The Playboy Assignment

Pierce shrugged. “I don’t know what use it is to know that Cyrus left everything he possessed to the son of an old flame.”

“Well, well,” Susannah drawled. “Who’d have thought it of Cyrus?”

“I know,” Pierce said bitterly. “It’s hard to believe that somebody as savvy as Cyrus was didn’t bother to update his will now and then, even if his financial circumstances hadn’t changed. A ten-year-old will is ridiculous... to say nothing of his leaving everything to somebody who wouldn’t even bother to cut his Hawaiian vacation short so the funeral could be held on time.”

“That wasn’t quite what I meant,” Susannah said. “It just occurred to me that perhaps the son of the old flame might be Cyrus’s son, as well.”

Pierce looked startled. “Oh, I don’t think—”

“Even Cyrus was young once. And now that I think about it, there was a certain twinkle in his eyes sometimes.”

Pierce snorted.

There were to be no church services, only a gathering in the cemetery. A surprising number of cars were already parked along the narrow, winding roads which cut the grand old cemetery into segments, and Pierce had to park at a distance. Susannah glanced from the gravel lane to her shoes, and sighed.

But before they’d gone far, the inconvenience of walking across grass and gravel in heels had given way to Susannah’s love of old cemeteries. She’d almost forgotten how much she loved graveyards, full of elaborate monuments and family histories carved in stone in a kind of shorthand only the initiated could read. She’d been good at that, once, deducing from names and dates what had happened to the people who lay below the quiet sod. But she hadn’t gone exploring for years now. Eight years, to be exact....

“But how do you know?”

The question echoed in her head, in an almost-plaintive baritone that she hadn’t heard in the better part of a decade. Funny, she thought, that she could still hear it so clearly...

“How can you tell from a tombstone that life was rough for women?” Marc had asked on a crisp November day, as he stood beside her in an old cemetery in a far north suburb of Chicago. “It’s a man’s tombstone, at that.”

“That’s right,” Susannah had said. “The monument is for the patriarch, but look on the back at the list of names. His three wives didn’t even get a stone to themselves. He married them one at a time, of course, but now they’re all lying here bedside him, together for eternity.”

“But how?” Marc had asked, very practically. “He’s only got two sides.”

Susannah had found the comment hysterically funny, and she’d finally wobbled over to a low flat stone nearby and sat down to recover from her fit of laughter..But in fact she’d never managed to get her breath back, for Marc had joined her there, and kissed her...

And she hadn’t walked in a cemetery since.

“What a nuisance this is,” Pierce said. “Trust Cyrus to make things inconvenient.”

“Shush.” They were getting close to the small tent where the crowd had gathered. A soft breeze tugged at Susannah’s hat and ruffled the corners of the American flag covering the casket.

She hadn’t known that Cyrus had been in the armed services. But then, Susannah thought, there seemed to be lots of things that they hadn’t known about Cyrus.

They were almost the last to arrive, and only a few moments later a man in flowing robes began the service. Susannah tipped her head a little, allowing the wide brim of her hat to shield her eyes as she glanced around the crowd.

She saw a few vaguely familiar faces, but no one she knew well. And try as she might, she couldn’t locate any likely candidate to be—what was it Pierce had called him? The son of the old flame, that was it. No one stood out from the crowd. There was no row of chairs, no one obviously fighting strong emotion...

Perhaps, she thought, Pierce was wrong and the heir hadn’t showed up after all?

The service was brief. From a distant hillside, a rifle salute cracked the air, taps sounded, and an honor guard briskly and efficiently folded the flag which had covered Cyrus’s mahogany casket.

Susannah watched with interest as they presented it to a man standing nearby. But all she could see was the back of a well-groomed head and a brilliant white shirt collar showing between sleek black hair and a gray pin-striped suit. Not black, she thought, with interest.

“That must be the old flame’s son,” Pierce muttered into her ear. “Wish I could get a better look.”

The pastor said a final prayer, then looked out over the crowd, drawing them all together with his gaze, and said, “It was Cyrus’s request that everyone who attended this service be invited back to his home immediately afterward, for a party.”

Susannah smothered a gasp. “That’s macabre!” she whispered.

“What it is,” Pierce muttered, “is a waste of money the museum could have put to far better use. A party! What nonsense.”

But instead of turning back toward the city, Pierce followed the trail of cars toward the western suburb where Cyrus had lived.

“Wait a minute,” Susannah said. “Surely you don’t intend to go to the party, Pierce. Both of us think it’s bad taste—”

“That’s beside the point,” Pierce said grimly. “Odds are the old flame’s son has equally bad taste, or he wouldn’t have gone along with the idea.”

Susannah thought about that sleek dark head, and frowned. “I don’t quite see—”

“He probably doesn’t have a clue about what to do with Cyrus’s old pictures. Maybe he doesn’t even realize that they’re important. So maybe I can introduce myself and make another stab at the collection.”

“Pierce, isn’t it time to give up?”

“What kind of PR person are you, anyway? We can’t lose by just asking. You’d feel like an idiot if he gave it to somebody else—or threw it away—because we didn’t tell him we’re interested.”

He was right. In any case, she was going to end up at the party, since throwing herself out of a moving car didn’t strike Susannah as much of an option. So she might as well give the idea a stab.

Cyrus Albrecht’s house wasn’t just a Queen Anne, she realized as Pierce pushed open the wrought-iron gate to the front walk. It was the most elaborate Queen Anne she’d ever seen. Towers and porches and balconies sprouted from everywhere she looked. The details of gingerbread and moldings and finials had been picked out in a palette of soft greens and browns, with an occasional startling touch of red.

“It would make a great haunted house,” she said. “All it needs is a full moon and a few spider webs. But I don’t see it as a full-fledged art museum—there can’t be enough big walls.”

Pierce shrugged. “We could have built a new wing. But that’s out of the question now. This house is worth a fortune, the heir wouldn’t even consider donating it.”

Susannah paused. “The paintings are worth a fortune, too.”

“But everybody has an idea what a house like this will sell for. On the other hand, to an inexperienced eye, the paintings might not look like much at all.”

“Pierce, you can’t misrepresent—”

They reached the front door, standing open to the summer breeze, and the murmur of the crowd reached out to them. Susannah knew her protest would carry back inside, so she bit her tongue and resolved to have it out with Pierce later.

They stepped across the threshold into the enormous dark-paneled front hall. Despite Susannah’s hat, the change from sunlight to dimness blinded her for an instant. Before she saw the heir, who stood with his back almost squarely to the door, Pierce had already moved toward him, pulling her along. His right hand went out, demanding the heir’s attention, and in the deepest voice she’d ever heard Pierce use, he said, “I’m sorry we meet on such a sad day. I was a friend of your.... I mean, of Cyrus’s. I have a bit of an interest in art, too, you see.”

Susannah stared up at him in shock. A bit of an interest?

“Indeed,” the heir said, and his voice echoed through Susannah’s brain like the boom of a cannon.

Like a wooden marionette who could move only one joint at a time, she turned away from Pierce toward the heir. Under the wide brim of her hat, she spotted the monogram on his shirt cuff as he reached out to shake Pierce’s hand. MDH, it said, in delicate embroidery.

MDH... Marcus David Herrington.

Marc, who had been the single biggest mistake Susannah Miller had ever made. Marc, who had prompted the most disastrous idea of a long and varied series.

Marc...