Bulk solicitation to apply for a low-interest home loan and a “Last Chance!” pitch to resubscribe to InStyle magazine.

Milo handed them back.

“How about the stuff inside?”

“That’s private property,” said the mailman.

“What happens when you come back in a few days and there’s no more room?”

“We leave a notice.”

“Where does the mail go?”

“Stays in the station.”

“I can get a warrant and come by and open it all up.”

“If you say.”

“I say I just wanna look at the envelopes that are in there. Seeing as the box is already open.”

“Privacy— ”

“When she got killed she lost her privacy.”

* * *

The carrier made a show of ignoring us as he went about delivering mail to the other tenants. Milo reached into Box Three, removed a thick stack wedged so tightly he had to ease it out, and thumbed through.

“Mostly junk...a few bills...urgent one from the gas company meaning she was overdue...same deal with the phone company.”

He inspected the postmarks. “Ten days’ worth. Looks like she was gone well before she died.”

“A vacation’s not likely,” I said. “She was broke.”

He looked at me. Both of us thinking the same thing.

Maybe someone had kept her for a while.

CHAPTER 11

CHAPTER 11

We sat in the car, in front of Michaela’s building.

I said, “Dylan Meserve cleared out of his place weeks ago. The neighbor heard him and Michaela arguing and Michaela told me she hated him.”

“Maybe he came and got her,” said Milo.

“Took her on another adventure.”

“What about Mr. Sex Criminal Peaty? Maybe he snatched both of them.”

“If Peaty did abduct anyone, he didn’t take them to his place,” I said. “No way to keep that from Mrs. Stadlbraun and the other tenants.”

“Too small to entertain.”

“Still, he’s the one with the record.”

“And he’s weird. So now I’ve got two high-priority bins.”

* * *

As we drove away, he said, “Coffee would prop my eyelids.”

I stopped at a place on Santa Monica near Bundy. Scrawled the possibilities as I saw them on a napkin and slid it across the table as Milo returned from making some calls.

1. Dylan Meserve abducts and murders Michaela, then flees.

2. Reynold Peaty abducts and murders Michaela and Dylan.

3. Reynold Peaty abducts and murders Michaela and Dylan’s disappearance is a coincidence.

4. None of the above.

“It’s that last one I love.” Milo waved for the waitress, ordered pecan pie à la mode. Finishing most of the wedge in three gulps, he nibbled the rest with excruciating care, as if that proved self-restraint.

“I called Michaela’s mother again, it was all about her, big time woe-is-me. Too sick to come out to claim the body. The way she was gasping I figure it’s probably true.”

I summarized Michaela’s account of her childhood.