AllFreeNovel
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Milo said, “Business.”
“Makes the world go ’round.” She patted the top of her hair, drew the long fringe forward and finger-combed it, like a groom tending to a horse’s tail. “Someone did him? Insane.”
“Do you know any other girls he dated?”
“No, no, no,” she said, wagging a finger.
“No, what?”
“Don’t want to go there.”
“Go where?”
“Getting someone else pulled in here.” Stroke, stroke. “You ruined my day, why mess someone else up?”
“Giovanni’s last day was worse.”
She gave him a long look. “Low blow.”
“Rikki, if you know anything that could help—”
“I don’t.”
“The other women might.”
“They don’t either. Talk about areallywrong tree. The ladies I hang with are good people, no one’s weird or violent or crazy and we all have style. Okay? No one would do that. Never, not in our DNA.”
Milo’s eyes drifted toward me. Rhonda Montel’s followed.
I said, “I’m sure you’re right but the more information we have the better.”
“You’rethe big boss?”
“Nope, you were right the first time.”
“So what, he gives you a chance to talk when he runs out of material?”
Milo said, “We’re a democracy.”
“Bullshit.” She laughed. “You’re like the army, my dad was in the army, I know the army.”
I said, “The other girls Giovanni dated?”
She sat back, pulled off a few more leg-crossings. When she finished, the dress had ridden up nearly to her crotch, exposing a triangle of red silk. She let the view endure for a moment, then stood, tugged, wiggled, and sat back down.
“Kind of drafty in here.” Small laugh, raspy and uncertain.
I smiled.
She said, “Thatwas a nice reaction even if it was bullshit, at least you know how to treat a lady. Or think you do.” Another visual survey. “Not bad on the eyes, either—okay, this is not going to help you but there was four of us, used to hang out. We met in Vegas, we all danced there, decided to move here together a couple years ago. But we never lived together, nothing like that, it wasn’t like…college. We did our thing, hung out. Okay?”
We waited.
Rhonda Montel exhaled, fluttering enhanced lips. “Two of thegirls you can forget from the git-go. One moved like a year ago to New York with an eighty-year-old who keeps her on Fifth Avenue and all she has to do is look good and cook him meatloaf and baked beans.”
Her lips folded inward. She looked at the floor. “The other died six months ago. Cancer, real quick, and she never hung with Giovanni. Least that I saw.”
I said, “That leaves one.”
