"Then nobody will have a room there. Good," Shelley said. At Jane and Edgar's questioning looks, she added cryptically, "Bad vibes. Especially for this group."

Edgar showed them around the ground floor rooms: a vast-formal dining room, a living room with game tables, sofa groupings, and a sound and video system that would have made Jane's son Mike weep with envy. There was even a Nintendo game hooked up. "That's for guests with children," Edgar explained a little too hastily.

"I thought you didn't take children?" Jane said.

"Well, no — we don't plan to, but — I"..

Jane grinned broadly. "You're an addict. I know the signs. What's your favorite? Mine's Chrysalis."

Edgar actually blushed to the roots of his fine hair. "Actually, I like the maze kinds best. Lolo, that sort."

Shelley stared at the two of them, aghast. "You play those games?"

"Someday I'll get you hooked," Jane threatened. "Is this the library?" She glanced into a darkened room next to the living room. > i

Edgar went in and turned on the lights. It was the perfect library — three walls of dark oak bookshelves, a long library table with green-shaded lamps, chairs and sofas of soft, comfortable leather, and an |oak library ladder that slid along one wall. There was even a fax machine and a copy machine ready, for businessmen and women who couldn't, or wouldn't, leave their work behind.

Jane went to a shelf of paperbacks with matching orange spines. "P. G. Wodehouse! Are these yours? Edgar, I think I'll adopt you instead of Gordon. 'There

is only one real cure for gray hair. It was invented by a Frenchman. He called it the guillotine,'" Jane quoted.

" 'The magistrate looked like an owl with a dash of weasel blood in him,' " Edgar came back.

They were laughing happily and tossing quotes back and forth when they became aware of Shelley tapping her foot and clearing her throat ominously at ' intervals.