“Like Rick.”

“That would be okay with me. So what time in a couple of days?”

We set up the appointment. She said, “Fine, thanks much,” and paid me in cash. Smiling. “You’re sure you only want half?”

I smiled back, photocopied Tanya’s medical records, and returned the originals to her. Five minutes to go, but she said, “We covered everything,” and got up.

Then: “Just talking helps, even if it’s genetic?”

I said, “There may be a genetic component. Most tendencies are a combination of nature and nurture. But tendencies aren’t programmed like blood types.”

“People can change.”

“If they didn’t, I’d be out of business.”

That evening at five, she called me through my service. “Doc, if an appointment tonight’s still an option, I’ll take you up on it. Tanya started in on her homework, tore it up, redid it, then she got all hysterical. Crying that she could never do anything right. Saying I was ashamed of her, she was a bad girl, like Liddie. Nothing like that ever came out of my mouth but maybe I somehow communicated…Right now she’s calm, but not a calm I like. Way too quiet, generally she chatters away. I haven’t told her I made an appointment with you. If you say tonight’s okay, I’ll explain it to her in the car.”

“C’mon over,” I said.

“You’re a saint.”

She showed up an hour later, with a little blond girl in hand. In her other hand was a small white jar.

“Museum wax,” she said. “Long as I was coming here. This is Tanya Bigelow, my beautiful, smart daughter. Tanya, meet Dr. Delaware. He’s going to help you.”

Milo touched a corner of the newspaper he’d slid across the booth. “Cute, huh?”

Ten a.m., North Hollywood. Hot Friday in the Valley, the Du-par’s on Ventura east of Laurel Canyon.

I’d left a message for Tanya about no malpractice issue, told her I’d be contacting Detective Sturgis. An hour later I was watching him jab the front-page Times article with his fork.

Breathless coverage of the founding of a mental health program in Tahiti by a former film agent and a retired studio head. Diploma mill doctorate for her, deep pockets and May-December infatuation for him. The agenda was past-life regression, a Chinese menu of meditation games, all the therapy you could eat for two hundred grand a pop, no refunds. The projected client base was “people in the public eye.”

I said, “What a scoop.”

“Probably some kiss-ass reporter with a screenplay.”

“That’s networking, dude.”

“Curse of the millennium. Hollywood sharks peddling mental health, what a concept. If you get in a tropical mood, maybe they’re hiring.”

I laughed and slid the paper back.

“Hey,” he said, “you’re not on the stand, volunteer an opinion.”

“I get paid for opinions.”

He grumbled something about “dogmatism.”

I said, “How’s this: Taking life advice from people like that is like learning the tango from gorillas.”

“Eloquent. Now I might even listen to the further details of your little mystery.”

We were putting away stacks of pancakes and drinking coffee strong enough to make my pulse race. With Milo, food smooths the process.

I’d driven out to Studio City because he’d been on the other side of the hill since midnight, cleaning up the details of a Mar Vista gang homicide whose tentacles had spread into Van Nuys and Panorama City. Another big one that would finally close. One more meeting with the D.A. and he’d be on a two-week vacation.

Rick was scheduled tight and couldn’t travel. Too bad for Milo, lucky for me. I had designs on his leisure.

I told him everything Tanya had said.

He said, “First a ‘terrible thing,’ now it’s a murder? Alex, I’m not prying into clinical details, but be brutally frank: Is this kid stable?”

“Nothing points otherwise.”

“Meaning you’re not sure.”

“She’s functioning well,” I said. “All things considered.”

“Mommy offed some neighbor? But she really didn’t? What exactly does she want?”

“I’m not sure she knows. I figure we do a little searching, come up empty, I’ll have more authority to ease her away from it. If I don’t make an attempt, I lose her as a patient. She talks a good case about handling her grief, but there’s a long way to go. If she falls I’d like to be around to catch her.”

He played with the edge of the newspaper. “Sounds like you’re a bit involved in this one.”

“If it’s too much of a hassle-”

“I’m not refusing, I’m contextualizing. Even if I wanted to say no, there are domestic issues at stake. Rick thinks Patty was some kind of saint. ‘It’s great you’ll be free to help, Alex.’”

“Let’s hear it for the zeitgeist,” I said.

He threw money on the table that I returned to him.

“Fine, you’re in a higher tax bracket.” Hoisting his bulk out of the booth.

“When do we start?” I said.

“We?”

“You lead the way, I’ll be your loyal assistant.”

“Oh, sure,” he said. “And I’ve got a life regression package to sell you.”

I walked him to his unmarked as he studied the list of addresses.

He copied it into his notepad. “She moved around a bit, didn’t she…so the kid’s theory is Mommy was trying to protect her from some kind of revenge?”

“Less than a theory,” I said. “She was tossing out possibilities.”

“Here’s one: Mommy was impaired and talked gibberish.”

“Tanya’s not ready to see that.”

“I asked Rick about the whole brain damage thing,” he said. “Unwilling to commit-all you doctor types are alike. Okay, let’s be organized so we don’t have to backtrack. You talk to Patty’s oncologist and see if you can nail down some medical specifics. I’ll hit the assessor’s office and find out Patty’s local residences before she took Tanya in. She from SoCal?”

“New Mexico.”

“Where in New Mexico?”

“Outside Galisteo.”

“If this terrible thing went down out of state, good luck.” He snorted. “Listen to me. Like it really happened.”

“I appreciate this-”

“I will file your gratitude under Things To Exploit At An Opportune Time. Another thing you can do is play computer games, see if Patty shows up anywhere in cyberspace. Plug in those four addresses. Anything else that strikes your fancy.”

“Has the department database gotten any better?”

“Last coupla times I’ve able to boot up and not blow a fuse.”

“Given an address, can you pull up crimes on neighboring streets?”

“Oh, sure, me and Bill Gates just did that yesterday. No, it’s a mess. Recent cases have been entered but for the most part we’re talking cardboard boxes in storage. Department’s notion of pattern-tracing is the pin board and the board changes every year. Maybe we’ll get lucky and it is something recent. ‘Close by,’ huh? That could be the same street but down the block, one street over, a quarter mile up to the cul-de-sac, turn left, toss salt over your left shoulder. For all we know, Alex, she meant something ungeographical. Close by as in a friend.”

“Tanya said she had no relationships with men.”

“What about women? A bisexual triangle could get nasty, there was one a few years ago in Florida, woman had her girlfriend gut-shoot her old man for insurance money.”

“Patty told me she was asexual.”

“You asked her about her sexuality?”

“She brought it up during the intake.”

“The intake was on the kid so why would Mama’s sex life be relevant?”

I had no answer for that.

He said, “What was the context, Alex?”

“Letting me know she wasn’t gay. But not in a defensive way. More matter-of-fact, this is who I am. Then she asked me if I thought she was abnormal.”

“So she was uptight about being considered gay. Meaning she probably was gay. Meaning she coulda been doing stuff Tanya didn’t know about.”