Lousiana Hotshot

that way,
and closed her own door. That would mean he’d have to come to her and knock— or at least send Eileen. Anyway, she had some stuff to do she didn’t want him to know about.
    But first the case. She hoped to hell Rhonda hadn’t been married— the hardest thing about the Internet was tracing people whose last names you didn’t know.
    Well, there
was
a Rhonda Bergeron at the address they’d gone to to find Pamela— evidently she’d lived with her parents. She was eighteen. Damn. So far, Talba had been too puzzled and hurt by Eddie’s refusal to talk to feel much for Rhonda. But eighteen! She was starting to feel plenty, including an urgent need to get going on this. Come up with something. Goddammit,
protect
her somehow, though it was too late.
    No newspaper clips. Hmmm.
    Talba’s fingers flew like a flock of finches. Not much on the father, Lloyd Bergeron, except that he was married to a woman named Marilyn. Decent credit, good driving record. Nothing on Marilyn.
    Johnson, as in Shaneel, wasn’t even worth trying.
    Just for good measure, she put together a dossier on Aziza Scott and printed it out for Eddie, along with the tidbits on Rhonda. No surprises there either.
    She needed to talk to people, to go back to Shaneel— the most likely whistle-blower— and threaten to wring her little neck if she didn’t talk. But Eddie’d wring
her
little neck if she did.
    She went to lunch and lingered until she was bored. When she got back, she was faced with the same old empty in-box. She felt tense and frustrated.
    And so she did what she always did to clear her head— started noodling on the net. Which reminded her— she was really going to have to set up a website for Eddie, and soon too. Her pride wouldn’t permit working in a place that didn’t have one. Besides, if she was going to be a rainmaker, it was probably the best thing she could do to bring in business.
    She was on Eddie’s time, why not do it for him now? She needed to register a URL. EddieValentino.com had a ring to it.
    No, wait a minute. The name of the agency was Anthony Valentino. Anthony! He’d named the agency after his son.
    She forgot about the website and started fooling around with “Anthony Valentino.” She could always do a people search, starting in Louisiana, then more or less guessing, but that was way too boring. Newspaper articles were a lot more fun. She hit a few more keys.
    And there they were— news stories. About a dozen of them, modest-sized articles in modest-sized papers all over the country. Interviews. There were schedules too, and reviews. Anthony Valentino no longer went by that name (though he mentioned it in every single interview).
    Anthony Valentino, formerly of New Orleans, had metamorphosed into bluesman Tony Tino. Now he probably did have a website.
    Yes, indeed. There it was. Even a picture of him, looking more like Angie than either of his parents. He had on a narrow-brimmed hat like an old black man might wear, someone playing in a joint like Ernie K-Doe’s Mother-In-Law Club. You couldn’t see his hair, but she was betting on thick and curly. The face looked
fine.
It was an Italian face, big-nosed and bold, with a hint of the balefulness so striking in his father. In a young man, lugubriousness contrived to be sexy, and no one knew it better than Talba. It was hard to say from a head shot, but Talba’s impression was of leanness, a build more like his mother’s than his father’s. His expression was cocky, in the manner of musicians posing for photographs, but the tiny bit of sadness and something else, something about the set of the features, suggested a vulnerability, a sensitivity, the kind of thing women went mad for.
Oh, hell, including me,
she thought.
Eddie’s kid’s a hunk. Wonder what he plays?
    Whoa. Harmonica. A blues harmonica player. He even had a CD out. Pretty accomplished guy.
    She rifled through the interviews, which he had attached to his home page— not only that, he sounded literate and charming. Actually, not charming. Anyone could be charming. The man sounded nice.
    He was… look at that… living in Austin. Practically a stone’s throw. There was no mention of a wife or kids, which she supposed befitted a blues musician. A bachelor would have more time to brood.
    Now why in hell didn’t Eddie know where he lived? Wait a minute here— she consulted the schedules and interviews. Tony Tino had played New Orleans, but hadn’t been interviewed there. Oh,