The downside is a windowless work space the size of a closet. Milo is long-limbed and bulky and when he stretches he often touches plaster. When he’s in a certain mood the place has the feel of an old-fashioned zoo cage, one of those claustrophobic confinements utilized before people started thinking of animals as having souls.

He sank down into his desk chair, setting off a tirade of squeaks, read the list, passed it over.

Holly Ruche’s dream abode was a thirty-one-hundred-square-foot single-family residence situated in what was then the Monte Mar-Vista Tract, completed on January 5, 1927, and sold three months later to Mr. and Mrs. Jacob Thornton. After ten years, possession passed to the Thorntons’ daughter, Marjorie, who unloaded the property thirteen months later to Dr. and Mrs. Malcolm Crowell Larner.

The Larners lived there until 1943, when the deed was transferred to Dr. and Mrs. George J. Del Rios. The Del Rioses resided at the property until 1955, after which possession shifted to the Del Rios Family Trust. In 1961, ownership passed to the Robert and Alice Hannah Family Trust and in ’74 Alice Hannah, newly widowed, took sole possession, a status that had endured until sixty days ago when her heirs sold to Mr. and Mrs. Matthew Ruche.

Initial purchase price: forty-eight hundred dollars. Holly and Matt had gotten a recession bargain at nine hundred forty thousand dollars, with a down payment of a hundred seventy-five thousand and the remainder financed by a low-interest loan.

Milo jabbed the list twice. “Dr. Larner to Dr. Del Rios. The time frame works, that box came from a hospital, and a shady white-coat fits with swiping medical equipment for personal use.”

I said, “I’d start with the period of those newspaper clippings—post-’51. That narrows it to the Del Rioses’ ownership.”

“Agreed. Let’s see what we can learn about these folk.”

He plugged in his department password and typed away, chewing a cold cigar to pulp. Official databases yielded nothing on Dr. George Del Rios other than a death certificate in 1947, age sixty-three, natural causes. A search for other decedents with the same surname pulled up Del Rios, Ethel A., DOD 1954, age sixty-four, cancer, and Del Rios, Edward A., DOD 1960, age forty-five, vehicular accident.

“I like Edward A. as a starting point,” he said. “The trust sold the house a year after he died, so there’s a decent chance he was George and Ethel’s boy and inherited the place.”

I said, “A boy in his thirties who George and Ethel might’ve worried about, so they left the house in trust rather than bequeathed it to him outright. And even though the trustee didn’t get it until ’55, a son could have had access to the property before then, when Mama was living there alone.”

“She goes to bridge club, he digs a little hole.”

“Maybe their lack of faith was due to lifestyle issues.”

“Eddie’s a miscreant.”