The buzz came from Bill Sweeney, as it often did. Even though he was gone, his name was on every art lover’s lips. You know, the owner is the daughter of William Sweeney. The neighbors told me Bill Sweeney’s wake went on till all hours. Such pretty girls; they must miss their father. The artist who painted Panes of Gold is Mary Magdalene Sweeney; she dedicated the piece to her father.

Liza was pleased at the size of the crowd, but even more pleased about the genuine collectors who had shown up on a holiday weekend to see the collection of Kat Ryan’s sunflowers that she had featured on the postcard.

There were already three red dots next to Kat’s vibrant oils in the first half hour. Kat was beaming and she was a wonderful salesperson of her own work. When you met Kat, not only did you want to buy her painting, you wanted to be her best friend. She talked about her work in an earthy, pragmatic way that even neophytes could appreciate. Connor and David had been entranced by the work and the artist and were the first to buy, then the red dots accumulated. Liza loved getting her gut instinct validated. There may be other gallery owners with better credentials, but not better instincts.

Other artists in the show were present as well. Vincent Williams from Chatham on the Cape had three abstracts in the show, heavily influenced by warm shades and organic lines, lovely paintings for the risk averse. His work was very strong and so was his jawline. He wore a blue linen shirt and black jeans to every event and women never failed to notice that his eyes matched his shirt.

Maxie Chow, a Brooklyn artist whom Liza had stumbled upon at a street fair in Red Hook one Sunday when she and Vivi were having a girls’

weekend in the city, stood next to her lithographs in neon-orange overalls and a black bra, inspiring more than a few furtive glances from the men in the gallery. Maxie’s work was firmly rooted in Pop Art, but the half dozen pieces that Liza had shown previously sold quickly to more adventurous collectors. Her saturated portraits of animals with still life elements brought an urban energy to the gallery. As Maxie explained to Liza, “Imagine if Warhol had liked dogs and rabbits and guinea pigs as much as he liked Marilyn Monroe.” Though the subject matter was quotidian, Maxie was a skilled printmaker and Liza knew she would be big someday.

But the star of the night was Maggie’s piece, Panes of Gold. All night long, there was a steady murmur around the painting. The locals responded because it was an unexpected, ethereal view of Southport Harbor, a familiar

subject usually painted in crisp tones of red, white, and blue, but not in Maggie’s version. The collectors responded because William Sweeney’s daughter, in the weeks after his death, had created a painting that seemed to shimmer on the wall. Maggie, in a long green dress and an oversized silver sunflower necklace, never moved more than five feet from the painting all night.

“My father once told me to use my pain and make my work sing and that’s exactly what I did,” Liza overheard Maggie telling her story to an attractive couple from Tribeca who started the interior design firm Meeks & Beauregard, named after their corgis. (Liza could never remember the actual names of the men when they wandered into the gallery, so she thought of the short one as Meeks and the tall one as Beauregard.) She watched Meeks snap several photos and send them off, presumably to a client who was in the Hamptons or Watch Hill or Kennebunkport for the holiday. That’s when she knew she had priced the work right. Expensive enough to get extra attention, but modest enough to get sold. The price tag was a big leap up for Maggie. I hope she can keep producing, Liza thought , and doesn’t do another disappearing act.

That’s when Liza heard Beauregard ask the million-dollar question of Maggie, “Are you working on anything else? We’d love to come by your studio.”

“I have a million ideas. Let’s set up a time for a studio tour.” Sometimes, it was an asset that Maggie could lie like a champion.

Tricia waved Cap over. He was good to put up with a Sweeney event two nights in a row. Tall and trim in his white button-down and Nantucket reds, Cap made his way through the crowd, speaking to several familiar faces briefly before reaching Tricia. “Hello, my dear.”

“I didn’t expect to see you tonight. I thought last night’s chaos would be enough for one weekend.” The two kissed cheeks.

“Only here for ten minutes. I wanted to see Maggie’s painting. It’s something.”

“Yes, if only she could sustain the effort.”

“She’ll find her way,” Cap said for the hundredth time about Maggie.

“Did you have a chance to read any of the memoir?”

“Through Chapter Four, then I had to take a break after that bombshell.

You?”

“I scanned the whole thing.”

“Did you know about Birdie?”

“I didn’t know that much about Birdie,” Cap said. “There’s a lot more to come in the book, Tricia. A warning.”

His grave tone surprised her. He wasn’t prone to drama. “I don’t think Liza and Maggie are even going to crack it open.”

“Good,” Cap said. “That’s wise. At least for now.”

“I’ll finish it by Monday when we meet.”

The two lawyers understood each other. The task was no longer personal, it was business. A similar thought occurred to Tricia about the Liza situation. “You should know, Liza and Whit are separated. Liza thought it was temporary, a trial separation, but it appears Whit has made some moves to indicate that it’s permanent.”

“Oh, dear. I’m not surprised. Whit seemed to tolerate your father, but that was a wedge, for sure. The timing is cruel. That seems beneath him. His mother will be appalled. She’s very fond of Liza; I’d say fonder of her than him. Lolly Jones will not be happy with her son. Liza has a lawyer?”

“Michelle Esposito.”

“She’s good.” Cap looked across the crowd to where Liza stood, speaking animatedly to a couple interested in the Vincent Williams abstracts. Liza’s warmth reminded Cap of Maeve. He wished the girls had gotten to know their mother better, the Maeve before the cancer and the long slow march of treatment and pain. The Maeve who could stand in the corner of one of Bill Sweeney’s book events and draw the crowd to her even though Bill had the bigger personality. “I’ll reach out to Liza next week and connect with Michelle Esposito if she needs me to. There may be questions about your father’s estate that she needs answered. I enjoyed getting to talk to Raj last night. He seems like a fine young man.”

“Yes, he is.” Raj had positioned himself as Tim’s barback, restocking the wine and the beer while Tim poured for the thirsty crowd intent on shaking off their Fourth of July overindulgence with more indulgence. Cap and Tricia stood quietly, taking in the scene. Both knew there would be a letdown for Maggie and Liza, the end of a period of intense emotions and effort that started with their father’s death and ended tonight. Tricia had a sudden thought. “I’m glad I took the summer off. I don’t know if I can go back.”

Cap was about to respond when a familiar voice interrupted, “There they are! The brain trust, huddled in the corner as usual.”

It was Lois Hopper, William Sweeney’s agent. She was wearing her signature black hat. She was the last person either one wanted to see at that moment. With Tricia’s approval, Cap had hired a forensic accountant to dig into whether Lois had been skimming off the top of the royalties. They’d get an answer soon, but neither wanted to tip off Lois that they were investigating her accounting. Her presence here was alarming.

“Kisses, kisses,” Lois said, waving her hands in the general direction of Cap and Tricia. She wasn’t getting anywhere near their faces. “So . . . how is it?” she asked. She could only be referring to the memoir.

Tricia and Cap played dumb while mentally going through the exercise of who could have been the leaker. Tricia guessed an accidental leak from Nina or Devon who told someone at Yale who told someone in publishing in New York who knew someone spending the weekend at Lois’s house in Westport. Cap assumed it was David or Connor who texted a friend in Montauk after one last glass of late-night wine who mentioned it on the beach the next day to a former editor at Allegory whose niece was an intern in Lois’s agency. Either way, she knew something was up.

“The show is great, isn’t it? What a surprise to see you here. I don’t think of you as a visual arts connoisseur, Lois.” Tricia remained unruffled and Cap remained silent.

“Not the show, dolly, the book! My sources tell me you have the memoir in hand. That’s great news for all of us,” Lois said, as if it was a given they were all on the same team, despite her threatening emails and terse voicemails over the last month. “The situation was starting to get very tense with Allegory.”

The situation in the gallery was starting to get tense for Tricia. Of all the characters who hung around Willow Lane as detritus of William Sweeney Inc., Lois Hopper stood out to Tricia as the least genuine, the most in it for the money and not for love of the written word. Maybe it was the stupid hat.