“I made the mistake of buying something from her.”

Dale laid a brotherly hand on her shoulder and looked into her eyes. “Thanks for supporting our local militia.”

Caroline grinned at him and walked out to the cold storage room with a bag of apples. Once Jane was sure she was out of earshot, she said, “I’d like to talk with you.”

“I’ll look you up when I’ve averted the current disaster.”

2.

Desmond had given her his unfinished draft of the Pauline Anderton manuscript so she could search for a hook they could use for the documentary. She was lying on a faded chintz-covered chaise longue tucked under a dormer window in the third-floor bedroom where she and Thomas had spent the night, reading the manuscript. Helen was curled up on the floor beside the chaise, and she was stroking her fur with one hand. From here, she could see Thomas sitting in a dark green Adirondack chair on the lawn and Gerald reclining under a tree reading a 1920s Harper’s Bazaar he and Caroline had found in the attic this morning. Caroline was three stories below on the loggia, curled up on a wicker chaise—another family heirloom—a cigarette in one hand, a leather-bound copy of The Decameron open on her lap. She’d tied a bandanna around her head to keep her hair from blowing in her eyes, and from here she looked like a frail beauty reclining on the deck of an ocean liner. Other family members were showing up later in the day, but they were staying in the many guest houses scattered around the estate.

“Some people are just born with it,” she told Helen. “Not you and not me, doggie, but definitely Miss Just Caroline Wade.”

Jane had finished a chapter of the Anderton biography in which Anderton, before being discovered by Walter Winchell, had backed out of a potentially career-making spot on a national radio broadcast because her husband had a head cold and insisted she stay and care for him. With characteristic bluntness, she’d tossed off the unfortunate clash of events as if none of it mattered. There was a quote from a postcard she’d sent to her sister: “Don’t bother tuning your radio Saturday night. Deal blew up due to Michael’s cold. Who cares? I hate g.d. New York anyway. I’d rather stay in Hell City, FLA, and spill hot soup on the slob. They wanted me to do one of those Cole Porter numbers. Hate them all.”