At the bottom:
AMANDA WRIGHT
ACTRESS AND DANCER
REPRESENTED BY ONYX ASSOCIATES
“Her agents?” I said.
“Vegas PD says they’re a defunct slick-sleaze outfit, used to do casino booking for topless acts. Mandy had no criminal record, which isn’t unusual for the high-class honeys who show up when the chips start piling and do the old thigh-rub. Other vital statistics: She was single, liked to party, did grass, pills, coke. Her last boyfriend was a blackjack dealer named Ted Barnaby, also a cokehead, moved to Reno soon after the murder. Vegas interviewed him the day after, he was cooperative and had an alibi: working all that night, verified by the pit boss. Also, he seemed genuinely torn up about her death.”
“But he moved.”
“It didn’t set off any alarms because casino people are transient. A detective took me over to the crime scene last night. Middle-class condos, quiet. Not a lot of trees like Hope’s street, but there was a huge eucalyptus growing right in front of Mandy’s building and that’s where he got her. Vegas and I have both been calling all over the country and no other matches have turned up yet, but there’s plenty to do.”
“Any record of Mandy living in L.A.?”
“Not so far. She’d been leasing the same apartment for almost three years, grew up in Hawaii, no police record there, either. Wouldn’t surprise me if she came down to L.A. at one time or another, but her credit-card receipts don’t show it and they do show other travel.”
“Where?”
Reaching into the briefcase again, he produced a thick black binder that he flipped open and placed next to the photo. Wetting his thumb, he turned to a page that showed two years of Visa and MasterCard summaries reduced to tiny print, three statements per page.
Mandy Wright’s monthly bills ranged from five hundred dollars to four thousand. Plenty of overdue notices and interest charges. A couple of defaults. Both times she’d been cut off and switched companies.
I ran my finger down the itemized expenditures. Mostly clothes, cosmetics, jewelry, and restaurants. The travel information had been circled. A dozen flights: two each to Aspen and Park City, Utah; six to Honolulu; one to New York; one to New Orleans.
“Well-traveled lady,” I said. “Business trips?”
“Hawaii might have been personal, she’s got a brother there, but yeah, the rest could be work: the ski places for the winter—working the lodges as a snow bunny. New Orleans was during Mardi Gras and that’s a big-time hooker scene. New York could be anything any time of the year.”
“But no L.A.,” I said. “Isn’t Vegas to L.A. a big hooker run? Don’t you find it odd that she flew everywhere but here?”
“Maybe she doesn’t like smog,” he said. “Maybe she drove down. But you’re right, lots of girls do make the desert run regularly. Last year we had some married women from the Westside picking up change by giving head in motels, back home in time to serve dinner. So maybe Mandy had a regular client in L.A. who didn’t want records kept.” He tapped the photo. “A girl who looked like that, you could see some rich guy paying her to come down regularly, keep it from the wife.”
He got a beer and I examined the rest of the folder, starting with the summary of Ted Barnaby’s interview. A single paragraph written by a Detective A. Holzer, who’d spoken to the boyfriend before he left for Reno. Barnaby had shown “tears and other evidence of grief. Subject professes no knowledge of any motive for the homicide. Says he knew victim did “some call-girl’ work, “that’s why we didn’t live together. She needed her own place.’ Subject also says he didn’t like the fact that victim engaged in prostitution and that he and victim had argued about this in the past but he’d come to accept it. “You’ve got to accept people on their terms.’ His alibi checks out, verified by Franklin A. Varese, casino pit supervisor, and fellow dealers Sandra Boething and Luis Maldonado.”
Next, autopsy and lab reports:
The toxicology screen showed a moderate amount of cocaine in Mandy Wright’s blood the night of the murder.