When Sterling smiled, really smiled, his grin split his face like the crack in a cheap watermelon. "I think I know now why Whitney is so devoted to you. I couldn't see it at first. The two of you seem so different, but you both have a devious side."

Tess probed the roof of her burned mouth with her tongue. Comparisons to Whitney seared in a way no potato could. "Are you saying you're surprised we're friends because she's gorgeous, rich, and successful, and I'm a plain, poor failure?"

"Don't beg for compliments," Sterling said, wagging his fork at her, still smiling broadly. The color in his cheeks was even higher than usual, perhaps because of his drink, and his hair was falling in his eyes again. Tess had a sudden desire to push it back. "You're both good-looking women, and I suspect you know that. Which is the main reason I find your friendship intriguing. Most attractive women pick plain friends."

"Smart women prefer beautiful friends: you meet more men that way, especially if you complement one another. I've met a lot of my boyfriends through Whitney."

"Including Jonathan Ross?"

The name, the too-casual way Sterling used it, made something catch in Tess's throat. Before his death, Jonathan Ross had been one of the Blight's star reporters. Obviously, Sterling would know that. He also had once been Tess's boyfriend, and she wondered if Sterling had learned this as well. She saw Jonathan again, the way she saw him in her nightmares, in clumsy flight over Bond Street. He had saved her life, losing his in the process. Not my fault, she reminded herself. Not my fault.

"Jonathan and I worked together at the Star years ago, then he moved to the Beacon-Light. We were friends, Whitney, Jonathan, and I. Friends. Men and women can be, you know."

"Sometimes I think Whitney would like to be a man."

"Whitney would like all the opportunities open to men. There's a difference."

Sterling didn't pick up on her dig. "Whitney reminds me of a man in one of those English hunting prints. I always expect her to stride into my office one day, a riding crop in one hand and a dead fox in the other. I've never really liked those blueblood types. Something androgynous there. You're actually more feminine, even if you do spend a lot of time trying to hide it." He turned pink again. "Sorry. There I go again, being inappropriate."

"More bizarre than inappropriate. Whitney's not mannish at all."

"I've been known to hold minority opinions before. I didn't get where I am by embracing the conventional wisdom."

"Obviously. The conventional wisdom is that you should let the widow Wink alone."

"I know." He shook his head. "I know. But I have to find out how she's doing, Tess. Won't you talk to her for me? I'll get the okay from Lionel, so you don't have to worry about Cory any more. Whitney told me you're trying to figure out what happened to your uncle. Do this for me, and you have carte blanche to come and go as you please for the next two weeks."

Tess raised her glass. "To unconventional wisdom."

Chapter 14

It was almost 2 o'clock when Tess finished scraping the last bit of hot fudge from her ice cream bowl. Sterling, who had faded during the main course, watched with a slightly stunned look that might pass for admiration. Together they walked back to the paper, where her car was now safely parked in the visitors' lot behind the building.

"The shit-and-salmon gang," she said out loud, remembering the brown Buick's original color, outlandish enough so it might be possible to track the model and make through MVA. How many salmon-colored Buicks could there be in Maryland? Then again, they'd probably have a new car the next time she saw them.

"What?"

"Nothing. Just a stray thought. My brain sometimes doesn't process a piece of information for days, but it never lets go of anything."

She felt a little giddy, as if returning from an unusually good first date, and had to remind herself not to seize Sterling 's arm or touch him in any way. Wine at midday, even one glass, made the world a dangerously warm and tender place.

They had agreed, somewhere over her dessert course, that she should start the new assignment immediately, going to call on the widow Wink this afternoon.

"Their house is in that new development out Reisters-town Road," Sterling told her when they reached the Blight. "The Cotswolds, I think. Or Tudor Village. Something English. He lives on Tea Rose Lane. I always remember that detail from the stories, because I thought it was funny, a tough guy who grew up in Violetville, then ended up on Tea Rose Lane. But I don't have the number. Come upstairs and I'll get it for you."

"No, I don't want to run the risk of entering Colleen's field of vision. She's like one of those big dinosaurs, the kind who can't attack unless she sees you moving. I've got a map in my car which should get me to Tea Rose. Then all I have to do is look for the place with a lawn trampled by all those camera crews. I may make one stop en route, pick up a little something I might have to put on my expense account. Is that okay?"

"Whatever you need," Sterling assured her.

Whatever?

The Costwolds seemed to feature every kind of architecture except for the modest cottages found in the part of England from which it took its name. The lots were deep but narrow. Huge houses crowded up against one another, almost as close as the city rowhouses the residents had fled. After a few wrong turns, Tess found Tea Rose, a looping cul de sac off the main road, Cotswold Circle. Her joke about the camera crews had been prescient. Although all the lawns here were still winter-brown, the yard at number seven had a particularly hopeless look to it.

After several seconds of scrutiny through a fisheye in the huge oak door, Lea Wynkowski opened the door.

"Yes?" she asked, eyes and voice dull.

"Mrs. Wynkowski? I'm Sylvia Weinstein, from Weinstein's Jewelers in Pikesville." The lie almost made her lips pucker, as tight and unapproving as the lips of the real Sylvia Weinstein, widely believed to have been born with a lemon wedge in her mouth. Tess could think of few people she'd less like to be than her aunt. But she did exist, and she worked alongside Uncle Jules in his Pikesville store when the mood struck her, or when she wasn't in Boca Raton. Her story would check out, if anyone thought to check it out.

"Honestly, I don't have as much money as everyone thinks I do," Lea said. "Even if I did, I'm not exactly in the market for jewelry right now."

"But I'm here to bring you something, Mrs. Wynkowski, something Wink had been planning to give you. He stopped in the store last week and said he would pick it up after the weekend. It's paid in full, it's only right you have it."

She pulled out a box and showed Lea the simple gold bracelet inside. More than $100, even at cost, but she had told Uncle Jules to bill it directly to the Blight. She'd like to see Colleen Reganhart's face when that expense came through for authorization.

"Kinda plain, for Wink's taste," Lea said dubiously. "Did he say why he was buying it?"

"Just because-just because he loved you."

To Tess's horror, Lea burst into tears and embraced her.

"I'm sorry, it's only that it's exactly what I would have picked out for myself," Lea said, wiping her nose on the sleeve of a butter-yellow sweater, then grabbing Tess again. "I guess Wink finally noticed I didn't wear that fancy stuff he was always giving me. Good thing. I'll probably have to hock most of them now."

Money was certainly on her mind, Tess noticed. "Are you having, uh, financial difficulties?"

"We're having financial catastrophes. Wink had a five-million-dollar insurance policy, but it doesn't pay off in the event of suicide. By the time you figure closing costs on this place, I'll lose what little equity we have in it. I could sell the business. But the business isn't worth anything without the basketball team, and there's no guarantee there will be a basketball team, or I'll get a piece of it if there is."