Milo said, “Don’t need you for a diagnosis. She’s loony. Even without the dope.”

“What dope?”

“You didn’t smell it on her? She stinks of devil weed, dude. Those eyes?”

Red rims, lack of coordination, answers that seemed just a bit off-time. “I must be slipping.”

“You didn’t get close enough to smell it. When I handed her my business card, she reeked. Must’ve just finished toking.”

“Probably why she didn’t answer the door.”

He gazed down the block. The speck that was Nora Dowd had vanished. “Nuts and stoned and doesn’t keep records. Wonder if she married money or inherited it. Or maybe she had her time at the bottom of the funnel and invested well.”

“Never heard of her.”

“Like she said, the axis shifts.”

“Planets have axes, stars don’t.”

“Whatever. Not very sympathetic to Michaela, was she?”

“Not even faking it. When Dylan Meserve came up she bolted. Maybe because he avails himself in all sorts of ways.”

“Creative consultant,” he said. “Yeah, they’re doing the nasty.”

“Situation like that,” I said, “a gorgeous young woman could be a threat to a woman of her age.”

“Couple of good-looking kids, up in the hills, naked...Dowd’s gotta be what, forty-five, fifty?”

“That would be my guess.”

“Rich lady gets her strokes playing guru to the lean and hungry and pretty...she picks Dylan out of the fold, he goes and fools with Michaela. Yeah, it’s a motive, ain’t it? Maybe she told Dylan to clean things up. For all we know, he’s right there, holed up in that big house of hers, got his wheels stashed in her garage.”

I glanced back at the big, cream house. “It would also be a nice quiet place to keep Michaela while they figured out what to do with her.”

“Load her in the Range Rover and dump her near her apartment to distance themselves.” He crammed his hands in his pockets. “Wouldn’t that be ugger-ly. Okay, let’s see what the neighbors have to say about Ms. Stoner.”

* * *

Three bell rings brought three cleaning ladies to the door, each one intoning, “Senora no esta en la casa.”

At the well-kept brick Tudor three doors north of Nora Dowd’s house, an elderly man wearing a bright green cardigan, a red wool shirt, gray plaid pants, and burgundy house slippers studied us over the rim of his old-fashioned. The toes of his slippers were embroidered with black wolves’ heads. The dim marble entry behind him gave off a whiff of eau de codger.

He took a long time to examine Milo’s business card. Reacted to Milo’s inquiry about Nora Dowd with, “That one? Why?” A voice like gravel under heavy footsteps.

“Routine questions, sir.”