J. Land Crockett had visited every day. He never mentioned being their grandfather, never was anything but gruffly polite, and he got his pictures in the papers by trying to chase off a reporter with his walking stick. Ashley had made a wry comment about remembering his lesson on dealing with the media, and to her immeasurable surprise, he’d laughed.

She wondered how long it had been since the reclusive billionaire had laughed.

The walking stick, he had reminded her, was needed because of her “ornery uncle,” who had knocked the old man over the head to keep him from getting himself killed. Ashley had told him she was familiar with Barky’s methods. Nevertheless, the billionaire and the farmer had become fast friends, and they sat together in the hospital, exchanging stories.

Ashley, meanwhile, had gone about assembling the facts. She had them all, except for one.

“Why did Judith Land go to the ranch the day she died?” she asked Barky bluntly.

He sighed and lifted his shoulders in a shrug. “Judith arranged to meet him, against my advice; I had no idea what she was doing or I would have stopped her. But she never believed me when I told her the measure of treachery her husband was capable of. She thought she could talk sense into him—and, I suspect, blackmail him with the Balaton jewels. She didn’t know what they meant, only that her husband wanted them a great deal and had been horrified the night she’d worn them to the Christmas ball in Vienna. When she left him, she had taken the jewels.”

“Did you know that?” Ashley asked.

“No, of course not. If I had, I would have thrown them into the sea and prayed they never saw the light again.”

“Balaton—Major, I mean—must have been desperate when he realized the jewels were missing.”

Barky had nodded grimly. “That was another reason he was so anxious to find her. He had to have the jewels. I’m sure she was trying to barter them for her freedom when the horse trampled her. Until you returned from Switzerland in 1982 ready to accuse me of being a jewel thief, I had always believed József Major had gotten the jewels that day. I bided my time, hoping against all hope that the jewels would remain in their safe-deposit box forever.”

“Sometimes I wish they had.”

“No. It’s better the truth is known.”

“All those years, Major must have been terrified that one day the jewels would surface...and then they did, in the worst possible way.” She winced, thinking of herself on the cover of You. “And he saw your picture and must have known what was happening.”

“Not entirely. He had never met me until I came to him in Los Angeles. He knew me neither as András Balaton nor orült szerzetes.”

“So he was willing to believe you were KGB and would help him—and then David and I started meddling.” She smiled. “But it’s just as well, you know. You’d probably have gotten yourself arrested as an enemy spy.”