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  “Well, Danny boy, you better be sure she’s had her shots. That plague looks contagious to me,” said Leslye.

  Dan’s expression turned anxious. He moved toward Sylvie and Walt. Coming to Sylvie’s side a moment later, Dan gently extricated her from Walt’s arms and tenderly ushered her away. “Come sit down, sweetheart,” Dan told her. “You look a little woozy.”

  Dan lovingly helped Sylvie into her chair. Leslye sat in the adjacent seat. Dan said to Sylvie, “Les will get you something to drink.” He glanced at the lady lawyer meaningfully. “Right, Les?”

  Leslye stood and found herself staring into the shirtfront of Walt McGurk, who had followed Sylvie and Dan. “I’ll be right back; you just rest, dear,” Leslye told Sylvie. Looking up at Walt towering over them, she said, “Good night, Mister McGurk. Thank you for coming.” She stepped around him and left in search of a beverage.

  Walt scanned the room. Sylvie was surrounded by elegant strangers and watchdogged by Dan Stern. Walt shoved his Stetson onto his head and ambled toward the exit.

  Halfway there he stopped, decided he was not leaving, and marched briskly back to Sylvie’s chair. He elbowed his way to her and, when Dan refused to yield a place to sit, Walt squatted on the floor in front of her. This put Walt on Sylvie’s eye level, and he pinned her with his gaze the way a lepidopterist skewers a butterfly.

  “Sylvie, you know half of my ranch is yours now. Harry’s half,” Walt said.

  “I guess so.”

  “Well, if you’re in a bind, I’ll buy you out fair and square. Cash on the barrelhead.”

  Dan said, “Really, McGurk! I don’t think this is the time—”

  “I’m talkin’ to Sylvie,” Walt said, cutting Dan short.

  Sylvie didn’t feel like discussing business at all, and certainly not while Walt and Dan were going at each other in front of the jet set. “Can’t we discuss this later?” Sylvie said to Walt. “I mean, it’s not like I need the money.”

  Walt’s mouth moved as if he would argue with her, but he realized the room had gone silent. The mourners all seemed to be staring at him. He stood abruptly, withered the room with a look, and strode for the door.

  Leslye arrived with a cup of water for Sylvie. Dan gave Les his chair, and he left to follow Walt, saying to the ladies, “I’ll just make sure he finds his way out.”

  Les urged Sylvie to drink, but Sylvie merely held the cup and watched the door through which Walt and Dan had gone. Leslye patted Sylvie’s shoulder and said, “It’s all right, darling. Don’t let Harry’s pet jailbird upset you.”

  “Harry’s what?”

  “Jailbird,” said Les. “Everybody knows Harry got him out of jail and set him up in that horse-breeding business.” Bitterness tainted her voice as she continued, “One of your mother’s charity cases, I expect. Harry never learned to tell her no.”

  Sylvie looked at Les in absolute confusion.

  “Honey, they say McGurk killed a man,” Les told her. “After all these years, I can’t believe you never knew. I thought Harry would’ve told you all about it.”

  Stunned, Sylvie gulped the water from the cup like an android. Without looking at Leslye, Sylvie handed her the empty cup. “I guess Harry and I never really talked much,” Sylvie said.

  Out in the parking lot, Walt was reaching to open the door of his truck when Dan Stern wedged himself between Walt and his goal. “Who do you think you are?” Dan sneered from six inches away.

  “Harry’s partner, Slick Face. Who do you think you are?” Walt responded.

  “Les and I were Harry’s partners, Dogpatch. Real partners, in multi-million-dollar joint ventures, not some two-bit horse farm in Podunk Holler. You’re not a business partner, you’re a joke.”

  Without raising his voice, Walt responded, “And you’re a brass-plated thief.”

  Dan took a good Ivy League swing at Walt, but Walt sidestepped it and landed a solid back-alley uppercut to Dan’s jaw. Dan went down on one knee and stayed there, wiping blood from a split lip.

  Standing over Dan with his fists poised for more, Walt said, “Harry never had to worry about finding my hands in his pockets. Tell me, did Harry kill himself when he learned you two had stole him broke, or did you blow him away because he caught you at it?”

  “It was a gas leak,” Dan insisted, favoring his swollen, bleeding lip. “An accident. Happens every day. You can ask the police, the Marine Patrol, the coroner, anybody.” A new gleam entered Dan’s eyes, and he smiled wickedly. “But you won’t. You don’t think I murdered Harry. This,” he gestured at the two of them, “is all a smoke screen to hide how you tried to get Harry’s half of the ranch from Sylvie before Harry’s body was even in the grave. Y’know, if I were going to be suspicious of anybody, Dogpatch, I’d be suspicious of you. We both know you’re capable of murder, don’t we?”

  Walt moved as if he wanted to kick Dan’s perfectly capped teeth down his throat, but he decided against it. He swung into his truck instead.

  As the truck roared out of the lot, Dan stood and wiped his face with his Hermes handkerchief. Then he dusted the knees of his trousers and re-entered the funeral home.

  CHAPTER FOUR - THE EVICTION

  Wednesday Morning

  Outside the front doors of Harry Pace’s former offices, black crepe would have to be re-hung later because maintenance workers had removed it to install new brass lettering. The name of the firm now read “Pace-Larrimore-Stern” instead of merely “Pace-Larrimore.”

  Inside the firm, Les Larrimore’s secretary, Diane, looked up from her desk at the sound of a door closing. She recognized Dan Stern and nodded a polite greeting.

  “Go right in, sir,” the secretary told him. “Ms. Larrimore is waiting for you.”

  Stern gave a quick knock then entered Les’s luxurious domain and took a seat in a high-backed leather chair that creaked as it took his weight. He propped his Ostrich-skin boots on the edge of her desk. Les put down her pen and turned the papers in front of her face down. If Stern took offense at this evidence of mistrust, he gave no sign of it.

  “You’ll be glad to know the final official reports are in,” Leslye announced. “Investigation closed. Faulty propane valve filled the bilges with gas, something made a spark—maybe Harry, maybe the telephone, who knows—and boom. Lucky. You couldn’t have arranged it better if you’d tried—and I, for one, am glad you didn’t have to try.”

  Stern gave an amused grunt.

  Les rose from her chair and made her way around to the front of the desk, where she sat on the edge and crossed her shapely legs. Stern handed her a cigarette and lit it for her. It’s not a smoke-free building if the boss wants a smoke, right?

  Putting away his gold lighter, he said only, “Keys?”

  Les enjoyed a slow exhale of smoke toward the ceiling. “Not so fast,” she answered. “The timetable still stands. I’ll get her out of the penthouse, but nobody goes near it until I’ve run it through the Tropigale books and then through the Danmore partnership. Got it?”

  “No!”

  Les leaned forward and speared her partner’s tie with her long-nailed index finger. “Look,” she told him, “you can go ahead and set up a deal on the cars, but keep it quiet. Harry was getting suspicious, and he may have told someone else. They may be watching us. We have to act like nothing’s changed. We’ll have it all soon enough, and without going to prison, if we just take our time. Okay?”

  Dan Stern didn’t respond. Leslye said again, punching with the index finger for emphasis, “I said we take our time, okay?”

  “Okay,” said the man. The chair creaked again as he left it. Leslye followed him to her office door.

  At the door she said, “One thing has changed, though.” She made eye contact with him and smiled a cat-with-canary smile. “Without Harry snooping around, the money’s as good as ours already. I don’t have to marry Harry for it. You don’t have to marry Sylvie for it.”

  “Hmmph.”

  The door opened and closed
, and he was gone. Leslye looked at the door for a long time.

  …

  Thursday Morning

  Leslye Larrimore scoured the penthouse apartment’s kitchen for some suitable intoxicant with which to fill her empty glass. From the bedroom, clothes hangers rattled, a mattress creaked, fabrics rustled, shoes thudded and rolled. Someone was packing. Someone in a hurry.

  Leslye opened the refrigerator and wagged her hundred-dollar haircut at a wilted flower, one overripe avocado, three bottles of Perrier, and a half-inch of flat wine in an open carafe. She emptied the wine into her glass without relish.

  Packing noises resounded from the bedroom. Leslye paced the kitchen carrying the empty wine carafe until she discovered a refuse chute and dropped the bottle down it. Then she meandered from the kitchen.

  In the living room all personal treasures, family photos, or decorative knick-knacks were gone, the trendy furnishings were sterile. The mega-screen TV was silent. Leslye moved past the couches to study the blue-gray vista of the Atlantic Ocean blurred by rain pelting the endless windows of the penthouse. Muffled thunder vibrated the glass. Leslye sipped her flat, leftover wine and grimaced.

  The packing cacophony from the bedroom ceased, and Sylvie Pace emerged, eyes raccooned with mascara from weeping. Her classic black dress fit her like a proverbial glove, and she was barefooted. Mismatched lingerie drooped over her shoulder and a shoe hung from one hand.

  Sylvie crossed to the window wall and stood beside Leslye, watching the rain. Wind whistled outside. Thunder shook the glass. Sylvie started sobbing.

  Leslye patted Sylvie on the back. “I don’t know what to say, Sylvie. It’s like a nightmare. I can imagine how you must feel. Until yesterday I guess you’d never even heard of margin calls or collateralized debentures or leveraged buyouts. This is a hard way to learn.”

  Sylvie nodded and pulled herself together. Never in her crudest imaginings had she thought it was possible for her father’s fortune to simply disappear almost overnight. She had always been assured of plenty, of freedom, of leisure. Her intellect comprehended the definition of “working class” or even “poor,” but her emotions rejected any possibility of those terms as applicable to herself. She controlled her sniffles and wiped her nose on the lingerie she carried, then she headed back to the bedroom.

  Leslye followed her.

  Sylvie disappeared into the room-size bedroom closet.

  Leslye leaned against the bedroom doorway and gagged on another sip of wine.

  Sylvie returned from the closet depths and tossed another load of clothing onto the heap festooning the now-invisible bed. Then she gasped and began digging through the clothing until she uncovered a Shar-Pei puppy, who immediately licked some of the mascara streaks from Sylvie’s face.

  “You love me, don’t you Maude, baby,” Sylvie cooed to the dog. “Yes, you do, I know you do. You love me even without Harry’s old money, don’t you, baby.”

  From the doorway Leslye said, “Are you sure you won’t let me or Danny help you? A loan, maybe, or at least use my credit card to rent a car?”

  Sylvie set aside the dog and resumed packing. “Thank you again, Les,” she said, “but, no. It’s not your fault or Danny’s. Harry made it, and Harry lost it. I’ll make it, too. I’ll be back. Somehow I’ll get back.”

  Leslye scoffed. “Back? You may never leave. Even though you can’t take the furniture, there’s still an awful lot to pack.”

  “I’m just sorry Danny had to be away on business,” Sylvie said. “You’ll tell him au revoir for me, won’t you? So he’ll know I didn’t just run off without saying goodbye?”

  Leslye put down the stale wine without regret and crossed to give Sylvie a sincere-looking hug. “Of course, dear,” said Leslye. “Dan understands deadlines. That’s all part of business. It’s just lucky you have somewhere to go on such short notice.” Straightening away from Sylvie, Leslye looked around the room and shook her head. “You will never get all this into that car,” she predicted.

  “That ... thing is not a car!” Sylvie grumbled, slapping something into her suitcase angrily. “It isn’t worthy to suck the exhaust fumes of a real automobile!”

  CHAPTER FIVE - THE CARS

  Thursday Morning

  At the bustling commercial anchorage of Port Everglades, Harry Pace’s familiar dove gray Mercedes Benz limousine squatted on the quayside. A red Ferrari with a vanity plate that read “SYLVIE1” rolled up a shallow ramp onto a massive shipping pallet beside the Mercedes.

  A few yards away, a mid-size ship of foreign registry was taking on cargo bound for another continent. A dockworker emerged from the Ferrari’s driver’s seat and secured the car to the shipping pallet. Overhead, one of the ship’s herculean cranes hovered, prepared to lift the cars aboard the foreign freighter.

  Several yards away, Dan Stern and a swarthy man in an Armani suit were reviewing and signing papers spread out on the hood of Dan’s personal Bentley. Armani Man nodded at the cars and the papers. Dan folded the papers and handed them to the Armani Man. Armani Man lifted his briefcase onto the Bentley’s hood and opened the case to reveal orderly bundles of cash. Dan had happily (and quickly) sold Harry’s and Sylvie’s personal vehicles for an astronomical sum.

  Dan motioned to the dockworker, who in turn motioned to the crane operator, and in seconds the Ferrari and Mercedes were hoisted high into the air.

  Dan happily took possession of the cash-stuffed briefcase. While he was shaking hands with the Armani Man, however, Dan’s face turned ashen. The red Ferrari had slipped its moorings and performed a swan dive off the wooden pallet into the ocean, spuh-lash! It sank out of sight.

  On the ground, Armani Man followed Dan’s horrified gaze to the foaming splash, the half-empty, swinging pallet, and the frantic dockworkers. As he watched, the Mercedes also began listing sickeningly to one side, then it followed the Ferrari into Davy Jones’ locker.

  Without missing a beat, Armani Man retrieved his briefcase from Dan’s arms and slapped the documents down on the Bentley’s hood. Armani Man walked away with his money. Dan Stern stormed across the pier waving his arms, cursing at dockworkers and crane operators, and turning an unhealthy shade of crimson.

  Inside the air-conditioned cab of the loading crane, its operator dialed a number and then spoke into his cell phone, “It’s a goner.” The crane operator listened to the other party’s response, then patted his pocket and, smiling, said, “No, thank you, sir!”

  Miles away, across the street from the Pace-Larrimore-Stern offices, a man in a yellow windbreaker, Stetson hat, and sunglasses hung up his cell phone and tossed an empty diet root beer can into a nearby recycling bin. The Windbreaker Man leaned against a lamppost, watching the office building and chuckling in satisfaction.

  Back in Port Everglades, after an hour of raving and threatening to no avail, Dan Stern was pulling away from the pier in his Bentley. Dan vented his anger and frustration into his cell phone. “You don’t understand! How can you not understand? You are the company’s insurance agent. The car was a company car. It’s a simple question: How soon can we get a settlement check on the loss?”

  Dan listened to the response of the insurance agent and, if possible, turned a deeper shade of crimson. “You did what!” Dan shouted.

  Dan held the cell phone away and stared at it as if it had sprouted venomous fangs. Brakes screeched, horns honked, and Dan narrowly missed a head-on collision. He tossed the cell phone into the car’s floorboards, swerved off the road, and skidded to a halt.

  With the car stopped, Dan leaned into the floorboards, picked up the phone, and put it again to his ear. “How could that happen?” he asked. “Geez!”

  The insurance agent said something.

  Dan responded with, “How could you cancel the insurance?”

  The agent said more.

  Dan gritted his teeth and asked, “Well, wouldn’t you get something that important in writing? Why would you—Me! I didn’t tell you to cancel it, you gold-plat
ed doofus!”

  The agent responded.

  Dan growled, “Then you better find out who did!” He slammed the phone against its dashboard holder and pounded the steering wheel with his fist.

  Miles away, across the street from the Pace-Larrimore-Stern offices, the Windbreaker Man strolled happily away from his lamppost, whistling “Your Cheatin’ Heart.”

  ...

  An hour west of the pier and north of the offices, highway 27 stretched between canebrakes that rose like green tidal waves alongside the road. A battered Volkswagen Beetle convertible, top down, piled high with Sylvie’s luggage, rumbled and rattled toward wavy mirages shimmering over the sun-tortured asphalt. Three of the ancient bug’s fenders sported bare body putty, testimony to repairs never completed.

  Sylvie Pace sat regally behind the wheel, looking wildly out of place in Dior scarf and Porsche Carrera sunglasses. She looked as incongruous as Princess Diana driving a mule-drawn buckboard to Buckingham Palace.

  Maude, the wrinkled puppy, perched in Sylvie’s lap. There was not an inch of space for the poor dog elsewhere in the overburdened little vehicle.

  CHAPTER SIX - THE ROOMMATE

  It was mid-afternoon, and Sylvie was convinced she was totally lost, when the pitted dirt road through palmetto bushes and scrub oak onto which she had turned finally ended in the yard of an old ranch house. She parked under a tree, took Maude under one arm, and went to knock on the ranch house door.

  The door opened. Walt McGurk took a good look at Sylvie, then at Maude, then back at Sylvie. “Surprised you remembered how to find the place,” he said.

  “I didn’t. I asked for directions at the yellow house down the road.”

  “Oh, thanks. That’s got a few rumors started.”

  He stepped past Sylvie into the yard and whistled. Butch, Walt’s massive mongrel cow-dog, loped from behind the house, greeted his master with happy wiggles, and stood slavering before Sylvie and Maude.