The Widower's Two-Step (Tres Navarre #2)(51)

I picked up my bag, got unsteadily to my feet.

"And Navarre—" Sam said, "you didn't find anything. Nothing to indicate Les SaintPierre's whereabouts. No documentation you can't explain."

It took me a second to realize he was actually asking me a question rather than giving me another order. I stared at him until he felt obliged to add, "SaintPierre was supposed to give me some information. It wasn't up there in Blanceagle's bedroom and it wasn't in Julie Kearnes' house."

I shook my head. The only piece I hadn't told Barrera about was the personnel files, and those weren't blackmail material. At the moment they seemed a petty thing to hide, a grudgingly small way to get some revenge on Barrera.

"Nothing," I told him. "I found nothing. Just the way you thought, Sam."

He scrutinized my face, then nodded. When I left, he was just starting to talk to the Hollywood Park police on the phone, explaining to them exactly how they were going to handle his problem.

24

Milo's green Jeep Cherokee honked in my driveway at ten o'clock Friday morning. I opened the passenger's side door and said, "I don't believe it. She's alive."

Sassy the basset hound sat up on the seat and yawned. Her tongue rolled into a long bologna canoe. She did a little shuffle on her front paws and snorted. Maybe it was a friendly greeting. Maybe she was having a doggie coronary.

"How old are you?" I demanded. "You make a deal with Satan?"

Sassy panted. She turned her head to the left, trying to see me through her one eye that was milky with cataracts. Where the other eye should've been was a sagging canyon of gray crusty fur.

"Sassy's plugging along okay," Milo admitted. "Got an abscess I have to drain every week."

He showed me one of Sassy's silky brown ears that normally would've made a perfect size ten and a half shoe liner. Today it looked like someone had sewn a squeeze bulb into it. Sassy kept grinning and panting as Milo examined the abscess. She turned her head side to side like somebody was calling her but she couldn't figure out from where.

I'd thought of Sassy as old when we'd dognapped her from her abusive former owners in Berkeley eight years ago. By now Sassy must've been pushing twenty. In canine years, she'd been around since the Civil War.

It wasn't easy moving her into the backseat. Imagine a sack of bowling balls with stubby feet and bad breath. When we finally got under way Milo broke out the extra

soft geriatric dog biscuits for her and beer for us. He poured the beer into coffee cups.

We exited Loop 410 on Broadway and headed south listening to Sassy chew. Most of the biscuit fell out the side of her mouth, but she went at it with gusto anyway.

I handed Milo a single typewritten sheet of paper.

He glanced at it as much as he could without losing his beer or running off the road.

"This is—"

"My first report."

He frowned. "Your report? Am I paying extra for this?"

"Erainya Manos is trying to instil me with some nasty habits—following procedures, writing daily reports to clients, stuff like that."

He handed it back to me. "Give me an audio version."

I told him about Alex Blanceagle's murder. Then I told him what Samuel Barrera had said, about the party line I was supposed to give Milo to blow the case off. Sassy was apparently interested. She kept sticking her nose between the seats, trying to slobber her biscuit residue into my beer.

When I finished Milo said, "And you still think Les disappeared on his own?"

"I think it's a strong possibility. I think he was using Julie Kearnes in more than one way. He got her to steal some personnel files from her temp jobs, probably sold her on the idea that they'd be running off together, even brought over a suitcase as a show of good faith. Then he ditched her."

"And she didn't say anything to anyone. Why?"

"She couldn't go bragging about what she'd been doing, helping Les blackmail Sheckly. Maybe she was hoping Les would still come back for her. Maybe she just didn't want to admit she'd been had."

"But you're not certain of any of that."

"That's why I want to look around Les' house."

"You've seen what Sheckly is like, Navarre. Now Alex Blanceagle is dead. It doesn't take a genius to figure out what happened to Les."

We drove a few blocks in silence.

Milo could've been right. It would've been a lot easier on Milo to think his boss hadn't voluntarily left him waistdeep in trouble. It would be a lot easier on me to believe Les SaintPierre was just another corpse waiting to be found. Corpses are stationary targets.

Otherwise, if Les SaintPierre had adopted a new identity with Julie Kearnes' help, then even with Kelly Arguello and me working overtime to find him, the chances of tracking him down were slim. The chances of tracking him down by next Friday, when Miranda's demo was due to Century Records, were virtually nonexistent. If Sheckly insisted on his bogus first option contract, there would be no effective way of challenging him. Miranda would go back to Sheckly's stable. She'd become another hasbeen artist waiting to happen.

"You're not following this Barrera guy's advice," Milo noticed, "about getting off the case."

"No, I'm not."