CHAPTER 42
After a stressful few days and a harrowing drive to Miami I was looking forward to enjoying the beauty of Vizcaya and the art of John Singer Sargent, alone with my thoughts, absorbing knowledge and avoiding everyone. I could relate to Buddhist monks who took a vow of silence. If you didn't talk, you never had to eat your words.
With so much to see at Vizcaya I could have spent years taking it all in. On my way to the rare books room I stopped to admire an eighteenth-century painting hanging in the Adam Library. It wasn't remarkable, just a portrait of three well-dressed children in bright colors, picking apples. The interesting part was that James Deering had been duped into buying it, believing it to be the work of a more famous artist. Not until the painting was restored sev
