“We were in India last year, they have places where dead bodies are left out in the open.” Forbisher glanced through a rear window of his family room. What he called a back house was a converted garage, now blocked by a tarp on a vertical frame and yellow tape turned bright by a standing LED lamp. “I knew right away something had died but I thought it was a possum or a raccoon or a dog.”

Eileen Forbisher, finally able to steady her voice, said, “This is disgusting, terrible, disgusting. Frankie was supposed to be watching the house for us.”

As if the dead woman had failed to live up to expectation.

Her husband said, “Obviously, she couldn’t even watch for herself.”

“Jack! How can you be so matter-of-fact?”

He shrugged.

His wife said, “Yecch, I can still smell it and I haven’t even been out there.”

“I wouldn’t let her,” said Jack Forbisher, sniffing. “You really think you smell it in here?”

Eileen said, “Putrid.”

My nose picked up nothing.

Milo said, “So then what happened, sir?”

“I poked around near the garbage and there wasn’t any dead critter and as I got closer to the back house the smell got worse. I’m still figuring nothing terrible, maybe she left and a critter got inside. Her lights were out and her door was locked so I let myself in with my key and saw what I saw.” His nose wrinkled. “I got the hell out and called 911, end of story. When can we clean up?”

“Jack,” said Eileen, “she was a person.”

“Not anymore.” He canted his head out of his wife’s view and favored us with a see-what-I-go-through? eye roll. “Anyway, I got the hell right out, don’t worry, didn’t mess up your CSI.”

Milo said, “Appreciate it, sir. What kind of person was Frankie?”

Eileen said, “Quiet. Different from us, but no problem.”

“Different, how?”

“The tattoos, the rings and studs, paper clips, whatever.”

Jack said, “Without all that crap, she’d probably be a nice-looking girl. But no personality, you’d say hi, she’d pretend not to hear you.”

“Shy,” said Eileen. “Really shy. She had trouble making eye contact.”

Jack said, “She applied to rent, I said to myself nutcase hippie, forget about it. But once you get her to talk you can see she’s basically a quiet girl, no ax to grind. I’m a good judge of character, worked in L.A. Unified for thirty years.”

I said, “Teacher?”

“Maintenance coordinator, I ran all the electrical and plumbing for the northwest sector. That means dealing with people, I can tell who’s going to be a problem and who isn’t.”

“Frankie wasn’t a problem.”

“Quiet as a mouse,” he said. “Afraid of her own shadow, one of those nerds.”

“She was so quiet,” said Eileen. “You wouldn’t know she was there.”

Milo said, “Did she have a boyfriend?”