Two women stood near the double doors that opened to the dining room. One was rail-thin, blond, late thirties, wearing a black velour lounging outfit that consisted of pants and a matching zippered jacket with something sparkly underneath. The other woman was also rail-thin and blond, in a snug black power suit and spike heels.

The portion of the room I could see had unadorned walls padded with a pale green silk. There were fifteen oversize squares and rectangles of darker fabric where paintings had once hung, protecting the fabric from fading. In the center of each was a recessed receptacle that contained an electrical outlet. That way picture lights could be affixed to the frame without a length of unsightly electrical wire hanging down to the baseboards. In my Aunt Gin’s trailer when I was growing up, she’d sometimes have power strips hosting double and triple adapters with eight brown cords trailing from a single socket like piglets nursing at a sow. I thought all sockets looked like that.

The two women studied the room and the woman in the power suit said, “That’s all going to have to come out.”

“What do you suggest?”

“Quick fix? Get all that fabric out of there and paint the walls charcoal gray. That’ll hide some of the flaws.”

The woman in black velour looked at me sharply. “Who’s this?”

The woman who’d answered the door said, “She has a meeting with Mr. Xanakis. I was going to show her to the gym.”

The woman looked annoyed, but resumed her conversation without further reference to me. That one had to be the wife.

I followed my fearless leader through an enormous kitchen where a young woman in a white double-breasted chef’s jacket and striped pants stood at the white granite counter chopping onions. A middle-aged man in a tuxedo vest and a dazzling white shirt sat at the kitchen table polishing silver sconces. Through a doorway I could see the laundry room. A Hispanic woman in a white uniform looked up at me as she took a damp white linen napkin from a clothes basket. She gave the seams a sharp snap, laid the napkin on the ironing board, and took up her iron.

When we arrived at the French doors along the back wall, my companion opened one and pointed. Outside, an ocean of lush grass covered the shallow hill to the swimming pool. The gym was apparently located in the pool house, a structure identical to the main house, only in miniature.

I said, “Thanks.”

I took a stone path down the hill, past the koi pond, past an orchard of plum and apricot trees. Sprinklers came to life and shot out fans of water that created a rainbow against the cloudless sky. Had anybody heard about the drought in this part of town?

At the pool house below, I could see Ari Xanakis in the doorway in shorts, a tank top, tennis socks, and running shoes. I put him in his midfifties; short and barrel-chested, but otherwise trim. A lacy bib of dark chest hair spread out under his tank top. He had a pug nose, bright brown eyes, and a nice smile that showed faintly crooked teeth.