Rosie opened the swinging kitchen door and stuck her head out. “I’m make stuffed kohlrabi. Whatever you got, it’s gonna fix,” she said to him. And then to me, “You gonna hev some, too, with mutton. Sauce is best I ever make.”

I took the interruption as an opportunity to retire to my favorite booth, bad wine in hand. I shrugged off my jacket and slid into the seat, hoping I wouldn’t get a splinter in my butt. I pulled out my paperback and found my place, trying to look engrossed so William wouldn’t follow me across the room to amplify his complaints. I was apprehensive about dinner. Rosie’s Hungarian by birth and favors strange native dishes, many composed of animal organs smothered in sour cream. Earlier that week, she’d served me sautéed sweetbreads (a calf’s thymus gland, if you want the offal truth). I’d eaten with my usual oinky appetite. I was mopping up the plate with half a dinner roll when she told me what it was. Thymus gland? What could I do about it when I’d already eaten it? Short of running to the ladies’ room to jam a fork down my throat, I was stuck. It didn’t help that I’d enjoyed it.

She appeared with my dinner plate, setting it down in front of me. She waited with her hands clasped while I tasted a small bite of meat and faked enthusiasm. She didn’t seem convinced.

“Yummy,” I said. “Really. It’s fabulous.”

She remained skeptical, but she had other orders coming up and she returned to the kitchen. Once she was gone, I picked up my fork and knife and started sawing away. The mutton required more work than I’d anticipated, but the effort took my mind off the sauce, which was not as sublime as she’d indicated. The kohlrabi looked like a little alien spacecraft and tasted like a cross between a turnip and cabbage, a perfect complement to the badly fermented sugar water I was using to wash it down. I wrapped a chunk of mutton in a paper napkin that I then tucked in my shoulder bag. I caught William’s eye and made the universal gesture for the check. I exchanged a few parting remarks with Claudia and Drew, and then headed for home.

I was in bed by 9:00, thinking that was the end of the shoplifting episode. Silly me.

5

NORA

For Nora, the weekend had started on a sour note. She’d spent the early part of the week in Beverly Hills, taking care of routine appointments. She had her hair done, manicure, pedicure, massage, and her annual physical, which she was happy to have out of the way. She returned to the house in Montebello on Thursday afternoon. She and Channing had bought their second home the year before and she loved every minute of their time away. Though the new place was only a hundred miles north of their permanent residence, she felt she was traveling to another country. She could hardly wait to get there. This was a second marriage for each of them. When she and Channing met, he had shared custody of his twin girls, age thirteen. Her son was eleven. They’d decided against having children of their own, opting instead to keep life simple. Summers, all three kids would be under the same roof with them, and that was sufficient chaos, especially as puberty struck, bringing with it the squabbles, the shrieking, tears, accusations of unfairness, and doors slamming upstairs and down. While appreciating the current household peace, Nora looked back on that era with fondness. At least the family was intact, however bumptious and loud.

Channing had intended to join her Friday in time for dinner and stay until Monday morning. At the last minute, however, he’d called to say that he’d be bringing the Lows. Abner was a senior partner in Channing’s law firm and one of his best friends. Meredith was Abner’s second wife, the woman responsible for the breakup of his first marriage ten years before. He was a serial womanizer, currently cheating on Meredith with the woman who’d doubtless turn out to be wife number three—if she was smart and played her cards right.

Nora and Meredith had met in a Jazzercise class early in their fifteen-year friendship, and they’d loved nothing better than dishing about the various scandals in their social set. They’d bonded initially over the revelation that the wife of a pretentious bank president had had when she returned home unannounced and caught her husband cross-dressing, decked out in an Armani suit and designer heels. On another occasion, a mutual acquaintance was accused of appropriating large sums of money from the charity for which she volunteered as treasurer. Charges were filed but the case never went to trial. An agreement was reached and the business was swept under the carpet.

At least twice a year some outrageous impropriety would come to light, and the two would busy themselves trading rumors and howling with delight. Nora and Meredith had built an entire relationship on salacious gossip. This allowed the two women to compare notes, test their mutual values, and reinforce shared attitudes, to swap any number of snobbish put-downs. Not that they considered themselves snobs.