“Hope so, too. Anything else you want to tell me, Mr. Breshear?”

“Nope, can't think of anything- please don't call my wife, okay? Everything's going real well between us now. I don't want to mess it up.”

24

After Breshear left, she called Empty Nest and asked for Kelly Sposito, the current flame. Things going well with the wife meant only one on the side?

Sposito was in, had a high, unpleasant voice that got shrill when Petra identified herself and explained the nature of the call.

“Darrell? Are you for real?” But a moment later, she verified Breshear's alibi.

“So he was with you all night?”

“That's what I said- listen, you'd better not put this in the paper or anything, I don't need the grief.”

“I'm a detective, not a reporter, Ms. Sposito.”

“I see my name in the paper, I sue.”

Paper tigress. What was with her?

“Why are you hassling Darrell? Because he's black?”

“We're talking to people who knew Lisa, Ms. Sposito-”

“Everyone knows who did it.”

“Who?”

“Right,” said the woman. “Like you don't. And he'll get off because he's rich.”

Petra thanked her for her help, hung up, and drove the five blocks to the studio, used her badge and a combination of firmness and charm to get in. She got directions to Empty Nest from a guy with long hair who looked like an actor but wore a tool belt.

The production company occupied several white clapboard green-shuttered bungalows scattered between whitewashed soundstages and office buildings, the entire place spotless, with that too-perfect Potemkin village look. Billboards for TV shows and movies stood on metal towers. A field of satellite dishes resembled a giant crockery collection.

A woman in Bungalow A told her Breshear worked in D. Petra walked into a small, empty reception area, brass and glass and black wood floors, three phones, no typewriter or computer. More movie posters, cheapie flicks she didn't recognize, the smell of fish. Through a door she heard voices, and she opened it after the merest knock.

Breshear and two women in their twenties were sitting at a long table mounted with several gray machines- products of a mating between a film projector and a microscope. In an open Styrofoam takeout box were three sushi rolls.

One woman wore an oversized black sweater over skintight black leggings, had a sharp pretty face, bronze skin probably from a bottle, and a mane of big black curls that trailed down her back. The other was arctic pale and had thin blond hair held in place by a pink sawtooth clip. Pleasant-looking but not the buxom looker Curly was. Breshear, sitting between them, started to shift his body backward, distancing himself.

“Detective Connor,” he said. Steaming mug in his hand, Gary Larson cartoon silk-screened on the side. The guy claimed he didn't dope, but like many ex-alcoholics he had a caffeine jones.

“Hi,” said Petra. “Ms. Sposito?”

Curly said, “What?” and stood. Tall, five-nine, terrific curvy body evident even under the baggy sweater. Her dark eyes were ten years older than the rest of her. She wore so much mascara her lashes resembled miniature wiper blades. Too hard-looking to be a model or an actress but definitely someone who'd turn heads. A lioness, with that mane.

“Just thought I'd drop by and talk to you in person.”

Breshear's head swiveled fast as he looked at his girlfriend. Trying to figure out what she'd said over the phone that had complicated things.

Sposito glared as she walked toward Petra with big fluid steps.

The blond girl watched the whole thing, baffled.

When she was two steps away, Sposito said, “Let's talk outside.” To the blonde: “We're gonna use your office, Cara.”

“Oh, sure,” said the blond girl. “Should I just stay here?”

“Yeah. It won't take long.”

Out in the front room, Sposito put her hands on her hips. “Now what?”

Your fault, Jungle Girl, all that out-of-proportion anger.

“You had some pretty strong opinions about Mr. Ramsey,” said Petra.

“Oh, for God's sake! Opinions is all they were- everyone's saying the same thing. Because Mr. Ramsey was abusive. It's nuts to even consider that Darrell had anything to do with Lisa just because the two of them dated a couple times. But okay, you asked where he was, I told you. And that's all there is. I take enough crap for being with Darrell, I don't need this.”

“Crap from who?”

“Everyone. Society.”

“Racism?”

Kelly laughed. “Just a few weeks ago, we were at the Rose Bowl swap meet and some idiot made a rude comment. You'd think it'd be different, L.A., the nineties. I mean, who's the richest woman in America- Oprah.” She frowned and lines formed around her mouth. “What Darrell and I have is good and I don't want anything messing it up.”

If you only knew, honey.

“I understand,” said Petra. “Any other opinions you'd like to share? About Lisa's murder? Lisa, in general?”

“Nope. Now, can you please let me get back to work? We do work around here.”

Why were movie people so defensive about doing honest labor?

“How long have you been working here, Kelly?” Kelly, not Ms. Sposito, because this one would always try to dominate.

The wiper blades opened and shut. “A year.”

“So you worked with Lisa.”

“Not with her, like on the same project. She needed training, so Darrell worked with her. I've always been on my own.”

“Lisa was inexperienced?”

Kelly snickered. “She was a rookie. Darrell was always picking up her slack.”

“The whole six months she worked here?”

“No, she learned, she was okay, but to tell the truth- no, forget it, I don't want to put her down.”

Petra smiled, and Kelly bared her teeth. Petra supposed it was a return smile.

“Okay, I opened my big mouth. I was just going to say editing jobs are hard to come by, you pay dues. Lisa was totally green. I figured she had to have connections.”

“What kind of connections?”

“Don't know.”

Something else Darrell hadn't shared with the Lioness. Suddenly, Petra felt sorry for her. “What'd you think of her as a person, Kelly?”

“She did her job, I did mine, we didn't socialize.”

Petra said, “Did you like her?”

Kelly blinked. “Honestly? She wasn't my favorite person, because I don't think she treated people well, but I really don't want to speak badly about her now.”

“Didn't treat who well?”

The dark eyes narrowed. “I'm talking in general. She had a sharp mouth, that's probably what did her in.”

“What do you mean?”

“She was sarcastic. Had a way of saying something without saying it, know what I mean? Looks, tone of voice, the whole body language thing.” She rubbed her hips, bent one leg, ballerina-style, flexing, then straightening. “Lisa thought a lot of herself, okay? And if someone didn't measure up, she'd be sure to let them know one way or the other. You want my opinion? Maybe Ramsey was trying to get her back and she shut him down. Aren't those abusers always obsessed?”

Out of the mouths of hostile babes. “They can be,” said Petra, looking as fascinated as she felt.

“So Ramsey could have still been into Lisa in a big way,” said Kelly, “and let's say they got together and he tried to make it with her but couldn't get it up or whatever, and she let him know what she thought about that in that Lisa way of hers, and he freaked.”

Petra hid her amazement. The woman had gone from hostile resistance to criminological theory in five minutes- offering a theory that buttressed Petra's final-date scenario.

“What makes you think Ramsey was impotent?”

“Because Lisa said so- at least she hinted at it. It was about three, four months ago. We were eating lunch- all of us, Darrell, Cara, me, Lisa, and another editor who works here, Laurette Benson, she's gay. And the topic came up about actors, how they get all the glory and how so many of them have totally warped personalities, are totally screwed up, but the public never knows it because everything they hear is bullshit created by the media and publicists. Anyway, we started talking about how actors become sex icons, bigger than human- like Madonna having that baby and everyone's treating it like she was the other madonna and this was some kind of sacred birth, right? Like all those idiots still looking for Elvis or thinking Michael Jackson's gonna stay married. We editors look at these people day after day, scene after scene, through the window of a Moviola. You see enough rough cuts, see how many takes you need to get them to look good and sound smart, you realize how few of them are even talented in the first place. Anyway, we were talking about that and we got into all the sexual fantasies that the public develops about people who probably half the time can't even cut it in bed. Then Laurette started in about how many actors were gay, even the ones who the public thinks are hetero sex gods, how sexuality and reality are like two completely different planets. And Lisa rolled her eyes and said, ‘You have no idea, guys. You have no fucking clue.' So we all stare at her and she cracks up and says, ‘Take it from me. You go in thinking you're eating at the Hard Rock Cafe and it turns out to be the Leaning Tower of Overcooked Pasta.' Then she laughs even harder, then her face takes on this whole different expression- really bummed, angry- and she just stomps out and goes to the bathroom and stays there for a while. Laurette says, ‘Boy, someone's shorts got yanked.' Then Lisa comes back and her nose is red and she's in a too-good mood, know what I mean?”