Had she killed Garza? Could she have maneuvered his body into that Mercedes Roadster? Or was it the other way around?

Had O’Mara clipped Garza with that crystal vase, and he’d retaliated with killing force?

Either way, we had no body, a missing car, O’Mara’s car in the garage, and one of the bloodiest crime scenes I’d ever seen.

“Okay,” I said to Jacobi. “So where is O’Mara? Where is Redhead?”

While inspectors and uniforms canvassed Garza’s neighbors, Jacobi and I used our squad car as an office. He got out a BOLO on Garza’s Mercedes while I called O’Mara’s office and got her assistant, Kathy, on the line.

I imagined her sharp blade of a face, her big hair, as O’Mara’s assistant talked and ate her lunch in my ear.

“Maureen’s taking a week off. She needed a vacation,” Kathy said. “She’s earned it.”

“I’m sure. Where’d she go?” I asked, hearing the edge in my voice. Repressed panic.

“What’s the problem, Lieutenant?”

“It’s police business, Kathy.”

“Maureen didn’t say where she was going, but I can give you all her numbers.”

“That would be a big help.”

I dialed O’Mara’s cell phone, got her mailbox. I left my number on her pager. Called her house and got a busy signal, again and again.

Jacobi punched out O’Mara’s name on the console computer, and got data from the DMV.

He read it out loud. “Maureen Siobhan O’Mara; Caucasian; single; date of birth eight, fifteen, seventy-three; height five nine; weight one fifty-two. She’s a big girl,” Jacobi mused.

He turned the screen so I could see O’Mara’s photo and her address.

“We can be there in fifteen minutes,” he said.

“Let’s try for ten.”

Jacobi backed the car away from the curb and, with tires scraping the concrete, cut around the scene-mobile and into the traffic lane.

I flipped on the grille lights and the siren as we shot up Leavenworth toward O’Mara’s house in the tony enclave of Sea Cliff.

Chapter 128

Chapter 128

NUMBER 68 SEAVIEW TERRACE was a mango-colored Mediterranean-style villa with an unobstructed view of the bay, the bridge, Sausalito, and maybe Honolulu for all I knew.

Birds chirped in the shrubbery.

Jacobi and I mounted the porch, my mind seething with vivid images of the carnage at Garza’s house and the cyclone of questions whirling in my mind.

Come on, Maureen. Please be home.

I pressed the doorbell, and a no-nonsense buzzer blatted loudly at my touch. I heard no answering voice, though, no footfalls coming toward the door.

I shouted, “Police,” pressed the buzzer again, stood back as Jacobi stepped in and banged the door with his fist.

No answer. Nothing at all. C’mon, Redhead.

That creepy feeling came over me again—the horrors of death playing my vertebrae like a xylophone.