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The sort of woman whose car was littered with a week’s debris: old coffee containers and take-out cartons, and an assortment of clothes intended for the cleaners—whenever she found the time to get them there.
    In fact, nothing could be farther from the truth.
    She was thirty-seven years old, tall and slender, with the short blond hairdo of a network anchorwoman, impeccably dressed in a simple but expensive beige suit. There was no run in the pantyhose that sheathed her long legs, and her sand-colored suede pumps were pristine and unscuffed. Her makeup was minimal but perfectly applied; the mocha lipstick outlining her full soft-lipped mouth, the brown liner adding a faint emphasis to her large sapphire blue eyes, and the faint, haunting scent of Nocturnes, by Caron, that seemed to enfold her.
    Mal Malone was known as “the TV detective.” On her prime-time show she followed up violent cases of murder, of fraud in high places, of sex scandals in Washington, and of Mafia drug-running in Miami.
    She was famous for taking up the causes of forgotten murder victims, after public outrage had died down and the media had gone on to the next sensational case. With the assistance of the DA, she would delve out every detail, then reenact the crime on TV, jogging the memories of potential witnesses who might just remember something crucial.
    The public was riveted by her. She had her finger on the nation’s pulse. She knew what was bothering them and she showed them why.
    It was debatable whether Mallory Malone was a beauty. Sometimes she looked breathtaking; at others she looked downright plain. It all depended on her mood.
    When she was up and hot on a case, waves of energy lit up her face with a thousand watts of candlepower, giving her skin a golden glow and turning her eyes luminescent with concern. And at television award shows and dinners, she was ravishing in her trademark plain evening dresses in her favorite muted colors, the low necklines showing off her pretty shoulders and breasts.
    On other days, less frequent now, Mal Malone, the famous TV personality, seemed to disappear into the background. She could walk down Fifth Avenue and not a head would turn in recognition. The golden hair would be slicked back, lacking life and luster. The expensive jacket would somehow look as though it had come from the bargain sale racks. And the glow of vitality, the curiosity, the intelligence that had propelled her into the spotlight would be dimmed like a TV screen fading into a pinpoint of light before being extinguished altogether.
    Nobody but Mal understood the phenomenon, and she chose not to explain it to anyone. She was a woman who kept her own secrets, but it was an image that haunted her.
    Most days, however, Mallory Malone was on top of the world. This morning, she was on her way to London to interview a voluptuous young American actress who had just become engaged to a man four times her age: a billionaire with a not-too-perfect past and a hunger for more future than was left to him.
    Mal had charmed the happy couple into appearing on her show, knowing that the actress was eager for publicity. She was flattered to be interviewed, though Mal had warned her that she would be asking some “impertinent” questions of a personal nature.
    “Oh, I know what you mean,” the young actress hadcried, delighted. “Like, am I marrying him for his billions? Well, I can answer that right now, Mal.
Truthfully
. I’m a woman in love. It’s as simple as that. And if you knew him, you’d understand why.”
    Actually, Mal was not about to ask anything so obvious. Instead, she intended to ask what the rest of the world was asking: Does the lovely twenty-three-year-old have sex with this unpleasant man in his eighties? And if so, what is it like? And if he were not a billionaire, would she even contemplate having sex with him, let alone living out the rest of his days with him?
    Mal intended to interview the billionaire separately, have