Bede stepped back, appraised the Seville. Did the same for me. “You do keep it up pretty nice. You get it on a confiscation? When we invoke RICO we get all sorts of cool stuff. Just added a Bentley used to be owned by a San Diego dope dealer who made the mistake of transacting here. The right plainclothes assignment comes along, someone’s going to be riding pretty.”

She glanced back at the mansion. “I do need to have contact with the complainant. What do you want me to tell her?”

Milo looked past her. Silk drapes had parted behind a ground-floor window. Woman holding a cat.

Tall, thin, with short black hair, she wore a body-hugging champagne-colored velour tracksuit and oversized, white-framed sunglasses.

Milo said, “Some variant of the truth will work fine, Officer Bede. You want, we can take it from here.”

Officer W. Bede said, “No, I need to make contact for my report. Okay if I tell her you’re kosher, doing an investigation, but I don’t add details? Then, if she wants to talk to you, it’s your game.”

“Free country.”

“Nothing’s free in Beverly Hills.”

Chapter 21

eona Suss stepped through her gate, cradling her cat in the crook of one arm.

Officer W. Bede said, “Ma’am, turns out they’re L.A. police.”

Leona patted Bede’s shoulder. “Thank you, honey. I’ll be fine.”

Bede frowned. “I’ll be off, then, ma’am.”

“Have a nice day, dear.”

Bede’s Suburban roared off.

Leona Suss said, “They’re hiring babies nowadays.” A limp-wristed, bangled arm dangled toward Milo. “Hello, fellas.”

“Lieutenant Sturgis, ma’am. And this is Alex Delaware.”

“Leona. But you already know that.”

Her smile was so wide it threatened to split her face, sacrificing the lower half to gravity. She’d been tucked, but a while ago and with a light touch. The stretch-lines punctuating her jaw and her mouth and her forehead had begun to relent. The end result wasn’t unpleasant, hinting of what she’d been at thirty.

A nice-looking woman for any age. When she removed her shades and exposed almond-shaped, purple-blue eyes, that got upgraded to beautiful.

Angular, porcelain-skinned, finely boned, she reminded me of someone … Singer Sargent’s Madame X.

Milo said, “Sorry to bother you, ma’am.”

“Oh, you’re not bothering me, not at all.” A sunny, plummy voice fought the severe image. “I wouldn’t have even known you were here but Manfred grew alarmed.” Hefting the cat. “He’s better than any dog and considerably cleaner. The bonus is, I never had to buy him, he just showed up one morning meowing like the little panhandler he is. I gave him fresh albacore and cream from Whole Foods and we’ve had a wonderful relationship ever since. I don’t like dogs. Too clingy. How long have you fellas been here—what do you call it, surveilling?”

“We just got here, ma’am.”