When she reached the society section, she checked to see who’d been in attendance at various charity events. Channing was right about her begging off the last six occasions. She knew many of the couples who’d been photographed, usually paired with friends, or linked with board members or celebrities, drinks in hand. The women were all decked out in full-length gowns and fabulous jewelry, posed side by side with their self-important husbands. The men did look elegant in their tuxedos, though the pictures, two inches by two, were monotonously similar. The photographs represented the Who’s Who of Hollywood society with some couples in attendance at every event.

She was secretly congratulating herself for ducking out on so many tedious evenings when she spotted a photograph of Channing with Abner and Meredith at the Denim and Diamonds Ball, which she’d also missed. The Lows beamed as though blissfully happy. Now that was a laugh. She looked at the voluptuous redhead on Channing’s arm. She didn’t recognize the woman, but the dress she wore looked like a knockoff of the strapless white Gucci Nora kept at the house in Malibu. It couldn’t be an original because she’d been assured hers was one of a kind. Briefly she considered how awful it would have been if she’d showed up at the same party in a similar gown.

She looked back at the redhead, alerted by the doting smile the woman was lavishing on Channing. It was the only photograph on the entire page where a woman was gazing at her companion instead of smiling directly at the camera. She read the caption and felt a silvery chill, like a veil of mercury, envelop her from head to toe. Thelma Landice. She had her hand tucked in the crook of Channing’s arm. His right hand covered hers. Thelma was still overweight, but she’d managed to compress and confine every excess pound into a bloated approximation of the hourglass figure Marilyn Monroe had made famous thirty years before. Gone were Thelma’s yellowing teeth and the drab, ill-cut hair. Now her gaudy dyed red tresses were smoothed into a french roll. She wore diamond earrings, and the smile she flashed showed several thousand dollars’ worth of snow white caps.

Nora felt the heat rise in her face as comprehension flooded her frame. She’d misunderstood. She’d misread the signs. Meredith hadn’t sent her those beseeching looks in hopes of confiding her own marital misery. She’d pitied Nora for what she and half of Hollywood knew was going on between Channing and Thelma Landice, the fucking typist who worked for him.

6

DANTE

Dante had taken up swimming for the second time in his life when he bought the estate in Montebello eighteen years before. He was actually Lorenzo Dante Junior, commonly referred to as Dante to distinguish him from his father, Lorenzo Dante Senior. For security reasons, he avoided exercising in the open, which meant jogging, golf, and tennis were out. He’d set up a home gym, where he lifted weights three times a week. For cardio, he swam laps.

The thirty-two-acre property was surrounded by a stone wall, with entrance effected through electric gates, one set at the front and a second set at the rear, each with its own small stone guardhouse complete with a uniformed armed guard. There were six men altogether, working eight-hour shifts. A seventh oversaw the security cameras, which were monitored in situ by day and remotely by night. There were five buildings on the compound. The two-story main house had a detached five-car garage, with two apartments above. Tomasso, Dante’s chauffeur, lived in one, and the other was occupied by his personal chef, Sophie.

There were also a two-bedroom guesthouse and a pool house, which included Dante’s home gym and a twelve-seat theater. Dante’s home office was in a sprawling bungalow, referred to as “the Cottage,” which had its own living room, bedroom, one and a half baths, and a modest kitchen. He also had a suite of offices in downtown Santa Teresa, where he spent the better part of his workday. The Cottage and the pool house appeared to be separate from the main house but were actually connected by tunnels that branched off in two directions under the tennis court.

Dante had added the indoor lap pool across the back of the main house: two lanes wide and twenty-five yards long with a retractable roof; the bottom and sides were lined with iridescent glass tiles, and when the sun shone overhead, it was like moving through a shimmering rainbow of light. His mother had taught him to swim when he was four years old. She’d been fearful of the water as a child, and she made certain her own children were skilled swimmers from an early age. Dante did twenty-five laps a day, starting at 5:30 in the morning, counting backward from twenty-five to zero. He kept the water temperature seventy degrees, the surrounding air at eighty-four. He loved the way sound was muffled by the water, loved the simplicity of the crawl stroke, loved how clean and empty he felt when he was done.