Another silent sisterly consultation.

Barb Bruno said, “He’s a real smoothie. Drives a Bentley, wears nice suits. For all we know it’s not even his real name.”

Milo waited.

Susan Appel said, “Tell them.”

Barb Bruno said, “He goes by Nick. Nicholas St. Heubel.”

CHAPTER 29

CHAPTER
29

Milo paced the interview room.

The sisters had just left, reminding him not to forget “our zoning issues.”

He’d pressed them for details on the man they knew as Nicholas St. Heubel. Barb Bruno thought her rude guest played tennis. Susan Appel believed the game of choice to be golf. Both women admired his clothes, but thought him “way too smooth.”

Both had discarded his address and phone number.

Milo cited the Brentwood street where we’d encountered Heubel and the Bentley and they said, “That’s it,” in unison.

He asked for their husbands’ work numbers.

“Mike wants nothing to do with this.”

“Same for Hal.”

“Thanks, ladies, you really are heroes.”

“Heubel.” Working his shoulder and torturing his hair.

I said, “He’s the right age and height. Thinner than the descriptions we’ve gotten of Bright but nothing a diet couldn’t accomplish.”

“Able to keep it off.” One hand grazed his belt. “That alone makes him a goddamn criminal.”

“Tasha described ‘Tweed’ as having a puffy face and Heubel has a pouchy mouth, as if someone’s compressing his cheeks.”

“Kissy-poo,” he said.

“Kissing off the world,” I said.

He slapped a wall hard enough to send vibrations through the floor. “Bastard called in the Bentley to stir it up face-to-face. He’s that confident the cops are stupid.”

“He’s been getting away with serious bad deeds since childhood, thinks he’s invincible.”

“No more St. Heubel — what’s that, another game? I’m really not so pure?”

“It’s all about games,” I said. “He played with the sisters’ heads, returned months later and buried a body under their noses. The image of a backhoe churning up Kat’s bones gave him serious jollies.”

“Putting on the frightened-citizen act, I’m calming him down.” Frown. “I was worried he might know the mayor.”

“He might. Rosalynn Carter partied with John Gacy.”

“Oh, man,” he said.

Three more circuits.

“Asshole stalks Kat in his own wheels, spins a yarn about theft and recovery, leaves blood. All that just to jerk us around.”

“Using his own wheels was the perfect cover,” I said. “The Bentley’s a conspicuous car, even at that hour he had to consider someone might see it. But so what? He’d be the last person to suspect. If he hadn’t made the sisters nervous, he’d never have been connected to any of it.”

“True,” he said. “What was that family plot stuff about?”

“Arrogance.”

“Why spook the sisters if he wanted their husbands to invest with him, Alex?”