I laughed.

She said, “You think I’m kidding?”

At noon the following day, I met Milo up in the hills above the Sepulveda Pass.

Vacant lot, a mile or so above the spot where Kat Shonsky’s car had been found. Two K-9 handlers worked the brush between a pair of sleek, contemporary stilt-houses, running a chocolate Lab and a border collie.

Sharp-eyed dogs, beautifully groomed. Both with a thing for dead flesh.

Milo said, “In answer to your unasked question, this is one of the few open, unfenced spots around here. Which means nothing, she could be in Alhambra. But early this morning we gave a pack of tracking dogs a whiff of her clothing and ran them all over the neighborhood. Zilch for the first hour, then one of them raced up here and got somewhat excited.”

“Somewhat?”

“He changed his mind and got distracted. Happens more than you think. Still, better to be careful. So now it’s the cadaver mutts.”

“Who owns the property?”

“It’s shared by the two neighboring houses. Couple of sisters married to lawyers, they’ve got plans to build a joint swimming pool. Currently cruising together in South America for the last two weeks.”

“There’s your happy family,” I said.

“Not so happy if Lassie and Rin Tin Tin find something with maggots in it.” His skin sagged and his clothes were distorted beyond wrinkles, as if he’d wrestled with an intruder.

I said, “All-nighter?”

“Coma-time watching Tony’s place, went over to Kat’s apartment at seven a.m. Place looked like Martha Stewart had just filmed there.”

“Mom’s artful hand.”

“I called for techies anyway. No evidence of any violence or struggle but one thing Mom didn’t find was a Baggie of weed at the bottom of a tampon box. No credit card receipts, which would fit with ol’ Monica cutting her off. No phone records or tax returns, either, but Kat didn’t keep paper around, period. Not a single book in the place and the only magazines were old copies of Us and Elle. She did hold on to a few travel souvenirs – cheap crap from Hawaii, Tahiti, Cozumel. Snapshots, too. Her in bikinis, too-big smiles, no men friends. Like she got someone to take her picture to prove she was happy.”

“Sounds like a lonely girl.”

He yawned. “Anyway, I got the blouse.”

We returned to watching the dogs. The retriever was circling the lot with the intensity of a sprinter training for the big race. It stopped. Resumed circling. The border collie had lost interest and its handler led it back to the K-9 car.

“Dog’s life,” said Milo. “If nothing happens soon, I’m on my way to the boutique where Kat worked. Someone’s got to know something about her personal life.”

I said, “I’ve been thinking about the Ojo Negro killings. Leonora Bright was murdered only eight days after her father died. Her stepmother was terminally ill, making the sibs heirs sooner rather than later. A boilerplate will would split everything fifty-fifty with reversion to the survivor. Leonora was in her thirties, so there’s a good chance she never wrote a will of her own.”

“Scary brother gets rid of her to make sure she never sees a lawyer.”

“It’s a motive. And not that different from the one we’ve suggested for Tony Mancusi: Kill Mom before she changes her will.”

“There’s a specialty hit man out there fixing inheritance problems and both Ansell and Tony just happened to find him?”

I said, “I know it sounds remote but think about stolen black cars and costumes.”

“Theatrical traveling hit man… can’t dismiss it, but before I get historical, I need to focus on the here and now. If we can find some kind of link between Tony and Ansell, I might start breathing hard.”

“Donald Bragen thought Ansell was incapable of that level of violence because he sounded effeminate over the phone.”

“And Tony vamps. Okay, a theatrically gay specialty hit man. Bragen look into Ansell beyond his vocal qualities?”

“He didn’t even know Ansell’s real name because Ansell called himself Dale. And alibied himself for the time of the murder – working. Bragen accepted it.”

“Oh, Lord.”

“Sheriff Cardenas said he’d look into Ansell’s background. I ran a basic search last night, got no hits on that name. The Dale Brights I found were a fourteen-year-old girl who plays field hockey at a prep school in Florida, a sixty-year-old female insurance agent in Ohio, and a Nebraska churchman and farmer who wrote a book about wheat and died in 1876.”

“My bet’s on the girl… okay, let’s make sure we’ve buttoned down everything-”

He stopped midsentence.

The retriever sat down.

Stayed.

The head showed first.

Kat Shonsky had been buried three feet deep, stripped of her clothing, stretched out on her back with her legs slightly parted. Her skin was greenish gray, marbled, slipping loose from its skeletal underpinning. White-blond hair served as a nest for worms. Where putrefaction hadn’t taken over, black hyphens were evident.

Probable stab wounds. I stopped counting at twenty-three.

In the grave was a purple silk scarf, placed diagonally across the abdomen and upper thighs. Removing it revealed Katrina Shonsky’s driver’s license. Wedged between her labia.

“There’s a statement for you,” said Diana Ponce, the C.I. kneeling above the body.

Milo said, “Look what I did.”

“And I want the whole world to know it.”

Ponce bagged the license and called for a large envelope for the scarf. While she waited, she inspected Katrina Shonsky’s neck. No obvious ligature marks but there wasn’t much neck left and the final say would be the coroner’s.

Placing the scarf back on the body, she cupped the remains of the head gently in one hand and probed with the other. “There’s bone breakage at the back, Milo. Want to feel it?”

Milo got down next to her, and she guided his gloved hand.

“Oh, yeah,” he said. “Like cracked eggshell.”

“Someone bopped her good,” said Ponce. “Maybe to knock her out before he cut her?” She looked up at the twin houses. “This close to private property, you’d want to keep things quiet.”

Milo stood. “You should be a detective, Diana.”

She grinned. “According to the tube, I already am.”

The envelope arrived. Setting the head down with reverence, Ponce removed the scarf and unfurled it. Diaphonous thing; it waved in the breeze.

“Louis Vuitton label.”

Milo said, “I thought they did luggage.”

“They do everything, Lieutenant.” Ponce admired the silk. The breeze blew harder and a few granules of dirt slid off the garment and spattered the body. Ponce handed the scarf off and used tweezers to recover them.

Milo said, “Costs a fortune but it was left here.”

Perfect opening for one of those jokes cops and techs sometimes tell to buffer the horror.

This time, no one did.

Crypt attendants wrapped the body in plastic and took it away. Moments later Diana Ponce left and the criminalists got to work.

Milo said, “Time to get over to Monica Hedges. You can meet me there if you want.”

“Sure.”

I followed him to Wilshire, turned left. At Warner he pulled over, motioned me to do the same.

“Aborted mission. No answer at the Hedges, not exactly the time to leave a message. Let’s check out the place where Kat worked. You’re a fashionable guy.”

“Not really.”

“Too bad,” he said. “I was hoping you could interpret.”

La Femme Boutique was on San Vicente west of Barrington, squeezed between a coffee emporium specializing in Indonesian brew and a hair salon crowded with beautiful heads.

The shop was high, narrow, and white, hung with vintage absinthe posters and floored in weathered, wine-colored marble. The few pieces of furniture were heavy and Victorian, the clothes in the window frothy and fitted to malnourished mannequins.