Suddenly, a broad-faced woman with a short blunt haircut stomped into the room with a bold bid. All heads turned toward the woman as she marched to the table, nose up, gla.s.ses down, and made a show of studying the pearls. Then, with a dramatic shake of her head, the woman found a seat and refused another bid.

Immediately the bidding slowed. Nora was furious. That dealer had deliberately cast doubt on the pearls' quality. Again and again as the bidding rose, so rose the henchwoman to the table. And as before, as she declined, so did the bidding. It was as though the strange woman was reminding them of a previously arranged deal.

Nora's furs and lesser furniture were all sold for a song. Her china was stolen, and by the time her oriental porcelains were presented, Nora knew she had lost.

"G.o.d," whispered a young man behind her. "I can't believe we got it."

"A real find!" squealed a woman to her right.

"A real steal," was her friend's rejoinder.

One by one whispers of disbelief and triumph reached her ears. By the end of the morning, the auctioneer's calls garbled with the buzz of the crowd, becoming a white noise in her own head.

For the afternoon's set, rows of chairs remained empty and those that weren't again held dealers. Nora acknowledged with polite nods a few discreet greetings, but was not taken in. Her hands were tied; the lady would burn.

As if on cue, Walton stepped forward, graciously nodded her way, then let his gaze sweep the crowd. She saw in his eyes the same sense of futility that she herself felt. He raised his palms up and shrugged as though to say, "Is there no champion?"

Nora's carpets started the afternoon's auction. She examined them in a detached manner, allowing her critical eye to catch their merits or flaws. The bids, she ignored. They were too ridiculous to contemplate.

With her silver, she recalled the many dinner parties she had presided over. Her better porcelains, china, and curios came and went. Her furniture was spectacular, and well received. How many letters did she write on that tiger maple desk? How many dinners served on that Sheraton table? Remember the hours spent reading in that Chippendale wing chair?

A chill ran down her back when her elaborately carved four-poster was carried on stage. The bed didn't do well, nor, she decided, did it deserve to. The gavel sounded. Sold.

She leaned back and closed her eyes. Watching her merchandise pa.s.s by was endurable, but reviewing the memories that they provoked was an ordeal.

Walton finally rose to the podium to call an end to the fiasco. Only a few dealers were left in the cavernous room. "Thank you for the compet.i.tion," he said, giving the spa.r.s.e crowd a cold stare.

Nora rose and ducked out of the room, not caring who saw her retreat or what they said. Yes, she had expected a bad show, but not this preordained disaster. Out of all her things, only one piece did well: Oma's mine-cut diamond ring. It had been Oma's engagement ring, the one she never took off. Nora's only smile of the day came when the auctioneer called, "Sold!" after an astonishingly high bid. Yet her revenge was not sweet. Oma's ring, like so many other of her personal things, were gone. Nora stopped short and rubbed her temples.

"I'm sorry, Oma," she whispered as she strode out over the blood-red rug.

The following morning was rainy, and the cold wind whipped the wet into her face. Nora walked the distance to the auction house nonetheless, feeling the need for fresh air to bolster her courage. At the entry, however, she stopped and wondered if she'd approached the wrong building. Inside, the auction room was packed. Not only dealers volleyed for seats but society's elite elbowed their way through the crowd. They smiled and waved to her like old friends at a party. Walking to her reserved seat, Nora felt the fine hairs rise along her neck.

Walton stepped forward and clasped his hands before him, like a man about to sit down to a feast. He welcomed the crowd and gave a brief yet elaborate presentation of Nora's art collection. He deftly reminded the audience of the art's importance and drew attention to specific pieces in the vast collection.

After a gracious acknowledgement to Nora, the auction commenced with her Haitian collection. She was delighted when the bidding was as brisk and bright as the colors on the canvas. The same held for her early American works. Her biggest thrill, however, was the enthusiasm engendered over her collection of relatively unknown artists. These were the pieces that she was especially proud of. She thought of Esther and knew that if her work had been in this collection, it would have stolen the show.

Her collection was vast and the auction was long; still, the crowd remained strong. As the auction drew to a close, however, the festive mood of the room altered. Excitement grew as the crowd thickened to standing room only. The heat rose, the amalgamation of perfumes choked, and still the tension mounted. Quickly pulling out her pad and pen, Nora calculated the day's intake. She sucked in her breath. Her art collection had come through for her. The collection was her work, her ability, and no one else's. After a lifetime of dependency, she had succeeded on her own merit in the end. Nora held herself proudly in the pressing crowd. She realized that though she was far from out of debt, at the very least she could pay back a goodly portion of it with honor.

By G.o.d, she would restore honor to her life.

The lights dimmed and a hush fell over the crowd. Only one painting remained, and it was Nora's last hope.

With ceremony and care, two uniformed men carried her van Gogh out to the blue velvet-draped stand. The brilliance of the master's colors and the power of his brushwork jumped out under the expertly staged lights. The crowd let out a sigh and Nora smiled.

Walton stepped forward and delivered a dramatic introduction. Then, without a trace of emotion, he called for the first bid. Nora held her breath.

"Five hundred thousand dollars."

The crowd grumbled their disapproval and Nora's mouth fell open.

Walton looked as if he sucked a sour lemon. "We have a conservative bid of five hundred thousand dollars on the floor. Ladies and gentlemen, may I remind you that this painting is without question. It is a verified van Gogh. Let's hear a bottom bid of one million."

"I have a million," called out the woman at a special booth for telephone bidders.

"I have one million. Two? I have two, two million five. I have a new bidder. Three million."

The bidding picked up. Hands raised, the phones lit up, and discreet signs to the auctioneer kept his head bobbing from left to right. Nora couldn't see who bid what, but she perched on the edge of her seat as the bidding crossed into its fifth million.

In this new arena, old bidders dropped out and new ones stepped in. The phone bids increased and the bidding pa.s.sed mark after mark. The excitement hushed the crowd as they inched to the edge of their seats. Up went a card. Up went another. The bidding maintained a heady pace. Nora's fingers flew across her paper as she did her calculations. Hope bubbled in her veins. Higher and higher soared the bidding, beyond most of the crowd's limits. A few runners fled the hall to reach a phone.

Eventually, Walton's head swung between only two bidders. The phones sat silent and the crowd's attention focused on the remaining pair. Dealers both. The whispers started as to who they represented. The Getty Museum was hungry for a van Gogh. A j.a.panese businessman had a penchant for the artist. Who?

After a particularly high bid, one of the pair of dealers swung his head around and searched the crowd. He had obviously reached his limit. Nora followed the dealer's gaze to the rear of the room. There was a long pause. Walton raised his brows. Up came a hand. The crowd buzzed the name: Sidney Teller.

Nora chewed her lip. She knew the name. He worked for the Blair Bank. He was married to a Blair. Of course, Charles Walker Blair's brother-in-law! She gripped her pencil tightly.

The dealer and Sidney Teller parried higher. Heads volleyed back and forth like spectators at a tennis match. Nora's eyes remained on Teller.

After a satisfactorily high bid, the match seemed to end. The bid was out of the dealer's bounds. He paused. Sidney Teller smiled.

Now the second dealer craned his neck to the far side of the room. Once again, like a wave, all the heads followed his line of vision. Nora inched herself up for a better view.

From the side rose a cane.

A wave of shock swept the room. Agatha Blair bidding against her own son-in-law! What a story. The crescendo of wagging tongues rose to such a point that Walton had to strain to follow the bids. Nora sat stunned as the bidding shot back and forth, with fury. Neither Teller nor Blair cast a glance away from the auctioneer, but sparks of hostility and compet.i.tion filled the room.

As the bidding surpa.s.sed the estimated value, Teller's face grew ashen and sweat formed on his brow. Nora's mouth went dry. She glanced at Agatha Blair and saw on her face the cruel grin of a victor without mercy. Her heart fell as she made the connection with the journal. The Agatha of Mike's journal was Agatha Blair. Further proof of C.W.'s duplicity. And now he would have her painting. How she loved the van Gogh, and how she despised Charles Walker Blair.

The whispers ceased into silence as it grew clear that Teller could not meet the new bid. Heads turned from the side of the room to the rear, searching for a signal, any small movement that would indicate another bid from Teller. None came and Walton met Agatha Blair's gaze.

"I have my high bid," Walton said. "Do I hear another?"

A new bid sang out, piercing the silence in its clear-toned soprano.

As one, all the heads in the crowd swung toward the voice in the rear of the room. One woman stood at the door. She was young, blond, tall, and attractive, and on her face she wore a look of fierce determination. The room was in an uproar. Nora strained to hear the comments, trying to ascertain from the crowd who the mysterious woman was. She looked vaguely familiar, but Nora couldn't place her.

"I thought that marriage was on the rocks," she heard a man mutter behind her.

The crowd's buzz echoed one name: Blair. It must be Cornelia, she thought. Teller's wife. Another Blair had entered the bidding! Like the rest of the crowd, Nora sat flabbergasted at the unusual turn of events. This was turning into more than an auction. A family's saga was unfolding before the crowd's eyes.

Walton put his derailed auction back on track. In a monotone that belied the flush on his cheeks, he reopened the bidding. Immediately the crowd hushed. Cornelia took a step forward and searched the crowd. Her gaze rested on Sidney Teller, and Nora read on the woman's face an expression of love and loyalty that she envied. Then Cornelia turned to Agatha Blair and stopped, hard, with a cold stare. A cough sounded in the silent crowd.

Walton focused on Agatha Blair. She sat stiffly in her seat; only her hands moved while they squeezed the ball of her cane. Nora looked from Cornelia to Agatha, then back to Cornelia.

Agatha Blair raised her cane. Cornelia smiled and bid again. The murmurs of the crowd rose in volume. Up came the cane, up again came Cornelia's hand. Up went the bid. Agatha was visibly upset. The skin on her face was as taut as a drum. When Agatha raised her cane to make the record bid, she looked ready to club someone with it.

Walton looked to Cornelia. Cornelia Blair Teller gave her head a discreet shake no.

"Sold!" Walton announced with a tremendous pound of his gavel.

The crowd erupted in surprise and delight. People were on their feet, clapping their hands, slapping backs. What a good show; there would be fodder for the gossip mill for months. Men and women who had ignored Nora the day before rushed over to congratulate her now. Nora was in a daze, totally unprepared for the tumult.

Between the squeezing of her palm and the cool kisses on her cheek, she followed with her eyes Cornelia's path to her husband. No one stood in Cornelia's way as she wound through the aisles to where Sidney stood, silent and transfixed. Husband and wife met hands and without a word exchanged, walked together, uninterrupted, from the riotous room. Agatha Blair was gone.

Buffeted by well-wishers and gladhanders, Nora finally made her way up to Walton. He hugged her and led her from the throng into the privacy of his office. There, sitting like vultures upon the tapestry chairs, sat her lawyers. Ralph Bellows was noticeably absent.

"Well, gentlemen," Nora began as she proffered a steely gaze. "Let's settle our accounts, shall we?"

Agatha strode past Mrs. Baldwin's odious expression into C.W.'s office with the att.i.tude of a victor surveying her spoils. She paused to study the Rothko abstract on the wall, ran her hand over the Rodin sculpture, then sauntered her way toward C.W., her cane clicking on the wooden floor. Finally, she settled herself with a satisfied grunt in the deep leather chair opposite his desk, keeping her hands tight upon her ornate cane.

"Son," she began.

C.W. was sitting in a dark leather chair before the large expanse of his polished mahogany desk. The wood was void of even a single sheet of paper. His eyes coldly swept over her, then he nodded.

"Isn't it a tad dark in here?" Agatha asked. "Why are the drapes drawn?"

"There's light enough for this afternoon's work."

She smacked her lips, savoring the moment. "I do hope you are not too disappointed that I won the van Gogh instead of Sidney. It was foolish of you to waste your time offering him the same deal. Even though you did send your sister in reserve."

His eyes narrowed, but he did not move a muscle.

Agatha's cane lightly tapped the floor. "Yes, yes. Thought you had me there, didn't you? But the three of you combined could never outwit me."

C.W. saw the glimmer in her eyes. She was truly enjoying this. He wasn't. "Let's get on with the business at hand," he said wearily.

"Don't take it so hard," she said as she pulled out the auction papers from her bag and set them on his desk. After a dramatic pause, she inched the papers toward him with the tip of her polished finger. "You offered your controlling interest of the Blair Bank in exchange for the van Gogh. That was the deal. The deal is done. Here is the van Gogh. Now..."

C.W. leaned back in his chair and brought his fingertips to his lips. Staring over them, he impa.s.sively studied her greed and malice.

"Why do you hate me so much?" he asked calmly.

She c.o.c.ked her head, obviously surprised, perhaps even amused by his question. Then she slowly spoke.

"I hate you because you always had my number. Even as a child, you were lurking, hawking my every move. You even tried to talk your father into divorcing me-of course I knew about that." Agatha's fingers tightened around her cane as if she were strangling it. "You never accepted me. Neither did your sister. None of the Blairs did." She stomped her cane. "Hah! Who needs you?"

Agatha resettled herself in her seat, gathering herself as she looked to her left and her right, finally raising her nose in a haughty stare.

"Enough of this mother-son banter. Here is your painting," she said, reaching out with her cane and tapping the auction papers atop his desk. "I want my stock."

C.W. slowly ran his finger along his jawline. "The bank, the house, the name if I can help it-nothing will be yours. Nor will it ever be."

The smile froze on Agatha's face. "You wouldn't go back on your word. Not you. Not a Blair."

C.W. slowly shook his head. "No, I wouldn't." Sitting up abruptly, he opened his desk with a sharp pull, took out a pile of papers, and set them in a neat pile atop his desk.

"I had in mind a trade."

"A trade? What trade!"

"Instead of controlling interest in the bank, I thought you might like to buy my silence instead."

Like a fl.u.s.tered crow, Agatha spread out her elbows, then brought them tightly back to her sides. "Silence for what?" she shrieked.

He took one memo from the top of his pile and eased it toward her. She grasped it from the desk to her face. He saw her eyes widen, then narrow. He watched as her jaw clenched and her fingers whitened on her cane. She reminded him of a gargoyle he had once seen in Paris.

"Where did you get this," she hissed.

"Does it matter? What matters, dear stepmother, is that I am in possession of Michael MacKenzie's private papers and journal. You thought they existed, didn't you? Sent your minions to search. But they never found them. They were never discovered because MacKenzie's wife was too smart for the lot of you. She suspected foul play all along and took them as her only protection against your backstabbing maneuvers."

He flattened his palms upon the papers as he leaned forward. "You led MacKenzie on, creating a web so intricate that neither he nor I knew what was going on. Then, like the black widow you are, when you were done with him, you took everything he had and killed him."

"He committed suicide."

"There are many ways to kill a man. I know."

He leaned back in his chair, but he was clearly angry now. He studied Agatha's pale face closely.

"You have been caught in your own web, Agatha. What I have here-" he tapped the papers with the tip of his finger "-will not only take everything you have, but it will put you in prison for a very long time."

"You do that and it will ruin your bank!"

"I doubt it. Shake it up a bit, perhaps. But ruin it? No."

"But the van Gogh!" she shrieked. "Why the game?"

"Ah...the game. As I said, it wasn't a game. I knew I would win. You are incredibly avaricious, Agatha. I knew it, and I counted on it to set my strategy."

Agatha's voice lowered to a husky whisper. "What strategy?"

"You do play chess, don't you? Sidney wanted control of the bank. Desperately. He bid up the painting enough to ensure a fair auction; he was my knight. Cornelia then moved in to push the bidding higher, and the auction into a success; she was my bishop. And Nora, my queen, will now step forward and repay the bank loans, clearing both her name, and my own."

C.W. leaned far forward over the desk and stared deep into Agatha's gray eyes. "You do remember those loans, don't you? The ones you forged my name to?"

Agatha paled and her lips parted.

"It seemed only fitting that you should pay back the money you stole," C.W. continued, sitting back and s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g the cap to his black fountain pen with quick twists of his wrist. His business was almost completed.

"So now the accounts are balanced, MacKenzie's debt has been repaid and you, dear Agatha, have purchased a fine painting."

"My money!" she cried, rising.

"Why, Agatha. You never liked cheap art."

She began to rail against him, calling him names from the gutter and cursing him, his family, and MacKenzie. But when her slurs turned to Nora, he cut it short.

"Enough!" he called sharply, fixing her with his famous cold stare. She shrank back against the wall.