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Ballard pointed to the arched windows behind the photo of the slow dancers.
“Was it at the Huntington that year?” she asked.
“I have no idea,” Todd said. “I didn’t go, remember?”
“Right,” Ballard said. “Well, I think that’s good for now, Jackie. Thank you for your help. We really appreciate it.”
“Sure,” Todd said. “I mean, I guess. If it was useful to you, that’s cool.”
“It was,” Ballard said.
“Would you be able to give us contact information for Emma Sepulveda?” Maddie said. “It would save us some time.”
“Sure,” Todd said. “If you give me your contact information.”
Maddie looked confused but Ballard had a sense of what was coming.
“I’m tired of working on other people’s shows,” Todd said. “I want to create my own and I need someone to bounce ideas off of. Maybe give me some ideas too. It will be a female lead.”
“Uh,” Maddie said. “I guess that’s okay.”
She looked at Ballard to see if she was making a mistake. Ballard just nodded.
After exchanging contact details, including an email address for Emma Sepulveda, Ballard and Maddie thanked Todd and left theapartment. When they got back to their cars, they stood between them to talk.
“Victor Best,” Ballard said. “Did you and Colleen run him down?”
“He was one of the seniors we couldn’t find,” Maddie said. “But Colleen was still at it when we left.”
“Well, I want to find him and talk to him. Along with Rodney Van Ness.”
“Interesting that Mallory wasn’t in that photo. What do you think that means?”
“That’s what we’re going to talk to Rodney and Victor about.”
37
HATTERAS WAS STILLin her pod when Ballard got back to the Ahmanson Center.
“Colleen, what are you doing? You are spending too much time here,” Ballard said. “I don’t want you to burn out.”
“I won’t,” Hatteras said. “I like being here and I wanted to stay to find out how it went with Jacqueline Todd.”
Ballard filled her in briefly on the interview with Jackie Todd and then asked if she had been able to locate a senior from the yearbook named Victor Best.
“No, there’s nothing on social on the Victor Best from St. Vincent’s,” Hatteras said. “There are other Victor Bests out there, but I was able to determine pretty quickly they were not our guy. And you didn’t find any criminal record when you looked him up, right?”
“Right. Nothing criminal.”
“I could start a genealogy run, if you want.”
“Okay, but maybe wait till tomorrow. You’ve put in enough time today. Anything else come up I should know about?”
“Well, I jumped back on the Black Dahlia case for a while and worked on Willa Kenyon.”
“Anything new on that?”
“Yes. I reached out to the site manager at Lost Angels and she called me back. She was intrigued enough by what I told her that she—”
