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and Santa Monica, just north of the West L.A. station.
    The bones had made the morning news, print and TV, with Holly Ruche’s name left out and the neighborhood described as “affluent Westside.” Milo was carrying a folded
Times
by his side. He wore a lint-gray suit, algae-green shirt, poly tie the color of venous blood. The sun wasn’t kind to his pockmarked face; that and his size and his glower made him someone you’d cross the street to avoid.
    He appreciates the value of publicity as much as any experienced detective. But he likes to control the flow, and I expected him to be angry about the leak. He got into the Seville, stretched, yawned, said “Top of the morning,” thumbed to the editorial pages. Scanning the op-ed columns, he muttered cheerfully: “Stupid, stupid, stupid, and big surprise
 … more
stupid.”
    Folding the paper, he tossed it in back.
    I said, “Any tips come in from the story?”
    “Nothing serious, so far. Moe and Sean are working the phones.The good news for Mr. and Mrs. Ruche is the dogs turned up nothing else, ditto for radar and sniff-tubes. Nothing remotely iffy in the house, either, so looks like we’ve got a lone antique whodunit, not a psycho cemetery.”
    He stretched some more.
    I said, “You’re okay with the leak.”
    “That’s like saying I’m okay with earthquakes. What’s my choice?”
    He closed his eyes, kept them shut as I got on the 405. By the time I was over the hills and dipping down into the Valley and the 101 East, he was snoring with glee.
    Burbank is lots of things: a working- to middle-class suburb, host to film lots and TV studios, no-nonsense neighbor to the mansions and estates of Toluca Lake where Bob Hope, William Holden, the Three Stooges, and other luminaries established a celebrity outpost that avoided the Westside riffraff.
    The city also butts up against Griffith Park and has its own equestrian center and horse trails. John Jacob Del Rios lived just northeast of the park, on a street of ranch houses set on half-acre lots. Paddocks were visible at the ends of driveways. The aroma of well-seasoned equine dung seasoned the air. A shortage of trees helped the sun along and as noon approached, the asphalt simmered and a scorch, like that of an iron left too long on wool, melded with the horse odors.
    Del Rios’s residence was redwood-sided, shingle-roofed, fronted by a marine-buzz lawn. An old wagon wheel was propped to the left of the door. A white Suburban with utility tires was parked at the onset of the driveway, inches behind a horse trailer. No paddock in view but a corral fashioned from metal piping housed a beautiful black mare with a white diamond on her chest. She watched us approach, gave two short blinks, flicked her tail.
    I took the time to get a closer look. She cocked her head flirtatiously.
    Glossy coat, soft eyes. Years ago, I’d take breaks from the cancer wards and ride up at Sunset Ranch, near the Hollywood sign. I loved horses. It had been too long.
    I smiled at the mare. She winked.
    Milo said, “C’mon, Hopalong, time to meet John Wayne.”
    The man who answered the door was more Gregory Peck than Duke: six five, and patrician, with a shelf of deeply cleft chin, a well-aligned arrogantly tilted nose, and thick hair as snowy as well-beaten egg whites. His eyes were clear blue, his skin clear bronze veneered by a fine mesh of wrinkles, his build still athletically proportioned save for some hunching of the shoulders and widening of the hips. Nearing ninety, John J. Del Rio looked fifteen years younger.
    He wore a blue-and-white mini-check long-sleeved shirt, navy slacks, black calfskin loafers. The blue-faced steel Rolex on his left wrist was chunky and authoritative. Rimless, hexagonal eyeglasses gave him the look of a popular professor. Emeritus for years, but invited back to campus often.
    Or one of those actors hired by health insurance companies to play Elderly-but-Fit on their scam commercials.
    He proffered a hand