As they came out of the Japanese garden, they climbed a steep path that brought them out of the woods to the top of the hill where Gaby got her first full look at the main house, a three-story villa built in the 1920s in the Mission Revival style. In the center, cream-colored, stuccoed walls swooped up to a couple of red-tiled towers, forming the boundaries of the original house. In the 1980s, the owner at the time, a developer who’d since lent his name to museums and performance halls across the state, had added a wing to each end of the original house. To the left side, he’d built on a great room and a library and, above them, an in-law suite; to the right he’d added a solarium and, above that, the master suite. The children’s rooms were on the third floor. An arcade ran between the two tower bedrooms, the perfect place for a mariner’s wife or a ghost to stroll, but for the children’s safety, Ted and Holly had had the doors that led out to the arcade sealed shut. From the towers and from the tall windows that spanned the first and second floors of the original dwelling, there were unobstructed views of the rest of the Palisades below and the Pacific Ocean in the distance.

Years ago, Ted had bought the neighboring lots and demolished those homes, leaving just this showpiece that was an ode to both Old Hollywood and California’s missionary past. Someone else might have left the adjacent lots undeveloped, the ultimate flex in a neighborhood where space was at a premium. There was enough land to have planted a vineyard or even a small citrus grove, but instead Ted and Holly had ordered the construction of a series of cottages that looped around the back of the terrace like a garland.

At the top of the hill, Zanne veered left and the path wrapped around behind the main house to the terrace. She paused to let Gaby take in the view.

“I think I saw this in a magazine once,” Gaby said.

“The first time I saw it, I felt like I was in a movie. This way.”

She led Gaby beyond the ivy-covered retaining wall that enclosed the pool and obscured the outlying cottages from the terrace and the main house.

As they passed each cottage, Zanne called out their names. “Guest...gym...travel...and administrative.”

She stopped at the last cottage and they went in. The administrative cottage was H-shaped. In the center was a common space with a galley kitchen, dining table, and a sofa. On either side were two hallways lined with workstations. Zanne led the way down the right-side hallway, past Steve and Julia, the EAs who were speaking into headsets. At the end of the hall she said, “This is me.”

Gaby was silent a moment, then said, “It’s like a serial killer sits here.”