“This bounty hunter thing is harder than I thought,” Brenda said. “I need a ladies' room.”
“There's a powder room straight back,” Connie said. “It'll be on your right.”
Brenda sashayed off to the powder room, and we all stayed mute until the door closed.
“What the heck happened to her?” Connie asked.
“Monkey,” Lula said. “Bugger humped her head.”
The sound guy was grinning wide. “We looked at the footage in the truck on the way here. It's great!”
“You couldn't possibly use it,” I said to him.
“It would be a crime not to,” he said. “It's gold.”
Connie looked to me. “I assume there was no capture.”
I took my cell phone out and punched Morelli's number in. “Your assumption is correct.”
Morelli answered with a grunt.
“What's new?” I asked him.
“Nothing worth talking about. I caught a double homicide this morning and haven't been able to do anything about Dom or Loretta. Larry Skid is working Loretta. So far, no one's spotted Dom.”
“Larry Skid is an idiot.”
“Yeah. My description for him would be sack of shit. I've got to go. You're picking the kid up today, right?”
“Right.”
I disconnected and fished around in my bag, looking for my keys. “I have to talk to some people,” I said to Connie. “I'll get back to Susan Stitch later. Her monkey needs alone time.”
“Where you going?” Lula wanted to know. “I might have to go with you. I don't want to be here when Ms. Monkey Hair comes out of the bathroom.”
Ten minutes later, we were in front of Dom's mother's house. I knew Morelli had done a search, but I didn't think it would hurt for me to take a look, too. I knocked on the front door. No answer. I turned the knob and the door swung open. We stepped inside and listened.
“All I hear is the refrigerator,” Lula said.
The interior of the house was dark and fussy. Lots of candy dishes and figurines and vases filled with plastic flowers. The dining room table was covered with a lace tablecloth.
“What are we looking for?” Lula wanted to know.
“Clues.”
“Good thing I asked. I thought it might have been elephants.”
I prowled through the kitchen, and it looked to me like Dom had cleared out in a hurry. There were dirty dishes in the sink and a fry pan on the stove. The refrigerator held the usual staples. Yesterday's paper was open on the small kitchen table. A cup of cold coffee was beside the paper. A cardboard box containing cereal, jars of soup, and canned food was on the floor next to the sink. I was guessing this came from Loretta's stash. There were more cardboard boxes upstairs in a spare bedroom. They were labeled “clothes” and “bathroom.”
The master bedroom was untouched, the bed neatly made. A second bedroom was a disaster. Linens rumpled into a mess in the middle of the bed. Drawers open with clothes everywhere. Either Dom was a slob or else the room had been tossed.
I checked the garage. No cars. Loretta's possessions neatly stacked in a corner.
“What'd we learn here?” Lula wanted to know.
“Not much. Loretta moved in and then disappeared. Dom made an unplanned departure. Hard to tell how many people have searched the house. I'm guessing at least three... Morelli and me and someone else.”
The limo and the film crew van were gone when I returned to the office.