Public space commandeered with the usual insouciance. The motoring public on Wilshire wasn’t happy and tempers flared in the single open lane. I managed to escape onto Detroit Street, hooked a right on Sixth Street, cruised across La Brea. A few blocks later: Highland, the western border of Hancock Park.

The next block was McCadden, wide and peaceful and sunny. A vintage Mercedes rolled out of a driveway. A nanny walked a baby in a navy blue, chrome-plated stroller. Birds swooped and settled and chirped gratitude. Cold winds had been whipping the city for a couple of days but the sun had broken through.

Nora Dowd’s address put her half a block south of Beverly. Most of the neighboring residences were beautifully maintained Tudors and Spanish revivals set behind brilliant emerald lawns.

Dowd’s was a two-story Craftsman, cream with dark green trim.

Inverse color scheme of her acting school and, like the PlayHouse, girded by a covered porch and shadowed by generous eaves. A low rock wall at the curb was centered by an open gate of weathered iron grillwork. Splitting the lawn was a wide flagstone walkway. Similar old-school landscaping: birds of paradise, camellias, azaleas, fifteen-foot eugenia hedges on both sides of the property, a monumental deodor cedar fringing the double garage.

Barn doors on this garage, too. Nora Dowd’s house was twice the size of her school but anyone scoring above nine on the Glasgow Coma Scale could see the parallels.

“Consistent in her taste,” I said. “An oasis of stability in this hazy, crazy town.”

“Mr. Hollywood,” he said. “You should write for Variety.”

“If I wanted to lie for a living, I’d have gone into politics.”

* * *

This porch was nicely lacquered, decorated with green wicker furniture and potted ferns. The pots were hand-painted Mexican ceramics and looked antique. The double doors were quartersawn oak stained dark brown.

Milky white leaded panes comprised the door window. Milo used his knuckles on the oak. The doors were hefty and his hard raps diminished to feeble clicks. He tried the bell. Dead.

He muttered, “So what else is new?” and stuck his business card in the split between the doors. As we returned to the Seville, he yanked his phone from his pocket as if it were a saddle burr. Nothing to report on Michaela’s Honda, or Dylan Meserve’s Toyota.

We returned to the car. As I opened the driver’s door, a sound from the house turned our heads.

Female voice, low, affectionate, talking to something white and fluffy, cradled to her chest.

She stepped out to the porch, saw us, placed the object of her affection on the floor. Looked at us some more and walked toward the sidewalk.

The physical dimensions fit Nora Dowd’s DMV stats but her hair was a blue-gray pageboy, the back cut high on the neck. She wore an oversized plum sweater over gray leggings and bright white running shoes.