Her arrest and trial four years previous had been nectar for the media and every wrong turn in her life had been retracted, probed, and aspirated like a surgical wound.

She’d grown up rich and privileged, the daughter of two high-powered lawyers at Munchley, Zabella, and Carter—a firm since diminished and eventually destroyed by malfeasance and corruption, so maybe character issues had laced the family’s chromosomes.

Education at the Peabody School, summers in Venice and Provence, frequent-flier status on the Concorde, socializing with celebs and the people who created them.

All that had distilled to drug and alcohol abuse by adolescence, six abortions by age fourteen, dropping out of college to take on self-abasing roles in bottom-feeder porn loops. Somehow that had led to a seven-figure income running beautiful, fresh-faced girls, some of them Peabody alumnae, out of the better lounges and hostelries of prime-zip-code L.A.

Gretchen’s trick-book was rumored to be hours of fascinating reading but somewhere along the line it vanished and despite rumors of LAPD enmity, her eventual plea bargain was a sweetheart deal.

Now she was calling me. Three times in one morning. On the half hour precisely; shrinks and hookers are both good at sticking to time-tables.

Not an emergency. I need to be honest.

That did sound like rehab-talk.

Milo slammed the phone down, studied the single-spaced list of rent-a-cop outfits. The place his finger rested said he’d barely made a start.

“This is gonna take time.”

“If you don’t need me—”

“Yeah, yeah, sure, go have a life, someone should.”

On the way home, I phoned the judge and the pediatrician. The custody case sounded ugly and probably futile and I begged off. The failure-to-thrive lacked any hallmarks of Munchausen by proxy and I gave the doctor some differential diagnoses and suggested she get gastro and neuro consults on the baby but continue to keep an eye on the parents.

That left Gretchen Stengel.

Eager to talk to me. But no emergency.

I shut down the hands-off, put on music, took the long way home.

Wonderful sounds filled the car. More than music; Oscar Peterson doing impossible things with a piano.

L.A. rule number one: When in doubt, drive.

Chapter 6

obin cried.

Wiping away tears, she laid her chisel down, stepped away from her workbench. Laughed, as if that would reverse the emotional tide. “No sense staining a nice piece of Adirondack.”

A finger traced the edge of the spruce slab she’d been shaping. The beginning of a guitar top. Spec job, no deadline.

I said, “I figured you’d want to know. Sorry if you didn’t.”

“I’m being a baby, she was a total stranger.” Spots appeared on sawdust and she swiped at her eyes again. “Damn.”

Blanche waddled over and nosed the shavings. I bent down and petted her. Her eyes remained fixed on Robin.

“When did it happen?”

“A few hours after we saw her.”