Sam frowned, wondering how important it was to try to catch the threads of this conversation or if he could simply ignore it and go back to looking at the woman in red. Just as he had decided to do so, Denton the elder joined in.

“I’m sorry you’ve had to see that, gentlemen,” he said, but his eyes, glued on the woman they were apparently discussing, didn’t look sorry at all. They looked hungry. Sam’s frown deepened as he wondered whether his own expression looked like that.

“Err, what’s this?” Henry asked, in his best cat-herding voice.

“Mrs. Webster,” the son said. “Over there, in the red.”

Henry looked over blankly. “Who?”

“Surely you’ve heard of Alva Webster,” the old man said. “Even in Indiana—”

“Ohio,” Henry said.

“You must get the papers. She’s been plastered all over them for the last eighteen months, at least—”

“Longer, I’d say—”

“Orgies, affairs, all kinds of goings-on, and that was before her husband died. God knows what she’s been doing since. I heard—”

“We don’t really have much time to read the newspapers,” Henry explained hurriedly, cutting Sam off before he could say anything and sending him a sideways look that aspired to be both stern and soothing. “Now about those municipal contracts—”

“I heard she bought the de Boers’ old estate,” the son said, “the one up the river.”

Denton senior paused in the midst of taking a drink, setting his glass back down and frowning. “Liefdehuis?”

His son nodded. “Sounds like she means to stay in the States,” he said. “Who knows why. She can’t imagine anyone will acknowledge her.”

“You’re acknowledging her enough right now,” Sam said.

“What?” Denton junior said.

“Right now. She’s all you can talk about. Seems to me you’re getting a fair amount of pleasure out of it, too.” He felt protective of the woman in red. She didn’t deserve to have the Dentons of the world salivating over her, no matter who she was.

“Mr. Denton, the municipal contracts,” Henry said, smoothing over the jagged silence that followed.

“Err, yes,” Denton the elder said, turning away from Sam in puzzlement. “We have excellent contacts in New York, Philadelphia—”

“I heard it’s haunted,” Denton the younger said.

Sam’s gathering indignation paused. “Haunted?”

“Oh lord,” Henry muttered. “Mr. Denton, you were saying that you have business relationships in—”

“Shh,” Sam said, flapping his hand in Henry’s general direction.

Denton senior seemed to waver between wanting to focus on the money talk and wanting to tell a juicy story, and the juicy story won. “It’s a pretty gory tale, actually,” he said.

Henry smiled brightly. “I really think we should finish talking about the contracts—”

Sam stared Henry down and then nodded across the table. “Go on.”

“Umm.” The old man looked at Henry again, his face confused. Henry sighed.