"What?" Schwab asked.

"Nothing."

"No, no. You were about to say something."

The moment passed. "Tell me about conversions," she said.

The knee stopped bobbing. He relaxed. "It has to do with money laundering. Do you know what that is?"

"Oh yeah. Mafia stuff." Cassie pressed her lips together.

"The mob doesn't have a lock on it." Charlie laughed. "People who aren't connected do it, too."

"You said you were a finder. I know where some things could be found," she said softly. She could give him Mona's house. That was in Mona's name. Unearned income? And the Jaguar? Unearned, too. She bet Mona was not much of a declarer.

"Here?" Schwab glanced around again.

"No, no. Not here," Cassie said quickly.

"I see." Schwab popped a grape in his mouth. "What about your wine cellar?" he asked.

"How do you know about that?"

"A little bird told me."

"Humph. Is that a conversion, too?"

He popped another grape. "These are good. It may be."

"How?"

"Let's say expensive merchandise is lost or stolen, in transit or from the warehouse. Taxpayer may report the loss and take a deduction. But the merchandise is actually moved to another location, where it becomes a personal, not a business, asset that can be sold privately under the table without capital gains."

Cassie inhaled sharply. "You think the wine downstairs is that?"

"I can check it out."

"Could I say no?"

Charlie shook his head slowly. "Not really."

"How bad will it hurt me?"

"Honestly, I don't know."

"Is there anything I can do to help myself?"

"You could help me."

Now his cute smile made her queasy. It wasn't a big leap to guess where he was going with this. "How would helping you help me?"

"I know how the system works. I could help you with the angles. You think about it." He rose to go. "By the way, I really want to compliment you on the way you're holding up. Believe me, I know how the stress gets to people."

"I'm on Thorazine," Cassie told him, deadpan, disappointed that he was leaving.

"Really?" He stopped short.

"No, that was a smart remark."

"Ha-ha. It was a good one, I'll remember it." He headed for the door.

"Thank you."

He was gone as suddenly as he had come, and Cassie sighed at the confusion he'd stirred up. She couldn't tell the good guys from the bad guys anymore. Parker Higgins and Ira Mandel had threatened. Charlie hadn't threatened. It was a nice change. And Cassie had always liked blue eyes. She felt the opposite of the relief she'd had whenever Mitch drove off.

After Charlie was out of the house, an undercurrent of excitement hung around for a while. She'd been getting better about chewing her lip, but now she started gnawing on it again. She wondered if he was married, if his wife was pretty, if she knocked his socks off.

CHAPTER 38

"NO, YOU MAY NOT BRING YOUR GIRLFRIEND," Cassie told Teddy on the phone. She was using her reasonable voice, and it took all her energy to maintain it. It was the Friday of the Fourth of July weekend, and due diligence in Mitch's case was completed. The ethics committee of the hospital had concluded that the brain of Mitchell Sales had died a month ago, and it would no longer serve any useful purpose to sustain his body on life support.

"Teddy, are you there?" she demanded.

"Mommm, why can't Lorraine come? I thought you liked Lorraine." Teddy was whining in his office at Ira Mandel's accounting firm, where in addition to his basic job of bookkeeping, he was studying a bunch of difficult courses like calculus and linear programming at night and on the weekend to pass the two-and-a-half-day CPA examination of accounting, auditing, taxation, and other very sophisticated stuff. Ira had told her that only 10 percent of candidates passed, but he believed that Teddy would be one of them. For accountants, apparently, the CPA certificate was everything.

"Liking Lorraine is not the point, Teddy, I want to talk to you and Marsha alone," Cassie told him. She was parked in her place at the kitchen table with an untouched cup of coffee in front of her.

Today was their father's final day on this earth. She wanted her children in the same room with her when she told them.

"Mommm, Marsha's bringing Tom, isn't she? You're making lunch for him."

"It's just us, Teddy. And maybe Aunt Edith. I haven't decided."

"Aunt Edith! Why not Lorraine?"

"Aunt Edith is family, Teddy. Lorraine is not."

"Lorraine's my girlfriend. Don't you like my girlfriend?" Teddy demanded.

Cassie didn't want to scream her frustration and rage at Teddy into the phone. Lorraine was a hospital pickup! She was heavy. Cassie had nothing against heavy in general, but heavy like Lorraine on a person so young would mean the thirty-year-old Lorraine would be massive. She had no control over what she put in her mouth. In addition, Lorraine didn't have much going on between her ears. Lorraine was not cultured. She had an accent. A terrible accent. Worse than the Bronx, Brooklyn, and Queens all put together. This was the problem with Long Island. Her fingernails and toenails were long and painted blue or green or black. Cassie couldn't imagine how she was able to function in a hospital with nails like those. Plus, she didn't know how to cook. She ordered take-out on a regular basis. What kind of life would that be for someone like Teddy? Cassie didn't simply dislike Lorraine, she loathed her. Call her a snob. Call her shallow. Except for the weight, Mona had been just like her!

"Mommm," Teddy whined.

Cassie took a deep breath. She didn't want to say she hated Lorraine and feared that the fat, callow girl would transform her son the way the ugly, tasteless, fawning, scheming doormat, Mona, had transformed her husband.

"Teddy, I'm on my way out now. I want to see you at the house at noon. Leave now if you have to." Cassie ended the call, stood up, and moved to the sink to dump the coffee down the drain.

An hour and a half later, Cassie told Teddy and Marsha that their father was scheduled to die any minute, and Teddy suddenly stopped agitating for lunch.

"Are you going with me?" she asked. She'd hoped that they would act as a family, but it was up to them. When she dropped the news, they were sitting outside on the patio in a tight little circle around the wrought-iron table they'd always used for picnics. Cassie had asked Teddy to put up the umbrella to shade her face. As soon as he did, a cloud drifted over the sun, and the shade around them deepened to twilight.

For once the contentious children were too stunned to squabble. Teddy and Marsha divided their attention between each other and her. Around them was the fragrant backyard that had been their childhood haven: perfect green grass in the small lawn. Blooming lilies in all the borders. They were thinking the same thing. Mitchell Sales, their daddy, the end. Their mood was gloomy.

It wasn't as if they weren't prepared. Still, death coming on them like this, during a lunch break, was so final, there seemed nothing to say. Teddy studied a worm that had fallen into the pool. The worm must have died yesterday, because already it had faded to tan, bleached by the chlorine. He switched his attention to his shoes. They were the same Italian loafers his boss, Ira Mandel, wore. Suddenly Marsha, who'd taken the day off from her internship in the women's jail on Riker's Island, began weeping quietly.

"Tom didn't tell me Daddy was dying today. Does he know?" She was wearing her jail outfit: black pants, black T-shirt. No makeup. She looked pretty good except for the tears streaking her face.

Cassie felt sorry for her. Until now, Marsha had been detached, almost as if the double catastrophe of her mother's crazy face-lift and her father's crazy stroke both occurring practically at the same time was a kind of parental acting out that would eventually come to a peaceful end as hers always had. Now it wasn't clear whether the loss of her father or the fear of death itself was getting to her.