Nick got pliers and a flat-tip screwdriver from his kit and sat in the passenger seat. Pried off the door trim panel. Looked where the stoners liked to hide their stash. No stash, just the door latch assembly and the window crank with its toothed gear swabbed with grease.

He worked the trim panel back into place.

Lobdell ambled over from the yard office. “They already looked there.”

“Get off my back, Lucky.”

“We got the last three saw stores to check.”

Nick drove. He could feel the tension coming off Lobdell, low-voltage but steady.

“What’s up?” Nick asked.

“Kevin said some bad things to his mother. I won’t tolerate it under my roof. Kid can say what he wants to me. But Shirley, shit. Shirley lives for that boy.”

IN THE FIRST three days after the murder, Nick and Lobdell had found twenty-six Orange County stores that sold the Garden Forge Trim-Quick pruning saw. When they factored in south Los Angeles and north San Diego Counties, the number got up to almost a hundred. So far they had gotten through twenty-three. Three leads had proved fruitless. One still working. They had started with the stores closest to the SunBlesst packinghouse in Tustin. Now they were almost up to the Los Angeles County line, Nick increasingly pissed off that nothing was connecting up for him.

Nick drove and Lobdell looked out the window.

None of the clerks at Canning’s Hardware in La Habra remembered selling a Trim-Quick recently.

The owner of a nursery in Fullerton sold one to a young mother with two children just last week.

A garden supplies manager at the Sears, Roebuck over by Knott’s Berry Farm in Buena Park had sold one Trim-Quick to a man in shorts and a straw gardener’s hat two Sundays ago. The Sunday before Janelle was murdered, thought Nick.

“I’ve seen him in here before,” said the manager. “Always Sundays. Don’t know his name. Nice fella. Brown hair, neat mustache, medium height and weight. Didn’t see much of his face that day, because of the hat.”

Maybe that was the point, thought Nick. He remembered that two Sundays ago it was ninety degrees.

“Guess his age.”

“Thirty-five to forty. He also got snail bait, a flat of marigolds, potting soil, and a hand trowel. Paid cash, so don’t ask me to find the check.”

“Maybe you’d call me if you see him in here again,” said Nick. He supplied a card and the manager put it in the pocket of his blue apron.

They were walking back out of the garden section of Sears when Nick saw the entire room tilt left, then right again. Like a ship. He stopped, braced himself. Lifted his arms for balance. Then lowered them to his side, embarrassed.

“What gives?” huffed Lobdell.

“Balance a little off.”

Like getting hit on the head by Ethan. Fourteen years ago and still not quite right. Never told anybody and maybe should have. To his irritation Nick watched a row of potted rhododendrons scoot forward, then move back. All six in unison. Like a dance step. Slick.

He breathed deeply, shook his head. Looked at Lobdell and felt better.

“I got conked when I was a kid,” he said. “Every once in a while I just lose my balance for a second.”

“Great,” said Lobdell. “Hope it doesn’t happen when you’re covering my butt with your forty-five.”

“I could only cover part of it anyway,” said Nick. He laughed but Lobdell didn’t. “Monkey Wards is next.”

By the time they finished striking out at Wards, Nick wasn’t sure if he was really walking or not. The merchandise in the aisles was going past him but he wasn’t aware of moving his legs or feet. The products advanced, reds and yellows and blues coming at high speed, then curlicuing upward like colored smoke and vanishing into the ceiling. A set of wrenches glided slowly through the room.

Outside the sunlight wavered in an orange mirage. Lobdell was talking as they made the car. Nick could hardly understand the words but he could see them wobbling through the air toward him like balloons filled with water.

“I don’t feel right, Lucky.”

“You’re acting wrong, Nick. The fuck’d you have for breakfast?”

“Katy made pancakes and eggs. Onions in the eggs.”

“I’ll drive.”

“Thanks.”

THEY MADE the 11:45 A.M. meeting with Captain Frank del Gado. Nick couldn’t look him in the eye for more than a second or two. Del Gado’s skin ran off like melting wax and Nick felt an urge to giggle. Even with the office door closed Nick heard things from the other side with startling volume and clarity. He felt that his ears had grown to huge proportion. Felt the bones in his face growing.

Lobdell had agreed to do the talking. “We just wanted to follow up on this rumor about the beauty queen being on the narcotics payroll,” he said.

Del Gado was a sleek sixty, black hair combed straight back from a widow’s peak. Goddamned Eddie Munster, thought Nick.

“Yeah,” said del Gado. “So?”

“How long?” asked Lobdell.

“We worked with her during that thing with her brothers. We thought she might be helpful with where the pills and pot were coming from, and she was. All of her brothers were tied up with the Hessians. You get bikers, you get amphetamines. They make the damned things, zoom around the country distributing. Anyway, when the brother thing was over, we kept her on. You’d be amazed what people offered Miss Tustin, age eighteen.”

“Was she using?” Nick managed.

Del Gado’s gaze seemed eternal. “Enough to gain the confidence of certain people. Informants are free to do what they want. Within limits.”

“How high up the ladder was she?” asked Lobdell. “Big boys, medium-sized, what?”

Del Gado tapped a Zippo on his desktop. Painfully loud. Nick jumped, rising from his chair to cover it and hoping the captain hadn’t seen. He went to the window, looked out, then casually sat back down.

“Not big,” del Gado said, looking at Nick.

“What did you pay her?” asked Lobdell.

“It varied. Up to three hundred a month.”

“That’s pretty good money for nothing big,” said Lobdell. Nick actually heard the words before they were spoken.

“Sometimes she was useful.”

“Sir,” said Nick. “We need to talk to those drug people. Her connections and sources and friends. If one of them found out she was a snitch, that’s a motive to kill her.” He lurched up and went to the window again, hoping he looked upset and serious. Took a deep breath, fighting the smile off his face.

“Talk to Troy Gant,” said del Gado. “He’s waiting outside.”

GANT WAS SHORT and grubby. Stringy yellow hair, an attempted mustache, beat-up jeans and a loose sweatshirt with the sleeves cut out. He looked eighteen, maybe twenty. He looked at Lobdell with an openly hopeless expression. Turned his soft blue eyes on Nick and stared right through him.

“Come on,” he said. “Let’s motate.”

“Motate,” said Nick. “Like ‘move’ and ‘activate.’”

“Right on, Sarge.”

Gant led them down a hallway past a watercooler and a fire alarm box. Then into an empty conference room. A movie screen at one end, projector at the other. A tape recorder sat on one of the three horseshoed tables.

Gant shut the door. “You gotta be real careful here,” he said. “Janelle was working with some people. I’m working with some of the same people. You want to talk to them, talk to them. They can’t hurt her now. But you ask your questions just a little wrong, mix up something she could have told you for something only I could know and guess what, man-I’m seriously fuckin’ blown. Let me tell you two guys something. Narcotics isn’t about fun anymore. It isn’t about young people experimenting anymore. It isn’t about cosmic consciousness, no matter what the Brotherhood of Eternal Love says. It’s about big dollars and strong dope. It’s about permanently scrambled eggs and overdoses that stop your heart cold. It’s about distribution and profit and getting product on the street so every man, woman, and child can fork over the cash and turn on. Laguna? Janelle’s world? Bad people doing bad shit. Even del Gado underestimates it. Clear on that?”