Her private office was rust-colored and small—tiny, really, with barely enough room for the bookcase and the desk and a red lacquer stand off to one side, set with a single white orchid in a blue-and-white pot. The walls perpendicular to the books were hung with watercolor landscapes—green hills above the ocean, live oaks, fields of poppies. California dreaming. The rest of the space bore family photos. Melinda Waters with a slim, tall, dark-bearded man and two mischievous-looking boys, around six and eight. Skiing, scuba diving, horseback riding, fishing. The family that plays together . . .

“Homicide detectives. Well, this is certainly different.” Soft voice, edged with sarcasm. Under normal circumstances, she was probably the image of professionalism but a quaver at the tail end said she wasn’t pretending this was routine.

“Different from what, ma’am?” said Milo.

“From what I thought I’d be doing right before lunch. Frankly, I’m confused. I’m not working on any L.A. cases at all, let alone homicide. I specialize in tenants’ rights and financial—”

“Janie Ingalls,” said Milo.

Melinda Waters’s sigh stretched for a very long time.

She fiddled with papers and pens, closed her laptop, tamped her hair. Finally, she punched an intercom button on her phone, and said, “Hold my calls please, Inez.”

Wheeling her chair back the few inches that remained between her and the law book backdrop, she said, “That’s a name from a long time ago. What happened to her?”

“You don’t know?”

“Well,” she said, “your card says homicide, so am I safe in assuming?”

“Very safe.”

Melinda Waters removed her glasses, made a fist, knuckled one eye. The glossy lips trembled. “Oh, damn. I suppose I knew it all along. But . . . I didn’t really—damn. Poor Janie . . . that is so . . . obscene.”

“Very,” said Milo.

She sat up straighter, as if drawing upon a reserve of strength. Now her eyes were different—searching, analytical. “And you’re here, after all this time, because . . . ?”

“Because it remains an open case, Ms. Waters.”

“Open or reopened?”

“It was never closed, officially.”

“You’re not saying the L.A. police have been working on this for twenty years?”

“Does that matter, ma’am?”

“No . . . I suppose not. I’m rambling . . . this is really . . . this takes me by total surprise. Why are you here?”

“Because you were one of the last people to see Janie Ingalls alive, but no one ever took your statement. In fact, it was only recently we learned you hadn’t been a victim, yourself.”

“A victim? You thought . . . oh, my.”

“You’ve been hard to locate, Ms. Waters. So has your mother—”

“My mother died ten years ago,” she said. “Lung cancer, back in Pennsylvania, where she was from. Before that, she had emphysema. She suffered a lot.”

“Sorry to hear that.”