“Oh, my,” she said. “It’s . . . it’s . . . ”

“A grotesque example of conspicuous consumption, aesthetic bankruptcy, and ecological insensitivity?” I suggested. “An absolute travesty?”

“Well, yes,” she said. “But at least it’s a pretty travesty. Oh, look—that one looks like something out of Gone with the Wind.”

“Yes,” I said. “It looks like what you’d get if you took a bicycle pump and inflated Tara to three times its original size.”

“Oh, Meg,” she said. “You can be so negative.”

“We’re chasing a killer, remember?” I said. “It brings out the cynical side of my personality.”

“Playground! Playground!” Timmy exclaimed. He had begun bouncing up and down in his seat with excitement.

“Look, there’s Nadine’s house,” I said, a few hundred feet farther on.

Timmy and Rose Noire both stared with me as I drove slowly past. Nadine’s house was a two story in faux Tudor style.

“Aren’t you going to stop?” Rose Noire asked.

“Not right out in front, no,” I said. “Look, it’s a cul-de-sac.”

I turned around in the circle at the end of the road and we cruised past Nadine’s house again. Rose Noire and I were still fascinated, but not Timmy.

“Want playground!” he pleaded. He managed to sound as if being prevented from going to the playground was causing actual pain.

“Oh, Timmy, I’m so sorry,” Rose Noire began. “We don’t have time to go to the playground right now—”

“Yes, we do,” I said, as I began pulling over to park the car.

“Not that I object to giving Timmy some recreation,” Rose Noire said. “But I thought the whole purpose of this trip was to pursue leads to the disappearance of his . . . um . . . ”

“The playground gives us an excellent reason for being in the neighborhood,” I said. “We came over from the low-rent district to take insidious advantage of the rich people’s playground.”

“And it’s only two houses down from the house you want to spy on,” Rose Noire said. “How convenient.”

“Yes,” I said, as I went around the car to unfasten Timmy. “You can keep an eye on Timmy while I rove the neighborhood, conspicuously carrying the real estate section from Sunday’s paper to make me look harmless.”

“You’re not going to break in, are you?” she asked, in an anxious tone. “Having intruders does such horrible things to the energy of a house—the occupants usually need a cleansing ceremony afterward, and they so rarely realize that. Of course, I suppose it helps that you’re breaking in for a good cause rather than to commit a crime, but still—it can be the start of a whole downward spiral in the lives of its occupants.”

“No, I probably won’t break in, because getting caught would start a whole downward spiral in my own life. I expect most jails have even worse energy than burgled houses. I just plan to look in the windows.”

Actually, I wouldn’t hesitate to sneak in if I thought I could, but most houses this fancy tended to have working burglar alarms. I didn’t think Rose Noire needed to know my reasoning.