PALM BEACH, FLORIDA, 1978 The building staff must have gossiped for hours about thescrewball in 2-A. Her apartment bordered the courtyard garden, not twentyfeet from the glassed-in security office, where polite and cheer-ful doormen in green blazers fed the fish in the office aquar-ium and helped people in and out of cars. But they never saw2-A anymore. They heard her sometimes, at midnight orlater, her sandals slapping the marble tiles as she scurriedbehind the iron gate to the freight elevator. Sometimes--again, late at night--they saw her blue Caprice swinging inor out of the basement garage, the garage door gliding shutbehind her. But she shunned the passenger elevators, whichopened opposite the office windows at the building entrance. Every few days, a delivery truck arrived from Palm Beach'smost expensive market with a box or two of "groceries" for 2-A: cans of diet soda; several pints of Howard Johnson's ice