Three Fates

crushing the Mets. It was a keen disappointment, as he’d had twenty on the Mets, which just went to show you what happens when you bet on sentiment.
    He muted the screen, then picked up the phone and made a call. He asked the right person the right questions, and had no intention of sharing the answers.

Nine
     
     
     
     
    H ENRY W. Wyley, Tia discovered, had been a man of diverse interests with a great lust for life. He had, she supposed, due to his working-class background, put a great deal of stock in status and appearances.
    He hadn’t been a man to pinch pennies, and though by his own admission had enjoyed the attributes of young, comely females, had remained faithful to his wife throughout their more than three decades of marriage.
    That, too, she imagined, stemmed from his working-class roots and mores.
    As a writer, however, he could have used a good editor.
    He would ramble on about some dinner party, describing the food—of which he seemed inordinately fond—in such detail she could almost begin to taste the lobster bisque or rare roast beef. He talked of other guests until she could begin to imagine the music, the fashions, the conversations. And just when she’d lose herself in the moment, he’d shift into business mode and list, painstakingly, his current investments and interest rates, along with his own pedantic views on the politics that drove them.
    He was a man, Tia learned, who loved his money and loved spending it, who doted on his children and grandchildren and considered good food one of life’s greatest pleasures.
    His pride in Wyley Antiques was paramount, and his ambition to make it the most prestigious dealer a steady drive. Out of that ambition had come his interest, and his desire, for the Three Fates.
    Here, he had done his research. He’d tracked Clotho to Washington, D.C., in the fall of 1914. A large section of the journal was devoted to his delighted boasting of wheeling and dealing, and his ultimate purchase of the silver Fate for four hundred twenty-five dollars.
    Highway robbery, he’d called it, and Tia could only agree.
    He had, by his own account, all but stolen the statue that would be, in less than a year, stolen from him in turn.
    But old Henry, unaware of his own fate, kept his ear to the ground. He seemed to delight in the hunt every bit as much as he did in the anticipation of a seven-course meal.
    In the spring of that next year, he had linked Lachesis to a wealthy barrister named Simon White-Smythe, Mansfield Court, London.
    He booked passage for himself and his wife, Edith, on the doomed ship, believing he would finagle the second Fate for himself, for Wyley’s, then follow his next lead, toward Atropus, to Bath.
    Uniting the Three Fates was his great ambition. For the sake of art, yes, but more for the sheen it would layer over Wyleys and his family. And, Tia thought, even more than that, for the sheer fun of it all.
    As she read, Tia made her own notes. She’d check his facts, use his detailing to find more.
    She had an ambition and an anticipation of her own now. Though they had sprung out of injured pride and anger, they were no less formidable than her ancestor’s.
    She would track down the Fates, and would—in a manner she’d yet to completely pin down—reclaim Henry’s property.
    She would find them with meticulous research, consistent logic, careful cross-referencing, just as he had done. When she had them, she would astonish her father, one-up the oh-so-clever Anita Gaye and skewer the detestable Malachi Sullivan.
    When her phone rang, she was sitting at the desk in her office, her glasses perched on her nose as she sipped a protein supplement. As usual when she was working, she told herself to let the machine pick up. And as usual, she worried it might be some sort of emergency only she could handle.
    She fretted over that for two rings, then gave in.
    “Hello?”
    “Dr. Marsh?”
    “Yes.”
    “I’d like to speak to you about your work. Specific areas of your work.”
    She frowned at the phone, at the unrecognizable male voice. “My work? Who is this?”
    “I think we have a mutual interest. So . . . what are you wearing?”
    “I beg your pardon?”
    “I bet you’ve got on silk panties. Red silk—”
    “Oh, for heaven’s sake.” She slammed down the phone. Embarrassed, shaken, she hugged herself and rocked. “Pervert. That’s it. I’m getting an unlisted number.”
    She picked up the journal again. Set it down. You’d