"Once at the store she is directed to a nondescript grey van. She enters and sees an array of electronic equipment. A female tech hustles all of the m...les out and places the listening device on her torso. Then tests the thing and pronounces it "fully functional" and calls the detective.Without preamble he begins the brief, "Listen carefully Cheryl, the perpetrator arrived at the cabin forty seven minutes ago. All the monitoring equipment is inside and functioning normally. Once you are inside. ..I bought an acre of land in the bluffs south of town ... that was fifty dollars. I had a hole dig ... that was ten dollars. I paid the taxes in advance taking the mean average of taxes between 1932 and 1993 ... taxes were cheap in the hinterlands ... two hundred dollars and I got a signed promise that that was sufficient.I paid more from 1932 to 1962 but I paid less from 1963 to 1993 ... it all worked out. The dealer had the car delivered to my hole ... free. After the crate was offloaded in. But you'd have to swear first to let us go; and you mustn = tbreak your oath, or else . . . you'd be cursed." "Cursed?" said Tom, looking alarmed. "Yes," said Night Black, "cursed. If you make a mermaid apromise and don't keep it, you're cursed big-time. And the same thing happensif you try to, uh, have your way with a mermaid against her will. There's definitelyno honey, unless you agree first you'll let her go." At about this point,both girls were wondering: how much longer before he's. After breakfast we took our towels from my car and went to lie on the beach again. Lilly asked me about how I had coped when Sarah moved out, and I told her about how it had changed my relationship with my daughter. Lilly told me a bit about what Sarah had told her about the wild sex parties with Dick and Doris and whoever else. It was the excitement with which Sarah related these episodes that really got Lilly thinking about sex again, especially the type of uncommitted sex which so turned.