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the event he found something he needed to transport back with him.
    He found Miranda’s keys efficiently zipped in the side pocket of her purse. He walked quietly outside, got behind the wheel of her car, and adjusted the seat to suit him before putting it in neutral and releasing the brake. The car coasted downhill with its headlights shut off.
    He could have claimed to have been restless, to have borrowed the car to take a drive, had either she or Andrew heard the engine. But why lie when it wasn’t necessary? He waited until he was a quarter of a mile down the drive, then turned on the ignition, switched on the lights.
    Puccini was on the radio, and though he shared Miranda’s fondness for opera, it didn’t quite suit his mood. He noted the frequency, then hit scan. When he heard George Thorogood belting out “Bad to the Bone,” he grinned to himself and let it rip.

    Traffic thickened a little on the edge of town. People heading to parties, he thought, to weekend dates, or home from either because they weren’t quite interesting enough. It was barely midnight.
    A long way, he thought, from the city that never sleeps.
    Early to bed, early to rise, these Yankees, he decided. Such an admirable people. He pulled into the hotel parking lot well away from the entrance. He was fairly certain the same admirable trait would hold true for the visitors from Florence. The seven-hour time difference could be a killer the first couple of days.
    He’d stayed in the same hotel on his first trip, and knew the layout perfectly. He’d also taken the precaution of getting the room numbers for all the parties he intended to visit that night.
    No one took notice of him as he crossed the lobby and walked directly to the elevators like a man in a hurry to get to his bed.
    Elizabeth and Elise were sharing a two-bedroom suite on the top club level. The level required a key to release the elevator. And being a farsighted man—and because it was an old habit—he’d kept the access key when he checked out of the hotel himself.
    He saw no lights under any of the three doors of the suite, heard no murmur of voices or television from inside.
    He was inside the parlor himself in just under two minutes. He stood still, in the dark, listening, judging, letting his eyes adjust. As a precaution, he unlocked the terrace doors, giving himself an alternate route of escape should it become necessary.
    Then he got to work. He searched the parlor first, though he doubted either woman would have left anything vital or incriminating in that area.
    In the first bedroom he was forced to use the penlight, keeping it away from the bed, where he could hear the soft, steady sound of a woman breathing. He took a briefcase and a purse back into the parlor with him to search.
    It was Elizabeth in the bed, he noted as he flipped through the wallet. He took everything out, going through every receipt, every scrap of paper, reading the notations in her datebook. He found a key just where her daughter kept hers—inside zipper pocket. A safe-deposit box key, he noted, and pocketed it.
    He checked her passport, noting the stamps coincided with the dates his cousin had given him. It was Elizabeth’s first trip back to the States in more than a year, but she’d taken two quick trips into France in the last six months.
    He put everything but the key back where he’d found it, repeated the same process on her luggage; then while she slept he searched her closet, the dresser, the cosmetic case in the bathroom.
    It took him an hour before he was satisfied and moved on to the second bedroom.
    He knew Andrew’s ex-wife very well by the time he was done. She liked silk underwear and Opium perfume. Though her clothes were on the conservative side, she favored the top designers. Expensive taste required money to indulge it. He made a note to check her income.
    She’d brought work with her if the laptop on her desk was any indication. Which made her, in his mind, either dedicated or obsessive. The contents of her purse and briefcase were orderly, with no stray wrappers or scraps of papers. The small leather jewelry case he found contained a few good pieces of Italian gold, some well-chosen colored stones, and an antique silver locket containing a picture of a man facing a picture of a woman. They were faded black-and-white, and from the style he judged them to have been taken around World War II.
    Her grandparents, he imagined, and decided Elise had a quietly