The Murder Book by Jonathan Kellerman Page A

style.”
    “Which is?”
    “Being treated like they’re important. If that doesn’t work, threaten to call the parents.”
    “And if that doesn’t work?”
    “That usually works. Gotta go, nice talking to you.”
    “I appreciate the time, Officer. Listen, if I came by and showed a photo around, would there be a chance anyone would recognize a face?”
    “Whose face?”
    “The vic’s.”
    “No way. Like I said, it was a swarm. After a while they all start to look alike.”
    “Rich kids?”
    “Any kids.”
     
     
    It was nearly 10 A.M. , and Schwinn still hadn’t shown up. Figuring sooner rather than later was the best time to spring Janie’s photo on Del Monte and his patrol buddies, Milo threw on his jacket and left the station.
    Del Monte had been decent enough to call and look where it got him.
    No good deed goes unpunished.
    It took nearly forty minutes to reach Bel Air. The patrol office was a white, tile-roofed bungalow tucked behind the west gate. Lots of architectural detail inside and out — Milo would’ve been happy to make it his house. He’d heard that the gates and the private-cop scrutiny had been instituted by Howard Hughes when he lived in Bel Air because the billionaire didn’t trust LAPD.
    The rich taking care of their own. Just like the party on Stone Canyon: ticked-off neighbors, but everything kept private, no nuisance call had reached the West L.A. station.
    Del Monte was at the front desk, and when Milo came in, his dark, round face turned sour. Milo apologized and whipped out a crime-scene snap he’d taken from the pile Schwinn had left in his desk. The least horrifying of the collection — side view of Janie’s face, just the hint of ligature ring around the neck. Del Monte’s response was a cursory head flick. Two other guards were drinking coffee, and they gave the picture more careful study, then shook their heads. Milo would have liked to show Melinda Waters’s photo, but Schwinn had pocketed it.
    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.