First stop: the four walls of cypress. An opening on the east side led us into a flat area the size of two football fields. One corner was devoted to a safety-fenced half-Olympic pool with a padlocked, alarmed gate. The opposing corner housed a sunken tennis court. Diagonal to that were a regulation basketball court, a rubber-matted area set up with four trampolines, a moon-bounce, a tetherball pole, two Ping-Pong tables, and a sand pit that hosted a plastic slide, a swing-set, a seesaw, and a yellow vinyl tunnel-maze.

Milo said, “Kid-Heaven, courtesy Super Mom. What’s that, making up for her own shitty childhood?”

“Could be, if you’re in an analytical mood.”

“You’re not?”

“Let’s find the maids and the cook.”

The interior of the house was what you’d expect: the requisite vaulted rooms, quarry-emptying expanses of marble, enough polished wood to threaten a rain forest. The art on the walls was professionally spaced, perfectly framed and lit: oil paintings biased toward women and children as subjects and the kind of pastel landscape that combats insomnia.

The maids were easy to find. Imelda Rojas polished silver in the dining room, Lupe Soto folded laundry in a white-tiled utility room the size of some New York apartments, Maria Elena Miramonte tidied up a playroom that would thrill a preschool class. All three women were in their sixties, solidly built and well groomed, wearing impeccable powder-blue uniforms.

Milo spoke to them individually.

Easy consensus: Senora Prema was wonderful.

Senor Donny was never here.

Despite that, Rader’s name elicited tension but when Milo asked Imelda Rojas what she thought of him she insisted she didn’t know. He kept up the questioning but stepped aside early on and punted to me. My doctorate wasn’t any help, at first; Maria and Imelda were unable, or unwilling, to articulate their feelings about Rader. Then Lupe Soto opined that he was “a sinner,” and when pressed, specified the nature of Rader’s iniquities.

“Putas, always.”

“Lots of girls.”

“No girls, senor, putas. Is good he no live here. Better for the chillin they no see that.”

“He used to bring putas here?”

Lupe said, “You kidding? Always there.”

“His place.”

“Yeah, but we know.”

“How?”

“The TV in the kitchen.”

“Could you show me, please?”

She led us down a double staircase too grand for Tara through a succession of big bright sitting rooms and into a tin-ceilinged, maple-and-steel kitchen easily forty feet long. Mounted on the far wall were a dozen small screens.

Lupe Soto pointed to one. The image was inert. One of the wooden gates.

“See?”

I said, “He didn’t try to hide what he was doing.”

“Nah.”

I showed her the well-worn mug shot of Charlene Chambers aka Qeesha D’Embo aka Simone Chambord.

“La negra?” said Lupe Soto. “Yeah, she, too.”

“She went over to Senor Donny’s place?”

“All the time. But I don tell Senora Prema.”

“Why not?”