Hidden Riches

and hitting the eggnog before noon.”
    “Maybe Will can distract her. Is he coming alone or with one of his sweeties?” Dora asked, referring to their brother’s list of glamorous dates.
    “Alone, last I heard. Dora, watch that truck, will you?”
    “I am.” In the spirit of competition, Dora gunned the engine and passed the sixteen-wheeler with inches to spare. “So when’s Will getting in?”
    “He’s taking a late train out of New York on Christmas Eve.”
    “Late enough to make a grand entrance,” Dora predicted. “Look, if he gets in your hair, I can always—oh, hell.”
    “What?” Lea’s eyes sprang open.
    “I just remembered, that new tenant Dad signed up is moving in across the hall today.”
    “So?”
    “I hope Dad remembers to be there with the keys. Hewas great about showing the apartment the last couple of weeks while I was tied up in the shop, but you know how absentminded he is when he’s in the middle of a production.”
    “I know exactly how he is, which is why I can’t understand how you could let him interview a tenant for your building.”
    “I didn’t have time,” Dora muttered, trying to calculate if she’d have an opportunity to call her father between performances. “Besides, Dad wanted to.”
    “Just don’t be surprised if you end up across the hall from a psychopath, or a woman with three kids and a string of tattooed boyfriends.”
    Dora’s lips curved. “I specifically told Dad no psychopaths or tattoos. I’m hoping it’s someone who cooks, and hopes to suck up to the landlord by bringing me baked goods on a regular basis. Speaking of which, do you want to eat?”
    “Yeah. I might as well get in one last meal where I don’t have to cut up anyone’s food but my own.”
    Dora swung toward the exit ramp, cutting off a Chevy. She ignored the angry blast of horns. There was a smile on her face as she imagined unpacking her new possessions. The very first thing she would do, she promised herself, was find the perfect spot for the painting.
     
    High in the glittery tower of a silver building overlooking the cramped streets of LA, Edmund Finley enjoyed his weekly manicure. The wall directly across from his massive rosewood desk flickered with a dozen television screens. CNN, Headline News and one of the home-shopping networks all flashed silently across the wall. Other screens were tuned in to various offices in his organization so that he could observe his employees.
    But unless he chose to listen in, the only sounds in the vast sweep of his office were the strains of a Mozart opera and the steady scrape of the manicurist’s nail file.
    Finley liked to watch.
    He’d chosen the top floor of this building so that his office would overlook the panorama of Los Angeles. It gave him the feeling of power, of omnipotence, and he would often stand for an hour at the wide window behind his desk and simply study the comings and goings of strangers far below.
    In his home far up in the hills above the city, there were television screens and monitors in every room. And windows, again windows where he could look down on the lights of the LA basin. Every evening he would stand on the balcony outside his bedroom and imagine owning everything, everyone, for as far as his eye could see.
    He was a man with an appetite for possessions. His office reflected his taste for the fine and the exclusive. Both walls and carpet were white, pure white to serve as a virgin backdrop for his treasures. A Ming vase graced a marble pedestal. Sculptures by Rodin and Denaecheau filled niches carved into the walls. A Renoir hung in a gold frame above a Louis Quatorze commode. A velvet settee reputed to have been Marie Antoinette’s was flanked by gleaming mahogany tables from Victorian England.
    Two high glass cabinets held a stunning and esoteric display of objets d’art: carved snuff bottles of lapis and aquamarine, ivory netsukes, Dresden figurines, Limoges ring boxes, a fifteenth-century dagger with a jeweled handle, African masks.
    Edmund Finley acquired. And once he acquired, he hoarded.
    His import-export business was enormously successful. His smuggling sideline more so. After all, smuggling was more of a challenge. It required a certain finesse, a ruthless ingenuity and impeccable taste.
    Finley, a tall, spare, distinguished-looking man in his early fifties, had begun to “acquire” merchandise as a youth working the docks in San Francisco. It had been a simple matter to misplace a