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She searched Zoltan’s face, shrugged again. “Whatever it is you’re trying to accomplish, Zoltan, you should know I don’t want anything to do with it. Let the Big Take stay buried, if it’s real. Let it stay forgotten. It all stops right here in this room. The last thing I want is for my grandfather to go down in history as a thief—even if I really was hearing his voice rather than your own.” As she spoke, Rebekah rose. She felt a brief moment of dizziness.
Zoltan stood, too, lightly touched her hand to Rebekah’s arm. “I’m sorry you’re still unsure if your grandfather was actually here, and you still doubt me. He was here, Rebekah. I find it interesting, though, that he never told you exactly what the Big Take was. But maybe he didn’t have time, maybe he had to leave before he could tell you everything.”
But he’d told her there was a wolf in the fold, and what did that mean? It sounded ridiculous to Rebekah. She stared down at Zoltan’s hand. Zoltan pulled her hand away, took a step back, but her voice remained calm. “Fact is, I’ve come to believe there’s a time limit to how long the Departed can stay with us once they come through the Verge. Perhaps they need to wait their turn before they connect to us again.”
Rebekah looked toward the fire in the grate, only embers now. “To be truthful, Zoltan, I don’t know for certain whether to thank you for contacting my grandfather or compliment you on the quality of the research you must have done to convince me with your brilliant performance. More likely the latter, I think. Was my grandfather really involved in some kind of major theft with his friend? I don’t believe it. No, the Big Take was only one of the wonderful stories he told me. But as I said, it doesn’t matter.” She paused, leaned down to pick up her cup, and took a last sip of tea. “To pretend you’re actually speaking to a dead person—well, thank you for the unexpected evening and the tea.”
“Rebekah, I had an idea. Perhaps we could locate the Big Take and give it back to the original owner. What do you think?”
Rebekah said again, “As I said, Zoltan, this is over. I will not be coming back.”
“You are free to do as you wish, of course, Rebekah. But if you do come back, perhaps your grandfather will tell you more about the Big Take, explain his motives, and you can question him. You can tell him you don’t want it because you want to protect him. I know he can come back, his presence was strong tonight. He wants this desperately, Rebekah. Give him another chance to convince you.”
Rebekah started to shake her head, but she stayed silent until Zoltan walked her to the front door. “I hope you will reconsider. But whatever you decide, Rebekah, you have provided me with an intriguing evening, you and your grandfather both. Perhaps you will come again on Friday night?”
Rebekah shook her head. “I’ve made up my mind. I won’t be coming back.”
As Rebekah walked to her car, she realized she still felt unusually calm, smooth as the flow of a placid river, and wasn’t that odd? She carefully backed out of Zoltan’s driveway, her hands a bit unsteady on the steering wheel, and wondered if she’d ever actually believed she was speaking to her grandfather. He knew your nickname, Pumpkin. He knew about the Big Take story. Zoltan couldn’t have known about it, could she?
How could Zoltan have possibly found out Rebekah’s nickname and all the rest of it? She realized in that moment she wished she could believe her. She, Rebekah Clarkson Manvers, wanted to believe what had happened tonight was real. But of course it wasn’t. It was all smoke and mirrors. She had no intention of coming back on Friday, no matter what Zoltan wanted. Nothing good could come of it.
Was there a wolf in the fold? Why would Zoltan—or her grandfather—give her that bizarre warning? No, it was ridiculous, her grandfather was dead, gone. Still, why the warning? Who wasn’t she to trust? Rich? No, it couldn’t be Rich, her husband of six months, a four-term congressman from Talbot County, Maryland. She remembered he’d told her after his first wife died, he didn’t think he’d ever find another woman he would love. But he’d chanced upon her at Lincoln Center at a Lucien Balfour piano concert nine months earlier. For the first time in years, he fell in love, with her, and now he told her he was proud of her every single day. They were still discovering how much they had in common, and always enjoyed each other’s company. He dealt well with Kit, her business partner and friend, and he approved of her.
Rebekah turned into light traffic on Hazelton Avenue, only twenty minutes from Kalorama Heights and home. She thought of Rich’s younger son, Beck. He was more a gold-plated prick than a wolf. He was a health insurance lobbyist, a job arranged for him, of course, by his powerful father, her husband. He was thirty-three, five years older than she, and he made it a habit to come out of his bedroom wearing only his boxer shorts when he knew she was close by, as if he’d been waiting for her. He’d quickly graduated to coming out of the bathroom with just a towel wrapped around his waist. Beck had moved back to his father’s house in Chevy Chase the year before, after a nasty breakup with his then-fiancée, an investment banker’s daughter out of New York. Rebekah’s mantra to herself was: Beck, find another girlfriend soon, and leave.
Could Tucker be the wolf? Rich’s eldest son was perfectly pleasant to her, though he ignored her for the most part, regarded her as his father’s newest toy, a temporary diversion at best. That was fine with her. He seemed happy enough with his wife, Celeste, and their three sons. Celeste didn’t like Rebekah, but did she hate her enough to wish her ill? Was she the wolf? Well, speculating about it hardly mattered. She was only taking the bait Zoltan had tossed out to her, the hints and warning she’d left her with to get her to come back for another grandfather show. She thought cynically she’d probably be billed five hundred dollars for the entertainment.
Rebekah felt a wave of fatigue, and drummed her fingers on the steering wheel. She forced herself to focus on the meeting she had scheduled with Mr. Clement Herriot, a wealthy collector of impressionist paintings. Alas, she had bad news for him. The Berthe Morisot he’d bought at auction seventeen years before was a fake. He wouldn’t be happy, though Rebekah knew he must have suspected or he wouldn’t have contacted her to authenticate the painting. Kit had ferreted out the painter most likely to have executed Morisot’s style so beautifully—Carlos Bizet, who lived in Andalusia and was now ninety years old. Thankfully, he’d stopped his forgeries ten years before, but that didn’t help Mr. Herriot. It would certainly get his insurance company’s attention, since they’d doubtless hired an expert to authenticate the painting as well before insuring it. “No one else could have painted it,” Kit had told Rebekah. “And now Bizet’s so old, he spends his time bragging about his work hanging in museums all over the world, and, of course, in big muckety-mucks’ collections, like Mr. Herriot’s.” Rebekah thought about the wages of dishonesty, how if malfeasance went undiscovered long enough, there weren’t any wages to be paid here on earth. She’d decided long ago karma was only an inviting construct weak people used to make themselves feel better about not doing something when they should.
She planned to forget about the Big Take and the poem and the wolf in her fold. If Zoltan called, Rebekah would tell her again she wouldn’t be going back.
