“Where’s Fernando now?” Martinez asked, risking a look at the dog, who was now standing on his hind legs and digging at the meshed steel of the fence.

“I don’t know.” Yolanda shot a nervous glance up the street, as if she expected her brother to appear at any second.

“Is he at work?” Martinez asked.

“School,” Sebastian said, wrapping a big arm around Yolanda’s shoulders. “He takes night classes at the junior college. Like my wife. He usually comes home after work at the restaurant, The Blue Burro, but today he didn’t. Called and said he was going straight to school.”

“You got a phone number for him?”

“No!” Yolanda said, obviously scared, but Sebastian placed a hand on the back of her neck and rubbed it as he gave Martinez the number.

“Damn it, Sebastian!” Yolanda said, pushing his hand away.

Her husband wasn’t put off. “If he’s in trouble, we need to know about it.”

Hayes tried a different tack. “Does Fernando have a girlfriend? Anyone he would loan the car to?”

“No one serious,” she said.

Sebastian scowled. “Fernando, he knows lots of girls. But I don’t know about loaning the car to any of them. He should know better than that, you know? The car, it belongs to my wife.”

Hayes asked, “Do you know a woman named Jennifer Bentz?” When Yolanda shrugged, he continued. “Come on back inside, I have some pictures I’d like you to see.”

Yolanda shot Bentz one last hateful glance, then begrudgingly returned to the house.

Still seething, Bentz climbed into the back of the Toyota, leaving the door open so that a breeze slid into the car.

He wondered about Yolanda and the damned car.

She hadn’t been driving it earlier today.

Nor had Fernando.

But Fernando Valdez was the next person on Bentz’s list to interview.

Despite Hayes’s warning, he put in a call to the phone number, but Fernando didn’t pick up.

Bentz leaned against the seat, wondering if Yolanda was telling the truth. Something he doubted. He watched a bicyclist in reflective gear whiz past while a cat in a neighboring yard slunk through the shrubbery, hunting.

Meanwhile, Rufus had settled down to whining and pacing.

Bentz used his cell phone to reserve another rental car. He also called the So-Cal Inn, hoping against hope that Olivia might have slipped through the cracks and come looking for him there.

No such luck, of course.

He rented another room, one facing the interior pool this time, and gave Rebecca specific instructions to phone him if she heard from his wife. It was a long shot, of course, but he had to cover all his bases, even the most obscure.

Twenty minutes later, Hayes and Martinez were emerging from the house when Bentz’s phone rang. He picked it up, hoping to see Olivia’s number on the screen. Instead he saw Montoya’s.

“Bentz.”