Finally, she headed upstairs with a vague plan for the rest of her Saturday. First, she would report the stolen necklace to Leonardo’s financial manager and let him deal with the insurance company and the hotel. Second, she would grit her teeth and call Leonardo and talk him out of taking the next plane out of Florence-she thought he was still in Florence-to see her through this crisis.

If her conversation with Leonardo didn’t totally exhaust her, she would do a little work before lunch. Then she’d go for a long walk on the beach, take a nap, and afterwards see which of her new friends were around for dinner.

With any luck, the police wouldn’t call, and Jeremiah wouldn’t show up at her door.

Or, she thought, she at his.

Jeremiah knew this whole damned jewel thief nonsense, and maybe his life as a reporter, was really falling apart when he found himself back in Helen Samuel’s office. It was Saturday, and he ought to be cleaning his apartment, listening to tunes, and whittling with the boys-and if he was going to work, find a damned story he could actually write.

Helen was hammering out her column a half-hour before the midnight deadline for the Sunday paper. “Goddamned computers,” she said, cigarette hanging from her lower lip as she pecked on the keyboard. “No satisfaction hitting a ‘delete’ button. Give me a bottle of Wite-Out any day.” She glanced up at him with a skeletal grin. “I miss the fumes.”

“Why not do your column from home? You could just-”

“Modem it in?” She snorted, setting her cigarette on her overflowing ashtray. “Modems scare the shit out of me. Trust me, Tabak. I was right about television. I’m right about modems.”

Jeremiah didn’t ask her to elaborate. Her predictions on televisions or modems no doubt included the end of civilization as she knew it. Helen was even more doomsday about human nature and the future of mankind than the average reporter-which in Jeremiah’s experience was saying something.

“You want to know what I keep deleting?” She didn’t wait for his answer, her beady eyes boring into him. “Your name. I type, ‘The Tribune’s own Jeremiah Tabak was the first to rush to Mollie Lavender’s aid,’ and I delete it. Then I hit ‘redo’ and stare at it awhile, and delete it again.” She picked up her cigarette, inhaled, set it back down. “I kind of like that ‘redo’ button.”

“I’ve never known you to be indecisive, Helen.”

She squinted at him. “What have you gotten yourself into, Tabak? I can sit on this for a while, but you’re up to your nose in stink.”

He sat on the edge of a ratty chair. Fatigue gnawed at every muscle. He hadn’t slept last night. He doubted he’d sleep tonight. He’d spent the day plumbing every source he had. Police, lawyers, street informants, fellow reporters. He’d lost hours wandering around on the Internet for anything on Mollie, Leonardo Pascarelli, Blake Wilder, recent jewel heists, cat burglars. Helen would tell him he’d have been better off hitting the streets himself. She might be right. At least he would have been physically as well as mentally exhausted. Now every nerve ending seemed to twitch.

“That’s one way of putting it,” he said. “I wish I knew what I’ve gotten myself into.”

“Brass find out you were at the Sands last night and didn’t report the story?”

He shook his head. “No.”

“They won’t like being scooped by the freaking Palm Beach Daily News.” She grabbed her cigarette case and tapped out a long, slim cigarette, the other one still burning in her ashtray, smoke curling up from its inch of ash. “I don’t like it, either.”

“You had the story last night?”

“Of course. Just think, Tabak, you and I could have written the same story at the same time.” She gave a hoarse laugh. “Scares the shit out of you, doesn’t it?”

“We’d have come at this thing from different angles,” he said.

“I’m not so sure about that. You think Mollie Lavender is in the thick of this cat burglar/jewel thief business, and so do I.” She settled back in her chair, her coral lipstick bleeding into the tiny vertical lines in her upper lip; she wasn’t beautiful or young, and her chain-smoking had taken its toll in wrinkles and skin texture, but she was, Jeremiah thought, a handsome and complex woman, and more astute than he’d ever realized. She said calmly, “How hard have you fallen for her?”

He bit off a sigh. “Helen, Jesus.”

“Okay. Here’s the way it is, Tabak. We’re living in a celebrity culture. You’re damned near a celebrity reporter, which should be an oxymoron, but isn’t. So. That means if you get involved with a flaky arts and entertainment publicist who also happens to be the only goddaughter of a world-famous opera singer, people are going to notice, and they’re going to want to know more.”

“It’s none of anyone’s damned business.”

“Doesn’t matter. And if she turns out to be a jewel thief, you’re in the middle of a scandal. If you withheld information from the public, your goose as a credible reporter is, as we say, cooked.”

“For one thing, not that I need to explain to you or anyone else, what I have isn’t solid-”

“You were there last night, Tabak.”

He ignored her. “For another, I’m not in a position to withhold anything from the public. It would be a conflict of interest for me to write this story.”

“That’s what I was going to say in my column.” She held the fresh cigarette tight in one hand. “But that’s too damned subtle. I’ve been at this job a long time, and I’m smelling a scandal. My advice-not that you’re asking-is to pass the baton and bow out.”

“Let someone else do the story,” Jeremiah said.

“That’s right.”

He sighed.

“I know, I know.” She tucked the unlit cigarette on her lower lip. “You’re not on the freaking story. This is personal, between you and Mollie Lavender. Well, keep in mind it could cost you your credibility. And that’s your stock in trade, my boy.”

“Thanks for the lecture.”

“You’re welcome.” She dragged out a lighter and fired it up, her moves almost ritualistic as she lit her cigarette, inhaled, and blew out a cloud of smoke. “You didn’t risk coming down here and getting tongues wagging just to hear me lecture you on maintaining your reputation. What’s up?”

“You’ve followed this jewel thief probably even more closely than I have.”

“Right from the beginning. I’m not a Johnny Come Lately.”

“Okay. Last night’s attack-” Jeremiah paused, past knowing if he was making any sense. He studied Helen, the cursor blinking obnoxiously on her monitor, her old cigarette burned out, her new one angled rakishly between her middle finger and forefinger. “It’s either our thief getting violent and even more daring-”

“Or it’s someone else. A copycat of sorts.”

“What are your sources telling you?”

She tilted her head back, eyeing him through lowered, blackened eyelashes, debating whether she needed to tell him, a colleague who for eighteen years had hardly given her the time of day, anything. Finally, she said, “Nothing. Not one damn thing. And I’m only telling you because you’re not doing this story. Silence,” she added, raising her cigarette to her lips, “can be very intriguing.”

“Helen-”

“I’ve got a deadline, Tabak, and an empty paragraph to fill where I should be telling my readers that you and Leonardo Pascarelli’s goddaughter are the talk of the town.”

Jeremiah glared at her. “We’re not.”

“You will be,” she said, and swiveled around to her monitor.

Dismissed, he headed out of her office and kept walking until he reached the parking garage. He sat in his truck. There were times he wondered why he hadn’t just stayed in the Everglades with his father. This was one of them. He could have been a guide, a loner like his father, except by choice rather than by the cruelty of fate. His mother had been snatched from husband and young son by a deadly cancer that had moved fast and furiously. In Jeremiah’s experience, true love-the kind of love his parents had had for each other-couldn’t last, was doomed by its own perfection.