Prologue

"By any chance, is your pocket watch for sale?"

The old man raised his head. The woman asking about his watch was leaning across the glass display case separating them. Inside the case were snuffboxes, hatpins, razors with bone handles, saltcellars with their dainty sterling silver spoons, and various pieces of jewelry recently acquired at an estate sale.

But the woman's focus was on his watch.

He guessed the woman and her husband to be in their midforties. To them the gold timepiece probably looked dapper and quaint, Rockwellian. The couple were dressed in the preppy fashion of country club members. Both were trim and tanned, and they looked good together, as though they had come as a set, the man as handsome as his wife was attractive.

They had arrived in a sleek SUV, which looked out of place on the dusty gravel parking lot in front of the antiques store. In the half hour they'd been there, several items in his inventory had attracted their interest. The things they had decided to purchase were of good quality. As their appearances indicated, they had discriminating taste.

The old man had been listing the items on a sales receipt when his customer posed the question about his pocket watch. He laid a protective hand over it where it rested against his vest and smiled. "No, ma'am. I couldn't part with my watch."

She had the confidence of a pretty woman who was accustomed to beguiling people with her smile. "Not for any price? You don't see pocket watches like that these days. The new ones look...well, new. Shininess makes them appear phony and cheap, doesn't it? A patina, like that on yours, gives it character."

Her husband, who'd been browsing the bookshelves, joined them a