They went around a curtain in the fitting area and into a space that was half storage and half break room. There was a table with two chairs, and Kramer offered one to Ballard. She pulled it out and sat down. Kramer did the same.

“Now, what murder?” he asked.

“We’ll get to that,” Ballard said. “First, tell me, when was the last time you spoke to Jake Pearlman?”

“Oh my god, is Jake dead?”

His surprise seemed genuine to Ballard. She had wanted to know if he had been tipped to the investigation by Pearlman or anyone else on his team.

“No, he’s not dead,” she said. “Can you remember the last time you talked to him?”

“Uh, well, it’s been a while,” Kramer said. “I called him when he won the election. So that would’ve been four years ago?”

“He got elected six years ago.”

“Wow, time flies. Well, whenever it was, I called and congratulated him. I remember I told him he would be going to a lot of black-tie events now and I offered him a discount here. But that was it. He never took me up on it.”

“What about Nelson Hastings? Did you talk to him lately?”

“Hastings? Forget it. I have no reason to talk to him. I can’t remember the last time.”

“But you know him?”

“More like knew. We all went to school together. Hollywood High—and I do mean high.”

He laughed at his own inside joke. But it was a nervous laugh. Ballard read his tone when he spoke about Hastings as bordering on enmity.

“Did you have a problem with Hastings?” she asked.

“More like he had a problem with me. He wanted Jake to himself and eventually pushed me out. I’m just not that competitive. So now he’s running the Jake show, and I’m here.”

Ballard nodded.

“So, let’s go back to 2005,” she said. “You ran his campaign back then, correct?”

“I did, yeah,” Kramer said. “But I’m not sure I would call it a campaign. That sounds so big and planned—all the things that ours was not.”

“It was a small operation?”

“When Jake ran for president of the senior class at Hollywood High, we probably had a better machine. I mean, the ’05 campaign was held together by spit and Scotch Tape. We didn’t know what we were doing, and it failed as it deserved to fail. Jake stayed in politics, retooled, and then came back and won that seat. I was long gone by then. So tell me who died and what it has to do with me. I’m getting worried here.”

“Laura Wilson died. Was murdered. Does that name sound familiar to you?”

“Laura Wilson—I don’t think so. Let me think for a minute.”

“Sure.”

Kramer seemed to ponder the name, but he didn’t take the minute he’d asked for.