PROLOGUE

She called late at night and said she was coming next week and would he buy some decent wine for a change, something that didn’t come in a bottle that showed up later as a bud vase. Certainly, madam, Wynn said, and will you be requiring human sacrifices while you’re here? Very funny, she said, no worry about not recognizing you because you’ve suddenly become an adult. He thought of asking her not to come, but that was like telling a tornado to shift into reverse and leave town. Plus she would remember it forever, even if she was squiffed when she called.

He couldn’t help hinting that he had things to do. Oh, you’re busy, she said in her low snotty way of letting you know how absurd your schedule was. Oh, fine, I needed to talk to somebody, somebody I trust, someone like my brother, but no problem, Wynn, don’t give it another thought. No, nothing happened. Well, something did, but I don’t suppose you’d think it was important. It’s only Suzanne, why should you care?

Her flight got in Friday, she had her ticket, she wouldn’t be any bother. She would hang out with him, walk, talk, get things straight in her head. Honestly, no crisis, no chaos, just us, she said, and for some reason he believed her. When he hung up, he knew he was looking forward to her visit, even if conversation always revolved around Suzanne. Every so often this pissed him off, but he still liked to see her because he smiled more, stood straighter, found more color in his world. He forgot the other things that always happened when she showed up.

 CHAPTER ONE

“My god, I don’t believe you still have this same rug in the hall. Look at it—the same holes, the same fringe that sticks up. It’s a time warp in here.”

“What is with you?” He hefted her bag on his shoulder and leaned away from the weight. “You walk into my house and you start complaining. What a ratty place, how can you stand it, my brother the fossil. Thanks a lot.”

“And I couldn’t believe it at the airport when you pulled up in that Volvo. A Volvo hatchback. Don’t you own anything that was made after 1950?”

“Yes, I do. The Volvo hatchback.”

“Well, it was designed in 1950. I didn’t know they made them any more.”

“They make them for people who want a car, not a trend. Like your host, the fossil. Now come on in and stop bitching about my car and my house.”

“It’s not your house, it’s our house.”

“Suze—“

“Suzanne!” She grabbed at his shoulder. “Give me the bag, I’ll take it. It’s hitting the wall, dope.”

“All right. Now wait a minute. Wait. I’m going to put the bag down. On the rug. The one with the holes. We’re going to start over.” He led her outside. “Now we’re going to stand here a minute and look like we’re glad to see each other. Great to see you, honey. You look terrific. Smell good, too. I ask you every time what perfume you’re wearing and then I forget. Anyway, welcome and I’m glad you’re here.”

She turned and looked off down the block and he turned her around. “Yo. Sis. I’m over here.”

“What is there about coming home?” she said, still looking away. “I don’t do this anywhere else.”

“I hope not.”

“I don’t. But I walk into this house and I sound like—well, like I just did. And it’s Opium.”

“That’s the problem?”

“No, goof. My perfume.”

He wrapped his arms around her and hugged her. “All right. I love you, you smell good and I am truly glad you’re here.”

“Wynn?”

“Hmmm?”

“I’m glad, too. I am.”

He hugged her again and she put her arms around him this time and said against his shoulder, “You’re a nice brother and I love you.”

“Thank you. You picked a good week to come. It’s supposed to be beautiful.”

“That’s me. Bringing the sunshine wherever I go. Don’t laugh.”

“Why would I laugh?”

“I can’t imagine.”

They stood side by side on the porch and she took a hairbrush from her purse. He leaned against the railing and watched her stroke her blonde hair back from her face. “Did you ever think how unusual we are, we were so young when Mom and Dad got married that we grew up like a real brother and sister? I remember taking baths together.”

“We did, that’s right. You got the green frog sponge and I got soap in my eyes.”

“Wow. What a memory. Well, if you’re ever up for another one, I can find a really nice sponge for you.”

She stopped, brush poised over her head. “You’re weird, you know that?”

“I’m not. I regress when I’m around you, that’s all.” He pointed off to the side. “Did you see that oak where the tree house used to be? That whole branch cracked off last month in a storm. The last of the Duvall childhood, gone with the wind.”

Suzanne stepped back, closed her eyes and turned around once, then twice and lost her balance. “Remember I used to do that for magic? Make a wish, turn around twice and there was something you said, but I can’t remember that. Eeny-teeny alligator. Something dumb. Don’t you wish that stuff was true, that all you had to do was turn around and say a few words and it would all come true?”

He watched as she pulled a net of blonde hair from her brush and rolled it between her fingers. “What do you want to come true?”

“Everything I wish for.”

“What do you wish for?”

“Everything.”

“That’s specific. You’re really into details. No wonder you never decided to be an engineer.”

“Or anything else. Except a witch. A good witch. Like Samantha on that show—Bewitched. And what brought that up?” She took a deep breath. “What are you doing this week?”

“The book sale at the Armory starts tomorrow. I have to be there every day, but I told you that.”

“My smart brother.”

“Sure. Funny-looking but smart. You used to tell your friends you had this funny-looking brother. Remember?”

“That was awful. God. Anyway, you’re not funny-looking any more. I mean, you never were, but now you look terrific. Can you believe we’re almost forty years old?” she said suddenly. “Forty was the end of life. Forty was your mom and dad. And now it’s us. And you’re still here, with that book sale that breaks all records—see? I remembered—and I’m nowhere.” She stepped away and threw the fuzz of hair over the porch railing. They watched the autumn wind blow it across the lawn and into the quiet street like a tiny tumbleweed.

“Something happened. You told me that. What was it?”

She turned into the hall, picked up her bag and headed toward the stairs. “Nothing happened.”

“Bullshit.”

“Nothing happened that I want to talk about now. I want to visit people, like Debbie and Ellen, spend some time in the old hometown.”

He followed her up the stairs. “Which you could hardly wait to get out of twenty years ago and haven’t been in longer than four days at a time since you left. You hate the house, the climate, the people—did I miss anything?”

Suzanne dropped the bag. “My old room. It’s a time warp around here, honest to god. I’ll have to put on the earth shoes and take the Vega down to get it filled for $4.20. How can you stand it?”

“It’s my house. I like it this way. And it’s not our house. I paid you for your half, remember? I belong here.” He looked around the room and straightened a picture on the wall. “Remember this? You were sixteen, going to the prom. Mom and Dad thought you were their blonde and glorious beauty queen. Miss St. Clair, on her way to Miss Wisconsin. Tomorrow the world.”

She turned her back. “There’s a photo I can do without. Yep, I was on my way, all right. Then I got married and they got killed and I got divorced and you’re still here and we’re getting on for forty.”

Wynn stood by the window and pulled back the curtain. “The maple was hit, too, dammit. I didn’t see that. Maybe you have to be up here. Dammit, I love that tree.” He turned around. “Okay, laugh. Wynn and his trees, ha ha. I have trees, you have kids. Nice kids. Very nice kids.”

“Sure, they’re nice. Nice and faraway,” she said. “Do you know how often I see them?”

“Then move. You’re the one who left them. Walked away. Got in the car with the movie star and said, ‘Au revoir, mes amis,’ only you didn’t break your neck.”

She blinked and shook her head. “What is this, some code? What are you talking about?”

“Isadora Duncan.”

“Who’s that?”

“Never mind. It’s not important.”

“Damn right.” She bounced up and down on the bed.

“The important thing is why you’re here.”

“I’m here because I’m here because I’m here.”

“And?”

“What? I want to see you. What’s so strange? You’re my family and I like to talk to you. That’s what.”

“All right.” She wasn’t going to give him any clues. He watched her unpack, hanging up a pair of chocolate wool slacks that looked hand tailored and a striped sweater that no doubt was worth his weekly take at the bookstore. She’d lived in New Jersey for seventeen years before taking off for Reno, and now every time he saw her he saw a different woman. For the first time, he noticed a fine web of lines around her eyes and skillful makeup that didn’t quite cover the sun-roughened skin on her cheeks and chin.

“How are they? Andy and Petra?” he asked.

She waved them away with a ringed hand. “They’re fine. Mason is a really good father. He is.”

“He is, yes.”

“Isn’t he? You’ve seen him.”

He nodded. “Yes. I agree. It’s the first time I’ve ever heard you say something nice about him. I always thought the kids got along well with him.”

“He bought them anything they ever wanted,” she said. “All they had to do was say, ‘Dad, can I have—’ and it was in their hands.”

“That,” Wynn said, “does not make him a good father. Come on, Suzanne. They get along for something besides money.”

“Unlike me,” she said. “I never told you that.”

“Told me what?”

“Why I stayed for seventeen years. It was the money. He made a ton of money.”

“It was your money, too,” he said, sitting on the bed. “You were married, you shared the money.”

“Technically.” She split the word into hard syllables and bit them off. “But it was his. I never had to work, I didn’t have to be careful, watch pennies—hell, I didn’t have to watch dollars or charge accounts. I got to spend it. I liked that. After all those years of being poor in a middle class town.”

“We weren’t poor,” Wynn said. “We were never poor.”

She looked at him steadily. “Says you.”

“Poor is being hungry, not having enough to eat or wear, and we were not poor,” he said stubbornly.

“All right. You weren’t poor. I never had enough to wear. I never had a car like my friends did. I always felt poor.”

“Poor baby. Poor little match girl. And one night they found her frozen on the street corner in her threadbare little dress and a cloak so thin that it weighed almost nothing.”

“Shut up.” She blazed at him. “I’m just telling you, for the first time in my life I had money and I liked it. All right? All you ever needed was books. What do you know?”

He lay back and propped himself on the pillows. “You’ve got a point. I’m sorry. I don’t see it the same—money is—it’s complicated, it’s all mixed up with how we feel about everything else. In a way, it’s not money, it’s—”

“It’s money,” she said. “It’s about having money, making money, keeping money. And Mason made lots of money. Over $250,000 a year. Did you know that?”

Wynn whistled. “No. I knew he had bucks but, no, I didn’t know he had that kind of bucks.”

“So I stayed. I didn’t love him, I don’t think I even liked him very much. It was the money.”

“And the kids,” he murmured, his eyes closed.

“Well.” She sat cross legged beside him. “The kids were okay. He spoiled them rotten.”

“All that money,” he said. “That’s so much money. I’d be spoiled in a week and a half.”

“Not just the money. He did their homework sometimes. Petra was okay, she liked school, but Andy was failing English and he had to write make-up papers. Guess who wrote them? His father. Can you believe? It was such a cheat and they didn’t care. ‘I gotta get out of here sometime, Mom,’ Andy says. ‘I can’t go to high school the rest of my life.’ And Mason laughed. He thought it was funny.

“He did things like that all the time.” She held up her hand with fingers outstretched and touched one at a time. “He did his Science Fair projects for him. He did almost all his algebra homework. And he bought uniforms for the Little League team so Andy could play. He couldn’t hit worth shit.” Her hand clenched into a fist and she punched the bedspread. “I’m getting angry all over. I said I wasn’t going to do that.”

“But you did leave,” Wynn said. “It took a while, but you left.”

“By that time, the money had almost stopped,” she said. “Three bad years in a row and the board blamed him. I don’t think it was his fault but—” She shrugged. “We never saved anything. Mason spent it all as fast as the checks arrived.”

“While you were busy setting up IRAs and mutual fund accounts.”

“I spent it, too,” she said. “I admit it. I spent lots of money in seventeen years.”

The phone rang and Wynn reached for it. “Hello. Right, hi, Harriette. I’m here, yes, I am. No, you’re right, I’m not there. Was I supposed to be? Sometime this afternoon was the way I thought we left it. That’s okay, don’t—no, it’s all right, you’re not bothering me. I’m planning on coming in, but my sister just rode into town and we’re—it’s fine, Harriette, we’re replaying the oldies, you know how it is. Of course I’ll be there to help set up. I wouldn’t miss it.” He rolled his eyes. “Yes, I am extraordinarily indispensable, I know. The sun dare not rise without—I’ll be there in a few minutes. I was about to buckle on my armor when you called. Sure, I can spend as much time as you want, but I do think we’re in good—no, really. All right, I’ll see you soon. Good-bye.” He held the receiver between two fingers and dropped it into its cradle. “Oh, lord, it gets worse every year. The poor woman. You’d think she’d need an iron lung if I weren’t there.”

“Who’s Harriette?”

“Harriette is the woman who started all this. She was president of AAUW a few years ago and had the great idea to have a book sale. It was a disaster and the next year I offered to help and she oozed all over me. She’s the reason I‘m losing my hair and my good looks. And my temper.”

She crawled over to the edge of the bed and put her arms around him. “No, you’re not. You’re still my wonderful brother. Strange but wonderful.”

“Ah, yes. I hear that everywhere.”

Suzanne laughed, slid down the side of the bedspread to her feet and hoisted her bag on the bed. “I’ll bet you do, doofus. What’s the AAAW or whatever it stands for? Is that the old people one?”

“Old people. A clue. Old people—ah, you mean AARP. No, that’s the American Association of Retired Persons. This is AAUW.”

“Let me guess. American Association of—Universal, no, United Wackos.”

“Close. American Association of University Women. Very illustrious group.”

“And is Harriette illustrious, too?”

“Of course. I wouldn’t work for just anybody.”

“And you like this Harriette?”

“She’s fine. She’s from the South. Georgia. Very refined, polite, feminine. Like you.”

“Oh, quiet. And she’s waiting for your bod over at—the Armory, on Oneida?”

“That’s the place. And she doesn’t care about the bod over there, just the brain, such as it is. As if any two-bit brain couldn’t decide whether Leave Her to Heaven goes in religion or self-help.” He wandered into the hall and poked his head around the door. “Honest to god, I love this place, but I think its combined IQ would get us from Neanderthal to Cro-Magnon. With some help from a mastodon or two.”

“So you’re going over there and what am I going to do?” She hung a pair of green twill slacks and a striped linen shirt on the same hanger. “Do I have to go, too?”

“My god, Suze—you’re almost forty, remember? No, you don’t have to go, too. Walk around town. You’ll probably be amazed. There’s a lot of money here now. Here we go again on money. There is, though,” he told her. “The suburbs are crowded and people from Milwaukee move out here. And the casino’s brought in a lot of traffic.”

“Casino? What casino?”

He came in combing his hair. “You’re really out of things, aren’t you, babe? The one on the Indian reservation on Lac du Vert. Poker, slots, blackjack—those places are all over now. They’re disgusting but how the money rolls in.”

“Can we go there sometime?”

“You can go there sometime. I can’t stand them,” he said over his shoulder. “I don’t feel about money the way you do.”

“Because you’ve always had it,” she said. “Unlike some of us.”

He stood in the doorway. “Unlike some of us, I don’t need that much. It wasn’t—I had what I needed.”

“Yes, you did,” she said. “And sometime we’ll have to talk about that.” His hands outstretched on the doorway, he leaned in, his head on one side, questioning. “Casey and I figured it out once. And he thought something was rotten in Denmark.”

“Did he now? Casey—that’s the blond stud you ran off with, with the blue eyes and the manly chest. Good old Casey. And what does he know about my finances? What could he know?”

“He knew what I told him,” Suzanne said.

“And what do you know?”

“I know what I see,” she said. “You’ve got this house and the bookstore and you don’t look like you make that much money.”

“Of course. I’m two steps above the poverty level so I must be laundering money, is that it? What does Casey figure I’m doing to deserve this lap of luxury I’ve created here? Do I steal, deal or just cheat?”

She hung up the clothes she held and folded her arms across her chest. “He thought there should have been more from Mom and Dad. Their estate.”

“Estate.” He snorted. “They owned this fly-specked office supply place for twenty years. They sold pencils. Paper clips. Where was this estate supposed to come from?”

“The farm. That Grandma and Grandpa Duvall sold. That went to them, didn’t it? It was probably worth a lot.”

“According to Casey, your MBA,” he said.

“Well, he thought there should have been more money, yes. We sat down one night and figured it out and he thought I should have had a whole lot more. That I deserved a lot more than I ever got.”

“Thank you, Suzanne Duvall Lee, for that succinct summing up,” he said. “That was what Studly thought, did he. All right. Why don’t we get the man on the phone and talk it over, shall we. Or would you rather lay it all out yourself? No.” He put his hand up. “No, let’s get Casey at the bat. What’s his last name? I was so taken with those cute little chest hairs peeping over his gold chain when he was there that I must have—“

“Rollins.”

“Rollins. That is nice. Lovely name. Casey Rollins. Casey is no doubt a nickname, right? His real name is Percy or Abraham or something?”

“Shut up. I’m sorry I brought it up.”

He checked his watch. “I’ve got to go. But I’m serious about this. Call Casey while I’m gone—he’s still in Reno, right?—that’s two hours difference?—and tell him I want to talk to him. I don’t want some bozo living with my sister who thinks her brother is a sleaze. Tell him I’ll set up a three-way call—or maybe we can work something on the computer.”

“Forget it. It won’t happen.”

“We’ll make it happen. Come on, sis. That really pisses me off. I want to talk to him.”

“No.”

“No? Just no? Why not?”

“He won’t be calling. Just forget it.”

“I don’t want to forget it.”

“Well, you’ll have to.”

“Why?”

“Because—he’s not with me any more.”

He threw up his hands and slapped them again the wall. “Now you tell me. You split up. I didn’t know that.”

“He walked out. You didn’t know that.”

Wynn walked around in a tight circle, swinging his arms and letting his hands hit the walls. “Jeez. I’m sorry.”

“Uh huh. Sure. I’ll tell you all about it someday.” She laughed. “It was very interesting. There’s the kiss of death, right? Interesting.”

He stopped and looked carefully at her. “So what are you doing? Are you grieving? Celebrating? Carrying on with a stiff upper lip and droopy drawers? What?”

She pointed to his watch. “Aren’t you going to be late? For the Cro-Magnons? I’ll tell you all about this sometime. When your Giant Book Sale is over. Isn’t that how your ad goes? And we have giant things to talk about.”

“Right. What a shame we won’t get Milton Friedman over here to give us the benefit of his training. Of his special expertise. You did say that numbers were his field. Or was it law?”

“Oh, shut up. Nobody wants to see your figures. Honestly.”

“Then how were you two sleuths going to solve the crime? You just decided that was it? You felt in your hearts that someone was crooked?”

“I honestly don’t know,” she said wearily. “One night we’d had too much to drink and the rent was due and we said, ‘Wouldn’t it be nice if there was more money for Suzanne,’ and we talked about it. What do I know about farms or houses or anything?”

“More than Studbuns, I’ll bet,” Wynn muttered. “He looks like he knows about abs and deltoids and not much else.”

Suzanne shook her head. “He’s not as shallow as all that. Anyway, he’s gone, out of my life. So it’s all academic, isn’t it? One of your favorite expressions.”

“Do you want sympathy? Or shall I congratulate you?” He glanced at his watch. “Typical. Crisis in the family and I have to leave. No, I don’t have to leave. Let me call Harriette and tell her something came up and I’ll be late.”

“No no. I don’t want you to do that. I wasn’t going to mention it until I’d been here for a couple of days and then I blurt it out practically on the doorstep.”

He put his hands on her shoulders and shook her gently. “You never were any good at keeping your mouth shut. Miss Say-It-All Sue, that’s you.”

“Suzanne,” she said automatically, then grinned. “I know. Unlike you. And when do I get to find out a few of your secrets? When do you tell all? I’ll trade you.”

“You only have one,” he said. “You’ve blabbed everything else you know on the way here. Except about Casey. That’s new. You sure you don’t want to make it ten for ten?”

She shook her head. “I’m sure. I’m going to hang up my clothes, take a shower, change, walk around town. Look like a tourist. Buy some souvenirs, get a map, gawk at the Indians. Fun stuff.”

“Be prepared. St. Clair’s grown up. There’s still nothing going on around here, as if you couldn’t tell. But downtown is different and there are some expensive neighborhoods out on 64. Take the car, drive around.”

She shook her head. “I want to walk ‘til I’m tired and then sleep in my old bed, like I used to. Anyway, who wants to drive a Volvo?”

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