I knocked at the double scalloped-topped wooden gate, and then knocked some more, and at last a middle-range female voice (definitely not Marilyn’s) responded drowsily from a distance, making three sluggish syllables out of “Yes.”

“Nathan Heller,” I said to the gate, loud but not yelling. “Miss Monroe is expecting me.”

The breeze ruffled pond fronds as footsteps minced on hard surface.

The gate wasn’t locked, although swinging it open seemed to take a lot out of the small dowdy middle-aged woman. She had short-cut wispy dark hair and unflattering dark-rimmed cat’s-eye glasses, and her shapeless floral housedress covered a stumpy asexual figure.

She gazed at me as if we were both underwater and I was a rare fish she’d come across, only she wasn’t interested in rare fish.

“You are…?”

“Nathan Heller? Miss Monroe’s expecting me?”

Was there a fucking echo in here?

“Oh. Yes. Well, all right.”

She turned her back to me and trundled across the tile courtyard toward the house, a quietly handsome L-shaped Spanish colonial with stuccoed adobe walls. But this absentminded troll belonged guarding a ramshackle middle-of-nowhere mansion, the kind where you ask to use the phone because your car broke down, and wind up a mad doctor’s next experiment.

She was reaching for the front door, but I said, “Let me get that,” ever the gentleman. Glancing down at the four tiles on the doorstep, depicting a coat of arms, I noted an inscription in blue on gray: Cursum Perficio.

“What’s that mean?” I said, more to myself than my hostess.

“Latin,” she whispered, as if this were a secret. “For ‘I have completed my journey.’ Marilyn finds comfort in that.”

She gave me a sick smile and went in. I closed the door after us, moving through the entryway into a wide living room dominated by a fireplace and glass doors onto the swimming pool. Thick white carpeting and textured white walls made a sharp contrast with bright colors courtesy of Mexican art and dark, rustic furnishings that matched the open beams.