Milo said, “All these years he kept it shut.”
“Don’t know,” I said, “but if De Paine was doing business with Jordan, it explains the crime scene. Jordan let De Paine in and De Paine unlocked the rear window and let Fisk in. Or maybe De Paine did it himself and had Fisk along for support. Jordan nodding off heavily would’ve been an easy kill.”
Petra crossed her legs, rubbed an ankle. “De Paine’s that calculating but he doesn’t take Jordan’s dope?”
Milo said, “He’s smart enough to be careful.”
“Seems to me,” she said, “taking the drugs would’ve been smart, Milo. Easy misdirect to a heroin robbery.”
I said, “But that ran the risk of leading us back to Jordan’s supplier. Who could be De Paine.”
“So how does all this fit with Patty’s housing pattern? I understand her going from Jordan’s caretaker to the old man’s live-in nurse with a double in salary. But the same question remains: If she knew De Paine had been involved in a serious felony, why would she be his mother’s tenant? I realize she stayed less than a year but that’s still a long time to expose your kid to a super-bad influence.”
I had no answer.
Petra got up and fetched herself another cup of coffee. Milo phoned Rick and said, “Don’t wait up.”
When she returned, they settled next to each other on my leather couch.
Petra laughed.
He said, “What?”
“We look like patients-marital counseling or something.” She pressed her knees together, put on an exaggerated scowl. “Doc, I’ve tried to make the relationship work but he just won’t communicate.”
Milo said, “Nag nag nag.”
I said, “Time’s up, I’ll send a bill.”
Their smiles didn’t last long.
Milo said, “De Paine seems to be the glue in all this. He had to know Patty from when she lived on his block and he hangs with Robert Fisk.”
I said, “Let’s turn it another way. Patty didn’t know De Paine before she lived on his block. Lester Jordan knew both of them, but Patty wasn’t aware of it until later.”
“Then how’d Patty get to be Mary Whitbread’s tenant? Jordan referred her? Why would she take housing tips from a junkie?”
“Maybe she knew him as more than that.”
“They were buds?”
“She was a compassionate nurse, saw Jordan’s humanity,” I said. “After she moved out, they maintained communication.”
Petra said, “Or continued to do business.”
“That, too,” I admitted. “There’s another way Patty might’ve learned about the rental on Fourth. What if Myron Bedard helped her find new lodgings?”
“Why would he do that?”
“She’d taken good care of his father.”
“Benevolent Rich Guy?” she said. “What’s his link to Whitbread? And how does that tie De Paine to Jordan?”
“The Bedards own property,” I said. “Could be Myron owned Whitbread’s duplex back then. Or some neighboring apartments. Or he was connected to Mary Whitbread in another way. Iona said he was a philanderer. Mary’s an attractive woman. Ten years ago she wouldn’t have looked any worse.”
“Myron had a girlfriend,” Petra singsonged. “Killed two birds by sending her a tenant and easing his own guilt about evicting a single mom and her cute little kid?”
She turned to Milo.
He said, “It’s as good as anything else.”
“Teenage punk hooks up with a junkie who just happens to be the brother-in-law of his mommy’s sugar daddy?”
I said, “What do men talk to their mistresses about?”
She said, “My wife doesn’t understand me.”
“In Bedard’s case, my wife doesn’t understand me and she saddles me with a useless junkie brother-in-law. If Peterson Whitbread was a precocious teen criminal with a foot in the drug world, hearing that would’ve sparked his interest. He made contact with Jordan, the two of them ended up doing business. It’s possible Patty didn’t know about the connection when she moved to Mary’s building. She thought she was stepping up in the world, to a nice spacious duplex. Instead, she somehow got involved in a crime that involved the landlady’s son and Jordan.”
Milo said, “Patty told Tanya she killed a neighbor. Nothing comes up on or near Fourth.”
“What she actually said was a man ‘close by.’ Cherokee, Hudson, and Fourth span a wide range socioeconomically, but geographically, they’re spaced pretty closely.”
I pulled a Thomas Guide from my bookshelf, thumbed to a page, drew three red dots, passed the book to Petra.
She said, “Yeah, they are close…so we’d need to expand the geographical profile to what-all of Hollywood and Mid-Wilshire? Great.”
“But if I’m right about the crime occurring when Patty lived on Fourth it narrows the time frame to less than one year. It would also explain why Patty didn’t stay at Fourth very long. She’d done or seen something terrible and wanted out.”
“If she was that freaked out, why didn’t she leave town completely?”
“Maybe it wasn’t a matter of personal safety, just guilt-wanting to get away psychologically.”
The look that passed between them resonated. Predictably shrinky.
Milo said, “What if encountering Whitbread in the E.R. was more than bad reminiscence. Suppose he made a threatening remark to Patty.”
“How’s your little daughter doing, wink wink,” said Petra. “But why wouldn’t Patty report that immediately? Or use her little.22?” To Milo: “Find out yet when she registered it?”
“She didn’t.”
“By the time of the E.R. visit she was terminally ill,” I said.
“Even better,” she said. “She knows she’s going to die. If she’s nervous about Whitbread hurting Tanya, why not find him and go boom?”
I said, “You haven’t been able to locate him. Why would she have better luck?”
“All those years of keeping mum and all of a sudden he’s threatening her?”
“Maybe there was no overt threat, just a subtle remark that preyed on Patty’s mind. She had a special kind of mind. Obsessive, a brain racing nonstop. She learned to control it, some people do. But the tendencies remain and stress brings them out. Add cognitive problems due to her disease and there’s no telling how she’d process.”
Petra chewed her lip. “My brain’s ready for a pit stop…her place on Culver Boulevard isn’t that far from the other three places-what, five miles southwest?”
I said, “It’s a whole other page on the map. Literally and figuratively. More important, it had no link to the Bedards. She was out to disentangle herself.”
She closed the Thomas Guide. “One easy thing I can do tomorrow is find out who owned Whitbread’s building back then. Myron’s name shows up on the deed, I’m a little more receptive.” She grimaced. “She’s going to love that.”
“Who?”
“Cruella. Much as it pains me to admit it, she was right. Finding and talking to her ex is a must-do. But if she calls me young lady again in that tone, I bitch-slap her to Canada.”
We played with the computer for another hour, trying with no success to learn more about Moses Grant and Peterson Whitbread aka Blaise De Paine.
Petra said, “Boys, my eyes are crossing, let’s kick it in.”
I said, “One question: Tanya’s danger level.”
“If you’re right about Peterson threatening Patty because of some deep dark secret, it’s significant. How’s her home security situation?”
Milo said, “Decent. I gave her the lecture and she seemed to get it. I also did a few pass-throughs on her street. Nothing iffy, so far.”
“Nineteen years old and living alone,” said Petra. “Don’t know how I’d handle that. What exactly does she know about all of this?”
I said, “We told her about Jordan’s murder. She wanted to know if it was linked to her mother and we said there was no direct evidence of that.”