When Lou finally passed on, the social invitations dried up and the fourth-floor bridge club recruited a new couple, and Ida Kimmelman was left all alone with her dog Skeeter in apartment 4-K at Otter Creek Village. Somehow the U.S. government had overlooked Lou Kimmelman's death and continued to mail a $297.75 Social Security check every month, so Ida was making out pretty well. She'd bought herself a spiffy red Ford Escort and joined a spa, and every third Tuesday she would drive Skeeter to Canine Canaan and get his little doggy toenails painted blue. Of course Ida's Otter Creek neighbors disapproved of her extravagance and thought it tacky that she boasted of her double-dipping from Social Security. Ida knew they were jealous.

She was truly ambivalent about Lou's death. On some days she felt lonely, and guessed it must be Lou she was missing. Who else had shared her life for twenty-nine years? Lou had been an accountant for a big orthopedic shoe company in Brooklyn. He had been a hard worker who had saved money in spite of Ida; Ida, who'd never wanted children of her own, who was always scheming for a new car or a tummy tuck or a new dinette. When it came time to retire, the Kimmelmans had argued about where they would go. Everyone on the block was moving to Florida, but Ida disliked everyone on the block and she didn't want to go. Instead she wanted to move to Southern California and make new friends. She wanted a condo on the beach in La Jolla.

But Lou Kimmelman had been a shrewd accountant. One painful evening, two weeks before the shoe company gave him the traditional gold Seiko sendoff, Lou had sat Ida down with the Chemical Bank passbooks and the Keogh funds and demonstrated, quite conclusively, that they couldn't afford to move to California unless they wanted to eat dried cat food the rest of their lives. Reluctantly, Ida had accepted the inevitability of Florida. After all, it was unthinkable not to go somewhereafter your husband retired.

So they'd bought a small two-bedroom unit at Otter Creek, three doors down from the Seligsons, and Lou Kimmelman soon became captain of the fourth-floor shuffleboard team and sergeant-at-arms of the Otter Creek Homeowners' Association.

One thing Ida Kimmelman didn't miss about Lou, now that he was gone, was how he'd sit there in his madras slacks and blinding white shoes, watching TV in their new living room (which was hardly big enough for a family of squirrels), and ask, "Now aren't you glad we moved down here after all?"

Lou Kimmelman would say this three or four times a week, and Ida hated it. Sometimes she'd wonder bitterly if she hated Lou, too. She'd squeeze out on the balcony, which was actually more of a glorified ledge, and gaze at the parking lot and, beyond that, the emptiness of the Everglades. In these moments Ida would imagine how great it would be to have a town house on a bluff in La Jolla, where you could sip coffee and watch all those brown young men on their candy-colored surfboards. Thatwas Ida Kimmelman's idea of retirement.

Instead she was stuck in Florida.

After Lou died, Ida had gathered all the bankbooks and E. F. Hutton statements and got the calculator to add up their worldly possessions—only to discover that Lou Kimmelman, damn his arithmetic, had been absolutely correct. Southern California was no more affordable than Gstaad.

So Ida laid her dream to rest with Lou, and vowed to make the best of it. Never would she admit to her Otter Creek neighbors that her unhappiness was anything but a widow's grief, or that sometimes, especially during Florida's steambath of a summer, she longed to be back up North, in the city, where one could actually walk to the grocery without an oxygen tank.

December, with its cooler nights, wasn't so unbearable. The snowbirds were trickling south and the condominium was a much livelier place than in August, when nothing moved but the mercury. Now Otter Creek Village slowly was awakening, soon to be clogged with other couples who'd discovered Florida as long-ago tourists or honeymooners and returned to claim it in their old age.

The center of social life was the swimming pool. Not much swimming took place, but there was a lot of serious floating, wading, and talking—by far the most competitive of all condominium sports.

When Ida went down to the pool, which wasn't often, she'd usually end up dominating some debate about the perilous traffic, the impossible interest rates, or the criminally high hospital bills. Each outrage was a harbinger of financial ruination, which was the favorite topic poolside at Otter Creek. Lately, since she'd discovered Lou's Social Security checks were still coming, Ida's stock speech on the economy had lost some of its fire and she'd avoided the daily discussions. Ida loved to express her opinions, but she loved her spa, too.

On the morning of December 8, Ida Kimmelman followed her morning routine: hot bagels, two cups of coffee, six ounces of prune juice, David Hartman, and the Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel,which had terrific grocery coupons. By ten Ida was usually made-up and ready to walk Skeeter, but on this day she was running late because she had to go to Eckerd Drugs to buy a card for her nephew Joel the law student.

Ida returned to the apartment at ten-thirty to find a nasty little present from Skeeter on the shag in the bedroom. This was another reason she missed Lou, because Lou would always clean up after the dog; he never clobbered Skeeter or threatened to put him to sleep the way Ida did.

She was so mad about the mess in the bedroom that she hooked Skeeter to his leash and dragged him, yelping, down four flights of stairs. She led the dog out to the canal behind Otter Creek Village, near the Everglades dike, and unfastened the leash to let him run.

Ida noticed there was nobody out by the pool. She thought: These people! A touch of cold weather and they run indoors. The breeze felt good, too, although it puffed her new hairdo.

After fifteen minutes Ida Kimmelman got goose bumps and wished she'd brought a light sweater. She clapped her hands and shouted for Skeeter in a baritone that seemed to carry all the way to Orlando.

But Skeeter didn't come.

Ida picked up her pace along the canal, careful not to get too close. She called for Skeeter again, expecting any moment to see his beautifully barbered, AKC-registered poodle face hopping through the high grass along the banks of the canal.

But there was no sign of the little dog.

Ida trudged on, hollering, calling, cooing, thinking: He's just mad about what happened upstairs. He'll be back.

Soon she found herself standing in a field of scrub and palmetto, a full mile from Otter Creek. The sandspurs stuck to her slacks, and she cried out when a fat coppery ant chomped on her big toe.

"Skeeter darling," Ida Kimmelman cried, the great voice fading, "come home to Momma! Momma loves you!"

Suddenly she heard a commotion and turned to see two men waist-deep in the scrub; one black and ominous, the other small and dark. Nothing frightened Ida Kimmelman so much as the fact that the small man wore an undershirt, the mark of a true desperado.

"Have you seen my doggie?" Ida asked nervously.

The black man nodded. "Skeeter had an accident," he said. "You'd better come quick."

"What kind of accident?" Ida Kimmelman cried, forgetting her own safety and clumping after the men. "I said, what kind of accident?"

"An eagle," the black man said. "A fish eagle, ma'am."

And when Ida Kimmelman saw what was left of poor Skeeter, presented in a shoebox by the man in the undershirt, she fainted dead away. The next time she opened her eyes was in the airboat.

Standing before Brian Keyes was a plainly terrified woman in her late sixties, slightly overweight, lacquered with rouge and mascara. Her mouth was covered with two-inch hurricane tape, and her hands were tied with rope. Her shiny wine-colored hair was piled in a tangled nest on one side of her head. She was doing plenty' of talking with her eyes.