“I hope there’s not a problem, Detective. Domingo looked after Mr. Taverner as carefully as if he were his own father, and we have recommended him to another older gentleman in our assisted living compound.”

I reassured her, explaining that I just wanted to talk to Mr. Rivas about Marc Whitby’s visit to Olin Taverner. She put me on hold for a minute, then came back on to say that Rivas would be here in an hour to meet with the family of the “gentleman” who might be hiring him.

“We can ask him to stop by the office early to talk to you.”

She gave me directions to the office. I found the underpass from the golf course back into the Anodyne Park community, but once inside the complex, the dark and the winding paths unsettled my sense of direction. I pulled a small flashlight from my bag, but couldn’t make out any building that I recognized. I figured all the paths would end up either at the exit or the bar, and kept going. I was wrong-this particular walkway suddenly ended at a large shrub which caught on my trousers.

As I bent to untangle myself, I dropped my flashlight. Its beam picked out wheel marks going around the evergreen. Curious, I followed them and found myself at the entrance to a culvert. The ground was damp; I saw the tracks easily. It looked as though someone had driven a golf cart through here.

I was tempted to follow the trail to see whether this culvert ended up in New Solway on its far side, but I didn’t want to muck up my good shoes in the damp soil. And I didn’t want to miss Domingo Rivas.

I turned around. More by luck than skill, I found my way to the main part of the complex. A woman walking a toy poodle directed me to the management office.

The office took up a wing of the skilled nursing facility, a building tucked well away from the jolly parts of Anodyne Park so that no one had to think of disagreeable things like dementia or death. The woman on evening duty said, Oh, yes, they were expecting me. Domingo Rivas arrived soon after me, before it occurred to the woman to ask me for identification.

Rivas was a small man, perhaps my age, dressed like a waiter in black trousers and a white shirt. He watched me with worried eyes while the administrator explained that I was a detective with some questions to ask about “the black man” who’d died across the street last weekend.

After some urging, I got her to let us use a conference room where we could be private-she clearly wanted to be part of the conversation. With a little patient coaxing, I persuaded Rivas to sit down, and even to reveal his chief worry-that someone had complained that he didn’t take good care of Olin Taverner.

“He has-had-very high standards, very high, but so do I. His apartment, it is always spotless when I leave him, his clothes also. His meals, I make them with my own hands, I am a good chef for the old who cannot eat strong food.”