Claudine could have gone wider with the invitations, but it would have been a mistake to think packing the party with a room full of insipid millionaires was the right move to impress a pop star. The start-up bros who’d been invading town for the past decade brought a unique sense of soullessness and poor taste—the latter slowly destroying the business of Calhoun + Calhoun. Tech geeks who’d spent their entire lives wanting to blend in had no appreciation for Henry’s artistry, the singular vision he brought to every architectural project. He put his heart into each of his houses—or at least had put it into them, until the health scare a few weeks ago. No, the new-money crowd only wanted acceptance and would rather buy a prefab cookie-cutter monstrosity like Steve Gilman specialized in rather than let Claudine sell them a true masterpiece.

She tried not to think about Steve. Though that was hard these days, as Aspen was crawling with real estate agents like him. No discretion or discernment. Quick to sell whatever clapboard mansion came available. To think, the two of them were once the only upscale agents in town. (And once briefly—though not briefly enough—more than that.) Now there were dozens. The recession had driven a lot of brokers working mid-tier price points into their section of the market, and things continued to get more crowded thanks to the internet—Zillow, Trulia, Redfin. The only way to survive in this business was to sell big.

And Calhoun + Calhoun was just barely surviving. How bleak had things gotten? Well, just look at this salon. For years Claudine had been going to Lather—was one of Jeff’s very first clients. He was the only person she trusted to get the sharp jut of her black bob just right. An overly severe angle looked like she was trying too hard to be hip, desperate to seem younger than fifty-three. Not angled enough, and she seemed too matronly, looked ten years older. There was a precision to it, but precision is expensive. Which now she couldn’t afford. She had to come to a dump like this where instead of the soothing strings of Beethoven they pumped in too-loud Top 40 hits, and rather than glossy, oversized European fashion magazines the reading material was cheap, well-thumbed supermarket tabloids.

There was a stack of them on the table next to the hair dryer. She had already read them. The same stack sat on her desk at the office. Research. They all had Zara on the cover. Her streaked-blue hair pulled back in a greasy, disheveled bun. Oversized sunglasses covering eyes no doubt swollen from crying and sleeplessness. And the telltale sign of sorrow for a celebrity of her stature: sweatpants.

POP PRINCESS ZARA SINGS BLUES AFTER LIAM SPLIT

INSIDE ZARA’S DEVASTATING HEARTBREAK

FRIENDS WORRIED SUPERSTAR ZARA MAY DO SOMETHING INSANE

That something, apparently, was going mansion hunting in Aspen.