“What, in particular, would you like to know?”

“Anything you can tell me about him. And if you’re familiar with a woman he knew named Eleanor Green, that would be extremely helpful.”

“Well,” she said, “this is a person we’re going to discuss and that deserves a more personal setting than the phone, don’t you think? Why don’t you drop by tomorrow morning, say eleven? Where are you located?”

“Beverly Glen.”

“We’re not far at all, here’s the address.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Monahan.”

“You’re quite welcome.”

Board seats and ownership of a multimillion-dollar show car had led me to expect residence in Beverly Hills’ uppermost echelons. A manse at the northern edge of the flats, or one of the mammoth estates nestled in the hillocks above Sunset.

The address Grace Monahan gave me was on South Rodeo Drive, a pleasant but low-key neighborhood well away from the try-too-hard glitz and glassy-eyed tourism of the twenty-four-karat shopping district.

The numbers matched a nondescript, two-story, not-quite-Colonial apartment building on a block of similar structures, shadowed by the white marble monument on Wilshire that was Saks Fifth Avenue.

Monahan: 2A. A once-wealthy couple who’d fallen on hard times? The real reason for selling the blue Duesenberg?

I climbed white-painted concrete steps to a skimpy landing ringed by three units. The wooden door to 2A was open but blocked by a screen door. No entry hall meant a clear view into a low, dim living room. Music and the smell of coffee blew through the mesh. Two people sat on a tufted floral sofa. The woman got up and unlatched the screen.

“Doctor? Grace.”

Five and a half feet tall in spangled ballet slippers, Grace Monahan wore a peach-colored velvet jumpsuit and serious gold jewelry at all the pressure points. Her hair was subtly hennaed, thick and straight, reaching an inch below her shoulder blades. Her makeup was discreet, highlighting clear, wide brown eyes. The Pebble Beach photo was a decade old but she hadn’t aged visibly. Nothing to do with artifice; smile lines and crow’s-feet abounded, along with the inevitable loosening of flesh that either softens a face or blurs it, depending on self-esteem at seventy.

The duration and warmth of Grace Monahan’s smile said life was just grand in her eighth decade. One of those women who’d been a knockout from birth and had avoided addiction to youth.

She took my hand and drew me inside. “Do come in. Some coffee? We get ours from Santa Fe, it’s flavored with piñon, if you haven’t tried it, you must.”

“I’ve had it, am happy to repeat the experience.”

“You know Santa Fe?”

“Been there a couple of times.”

“We winter there because we love clean snow—have a seat, please. Anywhere is fine.”