The Sinister Tapestry — Jane McCarthy

Dark-eyed Jenine Royale was thrilled. A spur-of-the-moment invitation had brought the young reporter an unexpected trip home. Home was aptly named The Haven, a huge stone house set amid gigantic pines and rough granite boulders in a California mountain forest. Here Jennie had been raised under the tender tutelage of Henriette Royale---musician, lecturer, world traveler, and mother to seven adopted children---who presided over the estate with the dignity and grace of an aging queen.

Jennie had been separated from Henriette for several years. Caught up in the whirl of a journalistic career in Washington, D.C., she had sipped cocktails with junior senators and visiting dignitaries as a sideline to the more important business of selling her lightly barbed profiles of political personalities. But not even her writer's imagination could have dreamed up the bizarre drama that was unfolding at The Haven.

A dashing young stranger was apparently madly in love with Henriette, now in her sixties. Worse, Henriette openly returned the man's bold affections. Jennie could barely conceal her shock at her adoptive mother's girlish giddiness. Jacques DeFore was a writer, ostensibly preparing Henriette's memoirs, but Jennie distrusted him. She was especially wary of his self-assured proclamations on the subject of love, for to the horrified young journalist Jacques' flattering attentions to her mother spelled only one occupation: fortune hunter!