“Lilli felt more trapped by her circumstances than I ever did. She married fairly young. By the time Nick cast her in Casino, she had a husband, a child, unbelievable expectations placed on her. Perhaps she decided the only way she could change her life was to chuck it all and leave. Become someone else.”

“Is that what you believe happened?”

Sara’s shoulders sagged. She’d changed more than Zeke had anticipated. At twenty-two, she’d been dynamic and restless, grieving for a mother she’d lost too young and anxious to set the world on fire. Only she hadn’t. That wasn’t necessarily a failure in Zeke’s view, unless she thought it was. Either way, he’d left behind enough plans and dreams of his own not to judge.

“I only wish I knew,” she whispered, then blushed. “I’m sorry, Zeke-I realize I keep saying that, but I didn’t mean for you to have to listen to me whine. I just wanted to say hello. I don’t know, I thought you might have come to Saratoga because of Lilli, Joe, me, its being twenty-five years.” But when he didn’t respond, irritation flashed in her very blue eyes, undermining her gracious, sweet heiress act. She pulled a napkin from her lap and set it neatly beside her champagne glass. “You’re not going to tell me anything, are you?”

“Sara, there’s nothing to tell you.”

That wasn’t true, of course.

She gave him a cool smile. “Well, then. I hope you have a wonderful stay in Saratoga. It’s been good seeing you, Zeke. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a great deal to do before the Chandler this afternoon.”

She was on her feet. Zeke watched as she quickly-automatically-took stock of who was around her, who was paying attention.

“Wait,” he said calmly.

She looked at him, expectant.

“There’s something I’ve always wondered. Did you just use Joe to get Roger to notice you?”

It wasn’t what she’d wanted Zeke to ask. She hesitated, then said quietly, “I hope you go straight to hell when you die, Zeke Cutler.”

Then she was gone, stiffing him with the bill.

Zeke flagged the waiter for more coffee, noticing he didn’t jump as fast as when Sara had been there, but he did come, and the coffee was hot, the weather was nice. Zeke sat back, watching the horses and thinking.

After about thirty seconds he realized he didn’t have a whole hell of a lot to think about besides Dani’s black eyes. He’d been in town almost two days and so far didn’t know anything. Time to throw a stick of dynamite into the mix and stir things up.

But first, another cup of coffee.

The telephone woke her.

Fumbling for the receiver, Dani almost fell on the floor before she realized she wasn’t upstairs in her bedroom. She’d crashed on the couch in the living room after her kite flying. She stumbled to her feet. Her eyelids felt swollen, and her bruises and scrapes hurt, but the damn phone was still ringing. She headed to the kitchen, shuddering when she remembered she hadn’t locked the back door when she’d come in. But there were no robbers in the kitchen, no dark-eyed men on white horses. Just a bucket of peach skins and peach pits for the compost pile.

She grabbed the wall phone, but before she could grunt a hello, Ira Bernstein said, “You’d better get up here.”

His words-his serious tone-instantly woke her up. “What’s wrong?”

“One of the guest rooms has been ransacked. Totally tossed to hell and back.”

“Was anyone hurt?”

“Not that I know of.”

“Have you called the police?”

“Not yet. I, um, thought we should talk first.”

Cutler, she thought. He had to be involved somehow. “I’ll be there in ten minutes.”

She ran into the bathroom and splashed cold water on her face and brushed her teeth, raked her fingers through her hair, grimaced at her reflection in the mirror. What a mess. She hadn’t gotten off all of Magda’s makeup; mascara was smudged under her eyes. And she looked as though she’d spent the night peeling peaches and flying kites.

She decided against fresh clothes and instead put on her sneakers and headed out in her jeans. She tore through her garden and out the back gate, moving fast over the familiar ground.

Ira was waiting for her in room 304. It was one of her favorites. She’d found the crazy quilt in a dusty antique shop in Vermont and had repaired it herself.

“Housekeeping came in to make up the bed,” Ira said, “and found it like this. Efficient bastard.”

Indeed. A duffel had been dumped out, its contents scattered. Dani noticed jeans, canvas pants, dark shirts. White-knight clothes. “This is Zeke Cutler’s room, isn’t it?”

Ira nodded. “Dani-” He sighed, running one hand through his corkscrew curls. “Look, I didn’t call the police because I don’t know what’s going on around here. This guy shows up. Your cottage is broken into. He drives you to the Chandler party last night. He comes in this morning at the crack of dawn. Leaves. Now we find his room tossed.”

“That about sums it up.” Dani balled her hands into fists, trying to maintain some semblance of calm even as she fought to get a decent breath. The small room suddenly seemed oppressive and airless. “I don’t know what’s going on, either, Ira.”

“If you want me to, I can handle this. I’ll leave you out altogether. But if this is personal-if I’m going to tread somewhere you don’t want me to tread…” He paused, his cockiness and irreverence nowhere in evidence. “You just tell me what you want me to do.”

Any residual sleepiness or fatigue vanished as Dani straightened, looking around the ransacked room. The mattress was off the bed, drawers dumped, linens heaped, bath crystals and salts and powders emptied. What had Zeke brought down on her head?

“You’ve called our own security people?”

“On their way.”

“Good. Let them deal with the police. I’ll deal with Zeke myself.”

Ira looked dubious. “You’re sure?”

“No.” She forced herself to meet Ira’s eye, to smile. “But it’ll be okay. Thanks, Ira.”

Before he could stop her, she left, heading back across the grounds to her cottage, where she showered and changed. Fifteen minutes later, she was on her way into Saratoga. She found a parking space in a public lot and walked over to the library, where, after some digging, she checked out a copy of Joe Cutler: One Soldier’s Rise and Fall.

Then she walked to Kate Murtagh’s small yellow Victorian house, on a pretty street off-well off-Union Avenue. Dani went around back and knocked on the door, because it was August in Saratoga and if Kate wasn’t catering some event, she was in her kitchen. She yelled that the door was open, and Dani went in.

The kitchen was bright, airy, functional and spotless, with open shelves, pots hanging from cast-iron hooks, stacks of pure white cotton towels and aprons, white cabinets and miles of countertop. Kate was decorating petits fours at her butcher-block table.

“Egad, Dani,” Kate said, putting down her frosting bowl, “you look like the whirling dervish. What’s up?”

“I need to know if you’ve found anything else out about Zeke Cutler.”

“Aha.” She wiped her hands on her apron and gestured to a chair across from her, but Dani didn’t sit down. “Well, for starters, you didn’t tell me the man’s a stud. I saw him with my own two eyes, and he-Hey, are you blushing?”

“It’s hot in here. Where did you see him?”

“Outside your grampy’s place last night. Told him not to pester you or he’d have me to deal with. Didn’t seem to bother him much. But as you can imagine, I’ve plumbed my sources for any information I can on the man.”

“And?”

“And I’ve come up with precious little beyond what I’ve already told you.”

“But you have something,” Dani said.

Kate sighed. “Yeah, but what about you? Are you going to tell me what’s going on?”

“I will, Kate-you know that. But right now I just don’t have time to go into all the boring details.”