She laughed. “I need to get out of this without having him bad-mouth me all over the industry.”

“He gets nasty, I’ll break his fingers and his toes.”

“Not much of a challenge, darling, seeing as meth and tobacco and whatever have weakened his constitution. But those apes who follow him around are another story.”

I gorilla-beat my chest. Robin put her head on it and we watched for a few more minutes. An actress stared at an actor. He pretended to be contemplating something weighty. Ponderous music played, stopped, resumed. The camera swung to a steeple top. Then to an empty room. Then to a hand.

Ah, art.

Not that anything could’ve captured my interest. I’d been obsessing on three murdered women and the fact that others were likely to follow. I knew Milo was out there, somewhere, watching Grant Fellinger. Long, dreary process, no guarantee of results … the camera swung to a screen-filling blue eye, unblinking. Maybe this was the scene the critics had found “compelling.”

My cell beeped. As I read the number, Robin used the call as an excuse to turn off the TV. “Time to brush my teeth. Then I’m emailing Uno, tell him no in capital letters.”

“Bravo.”

I clicked in. “That was quick, Big Guy. You learned something.”

Milo said, “Hope you’re not too comfortable. Even if you are, you’ll want to get the hell over here.”

He rattled off an address in Mar Vista.

I said, “New catering?”

“Oh, boy. This one won’t help your appetite.”

The residence had once been the garage of a moderate-sized mock-Tudor on Grand View. Mar Vista’s name promises ocean views. Many of its streets don’t deliver but Grand View does. It was too dark to make out much of the Pacific, now, but I did spot a triangle of gloss beneath a tiara of city lights.

Taking a second for a moment of beauty before it started.

The victim was a twenty-four-year-old woman named Francesca DiMargio who worked at a bookstore in Silverlake.

Milo learned little else from her landlords, a retired couple named Eileen and Jack Forbisher who spent a lot of time “cruising.” Meaning ships, not low-riders.

They’d returned a few hours ago from a three-week voyage embarking from Puerto Vallarta, crossing the Panama Canal, and ending up back at Long Beach. Everything seemed in order until Jack Forbisher toted an armful of junk mail to the trash cans at the rear of the property.

“I get closer to the back house and what a stink,” he said. “Even with my allergies, you never forget that smell.”

“Where’ve you smelled it before?” said Milo.