in the fold? Why would Zoltan—or her grandfather—give her that bizarre warning? No, it was ridiculous, her grandfather was dead, gone. Still, why the warning? Who wasn’t she to trust? Rich? No, it couldn’t be Rich, her husband of six months, a four-term congressman from Talbot County, Maryland. She remembered he’d told her after his first wife died, he didn’t think he’d ever find another woman he would love. But he’d chanced upon her at Lincoln Center at a Lucien Balfour piano concert nine months earlier. For the first time in years, he fell in love, with her, and now he told her he was proud of her every single day. They were still discovering how much they had in common, and always enjoyed each other’s company. He dealt well with Kit, her business partner and friend, and he approved of her.
Rebekah turned into light traffic on Hazelton Avenue, only twenty minutes from Kalorama Heights and home. She thought of Rich’s younger son, Beck. He was more a gold-plated prick than a wolf. He was a health insurance lobbyist, a job arranged for him, of course, by his powerful father, her husband. He was thirty-three, five years older than she, and he made it a habit to come out of his bedroom wearing only his boxer shorts when he knew she was close by, as if he’d been waiting for her. He’d quickly graduated to coming out of the bathroom with just a towel wrapped around his waist. Beck had moved back to his father’s house in Chevy Chase the year before, after a nasty breakup with his then-fiancée, an investment banker’s daughter out of New York. Rebekah’s mantra to herself was: Beck, find another girlfriend soon, and leave.
Could Tucker be the wolf? Rich’s eldest son was perfectly pleasant to her, though he ignored her for the most part, regarded her as his father’s newest toy, a temporary diversion at best. That was fine with her. He seemed happy enough with his wife, Celeste, and their three sons. Celeste didn’t like Rebekah, but did she hate her enough to wish her ill? Was she the wolf? Well, speculating about it hardly mattered. She was only taking the bait Zoltan had tossed out to her, the hints and warning she’d left her with to get her to come back for another grandfather show. She thought cynically she’d probably be billed five hundred dollars for the entertainment.
Rebekah felt a wave of fatigue, and drummed her fingers on the steering wheel. She forced herself to focus on the meeting she had scheduled with Mr. Clement Herriot, a wealthy collector of impressionist paintings. Alas, she had bad news for him. The Berthe Morisot he’d bought at auction seventeen years before was a fake. He wouldn’t be happy, though Rebekah knew he must have suspected or he wouldn’t have contacted her to authenticate the painting. Kit had ferreted out the painter most likely to have executed Morisot’s style so beautifully—Carlos Bizet, who lived in Andalusia and was now ninety years old. Thankfully, he’d stopped his forgeries ten years before, but that didn’t help Mr. Herriot. It would certainly get his insurance company’s attention, since they’d doubtless hired an expert to authenticate the painting as well before insuring it. “No one else could have painted it,” Kit had told Rebekah. “And now Bizet’s so old, he spends his time bragging about his work hanging in museums all over the world, and, of course, in big muckety-mucks’ collections, like Mr. Herriot’s.” Rebekah thought about the wages of dishonesty, how if malfeasance went undiscovered long enough, there weren’t any wages to be paid here on earth. She’d decided long ago karma was only an inviting construct weak people used to make themselves feel better about not doing something when they should.
She planned to forget about the Big Take and the poem and the wolf in her fold. If Zoltan called, Rebekah would tell her again she wouldn’t be going back.
4
CHEVY CHASE, MARYLAND
THURSDAY, NOON
OCTOBER 29
Rebekah parked her silver Beemer on a side street, pulled the strap of her handbag over her shoulder, and stepped into the bright October sunlight. She gave the hood a quick pat. She loved her Beemer, her twenty-eighth birthday present from her husband. She sighed. She had to hurry or she’d be late to her daughter-in-law’s whoop-de-do planning luncheon. Celeste wouldn’t like that at all. But her meeting with her client, Mr. Herriot, had taken longer than expected. The news she’d had to give him