“I don’t know,” Marge said. “Davidson dismissed me without many details. What do you mean, I should ‘live with it.’ Don’t you think I should say anything?”

“You can do what you want. It’s a free country.”

“You think I should just shut up and do nothing?”

“Let your work talk for you. You’re a great detective, Marge. Eventually, you’ll get a case that’ll show off your balls. When you earn your stripes with Davidson, eventually he’ll leave you be.”

“So the best I can hope for is a grudging acceptance?”

“I don’t know Davidson any better than you do. Maybe he’ll continue to be an asshole. Maybe he’ll come around and turn out to be okay.”

“And in the meantime?”

“In the meantime, we do our job. Which means you’ve got to go out there and calm down a hysterical woman. Take my word for it, Margie. The assignment is no cakewalk.”

Mountain View Estates was a fifty-home development tucked into the Santa Susana pass, replete with communal tennis courts, pools, spas, and a gymnasium for homeowner exercise in inclement weather. Built in the profligate eighties, the customized tract houses, standing on third-of-an-acre lots, started at half a mil. Some of the houses had been originally priced upward of seven figures. But then the nineties hit, and with it a crash in California real estate prices. Decker had known a fair share of people who’d gotten into trouble by overextending themselves. With a sudden downturn in income coupled with a heavy mortgage, people were often forced to sell their bits of paradise at rock-bottom prices.

The given address put them curbside to a mock Tudor roofed in genuine slate and faced with used brick and cross-hatched beams painted deep brown. The lawn was a rolling emerald wave breaking onto a shore of leafy ferns and leggy impatiens that would rebloom when the weather got warmer. The front door was wood-paneled and inlaid with stained glass. Decker parked the Plymouth, and he and Marge got out of the car. They began walking up the basketweave-brick pathway that led to the entrance.

Guarding the manor was a skinny woman with short black hair snipped close to the scalp. She wore a jewel-studded, oversized black T-shirt, black spandex leggings and backless heeled shoes, toenails polished fire-engine red just like her dragon-long fingernails. She had dark eyes and a dark complexion, her cheeks accented with blush. Half-dollar-sized gold earrings hung from her lobes. Decker wondered how a thin fold of skin could tolerate such weight. Her eyes became alive when she saw help had arrived. She tapped her watch.