The snow started coming down in thick sheets. The wind was picking up too, blowing so hard the snowflakes stung Vera’s face and made her squint.

“You okay, lady?” asked a New York City policeman.

“Yes, I am, thank you,” replied Vera politely, though she really wasn’t. She was freezing cold and worried. She hadn’t seen an available taxi in a while and she became slightly panicky wondering how she would get back to her hotel. Her shoes were sopping wet from the new snowdrifts and street puddles. Her stockings were soaked and her toes were numb. So were her fingers. Vera had forgotten to bring gloves from Steubenville. She would have to buy a pair.

“I would get to wherever you’re going as soon as you can,” suggested the policeman. “This storm is going to hit hard and fast. It’ll be much worse than this, lady, and soon. The streets are going to be a mess in about ten, fifteen minutes.”

“Thank you, officer. I’ll get to where I’m going right away.”

The patrolman saluted Vera Bundle and walked away.

As he disappeared around a corner, Vera felt lonelier and more apprehensive than before. At least the policeman was company.

Now even he was gone.

It had been almost two years since Theresa Mendavey walked off the Sarah Lawrence campus with English professor Curtis Bok, when she reappeared at her mother’s newly constructed mansion in the flats of Beverly Hills. Theresa’s parents were divorced by then. With part of the divorce settlement, Theresa’s mother bought an old home, tore it down, and built a bigger, better one. Well, a bigger one. Theresa’s father stayed on the original estate in Manderville Canyon.

Edna Mendavey’s mansion had ten bedrooms and fourteen bathrooms. It was constructed to look like Tara, from Gone with the Wind. The mansion had six white pillars in the front. The four-car garage was built to resemble a barn with two huge wooden barn doors that swung open (electronically). Inside the garage were four parking places, one each for Edna’s Rolls, Edna’s Mercedes, Edna’s Jaguar convertible, and one spare parking place for a guest’s automobile. Being that there were two apple trees on the property, Edna Mendavey named her mansion the Love Apple Plantation. According to Edna, it was a saucy play on words, apples being a sly name for a man’s balls.

Edna Mendavey thought that was funny.

Edna would.

The Love Apple Plantation was an architectural abomination. It was the most abominable of all the architectural abominations in the flats of Beverly Hills, a municipality in which countless architectural abominations existed.