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May 2, 2006, the Windemere, Lake Shore Drive,

Chicago, Illinois

Detective Sergeant Franklin Chomsky had been with the Chicago police for twenty-two years, which gave him enough seniority that he rarely got called on to do the crap stuff anymore. It must have been at least six years since he’d last been dispatched to deliver a notification of death. However, this particular notification was a doozy, and the people involved were sufficiently prominent that he’d been fingered for the job.

“I need somebody who isn’t going to screw up,” the captain had said. “You’re it, Frank, so get going. You need to haul ass if you’re going to get to the Windemere before the TV crews arrive.

“The cops in Miami are sure the guy is dead, right?”

“He’s either dead or badly injured. If he’s injured, he ought to have turned up at a hospital by now, or been spotted by cops bleeding in an alley. There was one hell of a lot of blood in the hotel room. On the whole, the cops in Miami seem to believe he’s dead, but you can allow the wife to hope if you like.”

“I’ll give it to her straight. Lots of blood. Trashed hotel room. Luggage still in the room. No body. Prospects for finding a live Ron Raven not too great.”

“Yeah, sounds about right. And don’t forget it’s always possible that the wife is the person who offed him. God knows, she has a motive. Check out her alibi for Sunday night.”

Frank had changed his street clothes for a clean uniform and hauled ass as instructed. So here he was at the twin towers of the Windemere, one of the most upscale residential buildings in the city. The view of the lake from the higher floors must be spectacular, he thought, parking his squad car neatly between the No Parking signs. A million bucks for a one-bedroom on the ground floor and eight million for the penthouse, he figured. No wonder the captain didn’t want this death notification screwed up.

Frank made his way into the lobby and flashed his badge at the security guard who sat behind the reception desk. The guy wore a braided uniform that looked as if it had been dreamed up by a gay designer for a Princess Diaries knockoff.

“I’m here to see Mrs. Avery Raven,” Frank said, flashing his badge. “Official business. What number is her apartment?”

“Mrs. Raven’s residence is on the twenty-second floor, in our west tower.” The security guard peered down his long nose, not happy to have a lowly cop polluting his lobby, much less demanding admission to the inner sanctum.

“Great. How do I get to the west tower and Mrs. Raven’s residence?”

“The elevator lobby is to your right, over there. I’ll unlock the elevator so you can go up.” The guard looked pained at the need to make this major concession.

Frank checked the guy’s name tag. “Thanks, Steve.” He had dealt with humanity in too many different stripes, shades and indignities to be anything more than mildly irritated by a security guard with a poker up his ass and a bad smell under his nose. “You still didn’t tell me the number of Mrs. Raven’s apartment. I need it.”

“There isn’t a number,” the guard informed him. “Take the elevator marked West Tower to the penthouse floor. It opens straight into the vestibule of Mrs. Raven’s residence.”

Frank had seen apartments with their own private-elevator entrances on TV and in the movies, but he’d never actually visited such a place in person. This was going to be a new experience for him, in more ways than one. He hadn’t heard of Ron Raven or Raven Enterprises until today, but the captain claimed the company was some big-ass deal, generating a ton of tax dollars for the state of Illinois. Judging by the fancy place where the guy had lived, the captain was right. The property-tax dollars gushing out of this building probably paid the salaries of at least a couple of dozen cops.

Frank nodded goodbye to the security guard and crossed the gleaming floor to the gilt-trimmed alcove that housed the elevators. You could decorate a medium-size cathedral with the amount of gold leaf on the walls and ceiling, he thought, impressed against his better judgment. There were no buttons to summon the elevators, only a slot for key cards, but thanks to the security guard, the doors to the west tower elevator glided open within seconds of Frank standing in front of it.

“I’ll let Mrs. Raven know you’re coming up,” Steve said. “Can I tell her what this is about?”

“Nope. Just that it’s official business.” Even if the pompous little prick hadn’t pissed him off, Frank wouldn’t have humiliated Avery Fairfax Raven by broadcasting her personal business to the security guard. Although he wouldn’t be able to protect her privacy for long. Somebody in the Miami Police Department would have talked by now. There hadn’t been a juicy celebrity murder for at least a year, and this was so much better than a run-of-the-mill killing—a perfect story to whet the voracious appetites of the tabloids and cable news. He figured the Ravens had another hour or two at most before the media were all over the story.

The family-values talk-show hosts were going to have a field day, Frank thought cynically. As for the cable news outlets, they ought to be able to milk at least a week’s worth of moral indignation and high ratings out of this. Especially if the cops down in Florida didn’t manage to find the body. Then all the conspiracy theorists would ooze out of the woodwork, suggesting that Ron Raven wasn’t really dead, or that he’d been involved in some shady deal with the government, and the CIA or the FBI had eliminated him when he threatened to talk. Frank wondered why left-wingers always obsessed about conspiracies and right-wingers always obsessed about public morals. You’d think that every once in a while, something would come up that would cause them to switch obsessions, but it never seemed to happen.

Frank stepped into the elevator and pressed the button for the penthouse. The doors closed with a discreetly muffled thud. Very nice, he thought as the dark mirrors reflected back a flattering image of him in his dress uniform. Even the elevator was designed to make the residents feel good about themselves. He felt a twinge of sympathy for Avery Raven when he realized it was quite likely she would soon find herself with no money and no home. He hoped she turned out to be a real bitch, so that he didn’t need to feel sorry for her.

He stepped out on the twenty-second floor and was greeted by a tall, slender, blond woman with huge blue eyes and boobs that were either a generous reminder from God of what he intended women’s breasts to look like or else a gift from one of the best plastic surgeons in the business.

Frank found himself momentarily speechless. Damn, but she was the sexiest woman he’d ever seen outside the pages of a magazine. She was also not a day over thirty, most likely younger. For some reason, he hadn’t considered the fact that Avery Raven might be in her twenties.

He swallowed over the bad taste in his mouth. Fifty-six-year-old Ron Raven had apparently been getting it off with a woman almost three decades his junior, but that didn’t make a jot of difference to what he needed to do.

Concealing his distaste, Frank took off his uniform hat and tucked it under his arm. “Mrs. Raven? I’m Detective Sergeant Franklin Chomsky with the Chicago Police Department. I’m afraid I’m bringing you some bad news about Mr. Raven.”

The young woman’s polite smile vanished. “What is it?” Her hands tightened around the magazine she was holding—Gourmet Today, he noticed automatically. “Has something happened to my father? Has he been in an accident?”

Her father. Of course! This gorgeous woman must be Ron Raven’s daughter, not a snatched-from-the-cradle trophy wife. Jeez, he’d been on the job so long that his opinion of humanity had apparently sunk even further into the sewers than he’d realized.

Frank didn’t answer her questions. “May I come inside, Ms. Raven? That is your name, I assume?”

“Yes, I’m Kate Raven.”

“Is your mother home, Ms. Raven? I need to speak with her, if she is.”

“My mother got home a few minutes ago, as it happens.” She started to gesture him inside, then suddenly stopped. “Wait a minute. Show me your badge, please.”

He showed her his police ID and she read it carefully before standing to one side and letting him in. “I’ll get my mother, if you’ll wait here.”

Frank nodded to acknowledge the instruction to wait. Kate had conducted him into what he guessed must be the formal living room, a vast space defined by a vaulted ceiling, a marble floor and fancy columns that lined a hallway and hinted at more rooms fading off into the recesses of the apartment. A grand piano, a wall filled with books and a dozen pieces of antique furniture still left enough space to permit twenty or thirty guests to circulate around the room with no danger of knocking priceless knickknacks onto the ground. And as he’d guessed, the floor-to-ceiling windows on the east side did look straight out over Lake Michigan. The view was every bit as spectacular as he’d imagined.

How the other half lives, Frank thought, more amused than envious. Personally, he’d swap all these damn spindly legged antiques for a flat-screen TV and a couch where you could put your feet up in comfort to watch the ball game. Not to mention a table where you could stash a can of beer without wondering if you just destroyed five hundred years of polish.

He heard the sounds of two sets of footsteps approaching and he turned away from the view of the lake, focusing his attention on what lay ahead. Kate Raven came back into sight, followed by a woman who was equally tall and attractive, and looked no more than forty. This must be Avery Fairfax Raven. Clearly, since Kate was her daughter, Avery was older than she appeared—late forties at the very least—but she’d aged real well. From what he’d observed on the job, the rich nearly always did.

In her youth, Avery must have been as stunning as her daughter. She was still a beautiful woman, with light brown hair, smooth cheeks, sensuously full lips and a forehead devoid of wrinkles. She either had fabulous genes or generous injections of Botox and lip collagen kept her blooming. She was wearing a cream silk blouse, tailored chocolate-brown slacks and a single strand of pearls—presumably her definition of a casual outfit for an afternoon at home. His wife wouldn’t get that fancy for a funeral, Frank thought wryly.

“Detective?” Avery Raven’s voice was low and musical with a charming hint of a Southern accent. Everything about her appearance and manner breathed aristocrat. She paused a few feet away from him, outwardly composed. If he hadn’t been a cop for so many years, Frank would never have caught on to the fact that she was clasping her hands to prevent them from shaking.

“I’m Avery Raven,” she said. “My daughter indicated you need to speak with me, Mr. Chomsky.”

Frank wasn’t surprised that she had remembered his name. In the movies and on TV, the rich rarely noticed the little people. But in his experience, the classier and more educated a person was, the more likely that they had the ability to file away personal details with a precision that rivaled his computer on one of its good days.

“I’m real sorry to intrude, but I’m afraid I have bad news to report.” No point in beating about the bush.

Avery’s cheeks lost a little color but she exhibited no other sign of alarm. “Kate said you have information about…my husband.”

“It’s about Ronald Howatch Raven,” he agreed. “Mr. Raven’s Illinois driver’s license showed this as his home address.” His Wyoming license, of course, told a different story, but Avery wouldn’t pick up on the subtle distinction. Not unless she knew the truth about Ron Raven, which seemed unlikely. Frank was keeping in mind his captain’s warning that this woman had motives to kill Ron Raven, but if she was the murderer, he’d eat his best uniform hat.

“Yes, this is Ron’s home,” Avery said, betraying a first hint of impatience. “What’s happened? Why are you here?”

“I’m sorry to tell you, ma’am, that the police in Miami believe Mr. Raven may have come to harm. He’s missing from his hotel room, and the indications are that he has met with foul play.”

“Foul play?” It was Kate who asked the question. “Do you mean—he’s dead?”

“It’s a possibility, miss. I’m sorry.”

“Oh my God, no! Dad can’t be dead! Mom, didn’t you speak to him last night?”

“No, not last night.” Avery stared straight ahead as she answered her daughter’s question. “We spoke on Sunday. Ron called as soon as he arrived in Miami because he knew I was meeting friends for dinner.” Avery relapsed into silence. She fixed her gaze on Lake Michigan, her classically faultless profile containing no hint of what she was feeling.

Frank addressed himself to Kate. “According to the police in Miami, your father hasn’t been heard from since eight-thirty on Sunday night.”

Avery said nothing in response to this information and her face remained a blank mask. Kate, on the other hand, didn’t seem to have perfected the upper-class skill of hiding her emotions. Her cheeks paled before heating to a fiery red and her eyes filled with tears.

“My father was supposed to fly into Mexico City yesterday morning and there haven’t been any reports of a plane crash. He’s probably in Mexico—”

“I don’t believe so.” Frank spoke quietly but firmly. It was best not to leave these women with false hopes. “The police in Miami are quite sure Mr. Raven didn’t catch his flight. Whatever happened to your father seems to have happened here in the United States.”

Avery Raven brought her gaze back from the lake. “How can you be so sure he didn’t catch his scheduled flight, Officer?”

“The police in Miami have liaised with Homeland Security, ma’am. Controls are tight these days, and the authorities are confident that Mr. Raven didn’t board a flight out of the Miami airport anytime in the past forty-eight hours.”

Kate started to protest again, so Frank quickly provided them with details of the wrecked hotel room, the search of local hospitals and the ominous trails of blood, indicating that at least three people had lost traces of blood in Ron Raven’s hotel room. He ended up telling them about the rental car that had been found abandoned in a restaurant parking lot close to a busy marina, the Blue Lagoon, in Coral Gables.

“What’s the significance of that?” Kate demanded. She sounded hostile, which Frank understood. She was keeping her fear and grief at bay by refusing to accept the official explanation for her father’s disappearance.

“The police in Miami believe that whoever attacked your father may have disposed of his body in the ocean, miss, which would be a very convenient way to insure that we never find it. There are forty-eight boats docked at the marina, and several of them were taken out either late last night or early this morning. It seems likely that somebody at the marina will have seen something.”

“Only if my father really was taken out to sea,” Kate pointed out. “What if he never went anywhere near the marina? What if the rental car location is just a red herring?”

“Then we’ll find that out, too, eventually. Right now, the investigative team is checking on any preexisting links between your father and the people who dock boats at the marina. They also need to check whether any of the boats were taken out last night without the owner’s permission—”

“If the owner didn’t give permission, then there’s no way to find out who actually did take the boat out to sea and we’ll be no further forward,” Kate interjected.

Frank was impressed with her logic. Apparently she was one of those rare people able to reason through a problem even when she was stressed. “You’d be surprised at what trained investigators can discover once they generate a few initial leads. For example, there are security cameras at the marina and in the parking lot where the rental car was abandoned, and the tapes from those cameras are already in police custody. That should help a lot. Unfortunately, there’s no magic shortcut for any of us. The detectives in Miami have to follow each line of inquiry until it runs out. It’s going to take a while for them to have an accurate picture of what really happened but we’ll get there in the end.”

Or not. No point in mentioning the percentage of homicides and missing persons cases that went unsolved despite the best efforts of law enforcement.

“Perhaps my father’s been kidnapped,” Kate suggested. Anything, it seemed, was preferable to believing that her father was already dead.

“It’s possible, miss. But kidnappers usually make a ransom demand soon after the abduction. I assume you haven’t received any such demand?”

Reluctantly, Kate shook her head. “No. Nobody’s called. We had no idea my father was…missing.”

Avery drew in an audible breath and swallowed a sob, her first overt sign of distress. “Excuse me. I have to leave you for a minute.” She turned and walked blindly in the direction from which she’d appeared earlier.

Kate followed her mother, turning to speak to Frank over her shoulder. “I can’t leave her alone right now, but please don’t go. I have so many questions for you still.”

“I’ll wait, miss.” You don’t know the half of it yet.

“Thank you.” Tears poured down Kate’s cheeks. Fighting a losing battle to stanch her crying, she gestured toward the hallway where her mother had just been. “Oh God, I don’t know how she’s going to bear it if he’s really dead. Dad is her whole life.” She turned abruptly and hurried after her mother.

Just what he hadn’t wanted to hear, Frank thought grimly, pacing the luxurious living room. He suspected that accepting Ron Raven was dead would prove easier for Avery and Kate than hearing the truth about how the bastard had screwed them over. Now that he’d actually met the two women, his sympathies were engaged. He definitely wasn’t looking forward to the next fifteen minutes or so. If only Avery Raven had turned out to be the bitch he’d hoped for. Instead, she seemed like a real classy woman who deserved something better than the piece of crap she’d married. The daughter seemed nice, too. Smart as well as beautiful, which made for a hell of a combination, especially when you considered that the enticing package came wrapped in a comfortable supply of money.

Well, the kid had been rich until now, Frank corrected himself. Perhaps she would be rich again when Ron Raven’s estate finally finished winding its way through the probate courts—except that probating Ron’s estate was likely to take half a lifetime once the opposing sets of lawyers started battling in court. Two things you could say for sure about Ron Raven’s messy death: his family was screwed and disposing of his assets was going to make several members of the legal profession rich.

Frank paced for another three or four minutes. If the two women didn’t put in an appearance soon, he’d have to go get them. The Bulls were up against the Detroit Pistons tonight in a playoff game and he had plans to watch with his son. Besides, cooling his heels in this too-fancy living room was giving him a major case of the creeps. Hopefully Kate would return without her mother. He’d much prefer to deliver the bad news to the daughter and let her pass it on.

Frank caught a break when Kate returned a couple of minutes later, alone. “I wasn’t sure if you would still be here,” she said. Her belligerence had gone, replaced by a control that was visibly fragile.

“I couldn’t leave, miss. I still have important information to pass on to you.”

“I’m sorry to have kept you waiting. My mother is…We’re both upset, as you can imagine. She’ll be with us in just a little while. Could you give me a phone number so that we can call you later with all the questions we forget? My mother…We’re neither of us thinking too clearly right now.”

“Here’s my card.” Frank had one ready and handed it to her. Kate was likely to have more questions than she could possibly imagine, he reflected wryly.

“Thank you.” Kate tucked the card into the pocket of her jeans. Unlike her mother, she was dressed like a regular person, not as if she expected to share afternoon tea with the First Lady. “Tell me, Detective, exactly how much hope do the police have that my father might still be alive?”

“Not very much,” Frank admitted. “The trouble is, if your father is alive, the state of his hotel room suggests that he’s badly injured. So where is he? Why didn’t he call 911? Or if he’s unconscious, why have none of the hospitals reported a John Doe?”

She nodded, reluctantly acknowledging the logic of his analysis. “On the other hand, if my father’s dead, how did the murderers dispose of his body?”

“As I mentioned, the ocean seems like a real good bet.”

“No, I didn’t mean that. I was wondering how they got Dad out of the hotel without anyone seeing them.”

Frank couldn’t see any harm in telling her the truth. “When the Miami police searched the hotel, they found a big steel-framed laundry hamper near one of the service elevators. There’s blood on the canvas bag and the blood matches some of the stains found in your father’s hotel room. For now, the police are assuming the killers used the laundry hamper to wheel your father down to the parking garage.”

“They dumped Dad’s body in a canvas laundry hamper?” Kate’s breath caught and her mouth twisted downward. “That’s like something out of a really bad movie.”

Frank could have pointed out that murderers watched the same movies and TV shows as everyone else and usually demonstrated no originality or creative thinking. Instead, he answered mildly enough. “It might be corny, but it seems to have worked. Nobody saw your father or anyone else leave his room. Unfortunately, guests in a hotel don’t pay much attention to a cleaner pushing a laundry cart.”

“If my father really is dead, the person who killed him must have planned ahead,” Kate said. “He couldn’t just hope to find a laundry cart conveniently left in the right place. And how did he know which car my dad had rented, or where it was parked?”

Frank nodded his agreement. “That’s true. The Miami police are working on the theory that your father’s murder was premeditated.”

Although, in Frank’s opinion, that theory raised almost as many questions as it answered. If the murder had been planned in advance, why had it required so much brute force to kill Ron Raven? Why hadn’t he just been shot with a single bullet to his head while he slept? The police had retrieved blood samples from three different people. Presumably at least one sample belonged to the killer. If that was the case, the killer—already injured?—had risked a lot to move Ron’s body. Why? Would an autopsy have revealed clues to the killer’s identity? Frank could only thank God that he didn’t have to find answers to these questions. The cops down in Miami had his sincere sympathy. This case was a mess—and that was before anyone addressed the possibility that Ron had been the killer, not the victim.

Kate gulped in air. “I don’t understand why anyone would want to kill my father.” She leaned toward him, her hands clenched tightly enough for her knuckles to gleam white in the late-afternoon sun. “Who in the world would have a motive for killing him?”

Frank shook his head. “I’m sorry, miss, we’re still waiting for details of the case to come through from Florida. But your father was a businessman who spent the past thirty years making highly profitable deals. Where there’s a lot of money, there’s always the chance of corruption and double-crosses.”

“Not my father,” Kate protested. “Raven Enterprises is renowned for the integrity of its deals. And as far as the personal side of my father’s life is concerned, he leads a boringly normal life—”

“Not quite.” Frank had to stop her there, although the detective in him was intrigued to see how completely Ron Raven had fooled this branch of his family. He wondered if the folks in Wyoming were equally clueless.

“As I mentioned, there’s more information I need to pass on to you, miss. I’ve been sitting here trying to think of a tactful way to deliver the news, and I’ve decided there isn’t one. So I’m going to be blunt. Here goes. We have reason to believe your father was a bigamist.”

“A bigamist?”

“Yes, miss.”

“As in having two wives? My dad?” Kate stared at him, eyes wide with disbelief. She gave an uncertain laugh. “You’re joking, right?”

“I’m afraid not. Your father seems to have had two wives and two sets of children. You and your mother here in Chicago and another wife and two more children living in Thatch—apparently that’s a small ranching town in Stark County, Wyoming.”

“My father has two more children as well as another wife?” Kate’s voice spiraled into an incredulous squeak. “Of course he doesn’t! That’s absolutely crazy.”

“Having two wives at the same time is criminal, miss. It’s not necessarily crazy.”

“My father isn’t a criminal.” The realization that her father might have committed a crime seemed to stun Kate even more than the suggestion he had another wife and two more kids. She shook her head vehemently. “No, it’s impossible. Apart from the craziness of committing bigamy in this day and age, how could Dad have kept a second wife and family secret? He couldn’t possibly have spent time with them without my mother finding out.”

She had a good point, Frank thought ruefully, although he’d seen plenty of situations where seemingly upright citizens got away with living secret lives for years. Ron Raven had apparently been one of those talented deceivers who could lie with the ease of an accomplished con artist. Although, come to think of it, what was a bigamist if not a con artist supreme?

“You would know better than I do how your father managed to keep you and your mother in the dark. Perhaps all those business trips he took weren’t actually for business. I couldn’t say. But he has two other children, that I know for sure. A son and a daughter, according to the sheriff of Stark County.”

Kate made little pushing motions with her hand, as if to hold the astonishing news at bay until she could assimilate it. “What are their names? How old are they? Are they little kids?”

“No, they’re grown-up, but I don’t have any more details. I’m sorry. We’re waiting for the sheriff in Wyoming to fax us documentation. Normally, we’d have held off notifying you until we had more complete information, but in this case we decided it was important to warn your mother before reporters get wind of the story. We didn’t want your mother to turn on the TV and hear the news of Ron Raven’s death that way. Especially the part about him having two wives.”

Kate’s expression darkened from incredulity into horror. “Oh my God. You think there are going to be news reports about this?”

“I’d say it’s a certainty. You’d better be prepared for the media to make a circus out of your family’s private business.”

Kate sent him a pleading look. “There has to be some way to stop journalists from reporting that my father’s a bigamist. That would be slander, wouldn’t it?”

“No, miss. It’s not slanderous to report true facts that emerge in connection with an official investigation of a crime.”

“But you’re assuming my father has another wife and I’m telling you that’s not possible! There’s been a mistake. He adores my mother and she adores him right back. I’d have a hard time believing he’d ever been unfaithful to her, much less that he was married to another woman.”

Frank didn’t attempt to argue with Kate, just reached into his pocket and removed a carefully folded fax. “I don’t have birth records for your father’s other children, but I do have this copy of your father’s marriage certificate. It was sent to us by the sheriff of Stark County. You’ll see the name and the date. Eleanor Mary Horn and Ronald Howatch Raven.”

She took the fax, her hand visibly shaking. He stood in silence, letting the marriage certificate speak for itself.

“Maybe this is a forgery.”

“I doubt it, miss. Like I said, it was the sheriff himself who sent it to us. Besides, there’s other evidence. When the police searched Mr. Raven’s hotel room they discovered two wallets locked in the room safe, and both wallets belonged to your father.”

“The fact that my father owns two wallets doesn’t seem grounds for leaping to the conclusion that he’s a bigamist.”

“The two wallets didn’t cause the police to leap to any conclusions at all, although he did have two completely different sets of family pictures and credit cards in each wallet. Still, the cops in Miami just followed procedure. The driver’s license in each billfold provided a different address, one in Wyoming and the other one here in Chicago. Therefore the detective sergeant in charge of the investigation contacted law enforcement authorities in both locations to ascertain if Mr. Raven had family either in Stark County or in the Chicago area. It was routine police procedure at that point, since there are plenty of law-abiding citizens with two homes. When the request came in to us, we ran the information we were given through our state data systems and reported back to Miami that our records showed that Mr. Raven lived here in downtown Chicago with his wife, Avery Fairfax Raven. Only thing is, Wyoming reported back similar information, except with a different wife.”

“My father owns a ranch in Wyoming.” Kate ignored Frank’s comment about the second wife. “The ranch is an old family property, first bought by my great-great-grandfather, and now run by a professional manager—”

“You’ve been there?”

“Of course I have! I went there two or three times in the summer when I was a kid.”

Frank wondered how Ron Raven had pulled those visits off. There must have been a good bit of juggling and sleight of hand to make sure nobody ever mentioned the other wife and kids. Still, it wasn’t his business to find out how Ron Raven had worked his scam. He just needed to get Kate to accept the truth about her father.

“How about more recently, miss? Have you been to the ranch since you grew up? And how about your mother? Has she visited the ranch recently?”

“We’ve neither of us visited Wyoming in at least ten years.” Kate subsided into a tense silence.

I’ll just bet you haven’t, Frank thought. “Doesn’t that strike you as a bit strange?”

“My mother isn’t the type of person who enjoys spending time on a ranch. She’s not a rural sort.” Kate rushed on, before Frank could make a comment to the effect that her mother’s tastes had nothing to do with the fact that Ron Raven’s daughter had almost never visited a ranch that had been in the family for three generations.

“The point is, I’m not surprised Dad has two separate IDs. Probably it was easier for him to keep his accounts for the ranch separate from the rest of his expenses—”

“Ms. Raven, your father didn’t simply have two separate sets of credit cards and two different driver’s licenses and two different sets of family photos. I’m telling you he had two separate families, as well. And the ranch isn’t run by a professional manager, by the way. It’s run by your father’s wife. His legal wife.”

“His legal wife?” Kate’s voice cracked. “What do you mean?”

Frank grimaced. “Look at the marriage certificate, miss. Your father married Eleanor Horn fifteen years before he married your mother.”

Kate looked again at the marriage certificate and her cheeks lost color. “There must have been a divorce.”

“I doubt it, miss. My precinct captain heard from the sheriff of Stark County just a few minutes before I came to see your mother. It turns out the sheriff knows Ron Raven personally. He’s an old friend of the family, in fact, and he was as shocked to learn about you and your mother as you are to learn about the wife and children in Wyoming. The sheriff personally confirmed that your father has been married to a woman called Eleanor Horn for thirty-six years. The sheriff was at their wedding, which took place at the local community church in Thatch in front of at least a hundred witnesses and there’s never been a divorce. As far as everyone in Wyoming is concerned, Ron Raven lived at the Flying W with his wife Eleanor, and the only reason he traveled to Chicago was on business for Raven Enterprises.”

“If you’re right, that would mean my mother is just my dad’s…mistress.”

Frank was surprised by the old-fashioned word. But in the rarefied world where Kate and her mother lived, perhaps it wasn’t such an outdated concept. “I’m afraid that’s what seems to be the case,” he acknowledged. “Although I’d advise you to check with a lawyer to find out what your legal rights might be. If your mother genuinely believed she was married, she might have a legal claim to some portion of Mr. Raven’s estate. Not that I’m qualified to be making statements like that.”

Kate stared at him in silence. Clearly, until that moment she hadn’t considered the possibility that there might be financial consequences from her father’s bigamy. Then she laughed, although there wasn’t a trace of amusement in the sound. “Well, I guess that makes the perfect icing on the cake, doesn’t it? You’re saying my mother is going to find herself penniless, along with all her other problems.”

“Hopefully Mr. Raven made provisions, miss.”

Kate gave another short laugh. “Right. Why wouldn’t he, when he’s behaved impeccably in every other detail of his relationship with us?” She bit off another angry comment and walked to the window, staring out over the vast expanse of water, although Frank had a suspicion she wasn’t registering much about the magnificent view.

She finally swung around to look at him again. “How am I going to tell my mother? My God, how in the world am I going to tell her?” She asked the question as much of herself as of Frank.

“How are you going to tell me what?” Avery paused at the entrance to the living room, her hand resting on the back of a silk-covered chair. “Is it more bad news? Have they found Frank’s body?”

“No, nothing like that,” Kate said, hurrying over to her mother.

You had to give the girl credit, Frank reflected. She might flinch, but she didn’t shirk. She took Avery’s hands into a protective clasp and he could see the rise and fall of her chest as she drew in a deep breath to steady her voice.

“Mom, there’s absolutely no way to make this sound less awful than it is, so I’ll give you the straight-up, no-frills version. Detective Chomsky claims that in the course of their investigation into Dad’s disappearance, the police have discovered that he’s a bigamist.”

“A…bigamist?” Avery said the word as if she didn’t quite understand its meaning.

“Yes. They claim Dad has another wife and two children who live in Wyoming.”

“Another wife?” Avery pressed her hand against her chest. “Another wife and two children?”

“Yes. But that’s not all. Apparently Dad married this other woman thirty-six years ago and never divorced her. That means…that means she’s his legal wife. Here’s a copy of their marriage certificate. It seems you and Dad were never really married.”

Avery’s hands tightened their grip on the silk chair back. She glanced down at the fax Kate held out to her but didn’t touch it. “I can’t take it in. Are you telling me that Ron already had a wife when he married me? That my parents invited two hundred guests to witness a fake wedding ceremony?”

“I’m afraid it seems that way.”

The blood drained from Avery’s face, leaving her so pale Frank was sure she would faint. But she was tougher than she looked. He could see the effort she exerted not to pass out.

“Of course the police have made a dreadful mistake,” Avery said, echoing her daughter’s earlier statement. “They’ve confused his name with another Ron Raven, or something like that.” Her eyes made a silent plea for Kate to agree.

“Maybe they have. I hope so. We’ll get our lawyers to check it out, but Detective Chomsky seems quite certain of his facts. He says Dad was definitely married to…to the woman in Thatch thirty-six years ago. It’s a small town…well, you know that already…and the sheriff out there is a personal friend of the family. He was at Dad’s wedding to this woman. The sheriff knows the children, too, and he seems certain that there was never any question of a divorce.”

“Thirty-six years?” Avery’s lips were bloodless. “Ron was married to another woman for thirty-six years?”

“It seems that way.”

“How could he?” Avery asked, her voice low but shaking with anger. “How could Ron do this to us? And where was this woman when Ron took us to visit the ranch?”

“I don’t know. I can’t even begin to guess at his motives. Most of all, I can’t wrap my mind around the sheer stupidity of it. This isn’t the Victorian era. Why in the world didn’t he get a divorce before he married you?”

“I have no idea.” Avery was still alarmingly white, but her voice was stronger. “However, it’s fortunate for all of us that he appears to be dead, because otherwise I’d kill him.”