Milo said, “Don’t need you for a diagnosis.She’s loony. Even without the dope.”
“What dope?”
“You didn’t smell it on her? She stinks of devil weed, dude. Those eyes?”
Red rims, lack of coordination, answers that seemed just a bit off-time. “Imust be slipping.”
“You didn’t get close enough to smell it. When I handed her my business card,she reeked. Must’ve just finished toking.”
“Probably why she didn’t answer the door.”
He gazed down the block. The speck that was Nora Dowd had vanished. “Nutsand stoned and doesn’t keep records. Wonder if she married money or inheritedit. Or maybe she had her time at the bottom of the funnel and invested well.”
“Never heard of her.”
“Like she said, the axis shifts.”
“Planets have axes, stars don’t.”
“Whatever. Not very sympathetic to Michaela, was she?”
“Not even faking it. When Dylan Meserve came up she bolted. Maybe because heavails himself in all sorts of ways.”
“Creative consultant,” he said. “Yeah, they’re doing the nasty.”
“Situation like that,” I said, “a gorgeous young woman could be a threat toa woman of her age.”
“Couple of good-looking kids, up in the hills, naked…Dowd’s gotta be what,forty-five, fifty?”
“That would be my guess.”
“Rich lady gets her strokes playing guru to the lean and hungry andpretty…she picks Dylan out of the fold, he goes and fools with Michaela. Yeah,it’s a motive, ain’t it? Maybe she told Dylan to clean things up. For all weknow, he’s right there, holed up in that big house of hers, got his wheelsstashed in her garage.”
I glanced back at the big, cream house. “It would also be a nice quiet placeto keep Michaela while they figured out what to do with her.”
“Load her in the Range Rover and dump her near her apartment to distancethemselves.” He crammed his hands in his pockets. “Wouldn’t that be ugger-ly.Okay, let’s see what the neighbors have to say about Ms. Stoner.”
 
Three bell rings brought three cleaning ladies to the door, each one intoning,“Senora no esta en la casa.”
At the well-kept brick Tudor three doors north of Nora Dowd’s house, anelderly man wearing a bright green cardigan, a red wool shirt, gray plaidpants, and burgundy house slippers studied us over the rim of hisold-fashioned. The toes of his slippers were embroidered with black wolves’heads. The dim marble entry behind him gave off a whiff of eau de codger.
He took a long time to examine Milo’sbusiness card. Reacted to Milo’s inquiry aboutNora Dowd with, “That one? Why?” A voice like gravel under heavy footsteps.
“Routine questions, sir.”
“Don’t give me that malarkey.” Tall but bent, he had foxed-paper skin,coarse white hair, and clouded blue eyes. Stiff fingers bent the card in halfand palmed it. A fleshy, open-pored nose dipped toward a lopsided twig of anupper lip. “Albert Beamish, formerly of Martin, Crutch, and Melvyn andninety-three other partners until the mandatory out-to-pasture clause kicked inand they sentenced me to ‘emeritus.’ That was eighteen years ago so do thearithmetic and choose your words efficiently. I could drop dead right in frontof you and you’d have to lie to someone else.”
“Till a hundred and twenty, sir.”
Albert Beamish said, “Get on with it, kiddo. What’d that one do?”
“One of her students was murdered and we’re getting background informationfrom people who knew the victim.”
“And you spoke to her and you saw what a lunatic she is.”
Milo chuckled.
Albert Beamish said, “Students? They let her teach? When did that start?”
“She runs her own acting school.”
Beamish’s laughter was jagged. It took a while for his cocktail to reach hislips. “Acting. That’s just more of the same.”
“The same what?”
“Being the indolent, spoiled brat she’s always been.”
Milo said, “You’ve known her for a while.”
“She grew up in that overgrown log cabin. Her grandfather built it back inthe twenties, a blight on the neighborhood then, just as it is now. Doesn’tfit, should be in Pasadenaor some place where they like that kind of thing.” Beamish’s filmy irises aimedacross the street. “You see any others like it around here?”
“No, sir.”
“There’............