Milo did.

"What signs did you notice?" I said.

"First of all, his retiring. For years he'd talked about it, but he always complained he couldn't get enough money together- always griped about my having health benefits and a pension from San Berdoo and from Shale, and he was out on his own with nothing. Then, all of a sudden, he just walks in and announces there's enough in the kitty. I said, "What pie dropped out of the sky, Felix?' He just smiled and patted my head and said, "Don't you worry, Sugaroo, we're finally going to get that place in Laguna Niguel.' We were always talking about buying a condo down there, but we didn't have the money. We might have been able to afford one of those retirement communities, but Felix never saw himself as old. When he turned fifty, he bought himself a toopay and contact lenses. I guess he figured being so much older than me- I used to look like a kid, people would sometimes mistake me for his daughter- he should do something about it. The other thing he did that made me suspicious was get a new car, a cherry-red Thunderbird, the Landau model, the vinyl top. Which was their top of the line. We had a big fight over that, me wanting to know how we could afford it and him saying it was none of my business."

She shook her head. "We fought a lot, but we stayed together thirty-one years. Then he got himself killed and there was no big money in his bank account, just a little over three thousand dollars, and I figured he'd spent whatever he had on the car. And whores. I drove that car for fifteen years, finally junked it."

"Did he leave any business records behind?" I said.

"You mean his detective files? No, I told Mr. Sturgis he wasn't much for keeping records- truth is, he was pretty disorganized in general. After he died, I went through his things and was surprised how little there was- just scraps of paper with scrawls. I figured, his line of work, there might be things there that would embarrass people. I threw everything out."

"What kind of cases did he work on?"

She looked at Milo. "Same questions- no, I don't mind. I don't really know what kind of cases. Felix didn't talk about his work. Truth is, I don't think there were too many cases, toward the end. I know he did some work for lawyers, but for the life of me I can't remember the names of any of them. I wasn't part of his work, had my own job to do. I'm no feminist but I always worked. We never had kids, both of us just went and did our own job."

I nodded.

She said, "I don't mean to paint him as some kind of bum. Basically, he was a nice guy, didn't raise his voice, even when we fought. But he could be a little… easy around the edges, know what I mean?"

"Cutting corners."

" 'Zactly. The first time I met him he tried to pay me five dollars to release an accident record to him without filling out the proper forms and paying the county fee. I turned him down and he was real good-natured about it. Laughed it off- he had a great laugh. I was only nineteen, should have known better anyway, but I didn't. He came back the next day and asked me out. My parents hated his guts. Six months later we were married. Despite all the problems, he was a pretty good husband."

"So he never discussed Karen Best?"

"Never," she said. "Truth is, we didn't discuss much, period. We kept different hours. I'd be up at six, walking the dogs- we used to have miniature poodles- in the office at eight, back by five. Felix liked to sleep late. He claimed a lot of his work had to be done at night, and maybe it was true. He was gone a lot when I was home and vice versa." She grinned. "Maybe that's how we stayed together thirty-one years."

The grin dropped from her face.

"Still, his being killed was the worst thing ever happened to me after my parents passing away." To Milo: "When you first called, I didn't want to talk about it. But you were a gentleman, and then you told me maybe Felix didn't die because of whoring around. That would be nice to know."

23

She showed us two pictures of herself and Felix, saying, "These are the only ones I have. When you go mobile, you keep things to the minimum."

The first was a wedding portrait, the young couple posed in front of a painted backdrop of the Trevi Fountain. She'd been a pretty dark-haired girl, but even at nineteen her eyes had been wary. Felix wasn't much taller than his bride, a spare man with slicked hair and Clark Gable ears. He'd worn a pencil mustache, like Gable, but had none of the actor's strength in his face.

The second snapshot had been taken two years before Barnard's murder. The mustache was gone and the PI was stooped, his face lined, the toupee embarrassingly obvious. He wore a gray sharkskin suit with skinny lapels and a white turtleneck and held a cigarette in a holder. Mo's hair was bleached blond and she'd put on some weight, but despite that she did look young enough to be his daughter. The picture had been taken in a back yard, their faces shaded by a big orange tree.

"Our place in Santa Monica," she said. "I rent it out now. The income along with my pension's what keeps me going."

Milo asked to borrow the more recent photo, and she said, "Sure." We thanked her and left. As we stepped out of the trailer, she said, "Good luck to you. Let me know if you find out anything."

"Nice lady," I said, as we walked down to our cars.

"She fed me dinner," said Milo. "Beans and franks and potato chips. I was ready for camp songs. Before she really opened up, we watched Jeopardy. She knows a lot about presidents' wives."

"How long were you there?"

"Since six."

Four and a half hours. "Dedication."

"Yeah, beatify me."

"How'd you learn about Barnard's murder?"

"Social Security said he was deceased, so I checked county Death Records and it came up homicide, which needless to say surprised me. According to the autopsy report, he got shot in the back of the head in that motel, just like she said. What she doesn't know is that his pants were down around his ankles, but there was no evidence of sexual activity and he hadn't ejaculated recently."

"Was the place an outright bordello?"

"More of an anything-goes place. I knew it well from when I used to ride Westside patrol. Drugs, assaults, all-around obnoxious behavior. The detectives on the case assumed Barnard was a john who got in trouble."

"He was shot," I said. "Wouldn't a hooker have been more likely to stab him?"

"There are no rules, Alex. Some of the girls pack fire, or a pimp could have killed him; lots of them carry."

"Did anyone hear the shot?"

"Nope. Clerk discovered his body, cleaning up. By the time he called it in, place was empty."

"Deaf clerk?"

"It's a busy street, he had the TV blasting, who knows? There was no reason to think it was anything more than Barnard picking the wrong time and place for a blowjob."

"And now?"

"Maybe still. I called you because the fact that he was murdered knocks the Karen Best case up another notch on the Intrigue Scale. As does Mo's feeling that he came into dough."

"Best told me Karen was Barnard's last case," I said. "And Barnard was killed a year after Karen disappeared. You think he could have been blackmailing someone about Karen and they finally got tired of paying?"

"Or he got too greedy. On the other hand, he could have been blackmailing someone about another case totally unrelated to Karen. Or maybe he got the T-bird by saving pennies behind his wife's back. Or at the track. She said all he left her was three thousand bucks- how much would a T-bird have cost back then?"

"Probably six, seven thousand."

"Not major-league blackmail. We're still a long way from evidence. Barnard could have been shot simply because some whore did get mad at him."