"Now, listen to me. The two of you have to rely on me now. Teddy, I understand what happened last night. Marsha took off, and you were doing your own thing." That was a nice way of putting it. Cassie's lips were set hard against her teeth, but she said it without a trace of irony. They'd been doing their own thing, and their father had died on their watch. It was over. Fact of life.

Marsha gripped her mother's arm. "Mom, calm down."

"I'm perfectly calm. He had Daddy's body removed before I was even up, Marsha. Did he call you at Tom's place? No, he did not. Then he took off with that girl and left me here to be interrogated by the police. That cop wanted to arrest me for murder. What were you thinking?" she hissed at her son.

Teddy looked like a fifteen-year-old caught out doing everything he wasn't supposed to do. "I was just trying to help. I'm really sorry, Mom."

"Sorry!"

"He was already dead when she went to check on him. I swear," Teddy said.

Cassie didn't want to pursue it now. The girl was not in the house. Good, she didn't want to pursue that, either. Suddenly she felt sick again. She turned her attention to the grain running through the wood in the kitchen table. She'd wiped it clean before she'd gone upstairs to change. Tidy was her middle name. "Is there anything else you want to tell me before I go?" she asked softly.

Teddy took a deep breath. "Well…"

"What, Teddy?" Marsha demanded. "What now?"

"Gently, gently." Cassie pointed at the dining room door. "I swear to God he must think we're nuts."

"Who cares? We are nuts," Marsha muttered.

"Shhh. Marsha!" Cassie told herself she was perfectly calm.

"Don't shhh me. Daddy's dead, and nothing changes around here except now you're wearing my clothes."

"Well, they're better than mine," Cassie pointed out.

"I sent the letter," Teddy blurted.

"What letter?" Marsha gave him the idiot look. For once, Teddy ignored it.

"Mom, I'm really sorry. He was going to marry her. She told me a thousand times that everybody underestimates you, that you'd be okay. She promised me a better life." He squirmed in his chair, crumbling like a cookie.

"Mona promised you a better life than what?" Cassie's brain spun back into its whirl. In an instant she lost her perfect calm.

"She promised she'd always take care of me." Teddy pulled on his fingers until his knuckles cracked. "I had to stop it, that's all."

Mona had promised Teddy a better life? Cassie swallowed bile as a terrible thought struck her: Had Mona been sleeping with her son, too? She shivered in the sun-drenched kitchen. This was the stuff of soap operas. Teddy was their informer. He had nailed his own father. She was speechless.

"What are you talking about? What did you do?" Marsha demanded. She didn't have a clue.

Teddy was telling his story and paying no attention to her. "He was always teaching me lessons. It was time to teach him one."

"For God's sake what did he do?" Marsha turned to her mother, and still Teddy wouldn't acknowledge her.

"Mom, I gave him the second set of books."

Cassie's life took another unexpected turn. She was spinning, spinning. Dizzy, dizzy. Where would it stop? "What second set of books?" she asked faintly.

"It was how he taught me accounting. Not even Ira knows." For the first time Teddy glanced guiltily at his sister. "He and Mona cooked the books. Daddy showed me how they did it. Easy as pie. The official set was prepared for Ira, the other for them. He told me everybody did it. He was proud of it. He thought only idiots were honest."

Cassie put her hand to her mouth. She pointed to the dining room. "You gave him the books?"

"Well, they were disks, really. He was in here. He would have found them, anyway, and I didn't want to be like that kid in The Sopranos."

Cassie frowned. Sopranos? Was that an opera?

"He loved that show. Loved it. He thought he was Tony. I was Tony Jr."

"Oh God!" Now Marsha got something. "He thought he was Tony Soprano, Mom."

No wonder she'd always hated that show. Cassie waved her hand impatiently. She was still on the cooked books. Teddy gave the juice to the finder. "When did you do that, Teddy?" she demanded.

"Just now. He pretty much promised none of us would go to jail. You're not mad, are you?"

"Ha. They rape boys like you in jail," Marsha crowed. "I hope you get buggered, you crook."

"Marsha!" Cassie said, shocked.

"Well, he is a crook, isn't he?"

"Mom, do you forgive me?" Suddenly Teddy was begging, a little kid all over again. "I did it for you," he said. "And her." He pointed at his sister. "She may be a total jerk, but Mona wasn't going to give her a nickel. It wasn't fair."

CHAPTER 45

SO THIS WAS WHERE THE PATH of Cassie Sales's little uneventful life had led. She was in the Mercedes with Charlie Schwab, heading toward Mona's Refuge at just past noon on the day after Independence Day, which happened to be her first of single life in twenty-six years. She was very aware of looking like a vamp from a spy novel. She was wearing Marsha's black wrap dress, Marsha's big dark sunglasses, and Marsha's skimpy sandals. Her stomach was heaving, still in rebellion from the wine she'd drunk last night against a backdrop of exploding fireworks that had set the dogs in the neighborhood howling for hours just about the time Mitch had died alone.

All along she'd thought that her teenage daughter had been just your basic malcontent with multiple pierces and pink hair, and her son was a dolt, a puppet of his overbearing father. Now she realized that her children had minds of their own, and there had been a reason behind everything they did to annoy her. It amazed her how devious the mind was. It turned out that her son was actually tempted by prison because his father had deserved to be there, and her daughter wanted to work with women in prison because she and her mother had been in one. That was Cassie's interpretation.

Oddly, she was relieved that they had some depth. The three of them were eccentric, but possibly not certifiably crazy. In any case, like Teddy, she was setting the record straight regardless of the consequences. What did any of it matter now but the truth? It was only after she'd gotten into the car and taken the wheel that she remembered she hadn't asked Teddy if the cremation had taken place on schedule so no autopsy could be done of the body. Whatever had or hadn't happened to Mitch in the night, she didn't want anyone to know. So much for true truth.

It was too late to find out now. She became distracted on Duck Pond by how many worlds apart it was from Manhasset, where Teddy and Marsha had gone to public schools. Here was real privilege. Here were the horse farms, the Old Brookville Winery, with its greening suburban vineyard. Here was the estate where a rival importer far more wealthy than Mitch lived behind his iron gates. Here was the old money, the turn-of-the-century banking and oil money to which Mitch and Mona had aspired with their designer clothes, their trips, and their ever improving accents. The road that led to Le Refuge was nearly untraveled at noon on a weekday.

Cassie wondered where Mona was, if she knew yet that Mitch was dead. What would she do when she found out what the IRS had in store for her? She was amazed that she felt drained and elated at the same time. The infiltration of the enemy beside her was almost complete. Soon there would be nothing he didn't know. It was thrilling. He knew of the juice in all its forms, but not where it all was. Now she would show him everything she knew. Her body was electrified, almost singing in its new form. In the back of her mind, she had a feeling that even though Teddy had started the ball rolling on the revelations, Mona was probably behind Charlie's intense interest in her. He'd kept on her tail, followed her while her husband was sick, was dying, died, all the time as if she were the one doing wrong. And all the time Mona was the real thief.