No wonder she'd been nervous and paranoid all these years. No wonder she'd worried every single day of her life. She'd been a doll to him and everybody else, and they were all nothing but pigs in shit, just like her mother, who'd left her so many times, and Davey, who'd exploited her for his own gain, and her grandmother, who'd sent her away and hadn't let her come back for six long years. But by then she was almost dead, too old to help her at all. And then that adviser in her senior class in high school, who left his wife for her but turned out to have no money at all, so she had to come to New York to be with Granny instead. And stupid, stupid Jerry, who wouldn't set his sights high enough.

Mona hated Parker Higgins so much, she smiled at him kindly. She would kill him slowly. His wife would turn off to him. His friends would shun him. He'd lose his business. He wouldn't know what happened. The room blurred, came back in focus. She needed water. Just a sip.

"Mona, are you okay? How about a cup of coffee?"

"No, no. I'll be fine in a minute," she said, not wanting to touch a single thing in this poisonous place or be the slightest bit of a bother.

CHAPTER 47

CHARLIE NOTIFIED HIS BRANCH OFFICE, and Special Agent Marshall Dahl and his supe rvisor Angelo Carini promised to join them at Le Refuge as soon as they had finished lunch. Mel Arrighi was on his way. D.C. was notified. Cassie was in a hurry to get away before any of them got there, but she wasn't leaving without her credit cards.

She followed Charlie as he traveled from room to room, taking photos. "Charlie, give me those cards."

"What cards?"

"I saw you put them in your pocket. They're my cards."

"Nah."

"Charlie, I saw you."

"Well, if I have them, which I'm not saying I do, they're safe with me. Thanks for your help. You can go home now," Charlie told her breezily.

"Thanks for my help. I can go home now! I broke your fucking case." Cassie's voice rose.

"And the Bureau appreciates it. We really do." Charlie turned to her with a big grin and snapped her photo.

She gasped. "What are you doing?"

"You're a very lovely woman. Thank you," he said solemnly.

"Wait a minute. Mona was taking off with all this stuff she'd bought in my name."

"Looks like it," he agreed, a happy man.

"I need some assurances. Some waiver or something," Cassie went on.

He laughed.

"Look, I did a little checking with my not-so-honest lawyer last week about this house. The house is in Mona's name. She paid four million in cash. The other three came from a mortgage. I'd suggest you find out where that cash came from. If it came from Sales Importers, Inc., that would be what kind of income, would you say? If it came from the air, you'd probably like to know that, too. Either way, it's not right, not correct. You never believed me about anything. Give me my cards."

"I always believed you," Charlie said. But he was working now, on top of the world. He knew how Mitch's huge AmEx bills he'd been studying this morning had been paid off without the incoming cash, or the expenses, appearing on his personal or company tax returns. Some offshore bank was automatically paying them. As Charlie saw it, Mitch must have been regularly transferring money to banks out of the country through perfectly legal international credit cards. You weren't supposed to take more than a few thousand dollars out of the country without reporting it. But traveling executives in big international companies did it all the time. Cash was moved to banks that wouldn't report it, and international credit card companies did not reveal the money going out unless the IRS requested the transactions documenting it. They didn't routinely go through credit card receipts.

Mitch had accessed the money the same way he had moved it. He'd charged trips and luxury items abroad and paid for them with international cards. Once he got cooperation from the card companies, Charlie would have no trouble tracking it. This did not explain why the technique hadn't been used with the items in this house, unless Cassie was right and she'd been targeted by the two of them all along. He loved it. Mona's purchase of the house had put her at risk. Mitch could easily have purchased it quite legally himself. But the motive must have been divorce. He couldn't appear to have any money, of course. This was quite a feat for a man with so much money. Charlie looked at Cassie and wondered what kind of man would leave a beautiful lady like her.

"You didn't believe me. I know you." Cassie was heating up to a good scream. He put his hand on her arm to calm her down.

"Of course. I always believed you. I was attracted to you from the minute you called the cops on me."

"I hate you," she said.

Undisturbed, he removed his hand from her arm and changed rolls of film in his camera. "Fine. But you'd better go home now. I'll get in touch with you later on this."

"I don't want you to get in touch with me later. I want those cards in my possession. They have to be canceled," Cassie insisted.

Charlie regarded her with awe. Her cheating husband was dead. The IRS was descending with its big guns on the $600 million company of which she was most certainly part owner. The entity with all its tentacles would be opened up and examined with exquisite detail, far greater than any techniques used for a body on the autopsy table. No matter how much the Feds took in fines and unreported back taxes, however, Cassie would still be a rich woman someday. But all she cared about was clearing her name of what amounted (in this massive case) to a rather piddling credit card debt. What a woman!

"I want those cards canceled." Cassie stamped her foot.

She had no idea how much money was involved here, and he was enchanted. "I'll cancel them," he promised. With the new roll in the camera, he snapped another photo of her. "You're adorable when you're angry."

"That's a ridiculous thing to say."

"Well, you don't know me," he said.

"Well, you don't know Mona. You don't know what she can do."

"She can't do anything to me."

"She can hurt anybody. She can twist things around. Please. Give me the cards."

He shook his head. "Uh-uh. What are you going to do with them? You can't prove you got them here."

"I'm going to get an honest lawyer," Cassie told him.

Charlie snickered. "Surely a contradiction in terms. And right here you have better than a lawyer." He tapped his chest.

"Charlie, you're going to hurt me, I know it," she said sadly.

Something about her tone, like the unselfconscious embrace she'd given her daughter earlier, stabbed him in a place where he'd long thought he'd lost feeling. The emotion stopped him short. He dropped the arm holding his camera and stared at her, wondering at the very idea. Hurt her? How could he?

"Oh come on, not everybody's bad. The IRS are good guys."

She shook her head. "What's going to happen to my son?"

"He's a great guy, an honest man is worth his weight in diamonds. We reward people like him."

"Charlie, that's another lie. Give me the cards."

"Nope." He went back to taking pictures. When he turned around again, she was gone.

AT TWO O'CLOCK, Mona and four IRS operatives in two cars showed up at the same time. By then, the curtain hangers in the station wagon were gone, and the Moving Depot packers had unpacked everything and left it out on the counters and tables. All the furniture that had been outside was back inside. And the van was gone, too.

Mona arrived first and opened the front door of her house to find Charlie sitting on the stairs in the gallery. She almost fainted when she saw him.

"Hi," he said.

"What are you doing here?" she said.