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Jovanic shoved a couple of fries into his mouth and thought about it while he chewed. “It’s fascinating, but he won’t be convicted based on loops and swirls. We need something tangible. Maybe something to connect him to blackmail. Let’s drop in on Miss Brandi. She called right after I left Heidt’s office.”

“What did she say?”

“She sounded pretty nervous and said she’s not seeing anyone.”

Claudia laughed. “But that won’t stop you, will it, Columbo?”

He smiled at her and she felt her spirits lift. “She lives in Hollywood,” he said. “I got her address from the reverse directory.”

“God, I hope she has Ivan’s tape.”

“I hope it’s helpful if she does.”

Brandi Jones lived in the rear unit of a rundown duplex off Selma in the heart of old Hollywood. In the dusty yard of the front unit, a pair of toddlers in grubby diapers squatted in a dilapidated sandbox long since depleted of sand, pounding on clods of dirt with plastic shovels.

They made their way past a weeping willow that looked as sad as its name, and up the cracked, oil-stained driveway. A spanking-new red Beemer parked next to the rear unit struck a false note.

Jovanic checked his shoulder holster before rapping on the door. “Maybe she got a new pimp,” he murmured.

After a lengthy pause, he stepped back from the porch and took a good look around. Bent and broken miniblinds, cranked open, hung crookedly at the windows. The drapes behind them were drawn.

Jovanic returned to the front door and banged on it with the side of his fist until the scrape of a chain lock sounded.

The door cracked open an inch, revealing a bloodshot blue eye. “The fuck you want?” a young female voice demanded.

“Hi, Brandi,” Jovanic said in a friendly tone that belied the ferocity of his assault on the door. “I’m Joel. I called you a while ago.”

Dirty fingerprints at eye level marked the door. It inched open on a patch of pasty facial skin.

“I tol’ ya, I’m not workin’ right now.” Her voice was slurred, maybe from sleep. Maybe from using. Something about it tickled the edges of Claudia’s memory, but it wouldn’t come into focus.

Jovanic’s six-two form loomed over the girl. He put his hand on the door, leaning on the frame. “We need to talk to you. It won’t take long. Can we come in?”

The door started to close. “Get the fuck outta here,” the girl mumbled.

Jovanic jammed his shoulder into the doorway, forcing it open. A girl with blonde-tipped black hair stood there, her jaw slack with surprise. A red tattooed heart peeped over the top of her wife-beater T-shirt.

Memory cleared. “Wait a minute,” Claudia blurted, pushing in front of Jovanic. “You were the Goth girl at Lindsey’s funeral!”

Brandi frowned at her as if trying to recall her face. “Who are you?” she asked with suspicion of one who was no stranger to hard times and bad people.

“I’m a friend of Lindsey’s. We need to talk to you.”

“I got nothing to say. Go away.”

“Wait... I heard you talking to your friend. She said Lindsey didn’t kill herself, but you thought it was an accident.”

The girl’s eyes grew round and terrified. “Go away,” she whispered hoarsely. “Just go.”

Jovanic flipped her his badge. “Brandi, we’re not here to hurt you. We need your help.”

The girl stared back at him, her pupils dilated to the outer rims of the irises. She crossed thin arms over her flat chest, holding herself with hands that trembled. “I don’t know jack. Leave me alone, pleeeeeease.”

“I guess you know that Ivan is dead,” Jovanic said.

His words struck her like physical blows. Brandi slid down the doorpost and collapsed in a heap on the floor. A high-pitched keening arose from somewhere deep inside her, breaking loose into uncontrollable sobs.

From behind her, a new voice spoke over the wailing; a voice with a faint Caribbean lilt.

“I think I’m smellin’ cop.”

The door opened wide and Brandi’s beaded companion from the funeral stood there, one hand resting on a curvaceous hip.
The woman who had so thoroughly unnerved Senator Heidt.

Her name suddenly came back to Claudia.

“Why donchu come on in, officers,” Destiny Cardoza said, tossing her braids with a sassy smirk.

In her champagne Dana Buchman suit and braided hair, Destiny Cardoza might have been at home in a corporate office, but in Brandi’s dump she looked as out of place as perfumed toilet paper in an outhouse. The place reeked of the kind of mustiness that resulted from age and poor housekeeping.

A heavy-duty vacuum might improve the stained, threadbare rug,
Claudia thought as she surveyed the small dark living room and its thriftshop furnishings. She wanted to stride over to the windows and flip open the blinds.

Jovanic showed Destiny his badge. “Detective Joel Jovanic, LAPD.”

She turned her sexy smile on him before narrowing her eyes at Claudia. “This is a reunion for you and me, am I right, girlfrien’?”

“Looks that way.”

“We’re here on a murder investigation,” Jovanic began again, but Destiny ignored him, her gaze boring into Claudia as if they were alone in the room.

“Is that what you was doing at that funeral, girlfrien’? Investi
ga
tin’?”

Claudia shook her head. “I knew Lindsey a long time ago. The investigation came later, after Ivan was murdered.” Brandi picked herself up off the floor and flung her slim frame onto the sagging couch. Hugging her knees to her boyish chest, she buried her head in her arms, rocking herself like a five-year-old in need of comfort. The image of a feral cat came to Claudia again, as it had at the funeral, and she sat down near the girl, just close enough to offer contact. “Ivan sent us to see you. He said you have a...”

“Brandi,” Jovanic interrupted. “We need to talk to you.”

Brandi’s head snapped up, the mistrustful glare back on her tear-stained face. “I didn’t do anything!”

“We’re not here to hurt you, Brandi.”

“There is nothing for you here,” Destiny said coolly before the girl could answer.

Jovanic stepped toward her, a slight hint of menace in the way he used his height and broad shoulders. “Brandi can answer for herself.”

The girl cut her eyes at Destiny, but the older woman’s expression was one of warning, and she remained silent.

“Listen, Brandi,” Claudia spoke in a soft voice, approaching the girl as gently she would a child. “Ivan told me he wanted to give me some tapes. I don’t know where they are, but before he died, he gave me your name, so I figure
you
know.”

“Brandi,” Jovanic said. “We’re not Vice and I don’t give a shit how many johns you’ve serviced, or what you...”

“Hah! You think
that
is the problem?” Destiny Cardoza interrupted with a harsh laugh.

“What then?” Claudia asked. “What’s on the video?”

“Not what,” Destiny said.
“Who.”

“He’ll hurt me if I tell,” Brandi said in a small voice. She might have been talking about the neighborhood bully.

“Who’ll hurt you, Brandi?” Jovanic asked, but the girl kept her face turned down, shaking her head.

How long has she been on her own, selling the only asset she has?

The contrast between the two women’s wardrobes, and the condition of the duplex, told Claudia that whatever Lindsey had been paying her, it hadn’t come close to what Destiny might earn.

Jovanic crouched in front of the couch, the grey eyes masked. “We can protect you, Brandi. I’ll make sure you’re okay, I promise.”

“What you gonna do, put her in the Witness Protection Program?” Destiny scoffed. “You gonna get her killed, too, dat’s what. So, what is it worth to you, dis
video
, mister big-time detective mon?”

Jovanic’s jaw hardened, all tough cop now. He rose to his full height and went eye-to-eye with her, his voice chilly enough to make ice cubes. “Lady, what’s it worth to
you
to stay out of jail?”

Brandi started wailing again. “Noooo, not jail!”

Destiny swung around and lashed her hand across the girl’s cheek, staining the white skin with a bright-red palm print.

Jovanic grabbed Destiny roughly, twisting the fine fabric of her jacket as he jerked her away from the girl on the couch. He gave her a little shove that made her beads swing. “You want me to arrest you right now for assault?”

She stared at him for a moment, her chin jutting defiantly. Then she gave a low laugh. “Give de mon de tape, Brandi. Go on, give it to him.” Brandi looked up at her, petulance marring a face that would have been pretty with a little care and attention. Destiny gave her the slightest nod. If Claudia hadn’t been watching so closely, she would have missed it.

The girl pulled herself off the couch. With the enthusiasm of a death-row inmate headed for lethal injection, she led them to a pocket-sized kitchen.

She looked at Destiny, a question on her face. “But, there’s nothing...”

“Just do what de man say,” Destiny interrupted. “Give him de tape.”

The refrigerator must have been forty years old. The little door to the freezer section creaked loudly against crusted ice as Brandi reached in and retrieved a plain-wrap ice cream carton. She handed it to Jovanic with a pout.

The label read
Rocky Road.
“What’s this?” he asked, frowing.

“Inside.”

Jovanic lifted the sticky lid and took out a plastic bag containing a mini DV digital cassette tape.

Buried Treasure,
Claudia thought, remembering a favorite treat from the Good Humor ice cream truck of her childhood. She and her brother would race each other to eat the ice cream off the top and find the plastic toy embedded inside the sugar cone.

Brandi scuffed her foot against the refrigerator door, her eyes suddenly awash with tears. “What are we gonna do now?”

Jovanic had to do a little tango to switch places with her in the cramped kitchen. “Pack up some clothes,” he said. “I’ll arrange a place for you to stay until this is over.”

Going to the sink, he pushed up his shirt sleeves and rinsed the bag under the faucet. He tore off a couple of paper towels from the roll on the countertop, dried off the plastic, and turned to Destiny. “What about you?” She gave him a look that was halfway between a leer and a grin. “No need you worryin’ ‘bout me, sugar. I can take care of
my
self just fine.”

Brandi, Claudia, and Jovanic drove to the Wilshire Division station, where he handed the girl over to a female officer, with instructions to find her a temporary safe house. If he’d hoped for gratitude, he was disappointed. She slouched off without a backwards glance.

“Think she’ll be okay?” Claudia asked as Jovanic steered her into a small interview room that he’d commandeered.

He shrugged and popped the tape into a combination TV/VCR that stood on a side table. “We can protect her for now. After that, it’s up to her.” The only other furniture in the room was a plain grey metal table bolted to the floor and two chairs, one facing a two-way mirror. Claudia took the other one and unpacked the coffees they’d picked up from Starbucks on the way in. She pushed one across the table and pried the lid off hers, blowing gently into the cup while Jovanic fiddled with the controls.

He glanced at her over his shoulder with the raised brow. “You sure you’re over eighteen? This show is likely to be triple-X.”

She showed him the tip of her tongue, getting into the banter. “If anyone asks, I’ll just say you’re a dirty old man trying to seduce me.” He turned back to the player with a quiet chuckle.

After a few seconds of static the screen went blank, then Brandi, unfamiliar in blonde pigtails, was mugging for the camera in a parochial school uniform with a skirt short enough to show off her white lace panties. Black patent Mary Jane shoes completed the outfit. With her small breasts and slim body, she could have passed for a ten-year-old, if it hadn’t been for the world-weary eyes in the young face.

She climbed onto a wrought iron-framed bed like the one in the photos Earl Nelson had sold Claudia, and began jumping up and down, playing trampoline.

“What the hell?” Claudia said. From the background came a raspy male voice that she’d heard before.

“Hey, knock it off and lay your ass down. I gotta get the lighting right.”

Earl Nelson.

The girl laughed and threw herself onto her back, spreading her knees wide, mocking him.

“Goddamn it, Brandi, he’s not your fucking gynecologist.”

A chill ran through Claudia. “That’s Lindsey,” she breathed.

There was something eerie about watching the subject of their investigation step in front of the camera. Skintight jeans clung to long, slender legs, and she wore a sleeveless shirt that showed off her tanned arms. An untidy mass of blonde hair tumbled over her shoulders as she strode over to the bed and whacked Brandi on the leg.

“Come on, get serious. He’ll be here in an hour. I want everything set up and ready.”

“Yeah,” Earl Nelson called from behind the camera. “Get that cute little ass in gear.”

Lindsey whirled on him, her lip curled derisively. “Shut up, dumbshit. You’re only here to operate the camera. Don’t forget it.”

The screen went black for a moment, and Claudia wondered about the exchange between the siblings. Had one of them become violent? Earl was resentful that he had been cut out of Lindsey’s will. Had he known before her death that he was to be disinherited? Or could his resentment have triggered her murder?

The picture flickered back on.

Destiny, in a black leather bustier laced in front with a leather thong. She turned and gazed into the camera lens through half-closed eyes, running her tongue slowly over seductively parted full red lips. Her legs were encased in polished black boots that ended at mid-thigh. The exposed areas of her amber skin glistened with oil.

The camera zoomed out to reveal a naked man spread-eagled, handcuffed to the headboard and footboard of the bed, his head and face concealed by a leather hood. A zipper had been left open across the lower section to allow him to breathe. Clamped between his teeth was a rubber bit.