I looked at my watch. Ten after nine. Time to go, I supposed. ``Well, goodbye,'' I said.

``Goodbye. You'd better hurry.''

``Oh, you can count on that.''

She smiled slightly. Softly. Warmly. ``Don't hurry too much. I'll be soaking for at least half an hour.''

That was all she said. But suddenly those hot honey eyes seemed to have everything but swarms of bees in them. However, when there's a job to be done, I'm a monstrosity of grim determination, I like to think. I spun about and clattered through the front room to the door. As I went out, I could hear water pouring in the shower. Hot water. She wouldn't be taking a cold shower. Hell, she couldn't.

Bryn Mawr Drive is only two or three miles from the Spartan, and it took me less than five minutes to get there. But the scene was not the quiet, calm scene I'd expected. Four cars were parked at the curb, and two of them were police radio cars. Lights blazed in the big house and surrounding grounds. I followed a shrubbery lined gravel path alongside the house to the pool. Two uniformed officers, a couple of plain-clothesmen I knew, and two other men stood on a gray cement area next to the pool on my left. At the pool's far end was the little cabana Joyce had mentioned, and on the water's surface floated scattered lavender patches of limp looking lather. A few yards beyond the group of men, a man's nude body lay face down on a patch of thick green dichondra.