No, Baywest was most comfortable with institutional lending, financing deals cut by men who wore suits at all times during the business day, belonged to exclusive country clubs, traded secrets behind closed doors. The bank knew a lot of secrets. And now Leland junior was at the helm. His stepson, George Russo, though only twenty-seven years old, was a first vice-president.

Through French doors, the formal dining room at the Manor was a couple of elegant steps down from the music room. Neither Leland nor Helen played, but this hadn’t stopped them from purchasing the nine-foot Steinway grand and customizing it with a digital box that played classical music at the flip of a switch. After it had been installed, the couple had discovered that the natural sound of the piano was a little loud for dinner music, so they’d added the French doors to muffle it somewhat.

Now the piano was silent, but the doors were closed anyway. Leland Taylor did not want any staff to be privy to family discussions. Knowledge might be power, he’d often say, but secrecy thrills the soul.

The dining room was round as a plate, the cherry table within it an elongated oval that easily seated eighteen. Tonight, with the unusually beautiful weather, Leland ordered the drapes pulled back. Through the wraparound windows this afforded a view that extended from the Farallon Islands, clearly visible twenty-seven nautical miles off the Golden Gate, all the way around the city to the Bay Bridge and the coast range beyond. Only a few degrees to the right of due north, the spires of the Golden Gate Bridge seemed to float over the headland.

But no one in the room showed any interest in the view. At the end of the table closest to the music room, Leland Taylor sat next to his wife. They weren’t, after all, having dinner, although coffee had been set out, some cookies. Leland was dressed in a dark charcoal suit, a red-and-blue rep tie. He always wore a plain white dress shirt. (‘A white shirt says you’re the boss.’) Graham thought of him as six generations of British inbreeding, and this wasn’t too inaccurate. He was tall and lean, with watery blue eyes, a thickish upper lip, skin reminiscent of pink crepe.

A couple of chairs down to Leland’s right – not, God forbid, directly next to anyone – Graham’s sister, Debra, and her husband, Brendan McCoury, tried and pretty much failed to act nonchalant in the face of all this opulence. Debra had grown up here, but her life situation had changed. This was nothing like home anymore. Brendan had what a portion of the world – although not Leland’s – would call a good job as an electrical contractor. Debra was a veterinarian’s assistant. Because she was a woman – not a particularly stunning or charismatic one at that – to Leland she essentially did not exist. Her presence, and especially Brendan’s, was suffered because in Leland’s view this qualified as family business and Debra technically belonged.

George, like his older brother, Graham, was a big man, well put together. In his three-piece gabardine he commanded the far end of the table, drinking Heineken from a chilled Pilsner glass. Two more bottles were on ice in a small designer cooler on the table next to him.

The entire left-hand side of the table was Graham’s. ‘As a matter of fact,’ he was answering Leland’s opening question, ‘it must be pretty obvious that I didn’t know this arrest was coming. Otherwise, I would have called you all and set up something like this to go over the estate.’

‘Yes, the estate.’ Leland kept a sneer off his face, but Graham heard it. ‘We were surprised to learn of the fifty thousand dollars, Graham. How did Sal get that kind of money? Surely not selling fish. That’s what I’d be interested to know.’

‘It’s not coming to any of us, so what difference does it make?’

‘What are you talking about, not coming to us?’ This was George. He spoke quietly, but nobody was fooled. ‘It gets divided three ways if there’s no will. I looked it up. And there wasn’t a will, was there?’

Graham had resolved to stay calm. He picked up one of the cookies and took a bite to slow himself down. ‘Not as such, but there-’

‘Excuse me,’ Leland interrupted mildly, ‘but if there was no will, Graham, how is it that you are the executor?’

Debra interrupted him. ‘I read it was wrapped.’ Debra was holding her husband’s hand out on the table. Living in the shadow of her stunning, social-climbing mother, she had long ago decided not to compete and now, at twenty-nine, was not so much unattractive as unadorned. She wore no makeup of any kind. Her hair had once shone like Helen’s, but she’d elected not to dye it, and now it was a drab strawberry-blond. She was also five months pregnant and her face had broken out. ‘What does that mean, wrapped? Where did Sal get wrapped bills? And what were you planning to do with the baseball cards? Steal them too?’

Graham nodded across the table at his sister. ‘Yeah, Deb. I was going to steal them. I was trying to screw everybody.’

‘Just like usual,’ George said.

Graham turned down the table, a dangerous smile in place. ‘Fuck you.’

Leland tapped the table for order. ‘Now, now. Let’s keep it civil, can we?’

‘Sure,’ Graham said. His hand was shaking and the coffee threatened to overspill the rim of his cup. He carefully put it down in the saucer. ‘You know, guys, I haven’t had my all-time best day, spending it as I did in jail accused of murdering my father. Then I come here and we play dump on Graham. But I’ll tell you what. You can all go to hell. I don’t need this abuse.’

From the time he’d been a child, when Graham got angry enough, tears came to his eyes. He wasn’t going to have that happen now, or at least he wasn’t going to let his siblings see it. Trying to maintain some dignity, though, he wasn’t about to bolt from the table either. Focusing on the ceiling, he was blinking hard, pushing back his chair, when his mother suddenly spoke sharply, stopping him.

‘For God’s sake. Children, stop. Sit down, Graham! Please. Sit down. You’re right. We’re all just a little overwrought. You know that. It’s been a very emotional time.’

An uneasy silence.

Leland took over again, the voice of reason. ‘Your mother’s right, all of you. It’s been a difficult week all around.’ He cast harsh glances at Debra and George, shutting them up. ‘No one means to accuse you of anything, Graham. But we have some questions and I’m sure that you have answers. We don’t mean to grill you, but they do seem important, don’t they?’

Graham had moved back up to the table. He’d folded his hands in front of him. He was unaware of it, but his knuckles burned white from the pressure. ‘You know, Leland, frankly, they don’t. Frankly,’ he repeated, ‘I can’t understand why Georgie here-’

‘George,’ his younger brother corrected him.

‘Sure,’ Graham said. ‘George. Why George here cares at all about fifty thousand dollars, or even a third of it, which he’s not going to get anyway because Dad wanted it to go to someone else.’

‘Well, that’s one of the questions,’ Leland retorted. ‘Who did your father want this money to go to?’

Down at his end George did his Leland impression, slapping the table three times. ‘First, I think I’d rather talk about why I shouldn’t care about seventeen thousand dollars. That’s a lot of money.’

Graham threw him a withering look. ‘What do you make a year, George – one thirty, one fifty?’

‘What difference does that make?’

‘It makes a difference how much you need seventeen thousand dollars.’

‘Yeah, that’s the way you think, all right, but it’s not a question of how much I need it. That’s completely irrelevant. The issue is that it’s mine, whether I need it or not.’

Graham had that dangerous smile again. ‘You know, Georgie, you’re turning into a fine banker. And it’s not yours anyway.’

Petulantly, his sister spoke up again. ‘Well, regardless of George, we need it. It’s a lot of money to us.’