"I need to talk to her about a case."
"A case? What case?"
"Someone she worked with was murdered."
"Who?"
"Desmond Backer."
"Don"t know him."
"Ma"am-"
"I"m her mother. She"s out."
"Could you please tell me where?"
"How do I know you"re not some maniac?"
"I"ll give you my number at the police station and you can verify."
"How do I know you"re not giving me some phony number?"
"Feel free to look it up. West L.A. Division, on Butler-"
"I should do all the work?"
"Ma"am," said Milo, "I appreciate your caution but I need to talk to Bettina."
Silence.
"Mrs. Sanfelice-"
"She went to T.G.I. Friday"s."
"Which one?"
"All the way in Woodland Hills, I don"t know the address. She likes the burgers, you"d never catch me wasting gas for that."
"What was she wearing?"
"How would I know?"
"She doesn"t live with you?"
"She sure does, "cause she still don"t have no job. That don"t mean I pay attention to her clothes."
Click.
He phoned Detective Moe Reed, asked for DMV statistics on the intern.
The young cop said, "I was just about to call you, Loo. Prints on Backer and the female vic got run through AFIS but unfortunately nothing kicked back ..."
"I already knew that."
"You did?"
"It"s been that kind of day." He spelled Sanfelice"s name.
Seconds later Reed said, "Sanfelice, Bettina Morgana, thirty years old, five five, hundred and ten, brown, brown, wears corrective lenses, no wants or warrants. Here"s the address."
Living at Mom"s when she"d had her license renewed three years ago.
"Anything else, Loo?"
"I"ll let you know."
Milo hung up. "I hear intern, I figure a college kid. She"s way past that, unemployed, stuck with that loving maternal ent.i.ty. Like you said, emotional vulnerability. Ol" Des had a h.e.l.luva nose."
The 101 freeway was starting to clog up so I took Ventura Boulevard to Woodland Hills. The T.G.I. Friday"s was like any other, which is the point.
Chain restaurants are easy targets of ridicule for expense-account gourmets, doc.u.mentary filmmakers living off grant money, and trust-fund babies. For folks saddled with budgets and faced with a world that seems increasingly unpredictable, they"re temples of comfort. Milo and I had grown up in the Midwest and we"d both flipped burgers in high school. The smell of the grill still evokes all sorts of memories. How I react depends on what else is going on in my life.
Today, the aroma was pretty good.
Milo inhaled deeply. "Home sweet bacon."
The interior was vast, chocked with corporate oak, stenciled mirrors, not-even-close-to-Tiffany lamps, red-shirted servers mostly hanging around because of the three p.m. off-hour.
A bar ample enough to intoxicate half the Valley ran the length of the room. The layout made it easy to spot every customer: a scatter of bleary-eyed truckers with no idea what time it was, a mom and a grandmom teaming up to handle a whining kid in a booster chair, two young women in a booth midway down, sipping tall pink drinks and picking at a plate of fries.
A kid in a red shirt said, "Two for lunch?"
"We"re joining friends."
Both women were pale, thin, wore drab, short-sleeved tops, jeans, and careless ponytails. Other than platinum hair on one, they each matched Bettina Sanfelice"s stats.
Milo said, "The blonde"s wearing gla.s.ses, so I"m betting that"s her. Now all I need to do is separate her from her friend and get her to blab about her s.e.x life. Any suggestions as to the proper approach?"
"There is none," I said.
"Your optimism is a blessing."
Neither woman noticed until we got within three feet, then both looked up. Milo smiled at the blonde. "Bettina Sanfelice?"
The brown-haired woman said, "That"s me," in a tiny, tentative voice. Small-boned but full-faced, she had close-set mocha eyes and puffy cheeks and looked like a child who"d just been punished. The white-sauce-slicked fry she"d been reaching for dropped back onto her plate. Not a potato-something pale green and breaded-deep-fried string bean?
Milo bent to make himself smaller, showed his card rather than the badge, recited his t.i.tle as if it were no big deal.
Bettina Sanfelice was too stricken to speak, but the blonde said, "Police?" as if he were joking. She had good features but grainy skin with some active blemish, dark circles under her eyes that heavy makeup failed to mask.
Milo kept his focus on Bettina Sanfelice. "I"m so sorry to tell you this, ma"am, but we"re investigating the death of someone you worked with."
Sanfelice"s mouth dropped open. Her hand shot forward, rocked her drink. It would"ve spilled if I hadn"t caught it. "Death?"
"By homicide, I"m afraid."
Sanfelice gasped. "Who?"
Milo said, "A man named Desmond-"
Before Backer"s surname had been fully p.r.o.nounced both women shouted, "Des!"
The kid in the red shirt looked over. A hard look from Milo caused him to veer toward the bar.
The bespectacled blonde said, "I have just got totally nauseous."
Bettina Sanfelice said, "Des? OmiG.o.d."
The blonde removed her gla.s.ses. "I need a bathroom." She slid out of the booth.
"You also knew Des, ma"am?"
"Same as Tina did." The blonde trotted toward the restrooms, moving clumsily in ultratight jeans and ratty sneakers.
The kid in the red shirt dared to come over. "Everything okay?"
Milo expanded like a balloon. "Everything"s grand, just go about your business."
Now was the time for the badge. Gawking, the kid turned heel.
Milo said, "Your friend"s pretty upset, Bettina."
"Sheryl"s got a iffy stomach."
"That"s Sheryl Pa.s.sant?"
Nod. "OmiG.o.d. Who hurt Des?"
"That"s what we"re trying to find out. Mind if we join you?"
"Um ..." Not budging.
Milo smiled. "Thanks for the compliment, but I need a little more room than that, Bettina."
"Oh... sorry." Sanfelice scooted over and he wedged beside her. Milo"s presence turned her tiny. An abused child.
I settled across from them.
Milo pointed at the pink drink. "I know it"s a shock, feel free."
"Oh ... no, thanks." But she grabbed the gla.s.s with both hands, took a long, noisy sip.
"Frozen strawberry margarita?" said Milo.
"Frozen straw-tini ... Des is really dead? OmiG.o.d, that"s so ... I can"t believe it!"
"Tina, anything you can tell us about Des would be really helpful. You and Sheryl both worked with him, right?"
"Uh-huh. At GHC-that"s a architectural firm. Sheryl got me the job."
"You and Sheryl are old friends."
"From junior high. We tried out for the army but we changed our mind because of Eye-rack. Instead, we enrolled in JC but we didn"t like it, so we went to ITT to learn computers but we didn"t like that so we switched to business technology at Briar Secretarial. Sheryl got a job right away, she can type fast, but I"m slower so I switched to computer graphics. My dream is to design furniture and draperies but there"s nothing right now so when Sheryl got the job at GHC, she told me they needed a intern, maybe I could get to do design."
"Did you?"
"Uh-uh, I mostly ran errands, answered the phone when Sheryl was tied up. Which didn"t happen too much. There really wasn"t nothing to do."
"Was Des working at GHC when you and Sheryl got hired?"
"No, he came later. Like a week later. We said, "Finally, a guy."" Blushing.
"Mr. Cohen"s a guy."
"He"s old."
"How old?"
"Like sixty. He"s like a grandpa."
A voice to our left said, "He is a grandpa, used to bring his rug-rat grandkids in and would go off all day with them."
Sheryl Pa.s.sant looked down on us, oracle on the mount.
I got up to let her in. No more ponytail; her blond hair was long and loose and streaming and her gla.s.ses were gone.
She slid in. "Why were you talking about Mr. Cohen?"
Bettina Sanfelice said, "We"re talking about Des, Sher. To find out who killed him."
"Us? What can we tell them?"
Milo said, "For starts, what kind of guy Des was, Sheryl. Did he have enemies, who"d want to hurt him?"
Pa.s.sant shifted closer. Her thigh pressed against mine. I scooted an inch away. She frowned. Flipped her hair. "Des had no enemies."
"None at all?"