He left the patrol office and drove to the party house on Stone Canyon Drive. Huge, redbrick, three-story, six-column Colonial. Black double doors, black shutters, mullioned windows, multiple gables. Milo’s guess was twenty, twenty-five rooms.

The Cossack family had moved to something more generous.

A huge dry lawn and flaking paint on some of the shutters said the maintenance schedule had slackened since the house had emptied. Shredded hedges and scraps of paper confettiing the brick walkway were the only evidence of revelry gone too far. Milo parked, got out, picked up one of the shreds, hoping for some writing, but it was soft and absorbent and blank—heavy-duty paper towel. The gate to the backyard was bolted and opaque. He peered over, saw a big blue egg of a pool, rolling greenery, lots of brick patio, blue jays pecking. Behind one of the hedges, the glint of glass—cans and bottles.

The nearest neighbor was to the south, well separated from the colonial by the broad lawns of both houses. A much smaller, meticulously maintained one-story ranch emblazoned with flower beds and fronted by dwarf junipers trimmed Japanese-style. The northern border of the Cossack property was marked by a ten-foot stone wall that went on for a good thousand feet up Stone Canyon. Probably some multiacre estate, a humongous chateau pushed back too far from the street to be visible.

Milo walked across the dry lawn and the colonial’s empty driveway, up to the ranch house’s front door. Teak door, with a shiny brass knocker shaped like a swan. Off to the right a small cement Shinto shrine presided over a tiny, babbling stream.

A very tall woman in her late sixties answered his ring. Stout and regal with puffy, rouged cheeks, she wore her silver hair tied back in a bun so tight it looked painful, had sheathed her impressive frame in a cream kimono hand-painted with herons and butterflies. In one liver-spotted hand was an ivory-handled brush with pointed bristles tipped with black ink. Even in black satin flat slippers she was nearly eye level with Milo. Heels would have made her a giantess.

“Ye-es?” Watchful eyes, deliberate contralto.

Out came the badge. “Detective Sturgis, Mrs. . . .”

“Schwartzman. What brings a detective to Bel Air?”

“Well, ma’am, last Friday your neighbors had a party—”

“A party,” she said, as if the description was absurd. She aimed the brush at the empty Colonial. “More like rooting at the trough. The aptly named Cossacks.”

“Aptly named?”

“Barbarians,” said Mrs. Schwartzman. “A scourge.”

“You’ve had problems with them before.”

“They lived there for less than two years, let the place go to seed. That’s their pattern, apparently. Move in, degrade, move out.”

“To something bigger.”

“But of course. Bigger is better, right? They’re vulgarians. No surprise, given what the father does.”

“What does he do?”