Body in the Big Apple

Fox’s murder into the conversation and see if she could get any further information. She had to act fast before the evening ended.

“How about the murder of Nathan Fox? Do you intend to use it in your article?”

“It’s worth a mention. A lot of what’s happened in the eighties—the excesses—was what people like Fox were predicting in the sixties. It hasn’t simply been a case of the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer. That’s always been true. But in the eighties, the rich got much richer. Even after the 1987 crash. Last year, in ’88, Milken made five hundred and fifty million dollars—ironically fifty million more than the Gambino family, crime apparently not paying as much as it used to, or their kind anyway—and I am using that. Fox and his cohort believed that the widening gap between rich and poor would lead to revolution. Well, it hasn’t. At least not yet, and I don’t see it happening anywhere in the near future, but the seeds of the eighties were sowed in the sixties. Ironically, Fox liked nothing better than schmoozing with wealthy New York intellectuals and socialites. He was a regular at certain dinner parties, delighting the guests by telling them what decadent leeches they were. That all the finger bowls in the world wouldn’t be enough to cleanse the blood of the workers from their effete, uncalloused hands—that, or something very similar, was one of his lines.”

Faith thought again that Fox wouldn’t have lasted long at Aunt Chat’s Madison Avenue ad agency if the tired, trite slogans she’d been hearing were any indication of his acumen.

“So you haven’t really heard anything. But why murdered? Why now? What’s the ‘bottom line’?” She 74

injected the eighties buzzword to keep things light—

and keep the conversation going.

Richard thought for a moment. “There has been some talk that Fox’s murder was tied to his politics—

that it wasn’t just a robbery by some cokehead—but I haven’t been able to come up with an angle. Unless he’s been keeping some pretty heavy stuff under wraps all these years. Maybe about someone else in the movement. Or let’s say he was about to get a pardon and write a tell-all book. If Reagan could get a seven-million-dollar advance, Fox could certainly have hoped for half that—or more in hush money! But I jest.

He wasn’t into material goods. More to the point, he’s not the pardonable type. Wrong haircut. Besides the politics theory, there are a lot of rumors about where he’s been all these years, and maybe there’s a motive there. Someone he crossed. A woman? And from all accounts, in Fox’s case there were always lots of ladies.”

“Where do people say he was?”

Richard signaled the waiter for more coffee. “If Fox was everywhere I’ve heard he’s been, he would have racked up enough frequent flyer coupons to last through the next millennium. California, the Pacific Northwest, the Dakotas, Minnesota, Maine, Florida—

oh, and Cuba, to name a few. Apparently, he was all set to spend his golden years with Fidel, but Nate got kicked out when he said, ‘Thank you for not smoking’

to the big guy.”

“And what about the murder weapon? According to the papers, he was shot at close range and the weapon hasn’t been found.”

Richard rubbed his chin. He was in slight, very slight need of a shave.

75

“It would have been pretty stupid to leave the murder weapon behind as a calling card. If it was your average B and E, they’d have further use for it. If it wasn’t, but, rather, someone Fox knew and let into the apartment, then all the more reason to get rid of it, say in that big Dumpster known as the East River.”

“The papers haven’t said what kind of gun it was.

The police would know from the bullet. Have you heard anything?”

Morgan shook his head and then looked sharply at Faith. “Why so much interest in Fox? He wasn’t a well-known food connoisseur, to my knowledge.

Don’t tell me—your parents were in the Weather Underground and you’re actually a red-diaper baby.”

“Sorry, my father never even remembers to carry an umbrella and my diapers were as snowy white as the diaper service could make them. Mother has always believed some things are best done by others. Now come on—that business with Fox in Cuba, you were making that up.”

“I kid you not.”

Faith made a face and, terrierlike, held on to the subject. “Why do you think he wasn’t caught?”

“At first, probably because no one squealed on him, and it’s not so easy as you might think to find someone who doesn’t want to be found, even if you’re the feds.

Especially when he disappeared. Pre–cyber spying.

Then later, they had more important things to do. Better ways to spend taxpayers’ money. They probably un-loaded a bunch of dusty file folders on all those Weathermen, Yippies, pinkos, et cetera, on one poor slob and he’d make a few calls every once in a while.

Check the taps on their parents’, siblings’, old lovers’

phones. Reel somebody in by chance now and again.” 76

“Then Fox wasn’t taking much of a risk moving into the city.”

“Well, it did get him killed.”

“So you do think his murder is tied to his past?”

“Isn’t everything?”

77

Four

Almost everybody was wearing black at Nathan Fox’s memorial service, which was exactly what Faith had expected. It was not from a deep sense of propriety, but because this was New York City and everybody, especially women, wore black most of the time. It wasn’t timidity; it was the acknowledgment of a universal truth. You always looked good in black—and in style.

Fox was going out in style. Going out on the Upper East Side at Frank E. Campbell’s, where anybody who was anybody had his or her service. Faith walked in under the marquee and quickly went into the building.

There was a basket of yarmulkes at the door to the chapel. They seemed at odds with the bland, goyish entry room, complete with an Early American grandfather clock. But Fox had been, if not Jewish, a Jew, and many of the men were covering their heads.

Faith slid into a seat far enough back for a good view of the audience—the mourners, she corrected herself—but close enough to hear the lines—the eulogies, that is. It had felt like a performance from the mo-78

ment she’d pulled up to the entrance, her cab nosing out one limo and pulling up behind another. The service was private, the paper had said, and no time or place was given, but Emma had called Campbell’s, posing as her father’s cousin—“He has some,” she’d told Faith—and received the information. She’d called Campbell’s because, Faith realized, it would never have occurred to Emma that there might be other possibilities. So here Faith was—waiting for the curtain to go up, or down—after getting the message from Emma the night before.

The night before. Faith had been tired, but pleasantly so. After finishing dinner at Santa Fe, Richard and she had gone to Delia’s, a newish downtown club on East Third Street. The owner was Irish, and Delia’s had a slightly Celtic air, enhanced by books on the

“auld country” scattered about. But its main charm was in its unabashed romanticism. The interior was the color of raspberry silk sashes on little girls’ party dresses. There were vases crammed with fresh roses. A vintage bar and minuscule dance floor completed the decor. Prints of elegant long-ago ladies hung on the walls.

They hadn’t danced, not this time, but talked for hours more. Then Richard had taken her back to her apartment building. At the front door, he’d asked,

“When can I see you again?” “When would you like to see me?” she’d answered, slightly muzzy from fatigue and a large cognac. Richard asked, “Tomorrow?” It woke her up instantly, a dash of cold water. This is going fast, she thought, half in fear, half in delight.

“That’s too soon. Besides, I have to work. The next day?” He kissed her, and it was a good one, not too dry, not too wet. Her purse slipped off her shoulder into the 79

crook of her arm. He slid it back into place. “I’ll call you.”

“ ‘To everything there is a season . . .’ ” Faith opened her half-closed eyes. The service had started.

It was plain by the third tribute that if she had hoped to get any clues as to Nathan Fox’s true nature, it would not be here. But she had not harbored any such hopes. Funerals and memorial services are only venues for truth in fiction, where scenes of bereavement might dramatically reveal hitherto-undisclosed feelings. In reality, most people keep their private opinions private and eulogized. True, she’d been to heart-wrenching services where the naked grief of those left behind laid bare their hearts, but it was never a surprise. The same for those stoic occasions where not a single tear was shed.

There were no tears at Fox’s service, but a great deal of talk. The dinosaurs—the remaining larger-than-life figures from the radical sixties—needed to weigh in and be counted. Radical lawyers, radical professors, radical clergy, radical writers, professional radicals.

The chapel was packed. People were standing.

Faith began to feel fidgety in the warm room. Outside, it was cloudy, with gray skies. A light snow had begun to fall earlier in the day. It was bitterly cold. Inside, the smell of wet wool, designer perfumes, the single floral arrangement of oversized stargazer lilies, and furniture polish commingled. The temperature crept up, increased by the crowd. Faith began to feel slightly nauseated.

She took off her coat and tried to concentrate on what the speaker was saying. There was no casket, no urn. The only sign of Fox’s mortal existence was a 80

large framed photograph next to the flowers. It was the same picture that had been in the Times. His smile looked less smug and mocking now, more self-deprecating, sadder. But that could just be the place getting to her. She leaned over to look directly toward the man who was sonorously droning on, and for the first time she spied Poppy, who had turned around, presumably looking for someone, or counting the house.

Poppy Morris was sitting in the middle of a row.

Protective coloration? Unlike most of those Faith could see, Poppy looked genuinely stricken. There were deep circles under her eyes that even carefully applied concealer didn’t mask. She turned her head back, face-forward. Noting the woman’s distress, Faith seriously doubted that Emma was the only one to know that Fox had been back in town; the only Morris to have seen him in all these years.

Two more pundits spoke, and Faith did not even attempt to concentrate after hearing the beginning of the phrase “This is the end of . . .” It was all so impersonal.

What was she going to tell Emma? There was no wail-ing, no gnashing of teeth, no rending of garments. Not that Emma herself would have behaved with such primitive lack of control, but Fox’s daughter was bereft. She’d want to hear that others were also. That her father would be missed. That her father had been cherished.

Faith turned around, as much to stretch her neck as to see how many people were behind her. A middle-aged woman stood against the wall, her eyes locked on the speaker, hanging upon every word. Tears streamed down her cheeks. Faith would have liked to stare longer. Not only was someone besides Poppy exhibit-ing signs of loss, but the woman was hard to catego-81

rize. She was wearing a drab mustard-colored parka, which she’d unzipped, revealing a white cotton turtleneck. Her hair, light brown with as much again of gray, was parted in the middle and worn in a long braid, snaking down across her shoulder toward the waistband of whatever was completing her uninspired outfit. There was some sort of button pinned to the jacket. Faith could not read the slogan from this distance, but she was sure it expressed solidarity with someone—or something like whales or redwoods. It wasn’t hard to imagine her in the sixties, fist raised, hair blowing in the wind, finding answers in Fox’s di-atribes—and maybe more. Emma, and Richard Morgan, had spoken of Fox’s women. Faith had a hunch that the lady in brown was one.

The man who had read the lines from Ecclesiastes at the start of the service stood up again and addressed the group.

“Aside from his cousins Marsha and Irwin”—he nodded toward two elderly people sitting close together in the front row—“Nathan Fox leaves no survivors but his words. As his agent and friend, I watched his words transform a generation. Nathan was cruelly, barbarically struck down in an act we cannot compre-hend, but he is not dead. Not while his words live.” This looked to be the finale and Faith tuned back in.

“No survivors.” Well, she knew that wasn’t true. She looked at the back of Poppy’s head. Besides the two of them, who else in the room knew that Arthur Quinn’s words were false? Knew the whole story, knew enough to blackmail Emma?

“He was a skinny kid when he came to me with the first book. How could I not take him on, even when he called me a parasite?” He paused for the laugh, which 82

came. “Yeah, I told him, I’m a parasite, but an honor-able one.” More laughter. “He liked that.” Quinn stopped again, seeing that Nate Fox in his mind’s eye, or assuming that was what people would think. A sensitive parasite.

His voice grew louder as he continued his speech.

“How could I not do everything to spread those words?

He wrote with passion, conviction, and a monumental sense of injustice. There’s been a great deal of talk these last days about Nathan Fox’s life underground—

a wasted life. But Nate loved being on the run. He was on the run all his life—from the establishment, and maybe from himself. Certainly”—he smiled with studied ruefulness and a twinkle in his eye—“from every woman who tried to keep up with him.” During the laugh that followed, Faith darted a glance at the woman in the rear. Her cheeks were flushed and her mouth was closed in a tight line.

“How shall we mourn Nathan Fox? Not at all. He wrote to me once that he had no regrets, and how many men can say that?”

And how many should? Faith said to herself. No regrets. They’d entered the chapel to Mozart; was “My Way” going to see them out?

“How shall we honor Nathan Fox’s memory? By reading his books and making his thoughts a part of us—living his words and by our acts, he will be with us always. He has left us this gift—and there is another yet to come. The last letters I had from him spoke of

‘the big one.’ A book that was to be published only after his death ‘far in the future, Artie,’ he wrote, advising me not to count on the ‘shekels’ for a ‘long, long time.’ Inutterably sad words now. So, I watch the mail.

It may come tomorrow, next week, next year. It will be 83

his monument, one, to quote him again, ‘That will blow the fuckin’ lid off.’ This, ladies and gentlemen, was Nathan Fox’s purpose in life. May he rest in peace, but not too much. He’ll get bored.” The music, Mozart again after all, started immediately, and everybody rose at once, cramped or moved by Arthur Quinn’s startling eulogy. It had been a performance and people immediately surrounded him, waiting to pump his hand. Faith wanted to see him, too.

When Emma had first asked her to go to the service, Faith had already realized that Arthur Quinn was someone she needed to see. The relationship between author and agent is complex—a business agreement, but of a personal nature. An agent holds an author’s ego, as well as an author’s advance, in his or her hands.

Agents find themselves functioning as critics, confi-dants, shrinks, and sometimes friends. What was the bond between Quinn and Fox? Faith guessed from the interviews she read that it was strong. Quinn’s words at the service confirmed the impression. Did he know about Emma? Forget about the “no survivors” rhetoric.

Quinn had better hope that Fox’s words survived—and stayed in print. She almost laughed out loud. Clever, clever man—essentially putting Fox’s posthumous book out for bid at the man’s funeral. She imagined what Richard would have to say about Fox’s speech, then realized she couldn’t tell him she’d been at the service.

Quinn was still mobbed by well-wishers. Faith had worked out her approach. She would pose as a graduate student contemplating a book on the radical movement as typified by Fox. Quinn, she hoped, would be interested in the book as well as the subject matter. But 84

she wanted to talk to him alone and could make an appointment by phone. She’d hoped to at least introduce herself today. She’d picked a nom de plume, Karen Brown—something easy for someone like Quinn to forget and far removed from Faith Sibley. It was unlikely their paths would cross, except perhaps at an event she was catering, but she was usually out of sight in the kitchen. She looked at the number of people between Quinn and her. It would take too long to wait.

No, what “Karen Brown” needed to do now was find out who the woman in the rear was—and how much she knew about Nathan Fox’s life above and under ground.

It wasn’t hard at all. Following at a discreet distance, Faith wormed her way out of the chapel behind the woman, who stopped only when Quinn reached out for her hand over the shoulder of someone who looked like or was Norman Mailer. “I’ll call you,” he promised, and gave a sad smile. Faith couldn’t see the woman’s face or note her response, but her shoulders relaxed visibly and perhaps her lips, which had tight-ened at Quinn’s throwaway reference to Fox’s love life, did as well.

Passing into the front room, Faith saw the two Fox cousins standing to one side with an air of patient waiting. There must be a gathering somewhere, she realized, and someone must be taking them. A postmortem on the service. She could hear the voices, congratulatory, self-congratulatory, and the whispered asides, the sotto voce digs. She envisioned drinks gulped, some spilled, and the platters of shrimp, finger sandwiches rapidly depleted. Poppy and her crowd would be there—but it wouldn’t be at the Morrises’.

“Well, of course we haven’t actually seen Nathan for 85

many years,” his cousin Irwin was explaining to someone. “Marsha might know better than I. I’m in the dry-cleaning business and don’t have much time for reading.”

What was the question?

“No,” Marsha said firmly, “Nathan Fox never wrote a novel.” She looked at Irwin. Can we get out of here?

was written all over her face. Her questioner persisted and she replied edgily, “Yes, I would know. We’re family.”

Faith couldn’t hear the rest, but presumably Fox’s cousin was continuing to reiterate her statement. And what need did cousin Nate have for made-up lives when he was so busy working on his own?

Out on the sidewalk, the crowd was thinner, scurry-ing into waiting cars or flagging down taxis. The woman in the mustard-colored parka, hood up now, was heading for the bus stop. Faith walked rapidly until they were side by side.

“Did you know Nathan Fox well?” Faith asked. It was the right thing to say.

“Better than anyone,” the woman answered, her face revealing the aching need she had to talk to someone—

anyone—about him. It almost wasn’t necessary to re-cite her story, but Faith did it anyway.

“My name is Karen Brown and I’m considering writing a book about his life. I’ve been doing some work in graduate school on the sixties and got interested in him.”

“I was a student when we met—a long, long time ago.” Suddenly, the woman seemed tired.

“Would you like some lunch?” Faith asked. “There’s a coffee shop on the next block that’s not too bad.”

“Yes, yes, I would. I don’t have to be home yet.” 86

They walked quickly, without speaking. The snow had stopped, leaving a thin, crusty layer on the ice that had built up at the curbs and around the traffic lights.

It was grimy; the soot on the top looked like a sprinkling of black pepper. The cold wind brought tears to Faith’s eyes and stung her cheeks. The woman didn’t have to be home yet, but she did have to be home sometime. A husband? Kids? She’d find out soon.

The coffee shop was tropical in comparison to the weather outside, and Faith led the way to a booth at the rear, far from the opening door. The windows were outlined with colored lights and garlands proclaiming MERRY CHRISTMAS and HAPPY HANUKKAH, and HAPPY

NEW YEAR had been looped uncertainly behind the counter. A plastic poinsettia stood next to the cash register. Each table sported spiky evergreens, with smaller versions of the poinsettia shoved in the glass vases normally reserved for limpid carnations. But the attempt managed to impart the same air of holiday festivity that was filling every corner of the city with a vengeance as the countdown to Christmas continued.

After sitting for a moment, contemplating the decor and thinking how best to begin the conversation, Faith realized it was one of those places where you ordered at the counter and served yourself.

“Come on, let’s get some coffee right away and order.”

It wasn’t long before they were settled in. The woman—Faith realized she didn’t know her name—

had ordered pastrami—clearly not a maven. Coffee shops were not the place for pastrami. Katz’s was, the Carnegie Deli was.

Faith took a sip of coffee, enjoying the feeling of the 87

hot liquid traveling down her throat, past her rib cage, restoring her circulation. She held the paper cup in both hands for warmth—a blue-and-white cup with Aegean decorations, Greek keys on top and bottom.

“We’re Happy to Serve You.” All New York coffee shop paper cups looked like this. How did it start? A supplier in Athens?

“Sad that the only ones left are his cousins,” Faith commented. It was an opener.

The woman nodded vigorously and put her thick sandwich down. Under her parka—the button had urged people to continue to boycott lettuce—she’d par-tially covered the turtleneck with a loopy beige cro-cheted vest. She tossed her braid, almost long enough to sit on, back over her shoulder and started talking intently.

“When he was in college, first his mother died, then his father. Sophomore year. The year we met. He took it very hard, and later he used to say how much he regretted they never knew what a famous son they had.

‘Lorraine,’ he’d say—oh, I’m sorry. I haven’t introduced myself, Karen.” She looked genuinely stricken.

Faith instantly quelled the impulse to look over her shoulder for “Karen” and instead said, “It was pretty cold outside, not the place for introductions.” The woman smiled. She’d taken her glasses off, which had steamed up when they entered the restaurant, and was wiping them with a tissue. She must have been, if not beautiful, at least pretty when she was younger. Even now with a good haircut, losing the gray, a little makeup, new clothes . . . It would be a big job.

“I’m Lorraine Fuchs.”

“Fuchs?” Faith was surprised.

88

Lorraine blushed. She was a lot better-looking with some color in her face.

“ ‘The wife of his heart.’ That’s what he always said.

Of course, we never believed in the bourgeois institution of marriage, created solely by men to ensure that property would be transferred to a legitimate male heir and to further subjugate and humiliate women.” This is going to be heavy going, Faith realized dis-mally. But “wife of his heart”—that was sweet.

“I’m so pleased that someone, especially a woman, is writing an account of Nathan’s life, and I’m happy to help in any way I can. I’ve been with him since the day we met.”

“You mean you went underground with him?”

“Of course. He needed me. Maybe I’d better start from the beginning.”

“That would be wonderful. You’re the only person I’ve interviewed so far, and it certainly seems you’ve been the closest.”

Again, it was the right thing to say. Obviously, Nathan Fox was Lorraine Fuchs’s entire reason for being—or so Faith thought.

“We met at City College. He was in my poly sci class and knew more than the professor. They were always having these big fights.” She sighed blissfully.

“Nathan started to offer his own course. He was living in a tiny apartment on Morton Street. The rest is history. We became his cadre. I don’t know why people always say the fifties were dull. Believe me, there was never a dull moment for us!”

“So you all stayed together as a social-action group?”

“Yes. For a while, we were in the Socialist Workers party, but that didn’t work out. Nathan felt the party 89

wasn’t sufficiently committed to the working class. We formed a faction and published a paper, but eventually we left. Then Nathan wrote the first book and started giving talks all over the country. He was one of the first to speak out against the war in Vietnam,” she related proudly. “You’ve probably seen him in the documen-taries. There was no one who had as powerful an effect on a crowd as Nathan.”

Faith hadn’t seen Fox in action, but she planned to soon. She’d heard about his charisma, though. The peculiarly mesmerizing, yet galvanizing, effect he’d had on great masses of people.

“Of course, my parents disapproved terribly. I’m an only child,” she said apologetically, as if her mother and father’s failure to produce a sibling were somehow her fault. “They thought Nathan was using me. That’s what my father used to say. They didn’t understand that even without Nathan, I would have chosen the life I led.” She began to eat her potato chips, one at a time.

She had long, slender fingers unadorned by any rings.

“They never cut me off. They weren’t like that, and my mother always made a nice meal for us when we’d visit, but Nathan said it made him uncomfortable to be there, even if the pot roast was good. He always had his little jokes. He told them their phone was probably tapped and to be careful. My father was pretty upset at that. It was the last time Nathan went with me to the house. Harvey was a baby, so it would have been around 1964.”

“Harvey?”

“Harvey’s my son.”

Faith swallowed hard. A piece of her pita pocket lodged in her throat and she reached for her coffee. Not only did Emma have two—what would Irwin and Mar-90

sha be, first cousins once removed? Second cousins? It was one of those things she’d never been able to keep straight—but a half brother around her own age!

“So, Arthur Quinn was wrong.” And where was Harvey? Why hadn’t he been at his father’s service?

“Harvey isn’t Nathan’s child, although Nathan was the only father figure he ever knew. Nathan worried that any child of his would be persecuted by the police, the foot soldiers of the ruling class. We made a decision not to have any children. I’m not proud of what I’m going to tell you next, but things happen in life.” And how, Faith thought.

“I left Nathan briefly at one point. I needed to get my head together. He’d become very well known. The first book had been published and he was traveling in pretty high circles. I felt excluded and wrongly assumed it meant he didn’t love me. He tried to reason with me, and deep inside I knew I was the only woman for him. My jealousy was an indication of my own weakness and lack of commitment to our goals. But I went out to California for a while and lived in a collective in San Francisco. Somehow, I got pregnant.” Somehow? Surely Lorraine wasn’t that naïve, although Faith had quickly realized that Naïveté could be Lorraine’s middle name.

“It was very difficult to get a safe abortion in those days—women had not won the right to choose, a right imperiled now. But thank goodness I didn’t. Then I wouldn’t have my Harvey. I’d have nobody now.”

“What does your son do?”

“At the moment, he’s seeking employment.” Lorraine managed to sound proud. “He’s an expert mechanic, so good that many of the employees and even the bosses where he’s worked get envious of his skills.” 91

Mouths off and gets fired was Faith’s hasty analysis.

She was beginning to feel very, very sorry for Lorraine Fuchs.

“We live in Brooklyn. My mother passed away recently and my father has been gone for some years now. I inherited the house. I know I’ll eventually have to sell it and give the money away, but it’s been wonderful having our own place. We’ve moved so often. I grew up there,” she added wistfully. “And it’s good for Harvey to have a real home. I mean to come to. He’s got an apartment with some friends. They grow up so fast.”

Before Lorraine could go off on a Harvey and mother-hood tangent, Faith slipped in a question.

“Had you been living with Nathan Fox in the city?” It would have been cramped in the studio apartment with the three of them.

“No, he was working on a very important book and wanted to be completely alone. Of course, I knew where he was. He got sick once and called me to take care of him, which I was only too happy to do, but that was just one of two times I was ever there. The second was the day before he died. When he said good-bye, how could I have known it would be forever? You’ll have to excuse me.” Tears were streaming down her face. She took off her glasses and wiped her eyes with another tissue.

“I’m so sorry,” Faith said.

“Well, that’s life, isn’t it? Anyway, he didn’t have a phone, but he’d call once in a while. We were going to move back together when the book was finished. In any case, it would have been hard to live together when he decided to move to the city, because I was taking care of my mother. I guess I secretly hoped he’d move 92

to the house after she died, but people would have known who he was. The neighbors are . . . well, they like to keep track of what’s going on. So he stayed where he was and I stayed where I was.” Lorraine, clinging to Fox as they got older, would have had to play by his rules—always his rules.

“And Harvey? Were they close?”

“Well, not to say close, but Nathan was a very accepting man. That was what was so special about him.

He didn’t judge. When Harvey was a little boy, Nathan explained to me that it wasn’t a good idea for the child to get attached to someone who might have to disappear, and there were long stretches when Nathan was in a safe house that only had room for him. I’ve always been able to find secretarial work and supported us that way.”

Us being Harvey and Lorraine, or all three of them?

Faith wondered. Probably both at different times.

Time! She didn’t have time for this—unfortunately.

There was much more to be learned from Lorraine.

And she now had two more people who knew where Fox lived. Faith had no doubt that whatever Lorraine knew, her son knew—if he wanted to, and she’d have to meet him to judge that. Had Lorraine seen the Stansteads’ wedding picture when she went to care for Fox, seen the postcards on the fridge? Somehow, Faith thought not. Fox would have tucked them out of sight.

But still the question remained. Did Lorraine Fuchs know about Emma?

And what about the bank job?

“Were you involved when they tried to rob Chase Manhattan?”

“No, I’d been away for a few weeks helping my mother sell my grandmother’s house. She’d died a 93

month earlier and there was a lot to do to get it ready to put on the market. It was in New Jersey, out in the country near the Delaware Water Gap. It would have been a nice place for Harvey. He loved it there.” Lorraine sounded wistful. It had probably been one of the happiest times in her life, and Faith imagined the two women going through drawers, closets, boxes in an attic, reliving old memories while the little boy played outside in the sunshine. But it was time to get back to business.

“When did you find out about the robbery?”

“Right away. I had called Nathan the night before and told him I’d be back the next day, but I still had to help my mother unpack the things she’d decided to keep. I couldn’t just leave her, no matter how much I missed Nate. She gave me a beautiful set of dishes—

Nippon—that had been my grandmother’s. Nate, Harvey, and I were living in a tiny apartment in the Village then, and I thought I’d just bring a few plates. They’re still in a box. I really should get them out and use them at last. But anyway, about that night. Nathan knew where I was, of course, and showed up there. He tapped on the kitchen window when he saw I was alone.” Obviously another blissful memory. “He was really annoyed with himself for making such a mess of it. Two were arrested right away, but Nate and the driver of the car got away. He would never tell me who the driver was, but I have my guesses. I sometimes wonder what would have happened if I hadn’t gone away. I would have been there, too, and things would have been a lot harder. About keeping Nathan safe, I mean. The authorities weren’t looking for me. I mean they were, but not like with Nathan. I changed my name to Linda Fuchs and called my parents only once 94

a year for a long time. That part was hard. But things got better after a while. I think the FBI had better, or worse, things to do.”

Fox had found the perfect helpmate. She didn’t even seem to be much of a worrier, yet she was obviously intelligent. Faith wished she had more time to talk. She wanted to find out about the other men involved in the robbery attempt. Close comrades. Did they know about Nathan’s personal life? Where were they now, and were they in need of cash?

She grabbed the bill, over Lorraine’s protests that going Dutch was only fair. “You’ve been such a help, so please let me get this. I’m sorry I can’t stay longer, but I have to go. I have to be at work. Maybe we could arrange a time to meet again?”

Lorraine was clearly delighted at the prospect.

“Why don’t you come to the house and look at my scrapbooks? I’ve kept every news article, every review over the years.”

“That would be fantastic. I’m so glad I met you today,” Faith said.

“Me, too.” Lorraine had eaten everything on her plate, not wasting a crumb. The older woman seemed so lonely that Faith felt a stab of guilt at the way she was using her. But when this was all over, she assured herself, Emma could meet Lorraine and they could engage in mutual Fox worship.

“I’m not sure what my schedule is, so could I call you?” she asked.

“Sure,” said Lorraine, digging out a ballpoint pen and writing her number on a napkin.

Faith tucked the napkin in her purse and put on her coat. She hesitated before asking one last question, but knew if she didn’t, she’d be kicking herself later. “I 95

know it must be upsetting to think about, but who do you think killed Nathan Fox?”

Lorraine’s washed-out blue eyes filled with tears. “I wish I knew. I wish I knew.”

When Faith got to work, Josie was up to her elbows in coulibiac of salmon and muttering to herself, “Why folks can’t eat a good old Brunswick stew, I’ll never know. Just wait ’til Josie’s comes along.”

“We’re not behind, but we’re not ahead,” she told Faith, who was hastily changing into some work clothes.

“Any calls?”

“About ninety from someone named Emma. Left them on the machine, and we’ve chatted a number of times since. I believe it to be the concerned lady who didn’t want to bother you at work. You recall?” Faith did and raced to the phone.

Emma was home and picked up on the first ring.

“Emma, hi. It’s Faith. I don’t really have much—”

“Tell me everything. Were there a lot of speakers?

Was it crowded? Oh, I should have taken a chance and gone. How about the press—were they there?”

“Yes, yes, and yes. I’ll tell you everything tomorrow.

We have to do a dinner tonight on Gramercy Park and—”

“Faith, I got a call. From them.”

“Oh God, Emma. You have got to tell Michael!

What did they say? When was it?” If it was during the time of the service, that eliminated a whole bunch of people.

“I don’t know when. It was on the machine and I didn’t get back until around two o’clock. I left about ten. Hair, manicure, Christmas shopping, a lunch 96

meeting—it should be one or the other, a meeting or lunch.”

She was rambling on, her distraught voice making the prosaic words a litany of fright.

“Emma! What did they say!”

“ ‘We’ll be in touch.’ That’s all. ‘We’ll be in touch.’ ” Her voice was dead calm now, leaden.

“A man or a woman?”

“Impossible to tell. Strange, kind of squeaky, high-pitched.”

“Take the tape out and put a new one in. If I can convince you to go to the police, they’ll want it, and mean-while, I want to listen to it.”

“I erased it,” Emma said softly. “I’m sorry. I didn’t think. I just hit the delete button.”

“Look, we’ll meet for breakfast, okay? Don’t worry about it. It was a natural response. What are you doing tonight? Is Michael home?”

“Yes, he’s not going away again until January, and I’m going with him. Someplace in the Caribbean. And tonight? I think it’s the opening of Tru—you know, Robert Morse doing Capote. No, wait, that’s not right.” She sighed heavily. “I can’t remember, but something.

Michael knows.”

“Just don’t go anywhere by yourself. Stick with him,” Faith knew that Emma wasn’t going to take any solitary walks—not in this subzero weather and not when she was this terrified—but Faith was nervous.

Easy enough to get the Stansteads’ number. It was listed. At breakfast tomorrow, she’d try again to convince Emma to tell someone—maybe even Poppy.

Meanwhile, Faith had many hours to fill with trying to figure it all out. A murderer and a blackmailer, or two separate crimes?

97

After arranging to meet at 8:30 the following morning at the Maximilian Cafe at Fifty-eighth and Seventh Avenue, Faith hung up and turned, to find Josie staring at her, a guarded, worried expression on her face. “Is this something you want to talk about? Because, girl, it sure sounds like something you should be talking about,” she said.

Faith pulled a stool from under the steel countertop and sat down, cupping her chin in one hand.

“I wish I could, but it’s not my story to tell, and I’ve sworn that I won’t.”

Josie came up alongside. She looked straight at Faith. “Remember I’m here. And I thought I had heard it all, but apparently . . .” She smiled and coaxed one from her boss. “Apparently, I was wrong. Just don’t go starting something you can’t finish. I need this job.”

“Me, too.” Faith gave her a hug. “Now, what are we doing for dessert? French apple cake? [See the recipe on page 283.] The host’s allergic to chocolate, right?”

“Now, that’s someone with a real problem.” Yes, thought Faith—and Emma, uptown, opening her closet, laying out what to wear tonight for yet another dinner party, gallery opening, or benefit, would be ecstatic to trade for a problem like this.

Faith was drinking coffee, sitting by the window at Maximilian’s, drumming her fingers impatiently on the red-checkered tablecloth. Like the coffee shop yesterday, the creperie was bedecked with garlands spelling out good cheer—except JOYEUX NOËL had been added, and here the poinsettias were real. Outside, a Salvation Army Santa was vigorously ringing his bell, the little red collection pot swinging merrily on its tripod. Saint Nick had a boom box and Faith 98

could hear “Santa Claus Is Comin’ to Town” faintly through the glass. Every once in a while, someone would stop and slip some money in the pot. But only once in a while. Most people were streaming out of the subway and off the buses, single-mindedly heading straight for work, not so eager for the day’s toils as to escape the freezing cold.

There were less than two weeks until Christmas.

Faith wished the events of the last week either far into the future or far into the past. It was Christmas. She should be spending what precious little free time she had at Carnegie Hall listening to Handel’s Messiah, going to see A Christmas Carol somewhere, hearing the Vienna Boys Choir sing “pa-rum-pa-pum-pum,” shopping and more shopping, The Nutcracker for the umpteenth time, of course—and not embroiled in crime.

“Sorry, sorry, sorry. No cabs.” Emma ordered coffee immediately, then glanced at the menu, adding, “An English muffin, butter on the side.” She looked at Faith. “I know it’s a French place, but I like English muffins.”

“I’ll have a plain omelette and whole-wheat toast,” Faith said. She had the feeling she was going to need sustenance today.

“Any more messages?” she asked her friend as soon as the waitress left. The sidewalks were packed, but the restaurant was almost empty.

Emma shook her head. “If there’s another, I’ll save the tape.”

“There’ll be another,” Faith said pointedly. “Do you have any idea, any idea at all who could be doing this?”

Emma looked woebegone. “I’ve thought and 99

thought, but the only person I can think of is Lucy. You know what she’s like, and she’s been even more horrid since I got married.”

“Jealous, of course. I would be more than happy to confront her with you.” Faith brightened. Something concrete to do.

The food arrived. Emma put a millimeter-thick coat-ing of butter on her muffin. “But if I’m wrong, then she’ll know things she didn’t know before. We can’t just say, ‘Are you blackmailing me, Lucy, and if so, cut it out,’ without her wanting to know why, and then I’ll never have a moment’s peace again for the rest of my life.”

“Which you might not have unless you ask her,” Faith pointed out logically.

“But it’s likely that if it isn’t Lucy, she’ll blackmail me over having something someone could blackmail me about.” Emma broke off a tiny piece of her muffin and raised it halfway to her mouth. “How can this be happening to me?” she asked in despair.

She was right—on several counts. The Lucy plan needed more thought. Faith patted Emma’s hand, the one without the muffin. Her cuticles were even more ragged than before. “It’s not about you, remember?

Now, I need to know some things; then I’ll tell you all about the service. It was everything your father would have wished.” Faith was sure of that.

“How did the blackmailers—although we don’t know if it’s more than one; the ‘we’ could have been put in to lead you astray—anyway, how did you find out where to leave the money, and where was it?” Emma sat up straight. She could do this. “I got a call. I was home. It was Sunday afternoon, and as soon as I answered the phone, a voice said, ‘Put the money 100

in a green plastic trash bag and leave it in the Dumpster at the construction site on Forty-eighth and Lex at five o’clock today. Take a cab and have it wait. Then leave. If you screw up, or tell anyone, Christmas won’t be merry this year.’ ”

“Was it the same voice as the voice on the machine?”

Emma flushed. “I should have thought of that. No, it wasn’t, but again, I couldn’t tell whether it was a man or a woman with one of those Lauren Bacall-type voices, husky.”

“So, you took the bag and went to the spot.”

“Yes, first I had to go buy some trash bags. I couldn’t find where Juanita keeps them.” Faith was struck by something. “Wait a minute. This was Sunday. How did you happen to have ten thousand dollars in cash lying around?”

“I know you said paying them wasn’t a good idea, but it seemed the simplest way to me, so I’d taken money out on Friday. Just in case.”

“Who could have known about it? Michael? Someone at the bank?”

“Not Michael. It’s my own account. Technically, it’s joint, but his name isn’t even on the checks. It’s just for my expenses. Anyway, I put the money under my lingerie, and of course I didn’t mention it. It was a very busy weekend, lots of parties, and he had some kind of fund-raiser upstate that I didn’t want to go to. I keep telling him ‘I think I’m coming down with the flu.’

He’s been very worried and made an appointment for me with our doctor, which I guess I’ll have to keep, but I feel like a fraud.”

Once more, Emma digressed. The stress was loosening her hinges—hinges that weren’t too tight to start.

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Faith persisted. “Did you see anybody you knew at the bank? Was it a teller you’d recognize?” She couldn’t picture Michael Stanstead rifling through his wife’s panties. She had another thought. “Was Lucy—or anybody else—at the apartment during the weekend?” Emma started with the first part of the question. “I remember saying hi to a couple of people, and I think it was at the bank—or it may have been on the way.

The teller just looked like a teller. A man. He had to go and get some kind of approval. I think he was new. I brought one of those Coach saddlebags someone gave me once. Somehow, I thought it would be a bigger bundle. Anyway, I put the money in that. I was so nervous, I went straight home. And Lucy? Yes, she, Mother, and Jason came for drinks Saturday night with some other people. We were all going to watch Michael cut a ribbon at a YMCA. He cuts a lot of ribbons. I think this was a new media center for an after-school program. Poppy and Jason gave some computers or something, so that’s why they were there. A darling group of children sang carols; then we all went on to a party at La Côte Basque.”

“Why was Lucy there?”

“Well, she’s always around this kind of thing. She’s very interested in the campaign. Of course she’d love to be married to someone like Michael, and it just makes her worse. She was with this man who works for Michael.”

“Okay, now was there anything unusual about the cabdriver? And what about at the Dumpster? Was there a car near it? There must have been people on the sidewalk.” It seemed like a very risky drop, and whoever had planned to pick it up would have had to be seconds away, watching Emma.

102

“The place was deserted. Remember how cold it was? And there wasn’t even much traffic, not the way it would be on a weekday. The doorman got me a cab, so that was complete chance, unless this is all a gigantic conspiracy. The driver was from Haiti. I know because he was complaining about the weather. It’s his first winter in New York.”

Maybe not such a risky drop after all. Social-service agencies had been sending vans around to move the homeless into shelters. One poor man had been found lifeless, huddled in a box over a nonfunctioning heat vent that had probably provided some warmth when he’d first discovered it. Not only would no one be working at the site on the weekend, but no one would be camped out there, either. And five o’clock was a dead time in the city on a Sunday, a lull between the day’s activities and the night’s festivities. Easy enough to stand in the lobby of one of the buildings nearby, or to duck down in a parked car, racing out to pick up the money as soon as Emma’s cab turned the corner.

“No cars you recognized?”

“No, and I did look. The Dumpster was on Forty-eighth and there were NO PARKING signs all along where they’re working.”

Faith finished the last scraps of her omelette.

“I really have to get to work,” she said, and signaled the waitress for some more coffee.

“I have a ton to do,” Emma agreed, lifting her cup for a refill.

Realizing she’d been remiss in not giving a full account of the service, Faith described the event. Hesitating slightly, she told Emma about Lorraine Fuchs.

As she’d suspected, Emma wanted to meet her at once and talk about her father.

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“When things are a little more settled,” Faith advised, not wanting to muddy the waters any further. It was impossible to see bottom now, and if Lorraine was to learn of Emma’s existence, not having known previously, the waters might well silt up to deltalike proportions. For, if Lorraine knew, then Harvey would, and so forth, until the paparazzi outside Emma’s apartment building would be more numerous than at Jackie O’s and Princess Di’s combined.

“In detective stories, they always try to figure out who benefits from a death, which should be fairly simple to figure out. If Fox made a will—and I’m not sure Communists do this sort of thing—it would have to be probated, and some lawyer—or Arthur Quinn, if he has it—will be coming forward one of these days.”

“But Daddy didn’t have any money, not much anyway. Just enough to pay his rent, buy food, books, typing paper.”

Faith suddenly had a whole bunch of questions and didn’t want to forget. “Remind me about the books and paper, but we’ve been overlooking something. How did he even get the small amount he needed to live on?

He wasn’t getting any royalties. Lorraine has always done temp work, which can’t pay much. I suppose she must have supported them before they came to New York, and sympathizers may have sent her money. I’d like to get a list of those charities Fox stipulated as the recipients of his earnings. Could one have been Lorraine, a way of funneling the money back to himself?

But the FBI would have checked each one thoroughly, so that’s out.”

“How about Poppy?”

How about Poppy, indeed? Easy enough for her to supply her ex-lover with cash now and then. It made a 104

great deal of sense. Faith had left Fox’s service with the distinct impression that Poppy Morris had been carrying a torch of Olympic proportions for Fox all these years.

“It’s a thought,” she said slowly.

“Now, what about the books and typing paper?” Emma had a hectic flush on her cheeks and asked this eagerly. It was just like the old days, when they’d tried to get locked in the Metropolitan Museum after reading From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E.

Frankweiler.

“At the service, his agent talked about a book, one that was to be published only after Fox’s death. Lorraine mentioned that he was working on an important book, too. What do you know about it?”

“A couple of times when I visited him, he was typing. I could hear it through the door. It wasn’t a very safe building—the buzzer didn’t work and anybody could get in from the street door. I really wanted him to move, but he always said no one would bother an old man like him. He gave me a key, ‘just in case,’ he said, but I’m not sure what he meant, what the case would be. I always knocked, since there wasn’t an intercom and I didn’t want to disturb his work.

That’s how I heard the typing. He was pretty good at it.”

“The book, Emma, what was the book about?”

“Some political thing, I imagine. He told me it was his magnum opus and the most fun he’d had in years.

He kept it in a fireproof metal file cabinet. He was afraid of fire—said the building would go up in a flash.

I gave him one of those small extinguishers, and he was very pleased. But he never said anything about when the book was going to be published.” 105

“Did he ever talk about being afraid of anything else, particularly anyone else?”

Emma shook her head. “It’s not the greatest neighborhood and, as I said, the building wasn’t secure. He was afraid of fire because of his books and papers, not because he was worried about himself. I always thought he liked living on the edge—in a funny way, liked being a wanted man, hiding out.” Which was what Arthur Quinn had implied. Well, thought Faith, whatever gets you off—although in this case, it was permanent.

“It just doesn’t make sense. Without much of an estate, Nathan Fox was certainly worth more alive than dead to anyone who knew who he really was. Why kill him? Why not simply turn him over to the feds for the reward money?”

“But only a handful of people knew who he was—

me, this Lorraine Fuchs, Todd, but that was years ago.” Emma was right. It was a short list—so far. Faith could already add several names: maybe Harvey Fuchs—she hadn’t mentioned him to Emma yet—

maybe Arthur Quinn, maybe Poppy Morris.

“You better watch out . . .” The Salvation Army Santa’s tape was starting from the beginning again.

This time, Faith put the money for the check on the table and they put their coats on.

When she passed him, Faith shoved a five-dollar bill in the pot.

They were rolling out pecan shortbread cookies for an office party at one of the publishing houses when the phone rang. Faith grabbed it, hoping it was her grandmother, with whom she’d been playing phone tag since receiving the plaintive message about the closing of 106

B. Altman’s—or “Baltmans,” as Hope had called it when she was little.

But it wasn’t Granny; it was Emma. Emma sounding more frantic and flat-out terrified than Faith had ever heard her.

“I don’t know what to do! You’ve got to help me!”

“What’s wrong! Where are you! Emma, if you’re in any danger, you have got to call the police!”

“No, no! Faith, I’m at my wit’s end!”

“What! What is it!”

“The caterer I hired for the Stanstead Associates holiday party tomorrow night has been shut down by the Board of Health!”

107

Five

This was serious.

“Michael thinks everything’s all set, and besides people from the firm, he always invites extras—people he wants to impress, important people. I’ve been calling every caterer in the city and everybody’s booked.

I’m desperate!”

Trying extremely hard not to feel slighted as a caterer, Faith worked to sound sympathetic. The important “extras” would no doubt be people essential to Michael’s political ambitions, and a wife who muffed a simple thing like an office party was not going to present herself as a strong candidate for pulling off state dinners.

“I know Have Faith won’t be able to do it. Of course you’re booked, but do you know anyone who could possibly step in? It could even be an outfit from Jersey.” Emma’s voice trembled.

Faith was enormously relieved. She should have had more faith. Emma assumed she was busy, as all the hot—and even not so hot—caterers in town were. And 108

Faith was busy. She was doing a lunch tomorrow and an after-theater dessert buffet in the evening. Saturday night, she had two dinners and a cocktail party.

“What time is it scheduled for, and is it dinner?”

“Six o’clock, supposedly after work, but no one’s going to be working much on a Friday this close to Christmas. What we’d arranged was hors d’oeuvres, then a buffet of more substantial food and desserts. But it can all be scaled down. The most important thing is to have a lot to drink. At least that’s what Michael always says.”

“I have a job, but not until later, and I think we can do both.”

“You! But that would be heaven! I never dreamed you might be able to do it. Come over and take a look at the place. I don’t think you’ve seen it. I’ll give you a key and then you can come and go when you want.

Oh, this is too good to be true! We’ll keep it simple—

things everybody likes: foie gras, caviar, festive things.”

Foie gras and caviar with toasted brioche and blinis being the Triscuits and Wispride spread of this crowd, Faith reflected. Obviously, money was no object, and it certainly did make things easier. She took down the number of expected guests and a few other details from Emma, then began calling her suppliers. By the time Josie returned from a lunch break of Christmas shopping, Faith had the Stanstead party pretty much under control. She was happy to be helping Emma out, but even happier to have the opportunity to get a good look at some of the guests.

Emma and Michael Stanstead’s rich young urban professional apartment, up in the Eighties between Fifth 109

and Park in a grand old prewar building, owed more to Mark Hampton than Pottery Barn. Faith looked around the spacious living room. The walls had been covered in heavy damask silk with a slight woven stripe that was the color of bittersweet in autumn. In addition to the grouped collections of botanical and architectural framed prints, there was a striking modern oil by Wolf Kahn over the fireplace. The seating was chintz, but comfortable. Couches to sink into and curl up on.

Large easy chairs next to skirted round tables piled with books. The lighting from the ceiling was soft and supplemented by table lamps. Another painting, a por-trait of Emma as a child by Aaron Shikler that Faith recognized from the Morrises’ living room, hung between the front windows. The entire apartment had been tastefully bedecked for the season. Swags of white pine and holly and pots of deep crimson cyclamen trailed across the mantel. More pine was fes-tooned over the doorways with shiny red ilex, gauzy silk ribbons floating from the boughs. There were flowers everywhere. She went to adjust one of the blooms—a white amaryllis, faintly edged with red—

that had fallen slightly to one side, away from a profu-sion of blossoms and greens in a large silver Georgian wine cooler. The flowers were replacing a Dale Chihuly glass bowl, normally on the pedestal. “Too horrible if someone knocked into it,” Emma had declared, cradling the fragile piece in her arms and putting it in one of the cabinets under the wall of bookshelves, which contained burnished leather-bound volumes, complete with an antique mahogany library ladder.

There were small white French lilacs in the arrangement and their fragrance suggested spring sunshine, not the slate sky outside. Looking up, searching the 110

heavens anxiously for signs of more snow, Faith pushed one of the drapes farther aside. The pale gold silk fabric was so fine, it slipped through her fingers like molten metal, not woven threads. She let it drop back into place.

The room was perfect. There wasn’t a single jarring note. Usually, she thought of rooms as backdrops for the food, settings in which a meal, the main event, was served. This room refused to be relegated. Soon it would be filled with people. You wouldn’t be able to see the intricate pattern of the huge Oriental rug almost covering the parquet. The bowls of Christmas roses and other more elaborate bouquets would be shoved to one side, displaced by plates with scraps of food, empty glasses. Yet, the room would still dominate.

Josie came in with a pyramid of fruit and stopped in the doorway.

“Yes, I could live here. Oh yes. Wouldn’t ever have to leave. Could sleep on the sofa. I’m definitely going to have to get me a place like this.” They both burst out laughing.

“Where do you want this?” She held the fruit on top of her head and did a passable Carmen Miranda.

“On the buffet, next to the fruit knives. It’s meant to be consumed. The comice pears are perfectly ripe—

delectable. I had one for lunch.” Besides the foie gras, caviar, and champagne, Faith had added a buffet with roast sirloin of beef with two sauces—creamy horseradish and portabello mushroom—garlic mashed potatoes, roasted winter vegetables, a pesto pasta frittata, and the obligatory salad of mixed baby greens. The desserts, an assortment of cheeses, the fruit, champagne, and dessert wines were at one end of the table; the main course occupied the rest. Howard, bless his 111

heart, would tend the bar, set up in Michael’s study.

Jessica, a graduate student at Columbia who was on Faith’s list of part-time help, would take care of serving the buffet. Josie and Faith would alternate keeping an eye on things in the kitchen and circulating with a few platters of hot and cold hors d’oeuvres. Josie had offered to do all the serving, knowing that Faith preferred to stay in the background, but Faith had refused. This was one party where she planned to circulate.

Emma was thrilled. She dashed into the kitchen before the first guest arrived, looking spectacularly pretty in a lacy Geoffrey Beene slip dress. The lingerie look was big for evening wear this year, and some of the events Faith had catered recently looked more like slumber than dinner parties. But Emma didn’t look ready for bed—or rather, not ready for sleep.

“Thank you, thank you, thank you! I told Michael about the catastrophe but that I was able to get a great replacement, and he says he remembers a party you did and you’ll be even better than Henri, whose food was getting too predictable. I wonder why he was shut down? I never thought to ask, but it doesn’t matter.

Michael thinks I’ve done a terrific job, and now I have to fly. There’s the door!”

Emma’s speech was delivered at the speed of light and she was in and out of the kitchen before Faith had time to ask if they should start serving the hot hors d’oeuvres right away. She made the decision herself and popped a tray of coconut shrimp in the oven.

Emma’s kitchen contained state-of-the-art equipment—Viking range, Sub-Zero refrigerator, Calphalon pots and pans—but showed absolutely no signs of use.

Faith was accustomed to this, but she noted that the 112

Stansteads did stock some food—DoveBars, of course, milk, English marmalade, and orange juice. Somewhere, there were probably English muffins, too.

Faith walked from the kitchen down the hall, past the front door and foyer, and into the living room, which was already buzzing with conversation. The holiday season was adding glitter to what would be a sparkling group at any time of the year. Well dressed, well coiffed, they did indeed look like beautiful people. A subtle smell of expensive perfume filled the air.

The women were wearing more jewelry than usual.

Just as their sisters under the skin pinned a rhinestone Christmas tree to a coat collar or hung tiny Christmas ball earrings from their earlobes, these ladies had un-earthed their Judith Leiber minaudières and Tiffany di-amonds by the yard. They formed a seamless whole with their surroundings, and Faith felt as if she were watching an exceptionally well-staged and -costumed play.

She started passing the tray and dispensing napkins.

Michael’s study was off the main room. Setting up the bar there seemed to be working, freeing up space in the larger room for mixing and mingling.

Looking about, she was reminded that her role as employee made her virtually invisible. All her senses were heightened—particularly sight and sound. She was acutely aware of everything going on in the room.

Her first thought was that there were no surprises—

yet.

It was no surprise to see Poppy holding court, back to the fireplace, bathed in what was the kindest light of the room. It was no surprise to see Jason Morris, either, who was sitting in a large wing chair off to her side, watching his wife with an expression of tolerant 113

amusement. Faith remembered him now. A large, florid man in bespoke suits, with patrician good looks that had once been much, much better. He looked all of his years tonight, especially compared with his wife.

Faith remembered Emma’s recent description of her mother’s current attitude toward Jason, “But now she is fifty and he is seventy.” It was no surprise to see Lucy, dressed in those dreary lawyerlike clothes from Brooks—navy blue suits, skirt not too short, white blouse, maybe a fabric rosette at the neck. No jewelry except a very expensive watch. In deference to the hour and occasion, Lucy had chosen a black evening suit and the rosette was black satin. She’d inherited little in the way of appearance from her mother, certainly not her glorious red hair.

She was a wheat-colored blond, thanks to Daddy, tall and large-boned, but with the athletic body of a would-be partner who regularly hits the squash court, letting the boss win, but not by much.

And there were no surprises in her greeting to Faith.

“You must all be so proud of Hope. I hear she’s taking the city by storm. And what are you doing with yourself these days? Waitressing?”

Resisting the temptation to tell the bitch to take a flying leap, Faith smiled and moved the shrimp just out of Lucy’s reach. “I own the company that’s catering the party tonight.” She took a step away.

“How, well, how very unusual,” Lucy said, smiling nastily. “And here I thought you were merely one of the help, but then again . . .” She let her words hang in the air like industrial waste. She didn’t need to finish.

She didn’t need to say, “But then again, you are.” Letting it hang there was so much more fun.

Faith moved sister Lucy to the top of the list of peo-114

ple who might be blackmailing Emma, as well as to the top of the list of those who might have murdered Nathan Fox. She’d happily move Lucy to the top of more, but two was all she had at the moment.

She went back for another tray, and when she returned, studiously ignored Lucy on her rounds. It was impossible to escape the voice, though. “I’m sorry,” Faith heard her say without a note of regret, “I really can’t get worked up about where to put the homeless. Long Island, wherever—so long as they’re not in my face.” No surprises. But yes, surprises.

First, Hope walked in and sister bumped into sister.

She was looking particularly gorgeous in an ivory satin blouse and short black velvet skirt, her dark hair loose.

The hose on her shapely long legs had little rhinestones at each ankle. Hope must be in a whimsical mood tonight, Faith noted.

“What are you doing here?” Hope asked.

“I was about to ask you the same thing. You haven’t started moonlighting, working for Stanstead Associates, have you? Where would you get the time? And I’m catering this thing. Just ask Lucy.”

“Of course I’m not working for them, but it might be fun someday. They’re an exciting bunch. No, Phelps invited me. He’s a good friend of Adrian Sutherland.

They were at school together. You do know who Adrian is, don’t you?”

Faith had heard the name but couldn’t place it. “Remind me,” she said, looping her arm through her sister’s and pulling her in the direction of the kitchen. “I have to get some more food. They’re eating like lo-custs.”

“Adrian is Michael’s campaign manager and has also been with Stanstead Associates since it started.

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He’s Michael’s right-hand man. He was born here, but his father is British, so he has that cool accent. I’ve never actually met him, but I heard him on the news once. Everything he said sounded so terribly believ-able, so terribly important. He wants Phelps to work on the campaign, which is why he got invited.” A bell went off, and it wasn’t the oven timer. “Did you tell your new beau that you went to school with Emma?” Faith asked her sister.

“I might have. Why?”

“No reason, I just wondered. Now we’d better get out there before this gets cold. Plus, I want to meet your charming friend.”

A friend who might be looking to use Hope to in-gratiate himself with the party powers that be. Why else would he invite her to come along, especially when he was already a step removed himself from being asked by the host and hostess?

The crowd in the living room had increased substantially and, unlike many parties Faith had attended, nobody seemed in a rush to go on to the next—and at this time of year, there were plenty of nexts. But this tended to happen at the parties she catered. Josie was sure it was the food. “They want to scarf down the good stuff and then they won’t be stuck with greasy buffalo chicken wings and limp crudités wherever they’re going. They can just get loaded.” It was a possibility. They were even eating the fruit now.

“Phelps, I’d like you to meet my sister, Fay. Fay, Phelps Grant.” The young man turned from his conversation and shook Faith’s hand—she’d put her empty tray down—with every indication of pleasure.

Yes, preppy, but definitely attractive. Very attractive.

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Hope knew how to pick them—at least in this department.

“Hope tells me your catering business is doing very well, and after making a total pig of myself on all this, I’m not one bit surprised. I’m out all the time, but I haven’t had such good food in ages.”

“Thank you. That’s one of my problems—that New Yorkers eat out so much and at such great places. It’s a hard act to follow—or complement.”

“Well, you’ve certainly succeeded where others have perished.” He then proceeded to tell a mordantly funny story about a friend who had opened a restaurant down in SoHo and went bankrupt before opening. “He had no idea he’d have to think of anything but dishing out his grandmother’s secret spaghetti sauce recipe.

That was going to be the key to fame and fortune. He never got past the lighting fixtures.” Faith found herself liking him, but there was something about his polished delivery, and polished self, that still warned her to keep her guard up. Hope, of course, was looking at him the way a kid looks at her first puppy.

“Phelps, sorry, didn’t mean to interrupt.” The man with whom Phelps had been in conversation before had turned away from a small group of people.

“You’re not interrupting at all. This is Hope Sibley—she’s with Citibank—and her sister . . .”

“Faith Sibley, the caterer. I knew the food was unusually good.” It was the man who’d come into the kitchen with Michael Stanstead the night Emma had made her panicked exit after receiving the first blackmail demand. “I’m not sure we were properly introduced the other night. My name is Adrian Sutherland.” Here was surprise number two—and three. Adrian 117

Sutherland was also the man who’d been sitting alone, reading the Wall Street Journal, at the American Festival Cafe at Rockefeller Center.

Lucy chose this moment to join the group. “Adrian, you’ll never guess. My glass is empty.” She held it out in front of her.

“Now, that will never do. Phelps here—you remember Phelps Grant—was just about to fetch a whole bottle of bubbly, weren’t you?” Phelps left instantly. So it was like that. Gunga Grant. Faith realized that as the caterer, she should be seeing to the libations herself, but her job as investigator was more important at the moment. She wanted to watch Lucy and Adrian. What was going on between the two?

“I see you know the Sibley girls,” Lucy continued in her slightly nasal, well-bred voice. She managed to make it sound as if Faith and Hope were still in braces, allowed to stay up for the party as a special treat.

“Not as well as I plan to. Especially you, Faith. I see many Stanstead events in your future.” Lucy looked piqued, and she moved closer to Adrian, leaning her head on his shoulder in a propri-etary gesture.

Adrian made no acknowledgment of her more intimate presence, nor did he shake her off. He looked older than the rest of them, and Faith wondered if he had been ahead of Phelps in school. Or maybe he was one of those people born looking old. He was attractive, but not handsome. However, his suit, his hairstyle, the way he carried himself, and even his shoes suggested wealth—and power. He didn’t need to be handsome.

Hope was asking about some party-sponsored event 118

on New Year’s Day, whether Michael would be speaking and, if so, officially announcing his candidacy for the House seat, about to be left vacant by the incumbent’s retirement. Stanstead would get the nomination.

That was a given. Winning the election was another matter.

“Come and find out. Ah, help is at hand!” Phelps was back with the champagne and pouring it for everyone. Faith incongruously found herself with a glass. “I don’t mean to be coy, but we, or I should say he, really haven’t decided yet. I do know one thing, though.” He held his glass up as if toasting. “I’m sorry we already hired a caterer.”

On that note, Faith excused herself with thanks and rushed back to the kitchen to maintain her reputation and to escape the lethal glances Lucy was slinging her way.

The fourth surprise was Richard Morgan.

Faith had returned with Josie to replenish the buffet table, where Jessica was still busy serving. He entered the room, made a beeline for the food, and stopped when he saw Faith.

“Terrific!” he said. “I assume you’re catering this affair, and I assume it’s delicious. Nobody who can dissect a menu the way you can could have impaired taste buds. Not to mention my delight at seeing you again so soon.” The night before, they’d eaten at a noodle place and gone to see Woody Allen’s new movie, Crimes and Misdemeanors. It had had a bit too much resonance for Faith at the moment. Richard had loved it.

“This is my assistant, Josie Wells. Josie, this is Richard Morgan.” Faith was beginning to feel less and less like the anonymous help, what with all these introductions.

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“Pleased to meet you. I have a thing for your boss.” Josie laughed out loud, shot Faith a look as she left, and said, “Get in line.”

“She’s loyal, very loyal,” Faith countered.

Richard was eating a large amount of caviar on a blini. “This does not shock—or deter—me at all.”

“I would love to stay and chat longer, but I have to get back in the kitchen,” Faith said. “But first, please, quickly satisfy my insatiable curiosity and tell me why you’re here. Did the Stansteads hire you to sing carols?”

“And well they might. No, my dear Faith—and I mean that—I am here in a reportorial capacity. I’m doing a profile on Michael Stanstead for The New Yorker and I’m trying to get as much done as possible before I have to leave town next week. Stanstead invited me here. To see him at home, just your average guy with your average multimillion-dollar apartment.” Faith was dismayed. Not that Richard was doing a profile on Michael. That should be interesting. But that Richard was leaving town so soon. If he was gone, how was she going to find out how she felt about him?

“Harry Connick Jr.’s at the Algonquin. Want to catch him after you finish here?” Richard had moved on to the foie gras.

“I’d love to, but I have another party to do,” Faith was already getting a bit panicky about the dessert buffet and planned to send Josie and Jessica on ahead as soon as possible, even though it wasn’t scheduled to start for another few hours.

“Another time, another place,” he said, kissing her swiftly. Again, he was on the verge of needing a shave.

Her cheek felt warm, ever so slightly scratched.

“Yes,” said Faith.

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Josie and Jessica had gone. The party was winding down at long last and Howard came into the kitchen to say he was leaving the wine and champagne on the buffet table but was packing up the bar. There was another door to the study and he could do it without going through the living room.

Faith had done everything she could do until everyone left, so she sat down at the kitchen table to think about the evening. No one had been waving those Christmas cards around or making menacing gestures in Emma’s direction. In fact, it was hard to find Emma in a crowd, even when she was the hostess. Contrary to convention, she didn’t circulate. She’d greeted everyone at the start of the party, then gravitated toward a corner with some of the people she’d invited herself: neighbors in the building, a distant relative who was teaching at the Little Red School House, and her godmother, Madeline Green. Nobody knew how old Madeline was, and she wasn’t telling. She was Poppy’s mother’s best friend and the closest thing Emma had to a grandmother, since neither her mother’s nor Jason’s parents was still living. A grandmother of the Auntie Mame variety. Faith found herself wishing they could tell Madeline everything and let her handle things. She probably already knew about Poppy and Nathan Fox, maybe even about Emma’s birth. Madeline knew everything. Tonight, she was wearing a gorgeous sapphire blue Zandra Rhodes caftan, which set off her white hair—and sapphires—perfectly. In a room filled with people wearing a great deal of black, an occasional white or splash of red, Madeline stood out—as usual.

Faith thought about the party some more. What lit-121

tle she had seen of Emma, after the first glow of having solved her catering problem had worn off, convinced her that something new had happened. Emma was even quieter than usual. She looked worried until occasionally, remembering she was supposed to be a fun hostess, she replaced the guarded expression with a frenetic smile. What was she keeping from Faith?

Did she know who the blackmailer was? Did she know the murderer? One and the same? Eating Faith’s gougères this very night?

The door to the kitchen opened and Hope came in.

“Does it look like people are really leaving?” Faith asked her sister. “I want to get over to Sixty-ninth and be sure everything’s all right. Emma’s cleaners are coming to put everything back in shape, but I still have to pack up my stuff.”

Hope pulled out a chair and sat down. “I think you could start clearing the buffet in a few minutes. A lot of people are putting on their coats and saying good-bye to Emma. She’s in the foyer giving out the party favors. Very classy. Those Angus McDougall glass apples from Steuben. You’ve seen the ads, right? ‘Give the Big Apple for Christmas,’ something like that. I put mine in my briefcase.” Of course Hope was one of those who had worked late today.

“Very classy—and very expensive. Emma does have good taste, especially since she doesn’t need to read price tags. Those apples run about three hundred dollars apiece.”

Hope nodded. She picked up a metal strainer that looked like a dunce’s cap and started fiddling with it, twirling its sharp-pointed wooden pestle against the sides. Faith had used it for the mushroom sauce. She took the equipment away from her sister and shoved it 122

on the counter behind the table. These things were expensive.

“Why aren’t you out there making merry with your honey?” Faith asked. “Or home reading a good book.

You look bored.”

“Phelps, Adrian, Michael, and some other people are in the study smoking cigars, talking politics. I would have stayed, but the combination of the smoke and the sight of Lucy draped on the arm of Adrian’s chair and the arm of Adrian’s bod was more than I could handle.”

“What’s with them? Have you heard anything? She was certainly crawling all over him tonight, which I haven’t seen her do with other men—and he wasn’t exactly pushing her away. Somehow, I’ve never thought of Lucy as that interested in sex—except as a bargain-ing chip. Plus, she’d always want to be on top.” After Hope stopped laughing, she said, “Phelps mentioned we might be going to dinner with them, and from the way he said ‘Lucy and Adrian,’ it sounded as if they were an item.”

Lucy and Adrian. The plot sprang fully formed into Faith’s head like Athena from Zeus’s. Emma had said Lucy was even worse to her after her marriage to Michael. What better, and more evil, way to express what was so obviously a lifelong resentment of your sister (half sister, in reality) than first to blackmail her, then expose her, wrecking her husband’s chances for success? Lucy would then emerge the winner and marry his aide-de-camp, who would then proceed to take his old boss’s place. Lucy and Adrian. More than a couple—say a partnership?

“Fay! Fay! Hello!”

“Sorry, I’m a little tired.”

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“The bus pickup?” Hope asked.

“His name is Richard Morgan, and he’s here. I should introduce you. He’s writing a piece for The New Yorker about Michael.”

Hope brightened. The man had credentials. “Okay, let’s go.”

Entering the foyer and looking at the small crowd left, Hope whispered to her sister, “Your journalist friend could have a field day writing about most of the people here tonight. All the secrets, and I don’t just mean Moira over there, who, according to rumor, has no original body parts left.”

The svelte woman in what appeared to be a long red satin nightgown, the kind Jean Harlow wore with mules to match, was smiling at her companion’s remarks. The skin on her face was as tight as a drum.

Secrets. If Hope only knew . . . “There’s Richard, and he has his coat on, so we’d better hurry.” While Faith was making the introduction, Phelps Grant appeared from the study. His eyes and nose were slightly red, and Faith wondered whether he was allergic to cigar smoke or hitting the bathroom down the hall, which had proved popular with the “White lines” crowd.

He tapped Hope on the shoulder. “We’ve been invited to go out to dinner with Lucy, Adrian, and the Stansteads. Ten minutes. Okay?”

“As for myself, I couldn’t eat another bite tonight. I felt it my sworn duty to make sure the Stansteads didn’t get stuck with a lot of leftovers. My name’s Richard Morgan, by the way.” He put out his hand.

Phelps took it halfheartedly, said, “Phelps Grant; nice to meet you,” and turned to go back to the inner sanc-tum, where all the important people were. Faith couldn’t resist.

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“Richard’s a writer. He’s doing a profile on Michael for The New Yorker. ”

Phelps swung around instantly, and Faith left him in earnest conversation with Richard. The word quintes-sential pronounced with great intensity reached her ears, and she laughed to herself at serious little Phelps.

She headed toward the kitchen for the large trays and rolling cart she needed to clean up. She’d liked Phelps earlier, but less and less as the evening wore on. Why on earth couldn’t her sister see what a sycophant this guy was? That was such a good word. She’d drag it out again when she talked about the party with Richard.

Soon.

By the time she emerged from the kitchen, Richard was gone. She was glad. For a moment, she’d thought he was going to offer to help, and that would not have worked at all. She liked to keep her work life and private life nicely separated, although tonight it had been difficult.

Poppy came out of the study.

“Faith, I haven’t had a moment to talk to you all evening. Wonderful party, dear. You are fabulous.

Everyone is saying so. I tell them I taught you how to make s’mores, obviously starting you on the road to success.” Poppy laughed. Faith had forgotten how completely charming she was. And yes, she had taught Faith how to make s’mores—at a sleepover. It had been terrific fun. Poppy had seemed like a kid herself.

Faith also remembered Poppy’s saying they would do it again. She was still waiting.

“It’s a perfect place for a party. A beautiful room.

Hard to go wrong.”

“Emma does have a knack this way, I’ll say that for her.”

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And what else, Mom, what else do you have to say about your daughter?

“We’re all going out to dinner. Not that I can eat anything. Maybe a little salad.”

Suddenly, Poppy seemed distracted. She was looking toward the study, where all the others were.

“What are you doing for the holidays?” Faith asked politely to fill the gap in the conversation. So many topics were off-limits. Too bad.

“Jason isn’t interested in skiing anymore, so that means Mustique again. We’ve taken a house. You should come down,” she added with such sincerity that Faith could almost believe she meant it.

Emma came out of the study. She looked exhausted, ill even. She read the fear in Faith’s eyes and immediately said pointedly, “Everything’s fine. It was all perfect. And Mother, Faith has another party to do, so you mustn’t keep her.”

“Another party. You’re working very hard, Faith. I hope it’s not all too much. Everyone seems to be getting that ghastly flu that’s going around. Emma, you should stay here and get into a bath and bed. You know you haven’t been feeling up to par lately. You look a little feverish.” Poppy’s maternal concern extended to stroking her daughter’s hair, which meant she must be very worried indeed; then she gave Faith a slight wave and went off toward the study.

“I wish I didn’t have to go, but I do.” Emma’s eyes filled with tears. She slumped down in one of the chairs by the fire, which was going out. “Are you all right for the next party? Shouldn’t you be leaving?”

“The rest of my staff is taking care of it, and I’ll be finished here soon, anyway. But the question is, Are you all right? And I don’t mean the flu.” 126

Emma answered in a slightly manic torrent of words. “I thought it was a coincidence, so I didn’t mention it before, but now I’m not so sure. I’ve been getting a million hang-up calls since all this started.

It’s horrible, Faith. I’ve been going crazy. The phone rings ten or twelve times in a row, and every time I pick it up, there’s no answer. Just breathing. At first, I kept asking who it was, but now I don’t say anything, either, and after a while, there’s a click. I tried letting it ring, except then the machine would pick it up, and I don’t want Michael to think anything’s wrong. Besides, they just keep calling—whether I answer or not. Over and over and over again. It’s getting so that every time the phone rings, I’m afraid to pick it up.” She shuddered and wrapped her arms together.

And exactly how does Emma think she is going to hide the current state of her emotions from her husband? Faith wondered. Emma was close to the edge now, about to burst into frightened sobs.

“I don’t think it’s a coincidence. And if you went to the police, they could have the phone company trace the calls. You can’t keep this up! You really will make yourself ill!”

Emma shook her head; her hair fell over her face, a curtain of red gold. “No police,” she whispered.

Several people were coming out of the study, Michael Stanstead among them. The party was definitely over. “We’ll meet you there, then. Sign of the Dove, in half an hour.”

At the sound of her husband’s voice, Emma hastily blotted her eyes on the insubstantial lacy hem of her dress, tossed her hair back, and sat up.

“Everything was perfect,” she said loudly to her friend. “You saved my life, Faith.” 127

Saturday was a blur of work, and when Faith locked the door of the catering company’s kitchen in the wee hours of Sunday morning, she vowed to hire more help in the New Year—and, more immediately, sleep until noon.

The phone rang at nine. Fighting her way to consciousness, leaving behind what was possibly a pleasant dream involving Richard and a beach—she couldn’t quite grab on to it—Faith picked up the receiver.

“Um,” she said.

“I didn’t wake you, did I?” Emma asked anxiously.

“No,” Faith lied, wondering why people always lied about being awakened and why no one ever simply said, “Yes, I was happily comatose until the damn phone rang.” Then suddenly, she was wide-awake.

Emma. Anxious.

“What’s happened?” Something had to have happened.

“I got another card. It was mixed in with the mail, but it didn’t have a stamp. I’ve been dropping all the cards into that big bowl on the table in the hall until I had a chance to open them.”

“And you just did,” Faith said, finishing for her, now agitated herself. She knew the blackmail wouldn’t stop, yet there was always the faint possibility that she might be wrong. “What does it say this time?” Emma lowered her voice. She’d been practically whispering to start, and now her words verged on inaudible. “I can’t tell you.”

Faith managed to catch the phrase. “You’re afraid Michael will overhear or you just plain can’t tell me?”

“Both,” she whispered.

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“Look, Emma, tell Michael you’re going to church, or shopping, or whatever you do on Sunday mornings and get yourself over here immediately.” Faith took a quick shower. Normally, she did some of her best thinking under the strong, warm spray, but today her mind was on autopilot. She lathered, rinsed, and got out, then dressed and made a pot of coffee. She was looking at the toaster with a slice of bread in it when she realized she had virtually no memory of her previous actions. She focused on the matters at hand, first pushing the toaster control down, then thinking about this latest blackmail attempt. The card could have been in the pile for days— or someone could have slipped it in on Friday night. Someone at the party.

The buzzer sounded, and in a few moments Emma was sitting at the small table Faith had placed between the two front windows overlooking West Fifty-sixth Street.

“Are you hungry? English muffin?” Faith asked, pouring coffee. She firmly believed that food enhanced mental processes.

“I don’t want anything to eat, thank you. I’d probably throw up.”

“You’re not . . .” Faith began. Why not complicate matters a little further.

“No,” Emma said sadly. “I wish I were. You have no idea what it’s like getting your hopes up every month.

We’ve been trying for over a year now. The doctor says I need to relax. Michael has been an angel. Did I tell you he’s taking me with him in January for this business thing in the Caribbean someplace? He says he just wants me to sit in the sun on a beach. I know he’s as disappointed about not having a baby as I am, but he never shows it—or blames me.”

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It was on the tip of Faith’s tongue to ask why their infertility was necessarily Emma’s “fault,” but this was not the time. Of course Michael would need heirs—a bunch of little Stansteads to cluster round for the family Christmas card sent to constituents. Oddly enough, politicians still seemed to think that the way to win the hearts and minds of the electorate was by sending these yearly missives with wife or husband, progeny, and dog posed in front of a fireplace. Cards most vot-ers promptly tossed out.

“I’m sure you’ll get pregnant; you did before.” Faith blurted the words out, then realized that what she had meant to sound reassuring hadn’t quite come off that way.

Emma didn’t seem to notice. “That’s true, but it’s why I feel so guilty. It’s like this is a kind of judgment on me for all of that.”

“Oh, Emma, come on! You were pushed into a terrible situation. None of it was your fault.” Emma was staring out the window. New York was in a deep freeze. Records were being shattered. On the corner, a man and his wife from Maine had set up a Christmas tree lot, as they did each year, she’d been told. The whole neighborhood had adopted them, greeting them as the first harbingers of the season, their reappearance each Christmas something you could count on—a grown-up city dweller’s version of believing in Santa. They offered the couple showers, a bed when the temperature dipped below zero. The gaily trimmed tree they’d set up on the roof of the di-lapidated camper they lived in for these few weeks was a welcome sight against the dreary morning sky.

“Look,” Faith said, “let’s take one thing at a time.

Your doctor is probably right. God knows, you’ve been 130

under enough stress lately. Why don’t you show me the card and tell me all about it. All, ” she repeated.

Emma dug the card out of her bag. It was from the same series. A Victorian child with blond ringlets was holding a huge present. “Season’s Greetings” was printed on the large red bow. Inside, the greeting was grim:

What do you think Michael’s chances of getting elected will be when people find out he’s married to a murderer?

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Six

Obviously, this was yet another item on Emma Stanstead’s “Things I May Not Have Mentioned” list.

A major item.

“Don’t tell me,” Faith began as Emma started to sob.

“You were in Fox’s apartment the day he was murdered.”

“I was there, but I didn’t kill him!” she shrieked.

“Of course you didn’t!” Faith grabbed a box of tissues and moved Emma over to the couch. Faith hadn’t imagined Emma could ever make a noise like the one that had just issued from her mouth. She’d finally flipped out.

Emma began to shake. Just shake, soundlessly now.

Faith threw the down comforter from her bed around Emma’s shoulders and went to get her a cup of fresh coffee. Emma held it tightly, slowly moving it to her mouth, taking small sips. Faith felt as if there should be a dog sled nearby.

“He wasn’t dead. I didn’t see that, thank God, but I could have. If the killer had come sooner.” She closed 132

her eyes and drank again. Her pain, moving in waves from beneath the quilt, was searing.

“You went to his apartment at three, the way you always did, right? And left when?”

Emma opened her eyes, looking directly at Faith. “I only stayed an hour. I’ve felt so guilty ever since. I had to be back uptown for a cocktail party. A cocktail party! If I had stayed longer, my father might still be alive.”

“Or you might be dead, too,” Faith said briskly. She was beginning to understand why hysterical people get slapped across the face. Anything to bring them back.

Since she’d seen Emma that first night in the kitchen, Faith had had the same impulse. Anything to ground her in what passed for reality—and what seemed to work best was the verbal equivalent of a slap.

Emma came to—for the moment. She sat up straighter.

“I never thought of that.” She put the cup down on the low table in front of the couch.

“But it wasn’t likely,” Faith pointed out. “Whoever is blackmailing you knows you were at your father’s apartment that day, which means he or she saw you.

Saw you leave and then went in. Don’t you see? The killer waited until you left. You were meant to be kept alive. You’d be no use to anyone dead. How would they get the money?”

“That’s a relief—I think,” Emma said, kicking off her shoes and curling up on the couch with the quilt pulled over her. She was looking a whole lot better.

“Someone was watching, yet how would they know you’d be there? It couldn’t have been a coincidence.

Someone has to have been watching you for a while.” Someone knew Emma’s schedule, her every move.

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Faith didn’t give voice to the rest of her speculations. Emma had all she could take for now. But suppose someone, say Lucy, knew or had found out about Emma’s real parentage and either knew or supposed that Emma was seeing Fox. Easy enough to follow her.

New Yorkers are street-smart, but in a heads-down sort of way. You don’t make eye contact. And Emma, whose thoughts tended to be very far away from the immediate, would not have been paying attention to what was going on around her anyway—like someone following her. And New York is a big, crowded city.

Following someone, particularly Emma, would not have been hard.

“Did your father seem any different from usual? Ap-prehensive?”

“No, if anything, he was extremely cheerful. Maybe he’d finished that big book, the one you were asking about the other day. I remembered after I talked to you that I hadn’t heard any typing that day. And there weren’t any papers on the table. Usually, it was pretty messy. When I gave him the bialys, he said they would be a perfect celebration.”

“So, the two of you clinked breadstuff and made merry?”

This continuing picture of Nathan Fox the doting father was far removed from Nathan Fox the flaming radical.

“I didn’t eat anything. I wasn’t hungry. Besides, I wanted him to have them. I’d brought some cream cheese. I made him a glass of tea. He’d taught me how.

He drank his tea in a glass. He said his father always did.” Emma said in wonderment—at the custom and maybe a little at her startling culinary accomplishment.

Nathan Fox, Norman Fuchs, wasn’t disguised as an 134

old Jewish man. He was an old Jewish man, Faith thought.

“Did you ask him what he was celebrating?” Emma looked downcast. “No, at the time, I kind of thought it was because I was there. I’d missed the week before.”

“And I’m sure that’s what he meant.” Maybe, Faith thought, qualifying to herself. “What did you talk about?”

“Daddy always liked to hear what I’d been doing.

Where I’d gone. Who I’d seen. He knew quite a lot of people. Michael and I had been to the opening of ‘The Age of Napoleon’ at the Met’s Costume Institute the night before. It really is a wonderful show. If you haven’t seen it yet, you should go. I told him about dancing with my Michael by the Temple of Dendur. It was a lovely evening, although terribly crowded. Anyway, that got us talking about Napoleon. Daddy was very big on him and planned to write a book about whether he’d subverted the goals of the French Revolution or not, which of course he’ll never do now—

Dad, not Napoleon. Although, I suppose both. Daddy was always quoting him, history was ‘a set of lies agreed upon,’ that kind of thing. He thought Napoleon had been misunderstood in many ways.” This was all very interesting. It didn’t surprise Faith in the least to discover that Fox had had a Napoleon fixation. And about the Met—she had heard both the show and the opening were spectacular, but she had more questions. More pertinent questions.

Emma’s prints were spread over the apartment, what with the tea making and all, but the police wouldn’t have had anything to connect her with them. And surely the killer hadn’t left any. But getting back to the 135

business of the book—Emma must know something more.

“Did he show you a finished manuscript?”

“No, he must have put it somewhere. In his file cabinet, probably.”

A logical deduction.

Emma continued. “I told you before that he never actually said what it was about. I merely assumed it was like the other books. Political. The masses being oppressed. That kind of thing.”

Had it occurred to Emma that Nathan Fox the revo-lutionary regarded her as a class enemy? Probably not, since it was Nathan Fox, the radical chic darling of the Upper East Side, who was pumping her week after week for details of the life he obviously very much missed. It was all going on without him—the repartee, the gossip, the affairs, the beluga.

“And then you left?”

“Then I left.” Somehow the three words uttered in this completely flat tone sounded more tragic than all of Emma’s earlier outcries put together. There was very little to say after this, and during one of the silences Emma dozed off, exhausted by the surfeit of emotion.

Faith stood up and went to the window. The Christmas tree sellers, in bright red stocking caps and down parkas, were doing a brisk business. She’d planned to get a small tree herself. It was her first Christmas in her very own place. Maybe next year. She was going to be too busy. Emma’s latest revelation brought several parts of the picture into sharp focus. Faith now knew that Fox’s murder and Emma’s blackmail were the work of the same hands. It was highly unlikely that the blackmail operation had just happened upon the mur-136

der, which just happened to occur the day and time of Emma’s habitual visits. Which upped the ante consid-erably. Before, Emma had been in danger. Now that Faith knew they were dealing with a killer or killers, it was mortal danger.

A family was looking at trees. The kids kept dragging out Rockefeller Center–size pines; the parents, tabletop versions. Somewhere on that lot, they’d find the perfect one, something in between—and each side would feel victorious.

Emma, Emma. Faith looked at her friend—oblivious in sleep’s sweet escape. She’d been right all along. Of course she couldn’t go to the police. Once they discovered she’d been at Fox’s apartment so close to the time of death—the newspaper had said 4:00 P.M.—she would immediately become a suspect.

Could even be charged. It would all make very good sense to the district attorney’s office. Discovering her father’s whereabouts, Emma kills him and fakes a burglary to protect her husband’s political future. And the blackmail? She could have written the notes herself. The only hard piece of evidence was a tape—

which she’d destroyed. And her motive? That was easy. Faith had known from the start Emma would do anything for Michael. Do anything to keep him from leaving her once he found out who she really was—

and she’d managed to convince herself that was what he’d do, be forced to do to save his career . . . and face. No, this was not one of those times when your friend Mr. Policeman would be of much help. This was one of those times when the only person who could help was, unfortunately, you—or rather, your nearest and dearest friend.

And Faith had to move quickly. Before Emma lost 137

all her money, was arrested, made the tabloids, cracked up, or all four.

Outside, the family had tied their purchase on top of a child’s red wagon and started off, the father pulling, one of the kids holding the precariously balanced tree steady. Faith sighed. She wouldn’t be stringing any popcorn and cranberries herself this year.

Instead, as soon as Emma woke up and left, Faith would continue her investigation. Although, with this latest revelation, it seemed as if she was starting from the beginning. She decided to take a ride out to Long Island. Garden City, Long Island. People looked for houses on the weekends—and Todd Hartley was a real estate agent. Wasn’t it Dorothy L. Sayers who said,

“Suspect everybody?”

Faith knew how to get to Long Island. It wasn’t like New Jersey. She knew where Long Island was. Theo-retically, she knew where Jersey was, too. You could see it directly across the Hudson from the West Side.

There was a tunnel underneath you could take to go there. But it wasn’t like Long Island. She could find her way around the island—or rather, across the island from west to east to the Hamptons—with no stops in between. I’m not going anywhere near as far today, she thought with some relief, remembering the traffic back to the city on Sunday summer nights, exit names—

Eastport, Patchogue, Islip, Amityville—passing at a snail’s pace.

Garden City was at the near end of the island, close to Queens. She’d studied the map while Emma slept and planned her route. There weren’t any of those little black dots AAA uses to mark the scenic roads.

Those dots started at Hampton Bays, started where the 138

money started—Southampton, East Hampton, Ama-gansett. It might be fun to move the business to the island during the summers. Fun and profitable.

She popped a cassette of Christmas carols into the tape deck and began singing along. “God bless the master of this house.” Faith was under no illusions as to her vocal ability. A Jessye Norman, she was not. Yet, she wasn’t bad in a chorus, and she certainly knew how to belt out hymns. Her father, if he did not exist, would have to have been invented. He actually got his jaded, weary Manhattan congregation to turn out for hymn sings—just for the fun of it—where he would joyfully accompany them on a very ancient and always slightly out of tune guitar.

“Let every man with cheerfulness embrace his lov-ing wife.” Verse three. Always the afterthought. If Emma didn’t care so much about the master of her house, all of this would be a much more manageable problem. Not that Michael didn’t seem to care about his wife, too. Whenever Faith had seen them together, and that once without, he seemed genuinely to adore her. Faith had intercepted a look he gave Emma at the party the other night. She had been greeting someone and as Michael walked over to join them, he gazed on her with something more than love, more than appreciation. It was a “Could I possibly be this lucky?” look; a “Could this amazing, beautiful creature actually be mine?” look. Faith recalled hearing when the engagement was announced how he’d pursued his intended, wooing and winning her with extravagantly romantic gestures. Can’t go wrong with romantic gestures, she thought, as the flowers at Delia’s and Richard slipped into her thoughts.

She came out of the Queens Midtown Tunnel into 139

the bright afternoon sunshine. It sparkled on the mounds of dirty snow. She had thought it best not to drive the van from work with HAVE FAITH, the address, and the phone number emblazoned on the side. So, she’d borrowed her parents’ car, a sedate black Volvo—

her mother’s choice. Lawrence had probably driven it only once or twice, if that much. Things like borrowing the car were easy with them. They were not the kind of parents who would have to know where she was going, with whom, and why. Lawrence never asked this kind of question, period. Jane saved up her queries, hitting you on big stuff like what you were planning to do with your life, rather than day-to-day minutiae in which she wasn’t really interested—or didn’t want to know about.

Today, however, did fall into the “big stuff” category.

Yes, she was helping a friend—both parents would ap-plaud that—but the rest was way beyond “Can you look me straight in the eye and say that?”—and she had no intention of their ever finding out. Not her parents. Not anyone. She’d sworn to Emma she wouldn’t—and besides, at this point, knowledge was becoming an increasingly dangerous thing.

Not wishing to squander an afternoon driving to Garden City, which she was sure was not a garden anymore, even in clement weather, Faith had called the agency where Hartley was—after working her way down a number of them from the Yellow Pages. He was available and she set up an appointment. She was Karen Brown again, not a lowly graduate student, but Mrs. Karen Brown from Los Angeles. Mr. Brown—

she decided to call him Richard just for the hell of it—

was being transferred east and she was scouting communities for that perfect location. It had to be an easy commute to the city, good schools . . .

140

“And of course we both love the water, so maybe something closer to the North or South Shore?” Faith was sitting in a comfortable chair, drinking a cup of coffee she really didn’t want and watching the lies slide off her tongue as easily as sap from a sugar maple in a spring thaw.

Todd Hartley was busy filling out her wish list. Faith was waiting for him to ask how she’d been referred to him, and she had an elaborate story involving Saint Paul’s School and a cousin of her husband’s and always hearing about Garden City, then seeing an ad in the Yellow Pages and his name just hitting her, because of Bob Hartley, you know the old Bob Newhart Show—except Todd Hartley didn’t ask, not yet.

“Contemporary? Center entrance colonial? Ranch?”

“Not ranch.” Faith and Karen were both positive about this. Not on Long Island, anyway. Colorado, Montana, maybe.

He nodded. There was no vestige of the radical Emma had described. No Little Red Book sticking out of his handkerchief pocket, no Marx and Engels tie tack. He wasn’t bad-looking, although he’d be over-weight soon. She’d noticed the buttons on his suit jacket straining at the midriff. His forehead was rising, too. Bald and fat someday. Not a pretty thought. She’d also noticed a fancy watch and heavy gold wedding band. Todd had apparently given in to the bourgeois institution of marriage. His wedding picture was on his desk, and from the setting, Faith surmised that Todd had been indulging in the opiate of the masses, as well.

Mrs. Hartley had big hair—at least on her wedding day—and was a very attractive brunette. She was covering his hand with hers and the camera had picked up the sparkle from the rock she was wearing—something 141

close to Gibraltar. Faith twisted her own modest wedding band and engagement ring, purchased at Woolworth’s a few hours ago. She was willing to bet that Mrs. Hartley’s rings weren’t from Woolworth’s.

Todd’s, either.

It cost a lot of money to be a well-turned-out Real-tor. Without actually fingering the fabric, which might appear suspect, Faith guessed his suit was Brooks or Paul Stuart. Maybe on sale, but not cheap. In addition, you had to have an expensive, new—or nearly new—

car. No one was going to be persuaded into assuming a monstrous mortgage by someone driving an old Pinto.

“I think the best way to start is by selecting some target communities; then we can go for a drive and you can get a feel for them. What’s your timetable?” Faith was tempted to say she wanted everything cleared up by Christmas, but she answered instead,

“We’ll be moving in the late spring.”

“No problem. As you’ve probably heard, in the East, a lot of houses come on the market then, with the good weather. Things slow down in the winter, but you can pick up some real bargains that way.”

“People are desperate, you mean.” Faith wasn’t sure why she said that. Maybe it was to try to tease out whatever personality he had. It certainly wasn’t being expressed in the artwork on the walls—a framed map of the island and a generic floral still life.

He smiled slightly. “I guess you could put it that way.” There was a slightly awkward pause. “Well, Mrs.

Brown, why don’t we—”

The phone rang.

“Sorry, could you excuse me?”

Faith nodded and sat back in the chair. She’d wanted 142

to dress for the part. She wasn’t sure what a Californ-ian with no winter clothes would wear on a foray to the Big Apple, but she figured she couldn’t go wrong with a pair of Lauren black trousers and a white man-tailored shirt. She’d added a chunky gold-link bracelet she’d never particularly cared for that a too-serious admirer had given her last Christmas. She wanted to look as if she could afford a house, but not a mansion. She’d made a joke about having to borrow her Kamali coat from a friend and said she supposed she’d be buying things like it herself once they moved to this terrible climate. Chuckle, chuckle.

After picking up the phone and saying hello, Todd hadn’t said anything other than “This isn’t the best time now.” The person on the other end obviously did not agree, and after saying it once more with feeling, Hartley turned toward Faith.

“Would you mind terribly waiting in the reception area? I’m afraid I have to take this.”

“Not at all. My schedule is flexible. I have plenty of time.” Today anyway.

Unfortunately, the receptionist was at her desk. No way to pick up the phone and eavesdrop. Faith was forced to sit down and thumb through a back issue of People magazine—more Donald and Ivana.

The agency wasn’t on the skids, but the carpeting was ever so slightly worn in spots. It wasn’t affiliated with one of the big national firms, just a small family-owned outfit, probably been around forever. Hartley’s family? How had he ended up here? It wasn’t that long ago that he’d been hanging out with the comrades, desperately searching for Nathan. Who or what had changed his mind? The lovely Mrs. Hartley? Or after Poppy Morris’s revelation of Emma’s age, had 143

young Todd decided to retreat—fearful of statutory rape?

The agency, like much of the rest of the country, had dragged out its box of holiday decorations. A small clear plastic tree with unappetizing fossilized gumdrops skewered to its sharp branches stood on the receptionist’s desk. A row of stockings with names written in glitter pen hung in a line from the mantel of a faux fireplace. Todd’s, like the others, was empty.

What would Santa bring? A lump of coal? A huge pot of pink poinsettias stood in the fireplace opening and tinsel garlands looped about the walls and door frames completed the festive decor.

Faith has just finished her inventory when the receptionist got up, put on her coat, and left. Creeping over to the door to Hartley’s office, Faith could hear Todd’s voice, but she couldn’t hear what he was saying. She went over to the desk and carefully picked up the phone, pressing the button next to the line that lighted up.

“It’s too soon. That’s all I can tell you. Not yet.

You’ll have to be patient. It worked once. It’ll work again. She’s scared. Leave her alone for now,” said a voice on the other end of the conversation. A voice Faith had never heard before. “Do you catch my drift, Hartley?”

“Yeah, yeah . . .”

“Because if you don’t, you know what will happen, right?” There was no mistaking the menace in the man’s voice.

And she’d been about to get in a car with Todd Hartley, a man who, given what she knew, was up to his ears in something that sounded very much like a partnership in blackmail and murder! He knew who Emma 144

was. He’d known where Fox lived before. If Fox had trusted him that much, he’d have no qualms about revealing his most recent whereabouts. But knowing Fox was in the city, why hadn’t Todd turned him in? Still Red below the surface, or afraid of being outed to his new wife, his new life? Or afraid of a charge of cor-rupting a minor, and worse? It hadn’t been that long ago.

The man on the phone was telling him to wait. Wait to ask for money again? Wait to ask for more?

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” His hand came down hard on her shoulder and she dropped the phone. “Get into my office!” he barked. She grabbed the plastic gumdrop tree—none of them moved—and shoved it in his face. Startled, he relaxed his grasp. “What the hell!” And she took off for the door. She had it partway open when he threw himself against it, overturning the coatrack. She started screaming. It was the only thing to do.

“Shut up! Shut up!” he yelled at her, reaching toward her to cover her mouth. She shut up. The notion of that big sweaty palm on her lips made her gag.

“Who are you and what are you doing here? Who sent you?”

She was trapped. Please, please let it be that the receptionist was just going out for a sandwich.

She wanted to say nobody had sent her, but she also wanted him to think all five boroughs knew where she was. She concentrated on thinking how to get away.

Yet she had to be sure. “Nathan. You could say Nathan sent me,” she said in a firm voice.

“Nathan?” He looked shocked. “How do you know . . . Jesus, you want money. That’s it, isn’t it?” He exploded again. Her coat was at their feet. He thrust it 145

at her, opened the door, and pushed her out. “Just get out of here—and don’t come back.”

She was at the parking lot, light-headed with relief, when he came running after her, red-faced, panting. He still looked sweaty, even in the cold. There was a pad of paper and a pencil in one hand. Damn. Her license plate—or rather, Mother and Dad’s. All she could think of to do was to keep going so he wouldn’t know which car was hers. It was a municipal lot and almost full. He couldn’t stand outside in these temperatures without a coat for long. She kept walking. At the corner, she looked over her shoulder. He was taking down the numbers of every car in the lot. “Don’t worry, Mrs.

Brown,” he yelled after her. “I’ll find out who you are.

Don’t worry, you bitch! I’ll get you!” She ducked around the corner and into a card shop.

Thirty minutes later, with several packages of Christmas cards she doubted she’d get time to send, she went back to the lot. He was gone. She drove off in the opposite direction from the real estate agency and, as she’d been doing since she was so unceremoniously shown the door, ran through what had just happened.

Of course he must have heard her pick up the phone.

She’d have to get better at “overhearing” conversations if she was going to be good at this. Or maybe he hadn’t bought the whole act. She doubted this, though. She hadn’t done anything to raise his suspicions that she was anything other than what she appeared—a lady looking for a house.

Absentmindedly, she put on the tape again, but she wasn’t in the mood for medieval merriment. She decided to check her messages. She had to bring the car back, but the evening was free. She supposed things would even out, yet so far the business had been mad 146

rushes followed by enervating doldrums. Still, she reflected, if she was busy all the time, either Emma’s major problem or Faith’s fledgling business would suffer. Every silver lining has a cloud. Since when had she begun to think in clichés? Especially such tired ones.

Tired. That was it. She hadn’t had much sleep lately.

She reached for the car phone she was sure her father didn’t know existed and called her machine at home first.

“Faith, darling. This is absolutely the last message I’m going to leave. Altman’s will be an office building or whatever horrendous thing they’re planning to do with it before we get there for lunch. I’ll see you and Hope at Chat’s party and we’ll make a date then. I positively refuse to talk to this machine again.” Faith could picture her grandmother’s face. Amused indignation or indignant amusement. Added to tolerant bemusement and bemused tolerance, these made up the major portions of Mrs. Lennox’s emotional repertoire.

“Got a gig tonight yourself, or can we catch Connick? Call me?”

It was Richard. Faith felt happy. That was unusual lately. Worried, fatigued, frightened, yes—but happy was in short supply. What was going on? It had been a while since a man’s voice had caused this kind of reaction. She knew she was interested in him, but was she getting interested? She had a fleeting fantasy of pouring the entire tale out to him at the Algonquin tonight. They’d be drinking Manhattans while Harry Connick Jr., the boy wonder, played Gershwin and Cole Porter on the piano. It would be such a help to get another opinion. Was Todd Hartley, former radical, on the phone with an accomplice? Being advised, say, to wait before telling Emma when to make the latest 147

drop? Or was he talking to a disgruntled home owner who was getting close to putting a contract out on Todd himself—or switching brokers—because Todd wanted him to drop the price of his house to move it? Wanted to push someone, a woman, into making an offer?

Yet Faith couldn’t try to get things clearer in her own mind by picking Richard’s brains. She was back at the Midtown Tunnel and plunged down the ramp.

Yes, she’d go out with Richard, but she wouldn’t be able to tell him a thing. Any hint of what was going on in her life and it would be “soon to be a major motion picture” time. Any reporter worth his or her salt would react the same way. It was in their genes. But yes, she’d see him tonight. Yes.

Richard couldn’t meet her until nine, which was fine with Faith. Garden City had left her feeling drained, more relieved than frightened now. She was at the stage where she was imagining all the things that could have happened to her and hadn’t. She wanted to take a long, hot bath and a long, warm nap—under the quilt Emma had left on the couch.

The phone rang. It was her sister. She sounded upset. A highly unusual state for her. Faith remembered with a pang that she had never called Hope to arrange a time to have dinner with Phelps. Maybe she should ask if they were free tonight? They could come to the Algonquin afterward. No, scratch that thought.

“It’s about Phelps—”

“I know. I’m really sorry I didn’t get back to you about dinner, but it’s been crazy.”

“No—or rather, I mean yes. Let’s have dinner together sometime. But he just called, and I’m in a 148

quandary about what to do. This kind of thing has never happened to me before.”

It sounded like she needed more than simple advice to the lovelorn.

“What’s wrong?”

“Probably nothing. It’s just that Phelps has the chance to invest in—”

Faith interrupted again. It was getting to be a habit.

“He wants to borrow money?”

“Yes, rather a lot of money.”

“This is an easy one. A no-brainer. You know the golden rule. Never loan money to men, especially the ones you’re dating.”

“I know, I know. But it’s a short-term loan. With interest. His lawyer will draw up the papers.”

“This sounds like more than ‘rather a lot’ of dough!

What does he need it for?”

“He has the chance to get in on the ground floor of a terrific new software company. It all makes sense, except—”

“Except he doesn’t have the money and wants to borrow it from his girlfriend.”

There was silence on the other end. Faith didn’t know whether Hope was enjoying the appellation or pondering her decision.

“Look, sweetie, I’m not just being flip. Think about it. You loan him the money and he can’t pay it back. This places a strain on the relationship and you break up. You loan him the money and he does pay it back, but he’s always aware he was dependent on you for his new good fortune or whatever. Men don’t like that kind of feeling, so you break up. Now there is also the possibility that your lighthearted refusal to loan him any money—Mother always said never do 149

things like this; you can even hum a few bars of that other classic, “Mama said there’d be days like this”—will cause him to break up with you, too. But you’ll still have your money and will have saved even more on Doritos, which you know you eat when you’re depressed.”

“Oh, Fay, life is so simple for you!”

“What!” Faith exclaimed in astonishment.

“Well, you always know what to do.” This was a complete revelation. Faith viewed her younger sib as the one with the Filofax lobe, the life plan. Faith tended to make snap judgments, go on a gut response . . . but it was true, when it came to questions of the heart, that she was quicker to ring in than her well-programmed sister.

“True or not—and we have to talk—the question now is, What are you going to do?”

“Dunno. Stall. Find out more about the company.

Might be a good investment for me, too.” She perked up.