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“Nope, just listened to,” I said. “I meant what I said about courage.”
“I don’t think it’s a big deal, Dr. Delaware. She was my sister.”
Milo returned with a bottle. Aaron said, “Thanks,” twisted the cap off, and swigged half of the water. A few drops spattered his shirt.
Milo said, “Is it okay to go back to Cordi’s social life for just a second?”
“Sure. But I don’t know anything, Lieutenant.”
“She told you she’d had no dating life for a couple of years.”
“Yes, sir.”
“How about before that? Did she ever talk about a relationship that got unpleasant?”
“Not really,” said Aaron.
“Not really but maybe she hinted?”
“She said Mom had gone through a lot of frogs before she met Dad and that she’d done the same but her prince hadn’t appeared. That’s what convinced her not to depend on a man for her happiness.”
“There was no one she was scared of.”
“I never saw her scared of anything. She was much stronger than me because she had to be. Like annealing steel. You heat it then cool it—basically you stress it and it gets harder.”
“Aha.”
Aaron Blanding said, “I learned it in physics, no big deal.”
Milo said, “Now I’m going to tell you something your dad didn’t tell you. Cordi wasn’t the only person who died. There was a second victim.”
Aaron gaped. “You’re saying she did have a boyfriend, it was some kind of…passion deal?”
“No, this person was just a friend. Her hairdresser, actually.”
“Caspian? Caspian wasalso…oh, fuck-shit. It was…like a massacre? Was there anyone else?”
“Thankfully no, Aaron. So you knew Caspian.”
“I met him once. At Starbucks in Westwood. Cordi brought him along because she had a photo shoot in an hour and he was doing her hair and neither of them had eaten. Cordi still wasn’t going to eat because she wanted to look thin for the shoot, she said the camera put on like ten pounds. But she wanted to make sure Caspian got some nutrition, was joking that if she didn’t feed him he’d mess up her hair. She got him a whole wheat roll and some…avocado spread, I think. Something spread. He ate it all up, so obviously my sister was right.”
“What was your impression of Caspian?”
“Nice,” he said. “Respectful.”
“Respectful of Cordi?”
“Of Cordi and me. Of our meetings. He told me they were a great thing, it was great to have a sibling to talk to. By respectful I mean that when he got his roll, he went off to another table so we could have our time. That doesn’t always happen. An adult treating someone my age like a person. It’s like he didn’t make a difference between Cordi and me because of our ages. Now you’re telling me…fuckthat to hell.Fuck.”
A fist pounded a palm. “I can’t believe this. Oh, man, this sucks, it’s…it’s…it fuckingsucks.”
Milo said, “That’s for sure, Aaron. And what’s making the investigation even more difficult is we don’t even have Caspian’s real name yet.”
“You don’t?” Amazed. “That I can tell you. Charlie Bankster. He said it sounded too much like gangster so he changed it. Joking about it. The whole time was like that, Cordi joking, Caspian joking.” A breath. “I laughed a lot, which was…then Caspian went to eat and Cordi and I hung out.”
Sad smile. “I didn’t joke. A sense of humor is something I’m working on.”
—
