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and then his sweat-stained undershirt. He wrapped a handful
of ice cubes into his undershirt. He slipped his outer shirt back
on, hefted the ice-filled undershirt, and opened the kitchen
door.
    He stepped out onto the porch and bashed the
undershirt against the concrete stoop in rhythm with the tune he
was whistling.
Voilá
! Crushed
ice.
    In her new bedroom, Sylvie was staring at the
walls and muttering to herself, “Why not just bury them all at once
instead of keeping pieces of them in the house? It looks like
Druids have been sacrificing in here.” She looked heavenward and
addressed the Higher Power: “This is not what I meant when I asked
to be smothered in fur!”
    In the kitchen, Walt scooped crushed ice from
his undershirt and dribbled it into the green class. He tossed the
wet undershirt into the sink.
    In the bedroom, Sylvie was controlling the
urge to cry.
    In the kitchen, Walt held the green glass up
to the light and decided it would do.
    When Walt arrived in the bedroom and
presented the green glass to Sylvie, she had regained her composure
with a stalwart effort.
    “I could just take them down and give them a
decent burial,” she suggested. “Then I can redo the room the way I
want it—in Laura Ashley or Ralph Lauren, maybe.”
    “Yeah. Knock yourself out, Mrs. Audubon,”
said Walt. He gestured to her drink. “We’re all out of little
umbrellas. Listen, I gotta go run some errands in town. You just
settle in. Help yourself to anything you want in the kitchen.”
    After he left the room, Sylvie sipped the
Alka-Seltzer/squash concoction from the green glass. She made a
sour face. “Oh, great,” she said. “Neither one of us can cook.” And
she continued sipping the drink and surveying the room with little
hope for the future.

CHAPTER SEVEN - THE SNAKE
    At the Palm Beach Polo Club, it was just
another day in paradise for the rich, the filthy rich, and the
ridiculously rich. Leslye Larrimore and a helmeted polo player
walked across the perfectly green, perfectly groomed polo
field—which was a neat trick for Leslye since she was dressed in
haute couture as usual, right down to her six-inch heels. The polo
player was Daniel Stern, wearing knee-high black riding boots,
carrying in his hand the Ostrich-skin dress boots out of which he
had changed.
    “So, Sylvie’s Ferrari is a total loss, and
the insurance company swears the policy was canceled at the
customer’s request,” said Dan. “Sounds like we’ve got a
poltergeist.”
    “Just like the one that wire transferred half
the money out of our King’s Cay account in the Bahamas yesterday,”
Leslye responded.
    “Right.”
    They arrived at a bus-long horse trailer
surrounded by a string of eight grazing polo ponies. Dan stashed
his Ostrich boots in the trailer. He inspected his mounts and gear
as they talked. “Maybe Harry’s ghost is making l-o-o-o-o-ng
distance phone calls. ‘H. P. phone home,’ eh?”
    “It’s not funny,” said Leslye.
    “It’s a computer glitch with the insurance
company. And with the bank. You’ll get them both corrected. Relax.
Take another pill.”
    Leslye subsided a little. She withdrew an
envelope from her purse and offered it to him. “You’re right,” she
said. “Mistakes happen. We’ll get it corrected. I don’t know why
I’m overreacting. Too much caffeine, probably. Here’s what I really
came to show you.”
    Dan retrieved his riding helmet from the
trailer and wedged it under an elbow while he opened the document.
It was an attractive brochure featuring colorful drawings of a
high-rise building called Pace Tower. “Very nice,” he said. “Good
work, Les. Looks like a million dollars—or maybe a hundred
million.”
    Leslye smiled. “I’ve got a Japanese
conglomerate interested. Ichi-Nobuko. They want to sign preliminary
acquisition agreements next week. We’re talking a ten million cash
deposit to hold in our escrow account.”
    “Ten mil. Nice,” said Dan. “Just about pay
off the rest