Hidden Riches

in all, he considered it an excellent day. Making it look like a random burglary had helped pay his traveling expenses. He was going to treat himself to a first-class hotel after he’d picked up the parrot in Virginia.
    That would leave only another quick trip to Philly for the painting.
    In another day or two, Finley would have to admit just how reliable and how creative Anthony DiCarlo could be. And, DiCarlo mused, he was bound to earn a substantial reward for services rendered.

CHAPTER
TEN
    A well-mannered fire simmered in the grate of the Adam fireplace. It threw pretty, dancing lights over the Oriental carpet and silk-papered walls. A distinguished vermouth picked up the subtle lighting and sparkled in the heavy, faceted Baccarat glass. Van Cliburn played an elegant Chopin étude. Tasteful hors d’oeuvres had been offered on Georgian silver by the aged and discreet butler.
    It was exactly the sort of room Jed had skulked through during his childhood, with the carefully placed bric-a-brac whispering of old money. But there was a subtle difference here. In this room, in this house, he had known some transient happiness. In this room he hadn’t been threatened or berated or ignored.
    Yet it still reminded him, painfully, of the boy he had been.
    Jed rose from the miserably uncomfortable Louis XIV side chair to pace his grandmother’s front parlor.
    In evening clothes he looked the part of the Bester-Skimmerhorn heir. It was only his eyes, as he stared down at the flickering fire, that reflected the other paths he’d chosen, and the internal struggle to find his true place.
    He wouldn’t have minded a visit. Of all of his relatives, Honoria was the only one he’d had generous feelings for during his youth. As fate would have it, she was the only relative he had left. But the command performance grated.
    He’d refused to take Honoria to the Winter Ball, twice—directly and concisely. She had simply ignored his refusal and, using a combination of guile, guilt, and tenacity had wheedled him into dragging out his tux.
    “Well, Jedidiah, you’re still prompt.”
    Honoria stood in the parlor doorway. She had sharp New England cheekbones and brilliant blue eyes that missed little. Her snowy hair was softly coiffed around her narrow face. Her lips, still full and oddly sensuous, were curved. Smugly. Honoria knew when she’d won a match, whether it be a rousing game of bridge or a battle of wills.
    “Grandmother.” Because it was expected, and because he enjoyed it, Jed crossed over to take her hand and lift it to his lips. “You look beautiful.”
    It was quite true, and she knew it. Her Adolpho gown of royal blue set off both her eyes and her stately figure. Diamonds glittered at her throat, at her ears, at her wrists. She enjoyed the gems because she had earned them, and because she was vain enough to know they would turn heads.
    “Pour me a drink,” she ordered, in a voice that still carried a hint of Boston from her youth. “That will give you time to tell me what you’re doing with your life.”
    “We won’t need much time for that.” But he walked obediently to the liquor cabinet.
    He remembered when she had caught him filching from that same cabinet nearly twenty years before. How she hadinsisted that he drink from the decanter of whiskey—and keep drinking while she watched, steely-eyed. And after, when he’d been miserably sick, she had held his head for him.
    “ When you’re old enough to drink like a man, Jedidiah, you and I will share a civilized cocktail. Until then, don’t take what you can’t handle. ”
    “Sherry, Grandmother?” he asked, and grinned.
    “Now, why would I want an old woman’s drink when there’s good whiskey around?” Silks rustling, she sat near the fire. “When am I going to see this hovel you’ve moved yourself into?”
    “Anytime you like, and it’s not a hovel.”
    She snorted and sipped at the whiskey in a heavy crystal tumbler. “A drafty apartment above some seamy little shop.”
    “I haven’t noticed any drafts.”
    “You had a perfectly adequate home.”
    “I had a twenty-room mausoleum that I hated.” He’d known this was coming. After all, it was from her he’d inherited the tenacity that had made him a good cop. Rather than face the chair again, he leaned against the mantel. “I’ve always hated it.”
    “It’s wood and brick,” she said dismissively. “It’s a foolish waste of energy to hate the inanimate. In any case, you