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“Right.”
CHAPTER
29
Even before Milo’s left hand hung up, his right was tapping his keyboard.
He logged onto NCIC, then L.A. and Ventura County’s criminal databases. Nothing on Richard Brett Barlett. The internet was similarly stingy but for the reports of the murder we’d already read.
He swiveled around. “Lives like a monk. How does a guy like that figure into Meagin’s world?”
I said, “Maybe a relative? A close one, seeing as he’s one of the few people she called.”
“Three years younger than her…guess he could be a kid brother but then why did she call him only once?”
I shrugged. “You could try seeing if Barlett was her maiden name.”
“You mean Jones wasn’t? I’m shocked.”
—
He searched formeagin barlett,found nothing, paired the surname withmegan, meagan,meg.That produced several social media hits, none the woman we were interested in. Combining her name and its permutations withrichard brettpulled up a lot of noise that took a while to plod through and ended up useless.
He said, “A church guy and a former call girl? Sounds like a bad movie.”
“Maybe Barlett wasn’t always a church guy.”
“What then?”
“He went monastic to atone for his past.”
“Not a criminal past.”
“Nothing illegal about gambling in Vegas,” I said. “What if he’d once been a card ace?”
“Poker shark morphs into church clerk?”
“It happens.”
“That also sounds like a movie, Alex. Guy living at the tables, that would be an addiction, right? The only reason I can see for a big lifestyle change would be going broke, not some moral brainstorm. And if that was the case, what are the odds—pardon the expression—of it lasting?”
I thought about that. “Okay, maybe he wasn’t a green-felt guy. Or he was and there’s a middle ground: He relapsed while working at the church and kept the fact secret. That could also explain living simply. The casinos got most of his money.”
“Filing papers for the diocese by day and playing at night. You know what that sounds like.”
“Potential for embezzlement.”
“Cifuentes said people respect the church, but who the hell knows. Okay, let’s go local, that’s where a backslider would start.”
He turned back to his keyboard. “Closest place to the church is…the Players Casino, Ventura…and here’s another, looks bigger, run by the Chumash in Santa Barbara.”
The next twenty minutes were spent asking for and finally connecting to managers at both casinos who could give him answers.
No record of Richard Brett Barlett receiving lines of credit or racking up debts at either gambling house. The same was true for expulsions, banishment, any sort of security issue.
Both Sonia Hidalgo at Players and Harvey Morega at the SantaBarbara casino pointed out that someone habituated to low-minimum slots could go unnoticed.
Milo said, “Silent majority.”
