I said, “The link doesn’t need to be direct. If Tony contracted his mother’s murder, someone could’ve hired the same killer to do Kat. And the women in Ojo Negro.”

“Traveling pro with a taste for stolen wheels?” he said. “What kind of money motive could there be for Kat? She wasn’t exactly an heiress.”

“From what we’ve heard she could be abrasive. Maybe that one was personal.”

“She blew the wrong guy off so he pays for an elaborate scheme to do her?”

“Or she blew the killer himself off,” I said. “Clive picked her up in a bar and there’s no reason to believe he was the only one.”

“Even really bad guys have feelings.”

“Everyone has feelings. Depends what you do with them.”

Big-rig mishaps and the usual Cal Trans idiocy stretched the drive back to L.A. and it was dark when I got home. I drank Chivas out by the pond, put Blanche in my lap, and tossed food to the fish. She wanted to watch them eat so we kneeled by the rock rim. The babies were almost big enough to swallow the pellets, kept worrying the bobbing circles until they disintegrated. The adults indulged their attempts and managed not to pull a Jonah.

Robin came out and joined us, chopsticking leftovers and forgoing her glass of wine because she was thinking of working some more.

Quieter than usual.

I said, “Mr. Dot-com call again?”

She shook her head. “There’s a wolf-note somewhere on the mandolin fretboard. If I don’t fix it, I won’t sleep.”

“My soul mate.” I kissed her, walked her to her studio, carried a now sleeping Blanche back to the house.

My e-mail was the usual blather and one message that interested me, sent a few minutes ago.

dr. delaware: found leonora bright’s brother’s name in the obit on their father. nothing criminal on him so far and it was too late to access s.f. property rolls to see if he owns a house there. see what i can do tomorrow.

george cardenas

I sent back a thanks and downloaded the e-mail attachment.

San Francisco Chronicle obituary section. Someone important enough to merit a piece with a byline.

The late Dr. Whittaker Bright, a New York native, trained at Cornell and Columbia, had been a professor of engineering at UC Berkeley with an expertise in transformers and a patent for a now obsolete switching device that had paid him royalties for over a decade. Death had come after a protracted illness. Widowed and remarried, “Whit” Bright was survived by his second wife, Bonnie, a daughter, Leonora, of Ojo Negro, and a son, Ansell, of San Francisco. In lieu of flowers, donations were to be sent to the American Heart Society.

What caught my eye was the date of death. Eight days before the butchery in Ojo Negro. Mavis Wembley’s story was looking better and better.