Countdown

by Fern Michaels

  “You didn’t mention the Sandford name in the piece you and Dennis wrote. They probably think that guy Marks is not going to give them up. Arrogant rich people think like that,” Espinosa said knowingly.

  Ted brought the battered car to a smooth halt. “Here goes nothing,” he said as he settled his backpack firmly in place. “You got everything handy, all your creds? That’s the first thing whoever opens the door is going to want to see. Paste that winning Espinosa smile in place. You ready?”

  “I’m ready,” Espinosa said, getting out of the car. He looked around. The place looked deserted to his eye. He also didn’t see much in the way of holiday decorations. He said so under his breath.

  “I think it’s all about lights more than statues and stuff. Oooooh, look up at the roof and that wire sleigh and all those reindeer by the chimney, and look over there on the side; damn, there must be at least twenty wire things. Wonder what they are. It’s hard to see them against all the snow piled up. How the hell did we miss all that crap lining the driveway? Bet it all lights up at night. That article did say it was a light show once it got dark. Check out the wreath on the door. It’s not even real. The doodads look kind of worn and tattered to my eye, but what do I know! I’m just a reporter, but I want to say, right here and now, that this crap offends my eyes. You might have to digitally enhance it.”

  Ted slapped his head in frustration. “Joe, what was the name of the homeowner who came in second on the decorations? Quick, we might need the name.”

  “Ah . . . um . . . Cornelia something or other ... Wait a minute. Lowden. Yeah, it’s Lowden. Cornelia Lowden. She’s the mayor’s wife. She decorates the mayor’s office, too. She won a prize for that.”

  Ted looked up at the ornate door knocker, which was a replica of the prancing stallion on the sign out on the road. He wondered if the Sandfords raised Thoroughbreds out here in Never Never Land. He lifted the ornate knocker and gave it a good bang. He could hear the sound reverberating all through the house. Loud enough to wake the dead or, at least, someone wearing two hearing aids.

  The door opened suddenly. Fiona Sandford, dressed in a pink pantsuit with a Popsicle-colored blouse, blasted them before they could catch their breath. “How did you get in here and what do you want? This is private property, and you are trespassing.”

  “Ted Robinson, ma’am, and this is Joseph Espinosa. We’re from the Post in D.C. We’ve been trying to contact you for the longest time. We heard about your exquisite Christmas decorations and how you’ve won first prize six years in a row. We want to do a feature story on you along with some other equally talented homeowners. We’ve already scheduled McLean and Leesburg, but we were told they can’t hold a candle to yours. We did send two inquiries to the lieutenant governor’s mansion but never heard back. So, as our deadline is drawing near, we thought we’d take a chance and just ride out here to see if you would be agreeable to letting us show you off a little.”

  Fiona Sandford’s talonlike fingers flew to her bee-stung lips in stunned surprise. “Oh, dear, I’m so sorry for greeting you like that. It’s just that no one comes out here unless they’re invited. My manners are atrocious. Please, come in out of the cold. Can I offer you some coffee, tea?”

  “No, ma’am, we’re good. We would have called, but your number is unlisted, and rightly so, your husband being who he is and all,” Ted said with a smile in his voice. “So, will you grant us the interview? If you say no, then we’ll have to ask Mrs. Cornelia Lowden as our second choice.”

  “Of course! Of course! I can’t let Cornelia one-up me now, can I? We’ve had this ... little Christmas rivalry going on now for a good many years. All in good fun, of course. Just follow me into the great room, and you can see what I’ve done so far. I’m not finished yet. Actually, it’s a work in progress and never seems to get finished until Christmas Eve, for some reason. I’m sorry my husband isn’t here to speak with you. He loves to get into the season and usually he strings all the lights outside, with the help of our barn manager. We have thousands of lights, just thousands. It really is a light show at night,” Fiona Sandford babbled.

  Ted Robinson thought he had seen everything there was to see in the way of Christmas decorations, but his jaw dropped, as did Espinosa’s, when they entered the great room. There was not one inch of space that wasn’t adorned with some ricky-ticky, honky-tonk wall hanging, ornament, or statue. The Christmas tree went all the way to the ceiling and was white and silver, with a mishmash of ribbons, colored popcorn, bangles, and garish ornaments. A tarnished angel graced the top of the tree.

  “What do you think? Am I or am I not first-prize material?”

  “That you are, ma’am, that you are. Joe, make sure you get it from every angle.”

  “I’ve been at this for weeks now,” Fiona said proudly.

  Ted was so dumbfounded at all the junk he was seeing that all he could say was, “I can see that.” He risked a glance at Espinosa, who seemed to be having trouble focusing his camera. Either from laughter or pure dismay that he was actually here doing what he was doing.

  “A collage would be nice, you know, all entrances, exits, and windows so we get the whole picture,” he said to Espinosa, so he would remember the real reason they were here.

  “There’s just so much,” he mumbled.

  “It’s taken me all my life to collect everything. Every ornament, every statue, every card, every single decoration has a story behind it. I’m sure you don’t want to hear them, but they mean so much to me.”

  “Do you have any decorations made by your children over the years?” Ted asked.

  “I do, but I don’t put them out. My children do not share my passion for Christmas, so I don’t bother pretending. Now, if that makes me a horrible mother, then so be it. They aren’t even coming home for Christmas this year. Can you believe that?”

  Ted’s ears perked up. “Really. That’s too sad.”

  “My mother would kill me if I didn’t show up for Christmas Eve. Christmas Day is different; we each do our own thing. It’s Christmas Eve that is important to my mom,” Espinosa said, clicking away.

  “Well, I’m sure you’ll have a houseful of guests if not family. You do want to show off your”—Ted waved his arms about to take in the cluttered, mind-boggling room—“Christmas decor.”

  “In years past, yes. Unfortunately, not this year. I’m just devastated, but maybe doing this interview with a high-quality, top-notch newspaper like the Post, and seeing you bringing to life all my treasures, well, it just might make up for it. The lieutenant governor has so much government business on his plate this year that he won’t even be coming here until December twenty-third. I gave my household staff the time off. They all left yesterday and won’t be back till January second of next year.”

  Empty house. Great. Jack is gonna love this.

  “Well, that’s it for this room,” Espinosa said. “Do you have any other rooms you’d like us to feature?” God, let her say no, he thought to himself.

  “Absolutely I do. I decorate the entire house, including all six bathrooms. Just follow me, and I’ll show you. I so have this passion for reindeer. I wanted one when I was a little girl, but my daddy said no. I was brokenhearted. Now I have over a thousand of them. Isn’t that marvelous?”

  “It certainly is,” Ted said as he tried to tear his eyes away from a giant, plastic snow globe in the middle of the dining-room table. Inside, fake snow rained down as a fat, miniature Santa tumbled over and over. Gold-plated reindeer were spread over every square inch of the table.

  Ted couldn’t help himself when he said, “Guess you’re eating Christmas dinner in the kitchen, huh?”

  Fiona Sandford thought that was the funniest thing she’d ever heard. “We’ll eat off trays in the family room. It took me too long to set all this up, and I don’t want to disturb the arrangement.”

  “I don’t blame you,” Espinosa mumbled.

  “Do you get the Post way out here?” Ted asked, hoping to move thi
ngs along.

  “I read it online every morning. My husband insists I keep abreast of what’s going on. I do like the paper.”

  “What did you think of today’s article about what went down in the SE section of the District?” Ted asked nonchalantly as he pretended to admire a fat Santa with a green sack of tiny, wilted-looking packages. He racked his brain to remember where he’d seen a duplicate of what he was looking at. And then it came to him—the Dollar Store.

  “Why would you ask me something like that?” Fiona asked, suspicion ringing in her voice.

  “Because I’m a newspaper reporter and that’s what we do; we ask questions and hope for feedback. I guess you don’t have an opinion. That’s okay, a lot of people don’t. I’ll tell you who I really feel sorry for; it’s that guy who runs the management company. He’s going to go down, and he’ll take all his slum-landlord clients with him. So, Mrs. Sandford, we’d like to take some pictures of you with all your treasures. We have another thirty minutes if you’d like to change into something... festive. Or we can just shoot you as you are. You look lovely, but pink isn’t exactly a Christmas color. The decision is entirely up to you. This article is about you, so it won’t matter if your husband is in any of the shots or not. I’m sure we can dig something out of the archives if we change our minds.”

  Fiona suddenly looked angry, frustrated, hopeful in quick succession, as if she couldn’t make up her mind. “What? Did I say something to upset you? Was it that your husband won’t be in the pictures?”

  “No, no, not at all. Yes, I would like to change into something more formal. Would you like something to drink before I change? There’s coffee in the kitchen. Help yourselves. What did you mean when you said that person was going to go down?”

  “Oh, that!” Ted shrugged. “I’m just going by what that rich guy promised to do, which was go to the ends of the earth to dig up the owners of those slums. He meant business. He’s one of those dog-with-a-bone kind of guys. You’d best hurry, Mrs. Sandford; we don’t have much more time. Do you want us to send you the proofs, so that you can pick the ones you’d like us to put in the feature?”

  “Well, of course. That would be lovely,” she said, tottering away on her spike-heeled shoes.

  The minute Fiona Sandford was out of earshot, Espinosa hissed, “Tell me this is some damn nightmare, and we’re both going to wake up any second now.”

  “I wish I could. Did you get pictures of the locks on the door. I didn’t see any kind of alarm panel anywhere. Did you?” Espinosa shook his head. “Take a picture of the lock on the back door. The locks look pretty ordinary to me. Jack is going to want to see everything.”

  “She got a little antsy when you brought up the property-management company.”

  “I saw that, but I also saw that the woman is incredibly vain, and this little photo shoot means more than what went down out in the SE. When we leave, and she has time to think about it, it might be a different story. I think we need to nail down where the two kids are going to be for Christmas and verify it. That’s the first thing Jack is going to want to know.”

  “Yoo-hoo!” Fiona trilled as she whirled and twirled for their benefit. Ted longed for sunglasses. Espinosa gulped and almost choked. “The pictures will be in color, right? I’ve had this outfit since I was nineteen. It was the first thing I bought with my very own money. The material is called taffeta, in case anyone asks. It’s metallic and is really festive. It more or less blends with the Christmas tree, if you know what I mean. Each year, I have my husband take a picture of me by the tree. The top is all hand-sewn, multicolored sequins. You couldn’t touch this outfit today for under three thousand dollars and mind you it only cost me twenty back in the day. I so treasure it.”

  Espinosa had a fit of coughing. He brought up his camera and clicked and clicked. “Smile. Show me some pearly whites.” The bee-stung lips parted in a garish smile. “Okay, now point to that glorious parade of reindeer by the fireplace. Walk over to them, bend down, adjust their collars. Ah, perfect! You’re a wonderful subject to photograph.”

  “Thank you for saying that. What about the interview?”

  “Tell me if this will work for you, Mrs. Sandford. I’ll type up the questions and send them to you via e-mail. Write as much as you want, and if there’s anything I don’t ask, feel free to include whatever it is you want said. I’m willing to work with you one hundred percent. I just wish everyone was as nice and cooperative as you’ve been. Give me your e-mail address please.”

  Fiona rattled it off, and Ted wrote it down. Almost as an afterthought, he asked, “Where will your children be this Christmas if they aren’t coming home?”

  Fiona’s face darkened. “Faylan, my daughter, is going to Texas to spend Christmas with her boyfriend’s parents, and Addison is going skiing in Colorado. Sometimes, children are very thoughtless.”

  “Yes, that is true. Well, thank you very much, Mrs. Sandford. I’ll be in touch later this afternoon with my interview questions. If I don’t see you again, have a wonderful Christmas.”

  “You, too, Mr. Robinson. Thank you also, Mr. Espinosa.”

  Outside in the frigid air, Espinosa ran to the car, certain he was going to explode. Ted climbed into the car, turned on the engine, and burst out laughing. “That was a piece of cake. Soon as we get clear of this house, I’m going to text Jack. Start uploading those pictures to him.”

  “All of them?”

  “Every single one.”

  “I hope he made out as well as we did with Mr. Marks,” Espinosa said.

  “I’m sure he did. Okay, now key in the location of the mayor’s office. We need to scoot over there and take a few pictures to make this all look legitimate. Then head over to the Lowdens’ home and shoot a few from outside. Then we’re done here.”

  Chapter 6

  Jack parked his car, looked over at Cyrus, and said, “You gotta stay in the car, buddy.” He reached into his pocket for a chew. “Don’t let anyone steal you. If anyone comes near the car, blow the horn. You know how to do that.” Cyrus looked up at his master as if Jack was an idiot and growled. “Well, sometimes you forget, Cyrus.” The shepherd growled again, which meant, get real oh Mighty Master. Jack grinned as he made his way out of the busy parking lot and headed toward the office building that housed Lionel Marks’s management company. He really loved that dog.

  One look at the ornate lobby of the building he’d just entered told Jack he was in a high-dollar building. Marks had to be paying top dollar for digs like these. He signed in at the information desk and received a pass. He walked over to the elevator and pressed the button. He looked around, surprised that no one else was in the lobby. He looked up at the large sign next to the elevator that listed the tenants and their floors. Inside the elevator, he pressed the number eight and waited for the door to close. The elevator shot upward so fast, Jack lost his balance. When the door opened, he gawked at what he was seeing. Green marble floor, a horseshoe-shaped desk with what looked, to his trained eye, like a blow-up doll. Bleached blond hair, heavy makeup, scarlet lips that matched the polish on her long nails. Chesty. Low-cut blouse. Eye-catching to say the least. Jack offered up what he called his killer smile and said he would like to see Mr. Marks to ask him to take over his account. “I don’t have an appointment, I’m sorry to say. I’m just in town for a few hours, and it has to be now, or else I’ll have to find another management company.”

  “You really need an appointment, sir. I can probably fit you in tomorrow late afternoon, but today is not going to work.”

  Jack leaned over the desk, and said, “How about this? You go in and tell your boss I have a block of twelve condos in Watergate and four properties in Georgetown and two on Wisconsin Avenue. I can sign a contract right now, but it has to be right now because I have a flight to catch that I can’t miss.” He let her see the hundred-dollar bill in his hand that was meant for her if she cut through the I’m-too-busy-to-talk-to-anyone crap. Before Jack could blink, the blonde snatche
d the bill, and said, “Wait right here, and I will see what I can do.”

  “Money talks and bullshit walks,” Jack mumbled under his breath as he walked around the entryway and stared at the artwork on the walls. He was no art connoisseur, but what he was looking at looked like quality, pricey artwork. Jackson Pollock and Jasper Johns. Nice. Very nice.

  While Jack was viewing the art on the walls and checking out the two doors that led away from the area he was standing in, Lionel Marks was berating his receptionist. “But, sir, he said he had a block of twelve condos, plus properties in Georgetown and others on Wisconsin Avenue. You can’t turn that down! Besides,” she said brazenly, “you will owe me a finder’s fee because I could have sent him away, but I didn’t. He has a plane to catch. What do you want me to tell him?”

  Marks forced himself to calm down. What the hell, he’d snag the retainer, talk to the guy, and leave him in the dust. Since he wasn’t going to claim the destruction of his car in SE, someone had to pay for it. Why not this guy? “Okay, send him in, but tell him I only have ten minutes.”

  The buxom blonde tripped her way back to the foyer on her stilettos, and said, “Mr. Marks is making an exception and can give you ten minutes. Follow me, sir.”

  Once inside Marks’s office, Jack extended his hand, and the term sleazeball came to mind. “Mitchell Tremaine. Call me Mitch,” Jack said. “So, are you interested in representing me? I hate to put a rush on things, but I have a plane to catch. I want to warn you that the management company I just fired cooked my books. I will not tolerate malfeasance. I am prepared to deposit a hundred thousand dollars in an escrow account to cover maintenance. Whatever is left at the end of the year is yours. Plus a ten-thousand-dollar bonus paid out December thirty-first. If we sign a deal, it’s win-win for you as there are only a few weeks left till December thirty-first. I will fax you a list of the properties. My lawyer will review your contract, at which time the money will be deposited in the escrow account. I assume your retainer is the same as every other management company’s I’ve dealt with—fifty thousand dollars. It will be paid when the contracts are signed. I’ll be back in town in ten days. Can we do business, Mr. Marks?”