Mia listened to Pamela talk about her family and friends, all powerful, all connected. When she knew she’d hit a wall with Pamela, Mia smiled, thanked her, and put away her iPad.

When she stepped into the bitter wind, she knew Pamela was prepared to do whatever it took to get Alex Harrington elected mayor of New York City. She wondered which of them wanted it more.

Mia couldn’t wait to meet Juliet Ash Calley, the ex-fiancée too delicate to handle a powerhouse like Alex Harrington.

22

Mia

Beacon Hill

Wednesday, early afternoon

Mia pulled her bright red wool coat close, worked her hands into her snug leather gloves, smashed her red knit cap over her head, and walked into the stiff wind the quarter mile from Pamela Raines Barrett’s digs to Juliet Ash Calley’s family home. Kali had found out Juliet wasn’t currently living in her small cottage near the Harvard campus; she’d moved back to her family home to tend to her ill mother. Milo had been enthusiastic about Mia seeing Juliet, the former fiancée. He’d given her his shark smile, waggled his thick salt-and-pepper eyebrows, and said out of the blue, “She’s yet another person with three names. If your family is worth a billion dollars, it’s an unwritten law you have three names or you get booted out of the club. Don’t even think about using that bit, Briscoe. I think she’ll see you. She’s used to reporters interviewing her about her piano playing. I remember Jim Perry of the Boston Globe interviewed Juliet Calley for us, wrote a piece about her performance when he heard her play Ravel in Boston. Said it nearly made him weep.”

Mia lowered her head when a gust of frigid air hit her full in the face. Still, lots of people were out and about, with places to go; nothing could keep them inside, just like New Yorkers.

She stopped in front of a stately early-nineteenth-century mansion, mellow gray stone rising above iron gates covered with acres of ivy. She double-checked the address, pressed the button beside the gate, identified herself to the unknown man whose deep disembodied voice was loud and clear. The gate slowly swung inward. She walked into a wonderland along an old meandering flagstone path through an elaborate garden, hibernating now, ah, but come spring, it would be glorious. There were only hushed sounds of traffic, but nothing else, outside the iron gate. Mia heard yew bushes whispering in the wind, heard the arms of tree branches moaning as the wind swayed them back and forth. The house rose three stories, with ten chimney stacks—she had to count them, couldn’t stop herself. The ivy didn’t grow wild up the sides of the house; it was perfectly trimmed around the large windows and the large dark gray front door.