"How?" he asks.

"I have no idea." I shrug. "Just get it and arrange to show it to Santos. And bring back Elizabeth's necklace soon. I like how it looks on her neck."

Elizabeth moves closer to me, so our bodies touch, then strokes her now bare neck with her right hand. "I like that you took it from his dead sister," she mindspeaks. Then my bride says aloud, for Arturo and Tindall to hear, "I like how it looks too."

When I was much younger, I once asked my father why our people, who had the ability to shift our bodies into other shapes, were so locked in to our male and female identities. Couldn't we eliminate the need for opposing sexes and give ourselves a form capable of bringing its offspring into the world by its own solitary endeavors?

Father chuckled before he replied. "I suppose it could be possible, but it would be a dull world, " he said. "We already have so much power. We take what we want, feed when we wish. We have little reason to fear other beings. If we didn't have to confront the uncertainty and aggravation of romance, the constant ebb and flow of our relationships, how could we possibly avoid boredom?"

Life with Elizabeth is anything but dull. She rarely wakes before noon. But once she arises, she amazes me by managing to be in constant motion, sometimes gardening, other times roaming around the island or the house, borrowing the boat to race across the water, insisting on hunting each evening, demanding we make love afterward before we sleep.

Keeping her entertained remains a constant challenge. "Watching humans on TV only makes me hungry," she says. Elizabeth cares little for the books I read or the recordings of Mozart, Handel and Bach that I play. She dismisses all of it as "Human foolishness." But human-made goods, especially clothes, fascinate her and she asks me almost every day to take her to the mainland to go shopping.

Still busy getting the island in shape after my long absence, I try to channel her energy in more practical ways but, except for her garden, she remains aloof from all household chores. When I request her help in any type of housekeeping she sniffs, shakes her head and dismisses it by saying, "That's slave work," and punishes me with her silence.

By the time Arturo visits the island to return Elizabeth's necklace, almost a week after our confrontation with Jorge Santos, I welcome his presence. The Latin beams as he steps onto my dock and I greet him as if he were a long-missed, cherished friend. Elizabeth-also glad for the break in our solitary lifestyle, I suppose-joins us at the dock and acknowledges Gomez's presence with a smile before she takes the gold chain from his hands and fastens it around her neck. She stays by my side and listens as we begin to discuss Santos.

"All the man did was shrug when I showed him the receipt from Mayer's," Arturo tells me, handing me the receipt I told him to acquire. "I doubt he's convinced of anything."

"All the more reason for your associates to keep a watch on him and his girlfriend," I say.

Arturo grins. "They already are. The day after our meeting, Casey Morgan tried to sell her editor a story on your family and its businesses." He chuckles. "As soon as I heard about it, I called and had a long talk with the man. He turned her down. A few days later, he called to tell me he had her transferred to their Fort Lauderdale office, to write for the local news section up there."

"What about Santos?" Elizabeth asks. "Can't we arrange the same sort of thing for him?"

"It's not as easy," Arturo says. "He's a bartender at Joe's. I have enough influence to get a table there when I want. But I certainly can't get him transferred. We have to wait to see what he does and act when he gives us the right opportunity."

"And the white speedboat?" I ask.

"My people told me one was reported stolen from the Miami Beach Marina a few days before the shooting. It turned up, abandoned, in Eleuthra."

"And?"

Arturo holds up his hands and shrugs. "And that's all they know. I'd like to say it was Santos but this looks like it was contracted. I don't think he has the resources."

I nod agreement. "Under any circumstance, I don't think he'd want to let anyone else do it."

"True," Arturo says. "Which means we probably have another problem."

"I think so too." I smile, then say in half-jest, "You better get more of your people looking into it before I start to think it's you."

Arturo doesn't smile back.

Elizabeth's busy arguing with me about cars, neither of us thinking about the shooting or Santos, when we arrive at the dock at Monty's the next afternoon. "If we're so rich," she asks as we wait by the restaurant's valet stand for a taxi, "why don't we own our own cars?"

I shake my head, thinking of the dozens of times my father had lectured me about lack of necessity for car ownership and the waste of owning one. "We live on an island," I say. "We need to own a boat. But for the few times a month we come to land, it makes far more sense to hire a taxi."

Elizabeth grins. "We're rich," she says. "We don't have to make sense."

She looks off, frowns as I begin to explain if we used a taxi every single day for two years, it would still be cheaper than any car we'd choose to buy. She doesn't answer when I finish and I ask, "Are you listening?"

"Peter, look in the public parking lot across the street," she mindspeaks.

I follow her gaze, see nothing but cars. "What?" I say.

"In the row by the water, next to the tall palm tree."

The green MGB, parked in position to observe both our boat slip and Monty's parking lot, means nothing to me until the driver sitting behind the wheel grins and waves. Not wishing to let him think he can intimidate me, I smile and wave back to Jorge Santos.

Elizabeth continues to pester me about cars. I finally give in when we pass by a red Corvette in Monty's parking lot and she stops and says, "I'm not moving until you promise to buy me one of these."

To Arturo's dismay, I purchase a silver Mercedes sedan for me too. He frowns, and says, "I don't see why you need any car let alone two."

"With Elizabeth, it's easier to give her what she wants than to argue about it," I say. "Besides you should have seen her face when we bought the Corvette."

Arturo shakes his head. "All you two do is shop. You're spending more money faster than Don Henri ever did." But he arranges for the cars to be kept and maintained in Monty's private parking lot, just next to the valet stand.

At Elizabeth's insistence we begin to come to shore more often-both for her to shop and to drive her car around town. Not a day passes that we don't arrive to find Santos's green MGB parked in the free lot near the docks, the man watching our comings and goings.

Finally, I complain about it to Arturo. "You should have told me sooner," he says.

The next morning, as soon as Jorge Santos pulls into Monty's lot, two Miami police cars cut him off. Arturo has trouble stopping laughing as he tells me about it. "I watched from my office window," he says. "The cops yanked him out of the car, made him breathe in their machine-even though he was completely sober-and then arrested him for driving under the influence." He stops to laugh again."They threw him in the drunk tank. They promised me they won't let him arrange for bail for at least a couple of more days."

The next day Elizabeth and I come to shore for another day of shopping, this time at the ritzy stores at Bal Harbour Shoppes. We arrive back at the docks in the afternoon. Relieved to see no sign of the green MGB, I say, "Look, our friend's still missing. I wonder when they'll let him out?"

"Never, I hope," Elizabeth snarls.

She takes the helm of the Grady White, turns the key in the ignition while I stow her packages from Gucci, Saks and Lord and Taylor in the cabin. The Yamahas cough to life without the slightest hesitation.