“Listen to you, Mr. Optimist. Maybe you should call Tanya Knight and ask her to go to lunch. You could have a bunch of glass-half-full conversations,” Rena grumbled. “You were asking all those questions about her physical appearance just to make sure that Elaine couldn’t have gotten her mixed up with Kara Wiese.”

“Yeah. But Kara Wiese is barely five foot. With long brown hair versus short blonde. Come on, let’s go.”

They walked downstairs and got into A.L.’s SUV. He started it and pulled out of the lot. Got about three blocks before turning to Rena. “I know I said that I wanted to check in with Leah but I think I want to talk to Elaine Broadstreet again first. The questions we have for her are bigger than the questions we have for Leah.”

“You think she’s still at Leah’s house?” Rena asked.

“If she is, we need to do it somewhere else. I don’t think we’ll get the truth otherwise.”

“I’ll call her,” Rena said. Elaine answered her phone on the second ring.

“Hello.”

“This is Detective Morgan. I’m with Detective McKittridge and we’d like an opportunity to meet with you. Are you at home?”

“Uh...no.”

“Can you be there in fifteen minutes?” Rena asked.

“I don’t...” the woman said, her tone irritated. There was a pause. “Of course,” she said, her tone very different.

She either didn’t want to appear argumentative to the police or maybe she didn’t want her daughter to know who was calling. Hard to tell. Rena didn’t much care. “Thank you. We’ll see you then.” She ended the call.

“What’s her address?”

Rena gave it to him.

With a quick tap on the brakes, A.L. turned. The car behind him let loose a sharp blast of their horn.

Rena gave him a look.

“I know a shortcut,” he said.

He likely does, she thought. He’d grown up in Baywood. Had left for a few years, walked a beat in Madison, and later did some years in SWAT. But, as he told it, he’d been lured back to Baywood in hopes of saving his marriage. It hadn’t worked.

And he’d eaten dinner alone for a long time. But now was dating Tess.

That was the big news. The two of them had saved Tess from a serial killer just months earlier. “I never got a chance to ask,” she said. “How was California? You and Tess still okay?”

He gave her an amused look. “Familiarity breeds contempt?” he said.

“Contempt is a harsh word. And, anyway, it would be difficult to ever dislike Tess.”

He laughed. “Good one,” he said. “Too much of me, that’s another story.”

Now it was her turn to smile. “So I can assume it went well.”

“Yeah. It did.”