Her daughter had the Minstrel’s Rough. Catharina knew it.

“I’m staying with Juliana,” Wilhelmina said quietly behind her. “I’ll look in her apartment for the stone and let you know what I find. Johannes must have given it to her during one of the few times he saw her-perhaps even in Delftshaven, when we were all together. And right under our noses, too. He wouldn’t have told you because you wouldn’t have approved and because I would have felt it my obligation to tell you.”

“Why?” she asked hoarsely.

“Because you’re her mother.”

Catharina said nothing, not looking around as her sister left.

For seven years Juliana could have had the Minstrel. Seven years! And without ever once hinting to her own mother, confiding in her! What else did Juliana know? What had Johannes told her that she’d been waiting to hear from her mother all this time?

“Juliana, Juliana,” she whispered, “why don’t you talk to me?”

But she knew. Because you don’t let her. She protects you, too, like everyone else does.

A brisk wind had kicked up. Juliana pulled her glittery shawl more tightly about her and headed around the corner to the Club Aquarian, running hard into a wind tunnel. She’d turned into J.J. Pepper in the bakeshop restroom. The giant shawl had disguised the mohair coat, and she’d tucked her blond hair under a black, rhinestone-studded turban. Her red vinyl boots, gobs of makeup, two handfuls of rhinestones around her neck and on her wrists and the black twenties shift she’d worn under the coat, guessing she wouldn’t have to take it off for her mother, had completed her bit of subterfuge.

She’d left the man in the Burberry coat making a halfhearted attempt to pretend to be interested in a gallery window as he smoked a cigarette. Halfway to the club, she’d realized that now Aunt Willie would have to deal with him alone and had felt a passing guilt. But her stalwart old aunt had outwitted Nazi occupiers for five years; she could handle someone following her on the streets of New York.

Instinctively protective of her fingers, she shoved her hands deep into her coat pockets; she’d forgotten gloves. The brisk air revived her, pushing back the bone-deep fatigue and the thought of Matthew Stark’s dark eyes searching hers in the stairwell of her uncle’s tenement. Had he guessed yet that she had the Minstrel’s Rough? What would he do when he did?

A group of corporate types had the entrance to the Club Aquarian blocked, anxious for their after-work drinks-maybe even to hear J.J. Pepper perform. They all looked so normal. She wondered if that was what she was missing in her life: normality. Sometimes she dreamed about living a nine-to-five life, what it would be like to put on dress-for-success clothes in the morning and rush out to a corporate job with a properly stodgy briefcase tucked under one arm, to be in an office with people all around her. After work she could dress up and go to a concert if she wanted to and sit in the balcony, anonymous. She would have a life she could count on, routines.

The long, daily hours alone at the piano were her only constants. She could wear whatever she felt like, and there was no clock to punch, no one to tell her what to do-except Shuji. But she didn’t have to listen to him or to anyone else. And there was seldom anyone around to see her sweat, concentrate, hurt.

She thought of Matthew Stark again-his remoteness, his wry sense of humor, his strong sense of self. He didn’t give a damn what The New Yorker or Vogue or anyone else said about her. Toots, he’d called her. Sweet cheeks. It was a change from the most beautiful concert pianist in the world.

She wondered where he was. What he was doing. If he was thinking about her as much as she was thinking about him.

Len was at the bar, and he didn’t mention her lapse into classical the other evening. “Another time we’ll talk,” he said. “You’ve got a crowd waiting.”

Nodding gratefully, she kicked off the vinyl boots and slipped on J.J.’s gold T-strap shoes from her satchel, then went straight to the piano. There was a crowd-an appreciative one. She didn’t think she could do much for them. She was too tired, too preoccupied. She wanted to know what Aunt Willie and her mother were saying to each other. She wanted to know who was after the Minstrel. And why. What she was supposed to do about it. How Senator Ryder was involved. What Uncle Johannes had been doing in Amsterdam. Who Hendrik de Geer was. How Matthew’s buddy was doing.

She wanted answers, and all she had were questions.

That wasn’t true. She had one big answer: she knew where the Minstrel was.

She began with a few Eubie Blake pieces, slipped in some Cole Porter, and then was moving. Lost. Transported. She focused on the music, on her playing. She stayed with it. Controlled it instead of letting it control her. Then lost the need to control or be controlled and played only to play. She could feel the motivation, if not define it; feel the need. For the first time in months, she had something real to communicate. Mood, feeling, loss, confusion, terror. It was all there at her fingertips.

When she finished, she bounced up, filled with energy, sweating, exhausted. She grinned at Al, who had her Saratoga water waiting. Len was there at the bar, clapping with the rest of the crowd. It felt good. She’d moved them, but more important, she’d moved herself.

“See those walls?” Len said. “They’re shaking, babe. I knew they would be when you put it all together. You’re letting loose, not holding on so tight. I like it. Now what’re-” He stopped and narrowed his eyes, watching her go white as she stared down the bar, mouth open, her entire body stiff. “Shit, not again. Stark?”

She gave a little shake of her head, unable to talk. She felt as if she were going to crack and crumble, like one of those cartoon characters, Sylvester the Cat or Wile E. Coyote when they’d slammed into a brick wall.

“Somebody I need to toss?” Len asked darkly.

“No.” It came out as a breath. “Please, no.”

“Okay, babe. You just tell me.”

“I will,” she mumbled.

She glided away, her feet not making a sound on the floor, and slid against the bar next to Eric Shuji Shizumi.

Matthew double-parked on the narrow tree-lined street in front of Senator Samuel Ryder’s townhouse. Cars could just squeak by his. If they couldn’t, the hell with them. They could back up and go another way. He wasn’t going to be long. Although they lived within the same half-dozen blocks, he and Ryder never seemed to bump into each other. For a while they had, at least on occasion, but that was back when Stark worked for the Washington Post and was still being invited to some of the more desirable Washington parties. The ones where you didn’t wear Gokey boots and drink beer and talk baseball. He’d still go to those parties when he didn’t have anything better to do, like read the latest books panned by the New York Times Book Review or catch a game, and he’d provide the touch of cynicism and distance people expected from him. In drawing rooms filled with antiques and sterling silver and men and women who used poll results to tell them what was going on “out there,” he was a reminder of how different they all were. The chosen people. They’d all read LZ, of course-or pretended they had. “It’s so realistic,” they’d tell him, as if they knew.

That was another thing about Juliana Fall, he thought suddenly: no damn pretending. If she didn’t know who the hell you were, you got that blank look and that was that. Of course, with her pale beauty and international reputation, she’d get along just fine with the Washington crowd. Artists weren’t supposed to keep up with current events. They could be forgiven their airheadedness.

He bounded up the curving front steps and gave the garnet-red door two firm whacks. Ryder’s was a high-style Federal with black shutters, a Palladian window, pilasters, shiny brass fittings, and a delicate wrought-iron rail. An unadorned pine cone wreath hung in the middle of the door, put there, undoubtedly, by a conscientious housekeeper. The appearance of taste and perfection was important to the Golden Boy. Stark thought of his own townhouse. It needed renovating. Badly.