“She’s invented her own world.” I took a longer look at the log. “Eight big payments conforms to the final months of Qeesha’s pregnancy. Up to that point, she was figuring out what to do, by the fourth month she couldn’t hide it any longer, decided to take action. Donny told her to abort, she strung him along, kept delaying as he kept paying. Then it was too late and she had the baby and her hold over him was telling Prema. She continued to live here, got Prema to hire Adriana for backup. To serve as an insurance policy if things got ugly.”

“Adriana didn’t turn out to be much insurance.”

“When Qeesha and the baby disappeared, Adriana suspected the worst. But going to the police wasn’t an option. Child-care aide makes accusations against mega-celebs, no evidence to back it up, how far would that get? So Adriana decided to stick around and snoop. Then the baby skeleton showed up under Holly Ruche’s tree and it made the news and someone heard about it and thought it would be a grand idea to ditch a second set of bones not far from there so the police would think some sort of serial ghoul was at work.”

“Fifty years between dumps is a serial?”

“Not well thought out,” I said.

“Not a genius,” he said. “Aka Donny.”

“He’s the one with the wax and the knives and the bugs. And the guns.”

“According to Prema.”

“All verifiable accusations.”

“And I’m the verifier.”

We left Wedd’s room. Milo carried the appointment book away from his body. “Gotta get an evidence bag for this … Here’s something else to chew on, Alex: Donny dumping his own kid’s bones and doing Adriana the same night seems like a challenge for someone supposedly that dumb.”

I said, “Agreed. Had to be a two-person job. Donny and Wedd. That way there’d be no need to schlep Adriana across the park. Wedd was Prema’s guy by day, but Donny’s pimp and paymaster and who-knows-what-else by night. The maids knew about it, everyone knew about it except Prema. Wedd was a wannabe actor, wanted to emulate the star—drove the same kind of car as the star. He wasn’t ridiculing Donny when he imitated him over the phone. He was pretending to be him.”

“Hell, Alex, maybe it was more than that: What if Wedd had a crush on Donny? So when Donny asks him to take care of nasty business, he’s fine with it. Unfortunately, Donny grew uncomfortable with his knowing too much and took care of him.”

I said, “Nighttime drive, weed and a bong. Sure, it fits. Wedd probably figured he’d be partying with his idol.”

“Power of celebrity,” he said.