Dani had hung both keys on a gold chain. They’d attracted no comments whatever in New York. Her consultants apparently had been more interested in looking into her eyes for any sign she was going off the deep end.

She touched the keys as she watched the movie. In a performance as enriching as it was painful, the thirty-year-old heiress to the Chandler fortune managed to capture not only the soul of her character-a stunning, tragic singer in late Victorian America, a complex woman of torn loyalties and dreams she herself didn’t dare acknowledge-but also of countless women like her. She bridged the gap between rich and poor, between educated and illiterate, between virgin and harlot.

Lilli Chandler Pembroke tore out her own heart and gave it to every woman in her audience.

To her own daughter.

Yet if millions of moviegoers had their image of the famous missing heiress forged by her one short, unforgettable scene in Casino, Dani’s central vision of her mother was of her smiling and waving from the basket of a hot-air balloon.

She’d looked so happy.

As Dani had called up to the balloon as it lifted off with her promise to save her some raspberries, she’d never guessed-couldn’t have imagined-that she’d never see her mother again.

It was late when the theater emptied, but Saratoga was a late-night town, and the sidewalks were still crowded. Dani cut through Congress Park, past stately Canfield Casino. She wouldn’t have been surprised if she walked right over the spot where Ulysses Pembroke had been murdered.

On the other side of the park she crossed onto Union Avenue, a wide street lined with beautifully restored Victorian houses. The air was cool, fragrant with grass, pine and summer flowers. She passed the historic racetrack, quiet so late at night, its tall, pointed wrought-iron fences and red-and-white awnings silhouetted against the dark grounds.