Melinda was well-armored. Ilse, however, was a different story. When Melinda was mad at her, she called Illy a case of arrested development, but I didn't think that was true. I thought Illy was just tender.

"And in the end, they may prove it." Kamen shrugged his enormous shoulders. "How much of a death-duty that might entail I couldn't guess, but I'm sure it would erase a great deal of your life's treasure."

I wasn't thinking about the money. I was thinking about a team of insurance investigators sniffing around whatever I set up. And all at once I began to laugh.

Kamen sat with his huge dark brown hands on his doorstop knees, looking at me with his little I've-seen-everything smile. Except on his face nothing was little. He let my laughter run its course and then asked me what was so funny.

"You're telling me I'm too rich to kill myself," I said.

"I'm telling you not now, Edgar, and that's all I'm telling you. I'm also going to make a suggestion that goes against a good deal of my own practical experience. But I have a very strong intuition in your case - the same sort of intuition that caused me to give you the doll. I propose you try a geographical."

"Beg pardon?"

"It's a form of recovery often attempted by late-stage alcoholics. They hope that a change of location will give them a fresh start. Turn things around."

I felt a flicker of something. I won't say it was hope, but it was something.

"It rarely works," Kamen said. "The old-timers in Alcoholics Anonymous, who have an answer for everything - it's their curse as well as their blessing, although very few ever realize it - like to say, 'Put an asshole on a plane in Boston, an asshole gets off in Seattle.'"

"So where does that leave me?" I asked.

"Right now it leaves you in suburban St. Paul. What I'm suggesting is that you pick someplace far from here and go there. You're in a unique position to do so, given your financial situation and marital status."