She studied a silver fingernail. “You’re thinking how bizarre, this woman is faking serenity or she’s crazy. But you need to understand the relationship that Mark and I shared for forty-two years. He plucked me from the throes of Hollywood desperation when I was barely twenty-four. He was twenty-six but seemed oh so worldly to a girl from Kansas. We were inseparable. Then he had the nerve to die on me.” Brittle laughter. “Even beautiful relationships have their ups and downs, fellas. Mark and I chose to endure the downs in order to luxuriate in the ups. That necessitated a certain degree of tolerance.”

Both of us nodded.

“Don’t pretend,” said Leona Suss. “You people are paid to judge.”

Milo said, “We don’t judge that kind of thing, Mrs. Suss.”

“Missus. I still like the sound of that. I was Mark’s only missus.” Waving a languid hand around the immense room. “If the poor, benighted boy needed to cut loose from time to time, so be it. We were in the rag trade, I learned to be realistic.”

“About …”

“The trollops who model bras and panties and nighties happen to possess the most spectacular bodies on the planet. We ran a high-volume business, meaning new panties and bras and nighties three times a year. Meaning a new crop of trollops three times a year. Can you imagine the temptation Mark faced on a daily basis? I never went to college, fellas, but I’m not stupid. As long as Mark remained faithful to me, he was free to engage in little bits of recreation.”

I said, “Adventures.”

“No, recreation. Mark was not an adventurous person. Didn’t like to travel, didn’t like to expand his comfort zone, it was all I could do to get him to take a Crystal cruise once a year. If you need me to be specific, what I’m referring to is inserting his little you-know-what into a variety of young, moist you-know-whats.”

“So Tara was just another chapter in a long book.”

She favored me with a solemn stare that slid into amusement. “You do have a way with words. Yes, that’s as good a way to put it as any.”

“Was she one of your lingerie models?”

“No, Mark found her after he retired. Online. Which I find hilarious because the entire time we were in business, you couldn’t get him near a computer and we were forced to hire strange little autistic men to attend to our technical needs. So what does he do? Buys himself a laptop that he doesn’t even know how to turn on. Sets it up in his den and begins spending more and more time with it. It got to a point where he’d disappear for hours. I suppose you could call it an addiction.”

Milo said, “What else did he tell you about Tara?”