She left the exhibit and went looking for the Asian art section. One wide hallway was lined with European sculpture from the last century, which Betsy only glanced at—until she saw a small white bust of a young woman wearing a veil held in place by a circlet of flowers. She slowed, stopped. She could see a hint of eyes, nose, and mouth behind the veil, and almost instinctively reached to touch it. But her eye was caught by a hand-lettered sign asking her not to. Smudges on the veil showed not everyone pulled their fingers back as she did. Not that one could move the veil, of course; the entire thing was of marble, a three-dimensional trompe l‘oeil. She looked for and found the brass tag naming the genius who had done this: Raffaelo Monti. When I am rich, she thought, and went on.

Her feet were tired before she found the Asian art section, up on the third floor. It was cramped between two areas being noisily renovated, and was disappointingly small. The centerpiece was a massive jade mountain carved into paths, brooks, bridges, trees, houses, animals, and people. But in the few surrounding glass cases there was no pottery horse of any color from any dynasty.

Betsy went down to the information desk on the main floor, which was manned by two middle-aged women whose manners were so open and informal that they had to be volunteers. One of them called Hudson Earlie’s office, and permission given, a guard was summoned to bring Betsy up four flights to him.

She was shown into a small anteroom where a secretary said Mr. Earlie was on the phone. Hud stayed on the phone a long time—but Betsy didn’t mind. Chat was better than “music on hold,” and Hud’s secretary was personable, as well as young, trim, and pretty. Doubtless Hud had taken her out to dinner any number of times, though Betsy was careful not to ask.

Hud’s inner office was quite grand, with tall windows on two walls and an Oriental carpet on the floor. He came out from behind his desk to take her hand in both of his, pleased she had come calling.

“Nice of you to come into town especially to see me,” he said.

“Actually, I came to see the Kaffe Fasset exhibit.”

He smacked himself on the forehead. “Oh hell, where is my head? I should have realized that you’d be interested in that and seen to it that you got a ticket.”

“It was only five dollars, Hud.”

“Yes, but you’re not on Easy Street yet.”

“True, true.” She looked around. The shelves flanking the windows held small, exquisite examples from Hud’s specialty, Asian Art, and the books were also on that topic, except one called Art Crime.

“Do you get thieves or see a lot of fakes?” Betsy asked.