Not far from the site of her daughter’s suicide. Or the Buy-Rite mall, or the park where her granddaughter had been taken to be murdered.

A short drive, also, to the Daneys’ house in Van Nuys.

But for Barnett Malley’s escape to rural solitude, the case had tossed a narrow net.

Milo got the number, spoke briefly, finished with, “Thanks, ma’am, will do.”

“Off we go,” he said. “She’s surprised that I want to talk to her about Barnett, not upset. Just the opposite, she’s lonely as hell.”

“You picked that up in a thirty-second conversation?”

“I didn’t pick up anything,” he said. “She came right out with it. ‘I’m a lonely woman, Lieutenant. Any company would be welcome.’ ”

* * *

The house was a cantaloupe orange one-story ranch on a bright, hot street. The lawn was green pebbles. A garden hose coiled loosely near the front steps, maybe for watering the elephant’s ears that covered half the front wall. This sisal doormat read DJB over a heraldic crest. The bell chimed do-re-mi.

The woman who opened the door was petite, of indeterminate middle age, with narrow blue eyes and a glossy tension around the cheekbones that trumpeted the virtues of surgical steel. She wore a fitted orange crepe blouse over black leggings and red Chinatown slippers embroidered with dragons. Her brown hair was snipped boy-short with feathery sideburns that curled forward. Her right hand gripped a remote control. A cigarette in her left dribbled smoke that trailed downward and dissolved before it reached her knee.

She tucked the remote under her arm. “Lieutenant? That didn’t take long. I’m Nina.” Her mouth smiled but the surrounding glassy skin didn’t cooperate and the expression was robbed of emotional content.

The house had no entry foyer and we stepped directly into a paneled room topped by a slanted beamed ceiling. All the wood was pickled oak, yellowed by decades. The carpet was rust plush flecked with blue, the furniture beige, tightly upholstered and newish, as if it had been plucked intact from a showroom. A paneled wet bar housed glasses and bottles and a flat-screen TV sat on the brown tile counter. The set was on. Courtroom dispute, the sound muted— people mouthing aggression; a bald, scowling judge wielding a gavel in a way that couldn’t escape Freudian theory.

Nina Balquin said, “Love that stuff, it’s nice to see idiots get what they’ve got coming.” Aiming her remote, she switched off. “Drinks, gentlemen?”

“No, thanks.”

“It got kind of warm outside.”

“We’re fine, ma’am.”

“Well, I’m having.” She walked to the bar and poured herself something clear from a chrome pitcher. “Make yourselves comfortable.”