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“She’s not happy.”

“With her darling daughter?”

“Are you serious?” Jack said. “With me. She called first thing. How could I have done such a thing?”

Jack turned slightly in his chair. A waiter appeared with a fresh pot of tea at what Jack thought might have been world-record speed.

“How much did you have to pay the boyfriend?” Danny said.

The boyfriend’s name was Josh Bauer, from Jenny’s girls-gone-wild period. He’d sworn to her that he’d deleted the pictures from his phone. She believed him. And Joe Wolf had always thought she was the smart one.

“Let’s just say his life didn’t turn out the way he’d hoped it might after sitting next to Jenny in class,” Jack said. “He’s living in Vegas now, in what appears to be a constant state of debt. He said he hated doing this to her.”

“But he took the money.”

“Like the whore that he is.”

Danny grinned. “Imagine such a thing in a family paper.”

“Well, it isourfamily.”

“How does she keep her job at the high school?” Danny said.

“I’m already thinking about tomorrow’s front page after they fire her ass. No pun intended.”

“She deserves it, just for firing Kopka and Sawchuck,” Danny said.

“You were going to do the same damn thing when the season was over.”

“Hey, try to remember that we’re in this together.”

How could I ever forget such a thing?

They were at their usual corner table, no one close to them, plenty of privacy.

“The pictures just kind of fell into my lap,” Jack said. “We’re going to run a couple every day.” He smiled. “But you have to say that the timing of all this couldn’t have worked out better. As a circulation booster, our sister is the gift that just keeps on giving.”

There was, they both agreed, no possible way now that the other owners would give her the votes she needed to keep control of the team.

They sat in silence for a few minutes, eating the last of their breakfasts. It was Danny who finally spoke.

“Now we have to figure out how to deal with Thomas. I still can’t believe he turned around and better-dealed me.”

“I’lldeal with Thomas when the time comes,” Jack said as he waved for the check.

He handed the waiter his credit card. When the kid was gone, Jack leaned across the table, smiling again, and said in a soft voice, “Don’t you sometimes wish we could just kill them both?”

Twenty-Four

“YOU CAN’T HIDE UPhere forever,” Thomas said to me.

We were in what had been our father’s suite in the late morning. Thomas had picked me up at the back door to my house and sent his assistant back to get my car. The field below us was empty, practice not starting for another hour or so.

“I’m not hiding,” I said, and managed to smile. “My life is pretty much an open book at this point.”

“Everybody was young and stupid once,” Thomas said. “Holy hell, I sure was. And when I got older, I was still stupid, until I went off and got what Dad still called ‘the cure.’”

“You know what else Dad said.”