"In the garage," said Itatani. "He set up a whole shop. He kept more movie stuff in there, too. Lights, cables, all kinds of things."

"What kind of tools did he have in the shop?"

"The usual," said Itatani. "Power drill, hand tools, power saws. He said he sometimes built his own sets."

The garage was flat-roofed and double-width, taking up a third of the tiny backyard. Outsized for the house. I remarked on that.

Itatani unlocked the sliding metal door and shoved it up. "I enlarged it years ago, figured it would make the place easier to rent."

Inside were walls paneled in cheap fake oak, a cement floor, an open-beam ceiling with a fluorescent fixture dangling from a header. The smell of disinfectant burned my nose.

"You've cleaned this, too," said Milo.

"First thing I cleaned," said Itatani. "The hairdresser brought cats in. Against the rules-he had a no-pets lease. Litter boxes and those scratch things all over the place. Took days to air out the stink." He sniffed. "Finally."

Milo paced the garage, examined the walls, then the floor. He stopped at the rear left-hand corner, beckoned me over. Itatani came, too.

Faint mocha-colored splotch, amoebic, eight or nine inches square.

Milo knelt and put his face close to the wall, pointed. Specks of the same hue dotted the paneling. Brown on brown, barely visible.

Itatani said, "Cat pee. I was able to scrub some of it off."

"What did it look like before you cleaned it?"

"A little darker."

Milo got up and walked along the back wall very slowly. Stopped a few feet down, wrote in his pad. Another splotch, smaller.

"What?" said Itatani.

Milo didn't answer.

"What?" Itatani repeated. "Oh-you don't- Oh, no ..." For the first time, he was sweating.

Milo cell-phoned the crime-scene team, apologized to Itatani for the impending disruption, and asked him to stay clear of the garage. Then he got some yellow tape from the unmarked and stretched it across the driveway.

Itatani said, "Still looks like cat dirt to me," and went to sit in his Oldsmobile.

Milo and I walked over to the south-side neighbor. Another Spanish house, bright white. The mat in front of the door said

GO AWAY. Very loud classical music pounded through the walls. No response to the doorbell. Several hard knocks finally opened the door two inches, revealing one bright blue eye, a slice of white skin, a smudge of red mouth.

"What?" a cracked voice screeched.

Milo shouted back, "Police, ma'am!"

"Show me some I.D."

Milo held out the badge. The blue eye moved closer, pupil contracting as it confronted daylight.

"Closer," the voice demanded.

Milo put the badge right up against the crack. The blue eye blinked. Several seconds passed. The door opened.