"What's the difference? I'm not getting any of her money anyway," he said. "The fucking yaks can wait."

"Well, suppose I can't?"

Chaz pretended not to hear. He approached the closet and focused once more upon the sheer black dress. It was scooped in the front and featured a racy slit up one side.

He took it out and showed Ricca. "Did you bring this with you tonight? Because Joey had one just like it, I mean identical."

Ricca was peeved. "It's not mine, Chaz. Not unless I've grown three inches taller and dropped ten pounds."

"Aw, come on."

"It's not mine."

"Okay, okay." He yanked the dress off the hanger, rolled it up and tossed it in a corner. "I swear I packed that away yesterday."

Ricca glanced uneasily around the room. "To be honest, this is kinda freaky, being in the house with your wife dead."

"What-it was easier when she was alive?"

"No, it's just very sad, what happened to her," Ricca said. "Can we get outta here?"

Chaz went to the dresser and pawed through the drawers one by one. He couldn't find Joey's panties and bra, the ones he'd meant to save for Ricca. He wondered if he was cracking up.

"Lookin' for your other sock? It's right there on the floor, under the nightstand."

"So it is," said Chaz. "Thanks."

As soon as Ricca went to fix her makeup, he slipped out the kitchen door and into the garage. The cardboard boxes containing Joey's belongings were exactly where he'd left them, piled next to the Camry. The boxes didn't appear to have been touched, causing Chaz to think that he had somehow forgotten to collect his wife's black dress. As for the missing undergarments, perhaps he'd moved them to another place.

In the living room he was gratified to see that the stinking dead fish had not re-materialized in his aquarium since he'd flushed them down the toilet. Chaz made himself a drink and began scanning the alphabetized-by-artist CD rack, looking for some kick-ass driving music. What he found while thumbing through the T's gave him a chill. Bad to the Bone was missing. So was Move It on Over. Even the Anthology was gone.

Ricca appeared, looking spectacular but troubled. She said, "I hope you don't mind-I borrowed some of Joey's lipstick."

Chaz felt the hairs prickle on his neck. "That's impossible."

"I left mine in the car. I'm sorry."

"You don't understand. I threw out all her lipstick," he said. "I went through the whole goddamn bathroom and tossed out every goddamn thing of hers."

"But it was right there, Chaz. In the vanity-"

"No! Not possible."

Chaz felt a bloom of cold sweat under his arms. He stalked up to Ricca, grabbed her chin and turned her mouth toward the light so that he could examine the color.

"Shit," he muttered. It was definitely Coral Tease, Joey's favorite.

His favorite, actually. Just like that slitted black dress, the one she'd worn at his request to Mark's on Las Olas for their first anniversary.

He let go of Ricca's face and said, "Something's fucked up around here."

"Why would I lie about lipstick?" Rubbing her jaw, she was bewildered and angry.

"You're right. I'm sorry," he said.

"Can we get outta here, like, now?"

"Absolutely," Chaz told her. "Right after I make a call."

"Swell. I'll be in the bathroom." She shut the door forcefully behind her and fumed for a minute.

"Where's your razor?" she called out, but Chaz was already on the phone.

Joey Perrone and Mick Stranahan were watching the house from a neighbor's driveway halfway down the block. Joey said it was safe because the neighbors had gone to upstate New York for a month and possibly longer.

"Dodging subpoenas," she explained. "They run a telephone boiler room, selling ethanol futures to senior citizens. Every time the feds shut 'em down, they dash off to their lodge in the Adirondacks."

"It's a great country," Stranahan said.

"What're you doing?"

"Trying to figure out the damn CD player."

For surveillance purposes, Joey had rented them a dark green Suburban with tinted windows.

She said, "Mick, please don't."

He was sorting through the George Thorogood discs that Joey had swiped from her husband's collection. "What, you don't like the slide guitar?"

"I don't like the memories," she said.

Joey meant to drop the subject, but then she heard herself saying, "We'd be going along in the car and whenever he'd put on 'Bad to the Bone,' that was the signal he wanted me to, you know…"

"Gotcha." Stranahan tossed the CDs into the backseat. "So he imagines himself a wit, Mr. Charles Perrone, and a sex machine to boot."

Joey recited the ten things that Chaz disliked most about her, with hiding Thorogood being number six.

"That's not why he tried to kill you. Believe me," Stranahan said.

"See, this is what's driving me crazy," she said. "I can't figure out why he would do what he did."

"Money's my guess."

"But I told you, he's not getting a dime if I'm dead."

Stranahan fiddled with the radio dials. "Most murders come down to lust, anger or greed," he said. "From what you've told me about your husband, I'm betting on greed. If this isn't about your money then it's about somebody else's."

Joey said that, in a way, she hoped he was right. "I'd hate to think he threw me off that ship just so he could be with her." She shot a glare toward the house.

"Not likely," said Stranahan.

"I wish you could've met Benny, my first husband. He was a sweetheart," she said fondly. "Not exactly a firecracker in certain departments, but a good honest guy."

Stranahan aimed the binoculars at the bay window of the Perrone residence. The lights had come on, though the curtains remained closed. It had been an hour since the dark-haired woman had arrived, parking a blue Ford compact next to Chaz's Humvee.

"You don't know who she is?"

"No idea. It's pitiful," Joey said. "He's got so many bimbos, you'd need radio collars to track them all."

Stranahan secretly was pleased that Chaz Perrone was entertaining female company only three tender days into widowhood. Such a boggling lack of self-restraint could open a world of squalid opportunities for someone seeking to mess with Chaz's head.

"Let's call it a night," Stranahan suggested.

"Honestly, did she look that smokin' hot to you?"

"The longer we stay, the riskier it gets."

"This is what the Secret Service drives. Chevy Suburbans."

"Joey, we're not the Secret Service. I'm supposed to be retired and you're supposed to be deceased."

"Hey, we should copy the license off her car!"

"Done." Too tired to trust his memory, Stranahan had jotted the tag number on the inside of his wrist.

"Fifteen more minutes," she said. "Then we can go."

"Thank you."

Earlier, after leaving the car-rental agency, they had, over Strana-han's objections, stopped at an outlet mall. Joey had decided that she couldn't continue wearing the clothes of his ex-wives and girlfriends, and noted as an example that their bras were all too large. Grimly, Stranahan had trailed after her as she accumulated $2,400 worth of slacks, tops, skirts, shoes, cosmetics and other personal items. She was the most ruthless and efficient shopper that he'd ever seen, but the experience had exhausted him so thoroughly that his senses now seemed cauterized.

Or perhaps that's how everyone came to feel in West Boca Dunes Phase II.

"You didn't even ask about the black dress," Joey was saying. "There's quite a naughty history there."

"I was letting my imagination run wild."

"Whatever he's doing with her tonight, he's thinking about me. That I can guarantee. And wait'll he finds the lipstick!"

Stranahan leaned his head against the window and shut his eyes.