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trembling. “I don’t recognize the number.”
    “You didn’t recognize the voice?”
    “No. Of course not.”
    Parker held his hand out. “May I?”
    Abby Lowell handed him the phone. She couldn’t jerk her hand back from it quickly enough, as if it had just been revealed to her that the thing was in fact a live reptile. Parker checked the number, hit the button to call it back, then listened as it rang unanswered on the other end.
    “Oh, my God,” Lenny Lowell’s daughter breathed. She pressed a hand to her lips and blinked away the gathering tears.
    Parker turned back to Chew. “Track down the owner of the Laundromat. Find out who was working and what time they closed. I want that person located. I want to know if there was a single living being in proximity of this office between six-thirty and seven-fifteen. If a rat crawled by the back door and someone saw it, I want to know.”
    “Roger that, boss.” Chew flipped Kyle’s smirk back at him as he went to speak to his partner.
    Parker went to the vic’s desk. The old Rolodex was closed. He flipped the cover up with the tip of a pen, then turned to the Latent Prints tech. “Cynthia, I want every print you can lift off this thing, inside and out. Every frigging card, but priority on this one.”
    Abby Lowell’s. Beneath her name was her home number, her cell number, her address.
    “Go ahead and cover the bases for us, Parker,” Kyle said tightly as he stepped in beside Parker behind the desk. “But don’t get too cozy. If the word comes down from the mountain, you’re out.”
    Parker stared at him for a second, then a new voice called from the front office. “Parker, please tell me your DB had a heart attack. I need a nice simple ‘natural causes’ so I can go home. It’s raining.”
    Diane Nicholson, coroner’s investigator for the County of Los Angeles, forty-two, and a long cool drink of gin to look at. She took no shit and no prisoners—an attitude that had earned her the fear and respect of cops all over the city. No one messed with a Nicholson crime scene.
    She stopped just inside the door to Lowell’s private office and looked down at Lenny Lowell. “Oh, shit.” This with more disappointment than horror. There wasn’t much that shocked her.
    She looked at Parker with flat eyes, giving away nothing, then looked at Kyle and seemed offended at the sight of him.
    “Parker is the detective of record,” she announced. “Until I hear differently from someone more important than you, Bradley, I talk to Parker.”
    She didn’t wait for a response from Kyle. What he might have to say was of no interest or consequence to her. She worked for the coroner’s office. The coroner might jump to the bark of big dogs in Parker Center; Diane Nicholson did not.
    She pulled on a pair of latex gloves and knelt down to begin her examination of the body.
    Lenny Lowell’s pants pockets yielded forty-three cents, a Chiclet, and a laminated, faded, dog-eared pari-mutuel ticket from a horse race at Santa Anita.
    “He carried it for luck.”
    The voice that had been so strong and forceful earlier was now barely audible. Parker looked at Abby Lowell, watched her eyes fill again as she stared at the small piece of red cardstock in Nicholson’s hand. She didn’t try to blink the tears back this time. They spilled over her lashes and down her cheeks, one fat drop at a time. Her face was white; the skin appeared nearly translucent, like fine porcelain. Parker thought she might faint, and brushed past Kyle to go to her.
    “The ticket,” she said. She tried to force a sardonic smile at some private joke, but her mouth was trembling. “He carried it for luck.”
    Parker touched her arm gently. “Is there a friend you can stay with, Ms. Lowell? I’ll have an officer drive you. I’ll call you tomorrow and we’ll set up a time for you to come into the station and talk more about your father.”
    Abby Lowell jerked her arm away without looking at him, her gaze