“Did he have a car?”
“A white Toyota Corolla. I’ve got an alert out on that too.”
Bailey started the car and pulled out of the parking lot.
“Did you have unis door-knock the neighborhood?” I asked. Any activity over the past few days at Russell’s house in the Hollywood Hills could provide a crucial lead.
“Yeah. No one heard anything weird. The closest neighbor’s assistant was home waiting for a FedEx package, and he remembered hearing car doors slam at the house on Monday morning, but no screams, no sounds of struggle. Nothing unusual.”
Damn it. We needed to catch a break here. We didn’t have time for these friggin’ dead ends. I tried hard to keep myself from imagining what might be happening to Hayley at this very moment. “What’s up with all these assistants?” I asked irritably. “Why couldn’t this neighbor just sign the notice and leave it taped to the door like the rest of us?”
“Yes, let’s blame the assistant for not breaking the case for us. That makes perfect sense.”
I hate being busted for irrational crankiness. I was about to come up with a suitably cutting remark when I noticed that Bailey was driving like we were responding to a robbery in progress. “Why are we heading back to Hollywood? Shouldn’t we at least stop by the Galleria while we’re out here and see if we can figure out where Brian works-or, rather, worked?”
“Because I’ve already got someone tracking down his employment records, and it occurred to me that it might be more important to hit his apartment first.”
She was right, so I shut up and tried to hang on to my stomach as Bailey flew down the winding Laurel Canyon Boulevard. Laurel Canyon climbs from Studio City in the San Fernando Valley up and over the ridge and snakes down the other side into West Hollywood. It’s a storied canyon that was once home to a variety of megatalents, like Frank Zappa, Jim Morrison, Steven Tyler, and Joni Mitchell, and currently home to my bestie Toni LaCollier, who lived at the top of the hill off Kirkwood-though in all honesty she couldn’t carry a tune in a bucket. Toni was already a Special Trials prosecutor when I got transferred into the unit. We’d bonded so fast we agreed that we had to have been sisters in a past life. Her tiny house in the canyon hadn’t been much when she bought it-a lot of the houses in the area had gone to seed-but Toni had the gift of artistry and style. Within six months, she’d turned the run-down “fixer” into a unique little gem.
