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he planned to stay over regularly with his mother.
    It isn’t a good idea to have dinner with him, Lane thought, dismayed. Why didn’t I tell him I was busy?
    She did not like the answer that in all honesty she had to face. Eric Bennett was a very attractive man and she was looking forward to seeing him again.
    The sins of the father should not be visited on the son, she thought firmly, and then turned her attention to the swatches that Glady had handed to her to decorate the bedroom of the woman whose
husband had stolen five billion dollars.
    Dr. Sean Cunningham sat beside Ranger Cole at the funeral service for his wife, Judy. It was being held in the chapel of the funeral parlor. Her body had been cremated and the urn containing her
ashes was on a table covered with a white cloth in the aisle. Ranger had insisted that he carry the urn himself and place it on the table.
    It was obvious to Cunningham that Ranger was not hearing one word of the service. His eyes were fixed on the urn, and when he suddenly burst out sobbing, his plaintive wail could be heard
throughout the chapel.
    There were about forty people there. Cunningham guessed them to be coworkers and neighbors but when the service was over and they went outside he recognized a number of people who, like Ranger,
had been victims of Parker Bennett.
    One of them, Charles Manning, a retired lawyer, seventy-eight years old, came up to Cunningham. Nodding his head toward Ranger, who was now clutching the urn, he said, “Sean, I think
Ranger could go off the deep end. Is there anything you can do to help him?”
    “I think he could too,” Cunningham agreed. “I’m going to talk to him every day and see as much of him as I can. Denial and anger are the first steps in the grieving
process. He’s certainly in both stages right now.”
    “And what is the next step?”
    “Depression. And finally, acceptance.”
    Together the men turned and looked directly at Ranger Cole. Stone-faced, he had begun to walk away from the friends who had tried to comfort him. Realizing it was useless, no one tried to stop
him but watched as, hugging the urn to his body, he turned the corner and disappeared from their sight.
    Acceptance? Sean Cunningham knew that there was no chance that that would happen to Ranger Cole. But where would he vent his anger?
    Sean could not know that Ranger was seeking an answer to that question. His tears blinded him as he stumbled down the street. My Judy died before her time. A phrase from the Bible unexpectedly
came into his mind. “An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.”
    He knew what he was going to do.

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    F BI agent Jonathan Pierce, alias Tony Russo, had hired a moving van to deliver the furniture he had ordered for his new town house. He did not want
the logo of the company from which he was renting the furniture to be seen by his new neighbors. As far as they know I’m newly divorced, no kids, about to open a new brasserie here in
Montclair, he thought. That will give me an excuse to be in and out regularly.
    And an opportunity to keep Anne and, to a lesser degree, Eric Bennett under scrutiny.
    There was no doubt in Jon’s mind that Eric Bennett was in on the fraud. How else would Parker Bennet have gotten away with it? Someone had to have been working with him.
    In a final effort before the case went cold they had been granted warrants for court-authorized wiretaps for the phones and residences of Eric and Anne Bennett, as well as listening devices to
record conversations outside their homes.
    Jon had been placed by Rudy Schell as the next-door neighbor to Anne Bennett.
    “It’s possible they’ll say something to each other that will give us an indication if the father’s alive or if they’re in on it. My guess is that Eric Bennett may
be smart enough to have his mother’s town house swept for bugs before she moves in next week. Wait a week or so and then go in and do a little bugging of your own.”

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    O n Saturday