“Quiet.”

“Sounds nice.”

I told him about driving up to Latigo, left out the rest of my motor tour and the memories it had evoked.

He said, “No kidding. I was up there myself, early in the morning. Pretty, no?”

“And out of the way.”

“I talked to a few neighbors, including the old guy Michaela scared when she jumped out naked. No one had ever seen her or Meserve there before. Also, I got Mr. Albert Beamish on the phone this morning. Saturday and Sunday he spends at his place in Palm Desert. Sunshine did nothing for his disposition. What he was itching to tell me was he spotted Nora’s Range Rover leaving her house Friday around nine.”

“Right after our meeting at Brad’s house.”

“Maybe Brad advised her to take a vacation. Or she just felt like some down time and didn’t bother to tell her students because she’s an indolent rich girl. I asked Beamish to keep an eye out, thanked him for being observant. He barks back at me, ‘Show your gratitude by doing your job with minimal competence.’ ”

I laughed. “Did his powers of observation lead to checking the Rover’s occupants?”

“If only. Meserve’s car still hasn’t shown up but if he’s with Nora, the two of them could be using hers and stashing his. As in Nora’s garage, or the one at the PlayHouse. Maybe I can pry a door and take a peek. On a whole other tack, Reynold Peaty is being true to his loser-loner self. Stayed in his apartment all weekend. I gave Sean Sunday off because he’s religious, so it’s possible we missed something. But I did watch the place in the afternoon around four.”

Missing me by a couple of hours. Again.

“Last and possibly least,” he said, “Tori Giacomo’s building has changed ownership twice since she lived there. The original owners were a couple of nonagenarian sisters who passed on naturally. The property went to probate, a speculator from Vegas picked it up cheap then resold to a consortium of businessmen from Koreatown. No records of any old tenants, the aroma of futility fills the air.”

“When are you heading over to Nora’s?”

“Pulling up as we speak…” A car door slammed. “I am now heading for her door. Knock knock- ” He raised his voice to an androgynous alto: “Who’s there? Lieutenant Sturgis. Lieutenant Sturgis who?…Hear that, Alex?”

“Hear what?”

“Exactly. Okay, now I’m at the garage…no give, locked…where’s a battering ram when you need it? Tha-tha-that’s all, folks, this has been a presentation of the Useless Travel Channel.”

Tuesday morning, I called Robin, got her machine, hung up.

In my office, a dusty stack of psych journals beckoned. A twenty-page treatise on the eye-blink reflex in schizophrenic Hooded rats lowered my eyelids.

I went down to the pond and fed the koi. For fish, they’re smart, have learned to swarm the moment I come down the stairs. It’s nice to be wanted.

Warm air and sloshing water put me under again. The next thing I saw was Milo’s big face crowding my visual field.

Smile as wide as a continent. Scariest clown in the known world. I mumbled some kind of greeting.

“What’s with you?” he said. “Snoozing midday like a codger?”

“What time is it?”

He told me. An hour had vanished. “What’s next, white shoes and dinner at four?”

“Robin naps.”

“Robin has a real job.”

I got to my feet and yawned. The fish sped toward me. Milo hummed the theme from Jaws. In his hand was a folder. Unmistakable shade of blue.

“A new one?” I said.

Instead of answering, he climbed back up to the house. I cleared my head and followed.

He sat himself at the kitchen table, napkin tucked into his collar, dishes and utensils set for one. Half a dozen slices of toast, runny Vesuvius of scrambled eggs, sixteen-ounce glass of orange juice, half emptied.

He wiped pulp from his lips. “Love this place. Breakfast served any time.”

“How long have you been here?”

“Long enough to rob you blind if such were my intention. Why can’t I convince you to lock your door?”

“No one drops in but you.”

“This isn’t a visit, it’s business.” He stabbed the egg mound, slid the blue folder across the table. A second file separated from the first. “Read ’em and wake.”

A pair of missing persons cases. Gaidelas, A. Gaidelas, C.

Consecutive case numbers.

“Two more girls?” I said. “Sisters?”

“Read.”

Andrew and Catherine Gaidelas, forty-eight and forty-five, respectively, had disappeared two months after Tori Giacomo.

The couple, married twenty years with no children, were owners of a beauty parlor in Toledo, Ohio, called Locks of Luck. In L.A. for a spring vacation, they’d been staying in Sherman Oaks with Cathy’s sister and brother-in-law, Dr. and Mrs. Barry Palmer. On a clear, crisp Tuesday in April the Palmers went to work and the Gaidelases left to go hiking in the Malibu mountains. They hadn’t been seen since.

Identical report in both files. I read Catherine’s. “Doesn’t say where in Malibu.”

“Doesn’t say a lot of things. Keep going.”

The facts were sketchy, with no apparent links to Michaela or Tori. Was I missing something? Then I came to the final paragraph.

Subject C. Gaidelas’s sister, Susan Palmer, reports Cathy and Andy said they were coming out to Calif for vacation but after they got there talked about staying for a while so they could “break into acting.” S. Palmer reports her sister did some “modeling and theater” after high school and used to talk about becoming an actress. A. Gaidelas didn’t have acting experience but everyone back home thought he was a handsome guy who “looked like Dennis Quaid.” S. Palmer reports Andy and Cathy were tired of running a beauty parlor and didn’t like the cold weather in Ohio. Cathy said she thought they could get some commercials because they looked “all-American.” She also talked about “getting serious and taking acting lessons” and S. Palmer thinks Cathy contacted some acting schools but doesn’t know which ones.

At the rear were two color head-shots.

Cathy and Andy Gaidelas were both fair-haired and blue-eyed with disarming smiles. Cathy had posed in a sleeveless black dress trimmed with rhinestones and matching pendant earrings. Full-faced, with plump shoulders, she had teased platinum hair, a strong chin, a thin, straight nose.

Her husband was a tousled gray-blond, long-faced and craggy in a white button-down shirt that exposed curls of pale chest hair. I supposed his off-kilter grin had a Dennis Quaid charm. Any other similarities to the actor eluded me.

All-American couple well into middle age. They might qualify for Mom and Dad parts on commercials. Pitches for dog food, TV dinners, garbage bags…

I shut the file.

Milo said, “Wannabe stars and now they’re gone. Am I reaching?”

“How’d you come across it?”

“Checking out other MP cases with either an acting connection or a Malibu link. As usual, the computer flagged nothing, but a sheriff’s detective remembered the Gaidelases as would-be thespians. In his mind, no homicide, two adults rabbiting. I reached the brother-in-law, plastic surgeon. The Gaidelases are still missing, family got fed up with the sheriffs, tried the P.I. route, went through three investigators. The first two gave them zilch, the third turned up the fact that the Gaidelases’ rental car had showed up five weeks after the disappearance, sent them a big bill and said that’s all she could do.”

“The sheriffs never thought to tell the family about the car?”

“Ventura police auto-recovery case, sheriffs weren’t even aware of it.”

“Where was it found?”

“Camarillo. One of the parking lots at that big discount shopping outlet they’ve got there.”