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pointed out. “He’s an only child, so that’s how I’m sure,” I explained.
    â€œIs he now? That’s too bad. Only children tend to develop a mild case of the crazies later in life.”
    I had to agree. At times I felt like I already had an acute case of the crazies. The next time I went to the doctor he’d glance at my pupils and say, “It’s the crazies! And you’ll have them for life. Here’s a pill, it will do nothing for you.”
    â€œIs it true that by the time you were born, all the family money was gone?” asked Elizabeth, touching on a subject I tried very hard to avoid.
    It was true, I told her. The Everett steel money was nearly depleted. My grandfather had lost a lot of it in his final years, when he was trying to make good business decisions with a mind that wouldn’t allow them. And when my father married my mother, “a penniless academic,” according to my grandmother, she refused to give him what was left, since he had killed her hope of his marrying some heiress who could keep them living the life she had raised him in. She lived with us for thirteen years, promising my father would inherit what remained, but she gave it away instead, changing her will at the very end of her life and leaving half a million for my education and a little less for my parents, who, she stated, “were smart-asses enough to not need any more education.” I gave Elizabeth the very short version of the story.
    For the last couple of weeks, talking to Elizabeth—who almost always spoke to me, rather than to Louise, Nicole, or Erik—I had started to think that she had known about me before Louise mentioned me. My name was in bold under Louise’s and Erik’s on our department website and I had been in the auction room in New York with her husband before. We all knew Adam Tumlinson, but Elizabeth had never been present at a New York auction. I started to wonder if her familiarity came from research rather than name recognition. If it did, it didn’t really matter. Maybe it swayed her decision to go with Christie’s, and if so, I was just lucky to have the right name.
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    By the end of the first week in January, I felt like the world was releasing its grip a little. The auction was catalogued and organized and generating great buzz and Louise and Erik were absolutely fine with the guarantee we’d given Elizabeth. Even Nicole had forgiven me for the way I’d handled things in Houston, mostly because Art in America had valued the Tumlinson estate at $39 million, but speculated that it could hit $40 million.
    So when I received a call on my office phone from an unknown number that afternoon, I answered it with a sprightly hello instead of letting it roll over to voicemail.
    â€œIs this Carolyn Everett?” a man with a deep voice asked, mispronouncing my last name. He sounded very hesitant.
    â€œYes, it is,” I replied. He explained that he’d been transferred to both Louise and Erik but neither had answered their phone and he wanted to speak to someone in the American furniture department.
    â€œWell, you can talk to me,” I said cheerfully. “How can I help you?”
    â€œI don’t know that you can, but I’ll tell you what’s what and then you can tell me if you can help me.”
    â€œOkay . . . ,” I said, starting to regret that I’d picked up the call.
    â€œMy name is Richard Jones. I live down in Baltimore and I’ve got no real interest in American furniture.”
    Wonderful. Thank goodness he called the American furniture department at Christie’s then. Perhaps I should call up a butcher, introduce myself, and tell him I’m a vegetarian.
    â€œBut here’s the thing. My sister Nina Caine, Nina Jones Caine, she’s a librarian at Three Rivers High, that’s here in Baltimore . . . and . . . well, she’s very