left over after expenses, say two a month.
Leaving an estimated gross of 4.5K a month-round to 5. Sixty grand a year. To an Industry honcho, chump change. To someone like Adella, serious money.
Until she gets greedy. Asks for more.
Or maybe she'd accepted an initial lowball offer because the joy of motherhood, hormones, whatever, had numbed her brain.
Or Rich Daddy had promised more somewhere down the line.
Either way, she realizes she's living in a crappy single, budgeting for Pampers and pablum, meanwhile Rich Daddy's living large.
House in the hills, private jets, VIP rooms on demand, premium tables at Koi, the Ivy, wherever those types stuffed their faces. Moe was certain Aaron could rattle off the names…
Deciding to cash in big-time, she leans on Rich Daddy.
Becomes a problem.
Call in Ramone W, or someone like him, a psychopathic lowlife capable of anything.
One question: Why wouldn't Rich Daddy keep her happy by up-ping the support?
Because he's a narcissistic asshole used to doing things his way, sees no reason why some vagina he pumped who should've taken precautions has the right to share The Lifestyle.
Why the hell hadn't she aborted in the first place? Because she'd set out to screw him-literally and financially-from the begi
She'll just keep asking, you ll never be free.
Better to eliminate the problem.
Two problems.
The pictures rushed back into Moe's head. Little blue-swaddled package, moldering somewhere. The rest of the world became background noise as he hunkered down trying to logic out how Caitlin Frostig fit into the picture.
Caitlin had worked at a bar where celebs had once hung out. Maybe that included Ax Dement and/or Mason Book.
Adella's pimp supplied sex and drugs to Ax Dement. Maybe also to Mason Book.
Maybe, maybe maybe… something missing…
Then it hit him. Rory Stoltz knew everyone: Caitlin, Book, and Dement.
Had the All-American boy-ambitious, maybe too ambitious- been sucked into something dark and nasty? Did his adoring mommy sense that about her only child? Did that explain her hostility when Moe cornered her at work?
Rory Stoltz, All-American Walking-Around Guy. Did his duties including passing cash to Adella? Or to a hired killer?
Worse?
If Rory was the glue co
How did Caitlin figure in?
Maybe Rory had told her too much and Caitlin, a moral girl, freaked out.
Now she's a problem.
Would Rory go along with offing his girlfriend?
Caitlin was dead and Rory was still working for Mason Book. The world he'd entered, women were to be used. Discarded when no longer useful.
Uh-oh, one little logical obstacle: At the time of Adella's murder Rory was waiting tables at Riptide, not working as Book's heel-and-fetch.
Moe thought about that, decided it wasn't an insurmountable problem. Just because Rory hadn't been formally hired didn't mean he wasn't bootlicking the actor. How many crimes had grown out of booze-soaked bar conversation? A whole bunch of wrong-time, wrong-place.
What if Book had sensed something weak-spined about Rory?
Hey, wa
What if Rory had earned the P.A. job because he'd passed the amorality test?
Passing the test, but flunking life.
♦
Moe logged online and looked up employment agencies in L.A. Narrowed the list to half a dozen that specialized in personal assistants, private chefs, chauffeurs, other industry-type jobs.
An hour later, he'd confirmed that Rory Stoltz had never registered with any of them.
Expanding the search to an additional six agencies, even though they didn't specialize in high-life gigs, brought the same answer. Same for the Pepperdine student employment office, where Moe's easy lie about being a lawyer whom Stoltz wanted to work for was believed, no questions asked.
New skill set, he'd never been a good bullshitter, Mom always kidded him about his face being a one-way mirror into his soul. Nothing like on-the-job training.
And maybe the same applied to Rory. Just another California kid hoping for a toehold in the industry, Master Stoltz had learned all sorts of new skills.
Stuff you couldn't put on a résumé.
No agency registration wasn't proof Rory had been hired because of a relationship begun at Riptide-Moe had yet to place Mason Book and Ax Dement at the bar-but it did add weight to the balance scale.
So let's assume, for the moment, that Rory had co
Either because he didn't have much to begin with, or celebrity, charisma, and wealth were a lot more seductive than cramming for exams and backseat tumbles with Caitlin.
This was a city-this was a world-where people got famous for showing up, where sex tapes were career-enhancing, nothing was beyond the pale.
Why not sell out your girlfriend if it meant Something Big?
Moe revisited the screenplay he'd outlined. Turned it over, again and again. Each time, it got uglier. Made more sense.
Now how to prove it?
Focus on the victim.
♦
A film crew was actually shooting in Hollywood, jamming up La Brea between Melrose and Sunset, and the drive to Adella Villareal's last known residence on Gower took a smog-choked hour.
When Moe finally reached the address, he found it surprisingly un-crappy, a nice twenties-era, six-unit château-type with all sorts of fancy moldings and trim. Painted peach with a burbling fountain out front.
No answers at the three ground-floor units, but no big deal, Adella had lived on the second.
The tenant now residing in her single was a cute young Asian woman in a white coat. A Kaiser Hospital name tag said Karen Chan, M.D., R-II, Medicine. Chan looked around eighteen, despite eyes drooping with fatigue as she braced herself in the doorjamb and informed Moe the unit had been spotless when she'd moved in.