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The ballroom of the midtown hotel was crowded, packed with Manhattan’s wealthiest, most socially exclusive set. They wore fabulous clothing and immorally expensive jewelry, displayed glittering wit, and walked around smug with the knowledge that they could painlessly write huge checks to whatever the noble cause was this evening. It was why they were here, of course: to write checks. Most of them could not have said what the noble cause was tonight—in fact, it was a foundation for fostering war orphans—but they came anyway. That was partly because they believed they should write those checks, some from desire to do good and some because their accountants suggested it. They also came because everyone else in this dazzling stratum of society would be there, and they knew from experience that the surest way to get yourself talked about was to be absent from an event when the other check-writers gathered. Because in spite of their wealth—or perhaps because of it—very few of them would overlook a chance to snipe from behind. The shots could be lethal—and, occasionally, even true.
From the outside, though, it was a world of glamour and privilege. Any ordinary person looking into the room would have been struck dumb with longing to be included in such a magnificent company, and at the same time crushed by the knowledge that it could never be, for these people were clearly the top of the food chain, the glitterati, the richest and most accomplished people in the greatest city in the world.
While most normal human beings would have been thrilled to be in such company, would have traded ten years of their life to belong, to be welcomed into this group, on this bright and wonderful evening, Katrina Eberhardt Hobson was not normal, and she was definitely not thrilled. She felt no elation at having a well-earned hereditary place among these fabulous people. In fact, she had reached a point where she hoped they would all spontaneously combust so she could go home and take off the expensive heels that were pinching her feet and change into equally expensive slippers. She would gladly have traded ten years of her life to be almost anywhere else. Because Katrina was bored. Hugely, monstrously, totally, and completely bored. So bored that her head was pounding, and her hands ached from being clenched; so bored her mouth hurt from constant fake smiles, her teeth ached from grinding, and her throat hurt from stifling screams of frustrated, soul-crushing tedium she had endured for over two hours now.
She’d had four glasses of a truly appalling pinot grigio, and that hadn’t helped the headache, and she’d even spent twenty terrible minutes listening to Samantha Perkins, who was the most god-awful gossip in New York and always knew the salacious details of every sordid affair, and the only result was that Katrina was a tiny bit drunk, increasingly homicidal, and now aware that the graybeard CEO of a major bank was having an affair with a much younger foreign investor—a male investor. Katrina longed with all her soul to run from the ballroom, flee for her sanity, her very life—but she could not. Her husband, Michael, was on the board of directors of this foundation, and because he was in Zurich on business, it was Katrina’s duty to attend and represent him.
It was not the first time. Michael was often away on business. And when he was home, she rarely saw him, either. Of course, he was a busy man, and an important one. But when Katrina had married him, she’d been led to expect a little more, and she couldn’t help but feel a kind of sour disappointment with her marriage every now and then. And she did resent covering for him like this, just a little bit. But she had been raised in an old-money family who taught her that social responsibility was part of the deal. On top of all that, Michael did so much charity work, and nearly all of it for kids, so she couldn’t really justify feeling any resentment at all toward him. For the most part, she kept the fake smile in place and carried on.
“Noblesse oblige,” she whispered to herself. Just a reminder that she had to keep up appearances, no matter how desperately she wanted to throw her painful shoes at somebody and run from the room.
She thought about getting another glass of wine, decided it was a bad idea, and twitched her painful false smile back into place. Soon it would be time for the dreadful meal—a warm and limp salad, choice of unthinkable fish or inedible beef or vegan, whatever that would turn out to be. And then a series of soul-crushingly earnest speeches crafted to make the checks a little bigger. Katrina knew the whole program by heart. She had grown up wealthy and married even more money, and in her lifetime, she had attended hundreds of events just like this one—thousands of them—and they never varied, except for a few dull details. Tonight was no different.
—except for one small thing. Tonight there was actually a brief moment of interest in the program, one little thing that kept her in the ballroom when her entire being was screaming to be back in her big old house: the silent auction. Oh, there had certainly been silent auctions before. Most of the charity events had them, and Katrina had quite often bid on something, just because that, too, was part of her job. But tonight . . . Tonight some lunatic had donated an item that made Katrina quiver, and even drool with lust. Tonight, some incredibly lucky soul would bid on, and win, a perfectly gorgeous Hans Hofmann painting.
And Katrina was going to be that lucky soul even if she had to murder everyone else in the room.
The painting was a fantastic splash of primary colors, a swirl of rigid shapes and ragged edges, titled Ad Astra, and Katrina wanted it on her wall at home more than she wanted to breathe. So she would stand here with her fake smile and her aching head and her throbbing feet. She would endure Samantha’s dreadful leering stories and the nauseating dinner and the painful speeches. And as her just reward for suffering through all this terrible inhuman suffering, she would damn well go home with Ad Astra.
Finally, after four more conversations she couldn’t remember two minutes later, with people who were even less memorable, she heard a large silver bell ring three times, the PA crackled, and the announcement she’d been waiting for came.
“Ladies and gentlemen, the silent auction is now open for bids.” There was a bit more, a reminder to be generous and so on, but Katrina didn’t hear it. She was already moving at full speed across the room to the table that held the clipboard with the bid sheet for Ad Astra. Behind the table, the painting was displayed on an easel. An armed security guard stood to one side—this painting was not the only valuable item on display.
In spite of her haste, Katrina was third in line, and she waited impatiently as the first two bidders dithered, nibbled at the pencil, looked at their bank balances on their smartphones, and finally, with horrid, deliberate sloth, slowly wrote down their bids. When they had finally finished, Katrina lunged for the clipboard and quickly read the first two bids—both insultingly low for such a treasure, in her opinion, both well under seven figures. Katrina smiled. If this was an example of what the other bids would
be, the Hans Hofmann was as good as hers. She reached for the pencil where it lay on the table, frowning as she considered her bidding strategy. Huge bid now to frighten away the competition? Or something small and then come back later, at the last minute, to enter the final winning bid?
But before she could decide, a soft and confidently amused voice murmured from just behind her, almost in her ear, “It’s a fake, you know.”
Katrina jumped. She’d been concentrating so completely that she hadn’t heard or sensed anyone moving that close. Holding the clipboard like a shield, she spun around.
A man stood there with a cheerful, almost mocking smile. A good-looking man, in an understated way. He had a gleaming shaved head and a neat beard, and he wore a suit that Katrina was quite sure came from a Savile Row tailor. On an impulse she didn’t understand, she reached out and touched the lapel of his suit. “Richard James?” she blurted.
The man lifted an eyebrow in surprise, then said, “Ah. The suit? I thought you meant me. No, actually, it’s from Henry Poole, just a few doors down Savile Row.”
Katrina frowned. “You don’t have an accent.”
The man laughed, a very pleasant sound, Katrina thought. “It’s a relief to hear that. I’ve been told for the last few years that I did have an accent—a bloody Yank accent. I’m just back from a stint in London.”
Katrina found herself liking this man, and as she realized that, she remembered what had started their conversation. “Why do you say this painting is a fake? It certainly looks like a Hans Hofmann to me—an absolutely gorgeous Hans Hofmann.”
He nodded. “You have a good eye—but it’s a very good fake,” he said.
“I don’t believe you—I don’t want to believe you!”
“That’s always a dangerous posture when you’re considering a purchase like this,” he said.
“And how on earth would you know whether it’s a fake, Mr. Expert?” Katrina demanded.
“Actually, that’s part of my job,” he said, with a display of very good, very white teeth. “Or it was. I worked for Sotheby’s—in London? Because I’m a Yank, I was their expert on modern American.” He shrugged. “To be honest, I would have preferred German Expressionist, but—”
“All right, fine, you really are Mr. Expert,” Katrina said, abruptly feeling cranky. The thought that someone would take away her Hofmann was truly annoying. “So what makes my painting a fake?”
He took her arm and led her to a spot as close to the painting as they could get, with just the clipboard table between them and the easel. He had a strong grip, but warm and gentle, too, and again Katrina caught herself thinking that she liked this man—and perhaps in a somewhat dangerous way. It’s the wine, she told herself. Four glasses—that’s all it is. But the feeling stayed with her.
“Look,” he said, leaning toward the brightly colored canvas. He waved a hand in an up-and-down direction. “Vertically, the composition, it’s really good, very Hofmann. The shapes and colors, all very authentic. But look over here, this patch above the bottom right. See it?”
Katrina frowned at the painting. “The pink rectangle? What about it? What’s wrong with it? You don’t like pink?”
