“Gin and tonics with the old folk,” I said. “Refined.”

“The Queen Mother drank gin and tonics and she lived to 101. But I had Coke. Let me tell you, it was tempting- they were pouring Bombay, and I haven’t had much fun, recently. Virtue triumphed. Goddammit. Anyway, Kipper is still on my screen. The hostile, aggressive loner. Also, I did ask around about tall redheaded homeless gals. A few possibles surfaced on the Westside or Pacific Division, but all turned out to be wrong. One of the shelters in Hollywood does remember a woman named Bernadine or Ernadine who fits the description. Tall, big bones, crazy, midthirties or about. She drops in occasionally to dry out, but they haven’t seen her in a while. The shelter supervisor had the feeling she’d fallen quite a ways.”

“Why?”

“When her head cleared, she could sound fairly intelligent.”

“No last name?”

“Unlike the public shelters, the privates don’t always keep records- it’s a church group, Dove House. Pure good deeds, no questions asked.”

“When Bernadine sounded intelligent,” I said, “what did she talk about?”

“I dunno. Why? This was just time-killing because I dead-ended on Kipper.”

“Just wondering if she was a fan of the arts.”

“All of a sudden you think it’s worth pursuing?”

“Not really.”

“What?”

“Forget it,” I said. “I don’t want to waste your time.”

“Right now my time isn’t exactly precious. Julie Kipper’s uncle called this morning, politely inquiring as to my progress, and I had to tell him there was none. What’s on your mind, Alex?”

I told him about the other killings I’d found, recounted my talk with Paul Brancusi.

“Wilfred Reedy I remember,” he said. “Another of Rick’s favorite jazz guys. I think that one was a dope thing. Reedy pissing off a dealer, or something like that.”

“Reedy was an addict?”

“Reedy’s kid was an addict. He OD’d and died and Reedy got hot about all the dealing near the South Central clubs, started making noise. I could be wrong, but that’s what I remember.”

“So it was solved?”

“Don’t know, I’ll find out,” he said. “So… jealousy’s become the motive?”

“It’s the one point of consistency: artists struck down just as they’re about to ascend. Four, if you include Angelique Bernet. But the differences outweigh any link.”

“Wilfred Reedy wasn’t ascending. He’d been admired for years.”

“Like I said, wasting your time.”

Silence.

“On the surface, it’s not much,” he said. “Still, I ain’t sherlocking anything the old-fashioned way. Why don’t I do this: make a few calls and try to disprove the theory. That’s the scientific method, right? Blow up the whatchamacallit…”

“The null hypothesis.”

“Exactly. I’ll find out who handled Reedy, talk to Cambridge PD, see what’s really gone down. I can also check whether or not that ceramicist’s boyfriend is still behind bars, what are their names?”

“Valerie Brusco and Tom Blaskovitch,” I said. “He was sentenced three years ago.”

“Another creative type?”

“Sculptor.”

“Same as Kipper- maybe another vindictive chisel man. Ah, the art world. Like I tell my mother, you never know when the job will elevate you to higher ground.”

The next few weeks were a slow fade to futility. No new evidence on the Kipper murder surfaced, and Milo learned nothing about the other killings that excited him. He contacted Petra and learned she’d dead-ended on Baby Boy.

Tom Blaskovitch, the sculptor-killer, had been released from prison a year before, having earned good behavior points by setting up art classes for his fellow inmates. But he’d settled in Idaho, gotten a job as a handyman at a dude ranch, which was exactly where his boss was certain he’d been on the nights of the Kipper and the Lee murders.

Detective Fiorelle of the Cambridge police remembered me as a “pushy guy, one of those intellectuals- I know the type, plenty around here.” The facts of Angelique Bernet’s murder did nothing to support any link with Baby Boy or Julie: The dancer had been stabbed half a dozen times and dumped in an area of the college town that was well traveled during the day but quiet at night. No strangulation, no sexual posing; she’d been found fully clad.

The detective who’d worked the Wilfred Reedy case was dead. Milo got a copy of the file. Reedy had been gut-stabbed in an alley like Baby Boy, but strong indications of a drug-related hit had surfaced at the time, including the name of a probable suspect: a small-time dealer named Celestino Hawkins, who’d fed the habit of Reedy’s son. Hawkins had served time for assault with a knife. He’d been dead for three years.

China Maranga’s file was thin and cold.

Milo phoned Julie Kipper’s uncle and told him not to expect any quick solve. The uncle was gracious, and that made Milo feel worse.

Allison and I spent more time at each other’s houses. I bought Guitar Player and read the profile on Robin. Spent a long time staring at the photos.

Robin in her new shop. No mention there’d ever been another one. Gorgeous carved guitars and mandolins and celebrity endorsements and big smiles. The camera loved her.

I wrote her a brief congratulatory note, received a thank-you card in return.

Two and a half months after Julie Kipper’s murder, the weather warmed and the case file froze. Milo cursed and put it aside and resumed excavating cold cases.

Few of them were solvable, and that kept him grumbling and occupied. The times we got together, he never failed to mention Julie- sometimes with that forced blithe tone that meant failure was eating at him.

Soon after that, Allison and I drove up to Malibu Canyon to watch a meteor shower. We found an isolated turnoff, lowered the top of her Jaguar, reclined the seats, and watched cosmic dust streak and explode. Shortly after we got home, at 1:15 A.M. the phone rang. I was skimming the papers, and Allison was reading V. S. Naipaul’s The Mimic Men. She’d pinned her hair up. Tiny, black-framed reading glasses rode her nose. As I lifted the receiver, she looked over at the nightstand clock.

Most of the early-morning calls were hers. Patient emergencies.

I picked up.

Milo spit, “Another one.”

I mouthed his name, and she nodded.

“Classical pianist,” he went on, “stabbed and strangled after a concert. Right behind the venue. And guess what: This guy was on his way up, career-wise. Record deal pending. It wasn’t my call, but I heard it on the scanner, I went over and took over. Lieutenant’s prerogative. I’m here at the scene. I want you to see it.”

“Now?” I said.

Allison put the book down.

“Is there a problem?” he said. “You’re not a night owl anymore?”

“One sec.” I covered the phone, looked at Allison.

“Go,” she said.

“Where?” I asked Milo.

“Hop, skip, and jump for you,” he said. “Bristol Avenue, Brentwood. The north side.”

“Moving up in the world,” I said.

“Who, me?”

“The bad guy.”

Bristol was lovely and shaded by old cedars and marked by circular turnarounds every block or so. Most of the homes were the original Tudors and Spanish Colonials. The murder house was new, a Greek Revivalish thing on the west side of the street. Three square stories, white and columned, bigger by half than the neighboring mansions, with all the welcoming warmth of a law school. A flat green lawn was marked by a single, fifty-foot liquidambar tree and nothing else. High-voltage lighting was blatant and focused. A stroll away was Rockingham Avenue, where O. J. Simpson had dripped blood on his own driveway.