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brown, brown, wears corrective lenses, no wants or
warrants. Here’s the address.”
    Living
at Mom’s when she’d had her license renewed three years ago.
    “Anything
else, Loo?”
    “I’ll
let you know.”
    Milo
hung up. “I hear intern, I figure a college kid. She’s way past that,
unemployed, stuck with that loving maternal entity. Like you said, emotional
vulnerability. Ol’ Des had a helluva nose.”
    The
101 freeway was starting to clog up so I took Ventura Boulevard to Woodland
Hills. The T.G.I. Friday’s was like any other, which is the point.
    Chain
restaurants are easy targets of ridicule for expense-account gourmets, documentary
filmmakers living off grant money, and trust-fund babies. For folks saddled
with budgets and faced with a world that seems increasingly unpredictable,
they’re temples of comfort. Milo and I had grown up in the Midwest and we’d
both flipped burgers in high school. The smell of the grill still evokes all
sorts of memories. How I react depends on what else is going on in my life.
    Today,
the aroma was pretty good.
    Milo
inhaled deeply. “Home sweet bacon.”
    The
interior was vast, chocked with corporate oak, stenciled mirrors,
not-even-close-to-Tiffany lamps, red-shirted servers mostly hanging around
because of the three p.m. off-hour.
    A bar
ample enough to intoxicate half the Valley ran the length of the room. The
layout made it easy to spot every customer: a scatter of bleary-eyed truckers
with no idea what time it was, a mom and a grandmom teaming up to handle a
whining kid in a booster chair, two young women in a booth midway down, sipping
tall pink drinks and picking at a plate of fries.
    A kid
in a red shirt said, “Two for lunch?”
    “We’re
joining friends.”

    Both women were pale, thin, wore drab, short-sleeved
tops, jeans, and careless ponytails. Other than platinum hair on one, they each
matched Bettina Sanfelice’s stats.
    Milo
said, “The blonde’s wearing glasses, so I’m betting that’s her. Now all I need
to do is separate her from her friend and get her to blab about her sex life.
Any suggestions as to the proper approach?”
    “There
is none,” I said.
    “Your
optimism is a blessing.”
    Neither
woman noticed until we got within three feet, then both looked up. Milo smiled
at the blonde. “Bettina Sanfelice?”
    The
brown-haired woman said, “That’s me,” in a tiny, tentative voice. Small-boned
but full-faced, she had close-set mocha eyes and puffy cheeks and looked like a
child who’d just been punished. The white-sauce-slicked fry she’d been reaching
for dropped back onto her plate. Not a potato—something pale green and
breaded—deep-fried string bean?
    Milo
bent to make himself smaller, showed his card rather than the badge, recited
his title as if it were no big deal.
    Bettina
Sanfelice was too stricken to speak, but the blonde said, “Police?” as if he
were joking. She had good features but grainy skin with some active blemish,
dark circles under her eyes that heavy makeup failed to mask.
    Milo
kept his focus on Bettina Sanfelice. “I’m so sorry to tell you this, ma’am, but
we’re investigating the death of someone you worked with.”
    Sanfelice’s
mouth dropped open. Her hand shot forward, rocked her drink. It would’ve
spilled if I hadn’t caught it. “Death?”
    “By
homicide, I’m afraid.”
    Sanfelice
gasped. “Who?”
    Milo
said, “A man named Desmond—”
    Before
Backer’s surname had been fully pronounced both women shouted, “Des!”
    The
kid in the red shirt looked over. A hard look from Milo caused him to veer
toward the bar.
    The bespectacled blonde said, “I have just got totally
nauseous.”
    Bettina
Sanfelice said, “Des? Omigod.”
    The
blonde removed her glasses. “I need a bathroom.” She slid out of the booth.
    “You
also knew Des, ma’am?”
    “Same
as Tina did.” The blonde trotted toward the restrooms, moving clumsily in
ultratight jeans and ratty sneakers.
    The
kid in the red