More than anything else, he’d told her many years later, it was that comment that had prompted him to take her on as his student. He knew he was a strong personality. He had no interest in molding another pianist into a mini-Shuji. He had wanted, encouraged, demanded her development as an independent artist.

Now he couldn’t understand why she needed to color her hair pink and play jazz in a SoHo nightclub. He wanted her to be independent so long as she didn’t break any of his sacred rules.

“The bastard,” she muttered, still playing, “the goddamn bastard.”

She ignored the tears burning in her eyes and the fatigue gnawing at her muscles and the hollowness inside her, the cold, raw fear that had nothing to do with diamonds and coincidental deaths and men following her.

Shuji was gone. My God, she thought, what am I going to do?

Matthew drank a beer and watched part of a basketball game just to calm down, but neither helped. Weasel, Bloch-where the hell were they? He went for another beer, a Sam Adams, and took two sips as he sat down at the telephone in what passed these days for his study, of which the most notable items were his television and stereo system. His typewriter was covered and had about twelve issues of Sports Illustrated stacked on top of it. The bottom one, he noted, went back eight months. He didn’t own a computer. Working on one at the newsroom was enough. He didn’t like all those goddamn lights blinking at him.

He held the receiver in his hand and told himself not to do it.

He did it anyway. He had the number memorized, had already started to dial it twice this evening.

There were four rings, and then her voice came over the message machine. “I’m unavailable at the moment, but if you leave your name, number, and a brief message…”

“Juliana, if you’re there, pick up the damn phone. If not-”

The machine cut off. “Matthew.” She sounded vague, spaced. “What is it?”

The rigidity of his muscles began to ease as he listened to her. She had a beautiful voice. It made him able to envision her eyes, vivid and filled with energy. He began to imagine his mouth on hers. You’re slipping fast, buddy, he thought, and drank more beer.

“Were you practicing?” he asked.

“Mm, yes, I think so.”

“You think so?”

“I sort of lost track. That hasn’t happened to me in a while. I don’t think about where I am, what I’m doing, I just get totally absorbed. Then when I stop, it takes me a while…” She paused to take a breath, as if she’d been running. “A while to come back from wherever I’ve been, I guess. I was working on-what was it?” She sounded drugged. “I mean, I know what I was. It was the Chopin. It’s just not easy to articulate my thoughts after concentrating so hard. You should see what I’m like after I’ve been at it for seven or eight hours at a stretch.”

“Dizzier that you are right now?”

“Oh, much.”

Hard to imagine. But suddenly Matthew wanted to know what motivated this gorgeous, eccentric woman. What drove her to do what she did? What kept her at it? She had so goddamn much energy. She’d just returned from Antwerp, for the love of God. He could barely concentrate on a basketball game, never mind Chopin. He remembered how she’d been sweating after her Lincoln Center performance and yet still had been able to settle down. Did the woman ever just chill out?

In Vermont, he remembered. No piano there.

“I’m glad I’m not your neighbor,” he said, hearing the humor in his tone.

She laughed, that cool, sexy laugh with just a hint of nuttiness. “The Beresford has very solid walls-that’s one reason I live here. Aunt Willie doesn’t like it. Wouldn’t, I mean. But you were saying?”

“Juliana, this thing with the Minstrel, your uncle, Rachel Stein-it’s damn serious.”

“I know that.” Clipped, pissed. Back on earth.

“I don’t mean to sound patronizing, but it’s more serious than it was even yesterday. Listen to me, Juliana. I want you to stay in your apartment as much as possible, and I want you to play piano and stay the hell out this mess.”

“Is it Otis Raymond? Has something happened to him?”

He appreciated the note of worry and concern in her voice. “Not that I know of.”

“Then what?”

Phil Bloch knows your name, knows you were in Antwerp, knows you could have the stone. Never mind whether you do or you don’t. Never mind what you know and what you haven’t told me. Just get the hell out, sweetheart.

But he said only, “New information. I’ll explain another time. Watch yourself.”

“Matthew-”

“Do it, Juliana. Trust me on this, all right? God help me. I know what I’m talking about.”

For a few seconds she was silent. Then, “You know who’s behind all this, don’t you?”

She sounded breathless and excited and scared, and Stark knew if he gave her more, she’d be back on his doorstep, in deeper trouble than ever. He could almost see the brightness of those ice-cool emerald eyes. Christ, he had to find Bloch! But what good would that do? Coming down on Bloch’s head might only further endanger Weasel. Goddamn Ryder…

“I can’t talk,” he said. “Just watch yourself.”

“Won’t talk, you mean.” She was cool again, one tenacious lady. “You’re in Washington, aren’t you?”

“Take care of yourself. Why not take a trip to Vermont?”

She hung up on him.

Catharina sat at her bedroom window and looked down at the Christmas lights on Park Avenue. Tears streamed down her face, but she made no attempt to brush them away. Her thoughts had drifted back more than forty years, to the last Christmas with her mother and father in Amsterdam. She was just a teenager but had taken charge of the household. She’d planned for the holiday for weeks, scrounging up ingredients to make speculaas and appelbeignets, and Hendrik had brought rum and cocoa. What a feast they’d had! Johannes had managed to come, so tall and stoic, and Ann, so sweet and sad. Johannes had been marked for deportation to the Nazi labor camps and was in hiding, himself an onderduiker, and Ann, as the Jewish partner in a mixed marriage, was to report for sterilization procedures. She had refused and was in hiding too. Her family-her parents and younger sisters-had been deported the previous year and there had been no official word on where they were. The rumors were too dreadful to believe.

But that Christmas they’d ignored so much, laughing and carrying on, and afterward Catharina had sent goodies back with Wilhelmina for Rachel and Abraham. In a rare display of affection and pride, her mother had hugged both her daughters and told them they were fine young women. Hendrik had said he agreed, and when no one was looking, he’d kissed Catharina on the cheek. How she’d blushed! For hours after, her face burned. He was twenty-five and a hero in the Underground Resistance; everyone adored him.

Now, finally, she brushed away her tears, wishing her mother could be here with her. Catharina was nearing sixty herself. She was older than her mother had lived to be. And yet she wanted that stern, loving guidance, that soft lap, that strong shoulder on which to cry.

“You mustn’t blame yourself, dear Catharina…”

“Oh, Mamma,” she cried aloud, paralyzed with fear and indecision. Ever since her talk with Wilhelmina, she’d hidden herself away, looking for answers out the window, in the winter sky and the gray buildings and the Christmas trimmings. There were none. “If only you were here, Mamma, to tell me what to do!”

Drying her tears, she turned away from the window. She had a vision of her tiny daughter in pigtails and dirty sneakers, climbing up onto the piano bench, and she wanted to transport herself back in time and take that child in her arms and hold her, just hold her.

You must be strong, Catharina, she could hear her mother say. You must be strong.