Only one: the Lanyard A. Rutger Family Trust, established twenty years previously. The trust had sold the place fourteen years later, the transaction handled by Laurence Rifkin, Esq., of Rifkin, Forward, and Levitsky, Beverly Hills. Their website pegged them as tax and estate lawyers.

Milo said, “Start at the top,” phoned and asked for Rifkin. A mellow baritone came on the line surprisingly quickly. “Larry Rifkin here. Police? What’s going on?”

Milo summed up.

Rifkin chuckled. “I’m not laughing about murder. I’m laughing at theater of the absurd. Good old Charlie.”

“You’ve got a history with him?”

“I can’t believe he’s still claiming he was defrauded. He was the one who pushed the sale in the first place, Lieutenant. On top of being crazy, he must be going senile.”

“So any claim of fraud is groundless.”

“Groundless? It’s insane. Here’s what it boils down to: Lanyard, their father—Charlie’s and Leona’s, that’s Charlie’s sister—made some money in manufacturing and investments but by the time he’d died, he’d lost quite a bit in the market and once debts were settled there wasn’t much estate left. You know the rich, my treasures, your junk? Paintings Charlie thought were priceless turned out to be piddling, same for a bunch of supposedly rare books that weren’t first editions. The only sizable asset was residential real estate: three houses, worth maybe five mil at the time. The place on Borodi was the biggest-ticket item. Lan built it back in the forties, got Paul Williams to design, the place was gorgeous. There’s also a chalet-type weekend place with a dock on Lake Arrowhead, and a three-acre spread in Palm Springs. Lan died ten years ago, made it to ninety-one, but Barbara—his wife—died when she was much younger, so everything went to the kids. Leona’s a doctor, oncologist, lovely lady. Lan was a perceptive man and named her the executor. Technically, that was logical but it accomplished the obvious.”

“Family strife.”

“Charlie strife. We—my dad was still alive, headed the firm—tried to talk Lan out of designating Leona, suggested we should execute. Or Lan could find someone at one of his banks. He wouldn’t hear of it.”

“And Charlie went ballistic.”

“Nuclear. Pitting one sib against the other is always a disaster and these sibs never had much in common to begin with. Not that Leona didn’t try to make nice with Charlie. You won’t meet a more reasonable human being. But Charlie’s another matter, you don’t need to be a psychologist to see why he resents Leona. She’s everything he isn’t: smart, accomplished, happily married, a gem.”

“Charlie never got it together.”

“Charlie has spent nearly seventy years in a dream-state.”

“Delusional?”