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But his heart wasn’t in it and as we left he’d slumped and was shaking his head mournfully.
—
As we retraced our steps down the alley, Milo said, “Dope’s legal in B.H., but smoking anything—tobacco, dope—isn’t. Coulda called the locals.”
I said, “Like they’d care.”
“True. No problem for me, the stuff should never have been illegal in the first place. Not that I indulge.”
“Anymore.”
“We all have an anymore, right? Then you gotta concentrate on keeping the brain in decent order.”
We got back in the car, he U-turned and drove east.
“Two receipts,” he said. “Very elegant the way you sprang that on him.”
“Lucky guess.”
“I’d been wondering when to bring it up then you pounced.” He turned one hand into a claw. “Good timing, it opened him up. Too bad it doesn’t tell us what we didn’t already suspect. Some schemer, our Meg. Whatever her real name is. I’m starting to think nothing I know about her is real.”
A block later, in the midst of a Beverly Hills shopping jam, he said, “Calls her friends, her guy on the side, and a church. Hey, maybe she used to be a nun.”
I said, “Anything’s possible.”
“I was kidding.”
I was too preoccupied to answer. Googlingst. jerome’s church san pietro.
I said, “Oh boy.”
“What?”
“Find a spot and pull over.”
—
He turned left on Rodeo, driving away from the famous three blocks and toward the residences in the flats north of Big Santa Monica. Lucking out with a green light, he continued for half a block before parking.
“What?”
I showed him. “One of six hits, they all say the same thing.”
He took my phone, read, cursed loud and long.
CHAPTER
28
Two days after the murders of Meagin March and Gio Aggiunta, a homicide had taken place in the parking lot of St. Jerome’s Church in San Pietro.
The victim, shot after dark, hadn’t been discovered until the following morning, sprawled near the rear door of a bungalow adjoining the church. What the third account termed “the auxiliary.”
The initial story had been posted by the San Pietro Police Department then reiterated by a couple of local news blogs. No further details until later in the day when a second police release named the victim as Richard Brett Barlett, thirty-eight, an administrative clerk at the church.
Since then, no new developments.
Milo said, “She calls the guy two months ago, he gets killed right after she does.”
