“Middle of the day?” asked Lobdell. “Must have had a good night. What’s your name?”

“Dirk George. No outstandings, not using, not holding, not packing, not in the mood for cops.”

“I smell beer so at least you’re drinking,” said Lobdell.

“No law against that,” said Dirk.

“You house-sitting, Dirk?” asked Nick.

Dirk George looked at Nick. Still had the strangle look. “What’s it look like?”

“Answer the question,” said Nick.

“Cory’s gone, man. I don’t know where. I don’t care where. I’m staying in the pool house, watering the flowers. Keeping an eye out for the little piggies.”

Nick’s anger spiked. He looked at Lobdell, then back at Dirk. Dirk was all invitation. The let’s-fight look. You saw it in jail when you were young. Sometimes had to accept, just to make a point.

“We want to ask Cory a few questions,” Nick said.

“He isn’t here. The big house is locked up and nobody’s home.”

Something moved behind the curtains. Nick saw bare feet below the swaying fabric. Red nails. A silver ring on the left middle toe.

“Come on out, miss,” he said.

The girl hesitated, then pushed through the curtain and onto the patio. Janelle’s age, Nick guessed. Long blond hair. Beautiful suntanned skin. Blue eyes and freckles. A denim jacket with a rainbow embroidered on the pocket flap. Cutoff shorts.

Nick recognized her from Janelle’s memorial service. One of the girls who’d come with Jesse Black. Andy had told him her name. Gail.

“Hi, guys,” she said.

“See, we’re guys, not pigs,” said Nick. A flat stare at the man in the swimsuit.

She blushed and looked submissively at Dirk. Nick decided that if Dirk hurt her for what she said, he’d take it out of Dirk’s suntanned hide somehow.

“Will you come with me, please?” Nick asked her.

She looked at him with a distrusting innocence.

“You don’t have to, babe,” said Dirk.

“I saw you at Janelle’s service,” said Nick. He took a couple of steps toward the big house.

Gail hesitated, then followed.

Nick walked into the stand of cottonwoods and stopped. Gail unrolled her coat sleeves against the chill in the shade.

“I’m sorry for all of that,” he said. “I’m Nick Becker. Sheriff’s investigator.”

“I’m Gail.”

“Dirk has a bad attitude.”

“He hates the fuzz.”

“That’s up to him. We just had a few questions for Cory. Know where he is?”

She shook her head. “He didn’t tell me where he went. He asked me to stay here, keep an eye on things.”

“You, not Dirk.”

She nodded.

“Why are you hanging around with Mr. George?”

“He’s not so bad.”

“I mean, if it’s just for dope, you can always buy your own.”

“Weird statement from a cop.”

“I don’t dig guys like him and Cory with girls like you and Janelle. Cory and Dirk are creeps. Girls like Janelle and you are suckers. The creeps put up money or the dope and they get you.”

Gail said nothing. Shrugged.

“Were you and Janelle good friends?” asked Nick.

“No. We both liked Jesse. He liked her better than me. But we all got along.”

“See her that last night by any chance?”

She shook her head. “No. I went to a concert.”

“What was Cory up to that night?”

“I don’t know. Me and Cory had a thing a long time ago.”

“Couldn’t have been that long,” said Nick.

She shrugged again. Straightened her back a little. Took a deep breath and stared through him.

“Look,” he said. “We’re not here to find anybody’s stash. We’re not here to hassle Dirk or you. We wanted to talk to Cory. So can we just look around a little?”

“You can’t. That’s why Cory asked me to stay here. You have no permission to search. That’s what he told me to say.”

Nick nodded. Held her gaze for a moment. Had a feeling she wanted to help him. “Are you okay?”

“What do you mean?”

Nick waited but she didn’t offer anything.

“Creeps like Dirk can be hard on a girl,” he said.

“Anything beats home, Mr. Detective.”

“Where’s home?”

“Pacific Palisades.”

“Big dollars.”

“Plastic.”

“I grew up in Tustin,” he said. Then he took a chance. Figured it would open a door or not. “Have you tried the Orange Sunshine air freshener?”

She smiled and colored. Prettiest skin Nick ever saw.

“I sprayed myself by accident,” said Nick. “Tripped for a whole day and slept like a baby.”

“I stayed high for two days once,” she said.

“I found the bottle in Janelle’s car.”

Gail shuddered inside her coat.

“What have you heard?” asked Nick.

“Heard?”

“About Janelle.”

“Everybody says it was someone from Tustin.”

“And?”

“Something to do with her old life there. Being Miss Tustin and the magazine picture and her brothers. Her mom committed suicide with rat poison.”

“When was the last time you saw her?”

Gail looked down at the walkway. Nick did, too. Two-by-sixes with alyssum and lobelia growing up through the spaces.

“I went to the Troubadour to hear Jesse play about a week before the murder. She was there. We sat together with some other people. Jesse took her home.”

Nick waited. Felt like Gail had something to say.

“You think Cory knows something about Janelle?” she asked.

“He’s dangerous,” said Nick. “She was hanging out with him. She liked the danger. See, she was helping us. Telling us things, for money. If Cory found out about that, he’d do something bad.”

“I didn’t know that.”

“Keep it to yourself, Gail. I trust you.”

“The night she died, Cory and I were supposed to go see the Doors. He was going to pick me up at seven. He called me at quarter to and said he didn’t feel good, was staying home. I said I’d come over and he said no. That meant he was with someone else. He knew I knew. I figured, screw him. So I drove up to Hollywood myself and saw the band.”

“Was he with Janelle?”

Gail shrugged. “Probably. She was his new thing.”

New thing, thought Nick.

“I knew Janelle when she was little,” said Nick. “Just a girl. I need to find out who did this to her.”

“Was it really, actually, all the way cut off?”

Nick nodded. “Completely off. You going to let me have a look around here, Gail? Or shall I just come back with a warrant?”

“You can’t go in his house. It’s got alarms and everything.”

“Then how about the grounds? The pool house and the garage and the property? Whatever’s open and in plain sight?”

Gail nodded. “Yes. Okay.”

Dirk cussed her when she told him they could look around. Lobdell cuffed him to a eucalyptus tree and told him to shut up or he’d arrest him for trespassing, assault, and disturbing the peace.

Dirk looked puzzled and pleased when Gail said she’d bring around a couple of chairs and beers and keep him company.

THE POOL HOUSE had a small living room, and a short hallway with two rooms in the back. A bar with stools. A dinette. Dishes piled in the sink. Beer cans on the counters. Pretzels and canned nuts.

The fruit bowl on the little table contained two bananas, an orange, and a Smith & Wesson.357 magnum with a two-inch barrel. Nick used a tissue to pop the cylinder for a look at the serial number. Six magnum loads, six shiny primers looking at him. He balanced the gun on the fruit and wrote the numbers in his notebook.

“That’ll blow a hole in you,” said Lobdell. “There ought to be some way to keep creeps from having things like that.”

“Too many of both,” said Nick. Closed the cylinder.

They walked through the bedrooms but nothing looked unusual. Cory was big on stereos and televisions and posters from John Wayne westerns.

Back outside Lobdell smoked and Nick finished up his notes on what they’d seen in the pool house.

“The garage was open,” said Lobdell. He ground out the cigarette with his wing tip, kicked it under a cottonwood.