When I woke the next morning, I realized that something had been gnawing at me. Percy would not have killed Guy, not without knowing where Ted Bain was. And then there was the money. Guy had gone to get the money. So where was it? And did it even exist?

Guy was going to get money. Did that mean he already had the money and had hidden it? Or was he going to blackmail someone? And if he was, who was that someone…

I made myself a pot of coffee—I didn’t think it was so horrible to buy your coffee already ground; I certainly couldn’t tell the difference—and poured myself a bowl of Barbara’s organic corn flakes with enough sugar to erase any and all health benefits of the cereal. I’d only had a few bites when I had an idea.

I went and got my phone off its base. Dialed a number out of my address book and waited.

“This is Leon Arlo.”

“Leon, this is Noah.”

“Oh hello. What are we going to solve now, the Lindbergh kidnapping or the Black Dahlia?”

“Can you get me on the lot? I want to see Rex Hoffman again.”

“Oh? Have you decided to take him up on his very generous offer?”

“No. I want to see if Guy came back and tried to blackmail him again.”

“Why does that matter?”

“I’m not sure it does. But I’d like to know.”

“All right. I’ll get a drive-on for you. When do you want it for?”

“In about half an hour.”

“All right. Meet me in front of the Zukor building.”

“You want to go with me?”

“I’m not going to let you have all the glory.”

I wasn’t sure glory was the only thing he was after.

After a quick shower, I dressed in a pair of beige 501s, my oxblood Docs and a navy blue work shirt. My hair was hopeless, so I put on a baseball cap emblazoned with the logo for the failed talk show, Minty, that Marc had given me. He had fifty in a box under the bed. I was out the door in fifteen minutes and at the studio gates ten minutes after that.

I gave my name to the guard, a different guard this time, and when he had trouble finding it, I said, “Try Nora Balentine.”

“Oh yeah. That some sort of joke?”

“Supposedly.”

He chuckled and let me onto the lot. I parked and walked down to the Zukor building, a five-story gray-and-white layered cube. Leon stood in front of the entrance wearing a double-breasted gray suit and a daringly lavender tie.

“Good morning,” Leon said. “Welcome to the coal mines. This is where the magic happens in unmagical ways.”

We walked by a couple of soundstages and then turned to the left. I remembered the way, but I didn’t need to. Leon was very familiar with the lot.

“Do you know what you want to say to him?” Leon asked as we stood before the entrance to Stage 11.

“I think so.”

“Good. We may not get much time. Follow my lead.”

We walked into the soundstage and got about twenty feet before we were stopped by a guard.

“I don’t think you’re supposed to be in here.”

I could see the stage for Hoffman’s show on the other side of the stage. In daylight, it was garish oranges and reds, with light bulbs in those and other colors. Rex Hoffman stood in the center of the stage.

“We’re friends of Mr. Hoffman’s,” Leon said confidently. “Can you tell him we’re here?”

“Name?”

“Peterson. Guy Peterson.”

The guard turned and walked away. I gave Leon a sidelong glance. “That was impressive.”

“People are always curious when the dead show up for a chat.”

It didn’t take long before Rex Hoffman was standing in front of us.

“Hi. I’m Leon Arlo. Director, International Rights. Huge fan. Now, if there’s anything I can—”

Hoffman ignored him, asking me, “What are you doing here?”

“I have a couple more questions I’d like to ask.”

“Yeah, just because you were friends with Guy doesn’t give you the right to show up here any time you want.”

“You lied to me. You said you didn’t pay Guy. I think that’s wrong. I think you paid him.”

“And why do think that?”

“Because Guy’s boyfriend said he went to get money the night he died. So either you gave him money or he came back to ask you again on the night he was killed.”

“What are you—” I could see headlines flashing through his mind. He could probably get through some old sex pictures, but murder? “Yes. Of course I paid him. The first time. I’m surprised you believed me.”

“You didn’t see him the night he died?”

“Of course not. Do you want me to provide an alibi? I think I remember his name.”

I believed him, though, so I didn’t ask.

“You gave Guy cash?” I asked.

“Of course I gave him cash. Blackmailers don’t take checks.”

“I wouldn’t know. I’ve never been blackmailed.”

“Is that all? I’m in the middle of shooting a show. They can’t do anything without me.”

“Are you the only one?”

“Yes, I’m the only host—”

“No. Are you the only one Guy was blackmailing?”

He thought for a moment. “Probably not. He liked taking that kind of picture. He liked attractive men. It wouldn’t surprise me if someone else fell into his trap. Now, if you’ll excuse me.”

“It was a pleasure meeting you,” Leon said, extending his hand. Hoffman looked at it and then walked away. “I gather he was a lot friendlier the first time you saw him.”

* * *

So where was the money? The most logical place to keep cash was in a safety deposit box. But I was pretty certain that Ted said Guy left at night to get the money, so that left out anything to do with a bank. That left his apartment and his store as the most logical places. Of course, his store had already burned, so it wasn’t likely he kept the money there. That left his apartment.

After I left the studio, I took Western north. Guy’s family had cleaned out his apartment. Did that mean they found the money? That would explain the Mondrian Hotel. But then, so would the settlement they were likely to receive from the insurance on Guy’s store. Or even the settlement they were trying to squeeze out of the LAPD.

As I drove, I tried to calculate how much insurance might pay for his inventory. When I took his class he had maybe forty cameras, many of them quite expensive. And lenses, a lot of lenses. Then there were the furnishings and cash register, not worth much, and the equipment in the dark room. So, maybe twenty or thirty thousand dollars.

Of course, there would be a deductible and they wouldn’t have paid this quickly. Not to mention, they’d probably never pay. It was likely Guy burned the place down himself. Insurance companies frowned on that.

Did that mean for sure his family found the money? Or was I just being a snob? They didn’t seem like people who had much money, but maybe I was wrong. Maybe they had lots of money.

I turned around the lazy corner that meant Western was now Los Feliz. It was unlikely I’d find anything at Guy’s apartment, I knew that. Hell, it was unlikely I’d even be able to get in. I tried to think of a story I could tell the manager if I needed to. That is, if there was a manager. There might just be a management company. In which case, I’d need a really good story.

I found a legal parking place on a side street and walked up to the building. I could call the management company and tell them I’d heard about the apartment and I wanted to see it. Could I get them to show it to me that afternoon? Probably. Money was involved.

I walked into the courtyard and climbed up to the second floor. There was no reason not to check and see if the Petersons hadn’t simply left the door open. In a building like this there was really no reason not to leave an empty apartment open. I pulled open the screen door and tried the door to the apartment. Locked.

Taking a step back, I considered knocking on the neighbors’ doors. Sometimes people left keys with a neighbor; Guy might have done that. While I was deciding between knocking on the door of 2E or 2G, I noticed Guy’s window was open. I lifted the screen off and was able to step into the apartment through the window, which was exactly how he’d gotten into my apartment only a few nights before.

The apartment looked to be completely empty and smelled heavily of bleach. That might have been why the windows were open, but it wasn’t doing much good. How much bleach had they used? And why? The wood floor would have only needed to be mopped with Murphy’s Oil.

I stepped into the kitchen and saw that they’d barely cleaned the sink. Popping open the refrigerator, it was obvious they wiped it down with a sponge, but that was not the same as cleaning. The oven they’d ignored completely—despite the fact that it really needed it. A dirty oven didn’t fit with someone who’d use so much bleach they had to leave a window open.

Pushing the thought out of my mind, I wondered where he might have hidden the money. Certainly it could have been in a piece of furniture no longer there, but I doubted Guy would put it anywhere as easy to find as under the mattress. It was thirty thousand dollars, after all. Or maybe even more than thirty.

I walked around the apartment looking in all the closets to see if there was a hatch into the attic. There wasn’t. Then I went into the bathroom, lifted up the lid to the toilet, and looked into the tank. This might have been a good hiding place once, but it had been ruined by The Godfather. Now everyone knew the best place to hide a gun was in Ziploc bag in the toilet tank. It would have worked for money, too. Running my hand around the underside of the sink, I found nothing.

I went back to the not-very-clean kitchen. The freezer was empty but for a bit too much frost. I checked the underside of each drawer. Then I opened the doors below the sink. That area was empty. I ran a hand around the underside of the kitchen sink. Part way through, I stopped. I’d come across something sticky. And there was something else, something still stuck to the underside of the sink.

It took a moment or two to dislodge it. When I pulled my hand back out from under the sink, I saw it was a piece of electrical tape. Something had been taped under the sink. Probably the money Ted had been talking about. Did that mean Guy had gotten it? Or did his family find it first? And if they did, what did he do when he found it wasn’t there?

I was about to leave the apartment; I’d found what I needed to find, when I realized there was a large, funky looking spot on the wall next to the window. It was funky looking because the paint had been scrubbed off. The smell of bleach was very strong right there. I took a step back and tried to put it together. The scrubbed spot was taller than I was and twice as wide. As I stood staring at it, I realized something odd. Partway up, in the center were two spots that had been spackled.

Now, why would they spackle the walls but not clean the oven? I wondered. Not to mention the spots they spackled were too low for pictures. The hardwood floor was in decent shape, though hardly new. Most of the slats held their varnish, but the seal was old enough to have cracked between the slats. I got down on my knees. The floor beneath the scrubbed spot looked like it also had been washed in bleach. But there was something dark between the slats. I ran my thumbnail between two slats, pushing it in as deeply as I could.

When I took a closer look at my thumb, I recognized the sticky, dark material immediately. It was the same stuff I’d taken off the spanner wrench. It was dried blood. This whole area had been drenched in blood and then cleaned.