Undercover Genius

by Rice, Patricia

  UNDERCOVER GENIUS

  A Family Genius Mystery

  Patricia Rice

  www.bookviewcafe.com

  Book View Café Publishing Cooperative

  February 11, 2014

  ISBN: 978-1-61138-344-7

  Copyright © 2014 Patricia Rice

  One

  Carrying a stack of library research material, I didn’t see the nose-high spider web covering the mansion’s front door until it plastered my face.

  Startled, I juggled my loot and swatted at the tickly silk strands. Luckily for the web’s perpetrator, my reflexes were quick, and I didn’t drop anything. The brisk October breeze blew me inside as I shouted “EG!” into the towering foyer’s pristine stillness.

  Mallard, our spy cum butler, would never have allowed a spider within the property’s perimeters. I knew who to blame for the sudden acquisition of sticky Halloween decorations.

  “I suggest you repair to the turret with a broom,” a dry voice pronounced from the Waterford chandelier overhead.

  “I’m still not a witch, Graham,” I countered our host’s insult, carrying my treasure toward the basement door. “You may call me Princess Anastasia, if you’re into Disney characters.” The Anastasia part is actually my name. Magda, our mother — who claims to be a Hungarian princess — has delusions of grandeur and named all of her children after royalty.

  Amadeus Graham is our invisible landlord. He thinks he owns our grandfather’s house. Maybe he does legally, but morally, we have the higher ground. Thankfully, he lives in the attic where we never see him. We still suffer daily from his annoying commands.

  Ignoring my commentary, Graham intoned in that irritatingly unperturbed deep voice of his, “Live bats appear to be involved.”

  Oh, crikey. Stealing one of my half-brother Tudor’s imprecations, I dropped my reference material on the priceless Sheraton side table and dashed for the imposing mahogany staircase. Apparently Graham wasn’t commenting on my witchy appearance for a change, but on my half-sister’s behavior. EG must be testing Graham’s boundaries to see what it would take to get thrown out of the first real home we’d ever known.

  I have spent the better part of my life as a doormat for my evilly inventive, peripatetic mother and host of half-siblings. Under Magda’s auspices, we’ve been dragged around the world to live in huts and palaces, but we’ve never had a place to call our own.

  I liked to think, since I moved into my late grandfather’s Victorian home, that I was now in control of my life. Not seeing a lot of difference some days, except now I had the house’s current owner breathing fire down my neck whenever my half siblings got a little too creative.

  Live bats in the belfry would qualify as too creative, on the verge of dangerously destructive.

  I had no idea where Mallard hid the cleaning equipment. Since our nit-picky butler wasn’t here leading the bucket brigade, I had to assume EG had either chased him to the Irish pub he liked on the corner, or she had waited for him to leave on errands before populating the tower haunt she called her room.

  Elizabeth Georgiana, my youngest half sibling, is the reason I ended up here in D.C. I was determined to give her the stable home I’d never had. Some days, it seemed I should have chosen a Bedouin tent rather than a mansion crammed with antiques. But I still had foolish hopes of suing for our inheritance, so I was claiming squatter’s rights for the nonce. EG had to learn to live like a civilized human being sometime.

  “EG,” I said warningly, in my best Ruler of the Palace tone, testing the knob on her door. At the tender age of nine, EG had deliberately chosen the only chamber with an operating lock. I could dismantle it or take a hatchet to the door, but I was trying to respect her privacy, as no one had ever respected mine. The knob wasn’t locked — not necessarily a good sign. “Round up the bats. I want to come in.”

  The door cracked open to creepy Halloween music, and my little Goth peered out. A black net blocked sight of most of the room. “They’re a science project,” she announced. “Bats are good for the environment. They’re not hurting anything.”

  “Except insects and Graham’s patience. Where did you find live bats and should I ask?”

  “They’re in the tower attic. I just opened the trap door. They’re my pets!” If she’d wear her black hair in braids, she’d resemble Wednesday in the Addams family, except prettier. She has our mother’s slanted cheekbones and long-lashed eyes. Today, she’d cut her hair in ragged spikes in front and colored them purple.

  “You can’t take bats to school, and you can’t create your own haunted house until you own one. Get them out of there and close the trap door, or I won’t tell you when Nick arrives.”

  “He’s almost home?” she asked excitedly, forgetting to be a sullen brat. “Did he tear out the turd’s eyes yet?”

  Not a good visual. Yuck. “Bats, out,” I said firmly, shutting the door before the creatures could take it as an invitation.

  Having accomplished my parental duty, I trotted downstairs to return to my professional tasks. I’m a virtual assistant, an invisible researcher, and ghost writer for a number of professors and corporations, Amadeus Graham currently being my primary client. It’s the perfect job for a cellar-dwelling introvert.

  In addition to my normal duties, I was on a mission to save my family’s fortune. Nick was about to return with the key part of the puzzle.

  The business office I’d set up for myself in a previously unused corner of the cellar can nowhere compare to the electronic paradise Graham inhabited on the spacious third floor, but my needs were simpler than his. I did not know, and didn’t care to guess, what our resident spook did that required equipment rivaling the CIA’s. But as much as I appreciated his allowing us to live here, I really wanted to pry him out of our lives before his enemies dropped a bomb on us.

  To that goal, I turned on my computer to check Nick’s progress. I’m the eldest of the Hungarian Princess’s brood. At twenty-five, Nick is next oldest. As a result of Magda’s numerous marriages and affairs, we all have different fathers.

  Nick currently works in a congressional office with EG’s senator father, but he’s taken a leave of absence for a family matter, i.e.: capturing Reginald Brashton the Snake — the executor who sold our inheritance to Graham and absconded with all our funds.

  Using GPS, I’d tracked the yacht that Reggie the Snake bought with our money. We’d located the coke-sniffing bastard in the Caribbean with his off shore bank account. Nick had flown down to retrieve what he could. I didn’t know the full story of how he’d bagged Reggie — Nick is a lousy communicator — but I doubt it involved law officers. That’s not how we were raised.

  Self-sufficient is the politest word for Magda’s brood. Our mother calls herself a journalist, but I’m pretty sure she’s a spy who likes hooking up with power magnates. The result is that no two of us have the same father, and there are a lot of us. Until recently, being the eldest, I’d been the one taking care of my half-siblings.

  No messages from Nick were in my box, but the GPS showed the yacht had almost reached the Chesapeake. I had no notion of where one parked yachts — I didn’t even drive a car. Licenses are hard to come by in the deserts where I’d taught myself to drive in jeeps “borrowed” when the owners weren’t looking.

  I set my latest new toy on the desk — a smart phone in which I’d disabled the tracking device to annoy Graham. I had lots of plans for the money Reggie had better be coughing up, and I was hoping Nick would call soon.

  And then I returned to work researching Broderick Media, a conglomerate that Graham had taken an interest in, or a dislike to. I was deep in the bowels — bad image for a corporation called BM — of corporate infrastructure when the doorbell rang over my head. Si
nce I wasn’t expecting anyone and this was the reason we employed a butler, I ignored it.

  “I’m inclined to turn her away,” the desk lamp said dryly. “We have enough trouble without asking for more.”

  I smacked the lamp in hopes of ringing Graham’s ears. He wasn’t supposed to have his limitless supply of bugs in my office. “We have an intercom, you know.” But I was already on my feet.

  “You turned it off,” Graham reminded me.

  Oh yeah, well, if he had to be technical about it… I hate intrusion while I’m working. So I wasn’t predisposed to appreciate whoever had dared the doorstep.

  I didn’t linger to have words with a lamp and was already half way up the stairs.

  Graham must have used the intercom to inform our visitor that someone was coming since they weren’t battering on the door or bell by the time I reached the main floor. Or maybe they were admiring the trailing pothos vine in the sphinx head that was our speaker. Graham scared off quite a few solicitors with the talking plant. If his presence didn’t irritate me so much, I’d have had to admit that his eccentric habits occasionally amused me.

  I opened the door. I was tempted to slam it again — just because I could and because sibling rivalry thrived — but I maturely refrained. Someone in this family had to be the adult.

  “Ana, it’s you! Looking lovely as ever,” Patra chirped on the doorstep, before rolling her suitcase over my toe and pushing inside without invitation. Her head swiveled as she tried to gobble up all the riches that were our foyer. “And Magda grew up here? She gave this up why?”

  “You could have called to ask,” I said, shutting the door after noting with suppressed delight that the spider web was a little more tattered. Strands of fake silk adorned Patra’s unnaturally gorgeous mop of chestnut hair. “Obviously you talked to someone to find the address.” It just hadn’t been me.

  My half-sister, Cleopatra Llewellyn, had not only inherited the tall, buxom good looks, but the gregariousness and extroverted personality of our mother. Patra is also seven years younger than I am. I’d changed her diapers, so we’re not exactly pals. I could admire her educated sophistication now, but she’d always been one more task on my overflowing list.

  “Tudor said we all own part of this place, so I thought I’d check it out.” She peered into the stuffy horsehair parlor that was actually neat without Nick here to trash it.

  Since Graham had the whole house bugged, I could almost hear him growling, and I hurried to correct her assumption. “We don’t own a thing. The estate executor legally sold everything before absconding with the funds. We’re taking the deal to court.” I threw that in with a large dollop of accusation just to keep Graham on his toes, if he was listening. “Is that all that brings you to DC?”

  Sunny Patra didn’t do irony or sarcasm like the rest of us. Not recognizing mine, she merely headed for the stairs. “No, I have a job offer and an interview and the opportunity was too good to pass up. Is there room for me or do I have to sleep with EG?”

  For a very brief instant I enjoyed the image of bouncy Patra moving in with cynical EG and her bats, but that was the old Ana — the hermit who ran for cover because she knew a family arrival meant trouble.

  I’m still a work in progress, but the mature, newly domestic Ana bit the bullet and replied, “We have room. EG has the turret, Nick the queen mother room. I sleep in the upstairs study. Beyond that, the choice is yours.”

  Well, except the third floor, but Patra is a newly hatched journalist. She’d figure it out.

  “The place is a mausoleum!” she cried, peering into every chamber on the second floor. I couldn’t wait until she reached EG’s. “Oh, look, this one’s in rose and green, how 70’s! Do you think this belonged to Magda?” She rolled her suitcase inside.

  “In her teen years, maybe,” I acknowledged. Of course, Magda had only been eighteen when she’d married Brody Devlin. Would she and my father have taken another room, or maybe the third floor? I’d spent the first four years of my life in this opulence. None of my half-siblings had a memory of our grandfather. I was the only one with vague recollections of a stiff, cigar-smoking man with a mustache.

  “Magda as a teen, the world trembles at the notion! I’ll take this one, if that’s okay. I don’t have any idea how long I’ll be here.” Patra plopped backward on the rose satin cover of the bed and studied the wooden tester overhead. “She had posters taped up there. The tape left marks.”

  I was ambivalent about Patra staying, but at the same time, I enjoyed sharing one of our rare sibling moments. “Probably naked Polaroids. Or dartboards of people she hated. Magda isn’t much into rock stars.” I crossed over to the mantel, lifted the pastoral painting over it, and ripped out an audio wire. “Got gum?” I asked, pointing to the camera hole that remained.

  Patra grinned. “Man, that brings back memories. Chip off the parental block, is she?” She sat up and fished in her humongous purse, not unsurprisingly producing duct tape.

  I’d been blaming Graham for the spy holes, but yeah, Magda had probably picked up some of her perverse habits at home. Grandfather Max had been a secretive troll, although this equipment wouldn’t have been available thirty years ago. It was the attitude that had been passed on. We happily covered the peephole together and returned the boring painting to its place.

  Then I sat down in a rose-silk lady chair and pinned my sister with my gimlet glare.

  “Now no one can hear us, tell me what really brought you here.”

  Two

  Patra’s perspective

  Irritated, Patra glared at her older sister. “Don’t be annoying, Ana. I’m an adult now, with a good shot at a staff position with Broderick Media. I don’t need you to torch my boyfriend’s Jag anymore.”

  Ana had done that, back when Patra was in high school and dating the son of a sheik. Patra hadn’t known he was a jerk until he decided he’d start a harem with her, or add to his existing harem. Her sister hadn’t bothered asking. Ana had simply come riding to Patra’s rescue and clarified in no uncertain terms that an all-female household wasn’t helpless.

  At the time, Patra had appreciated the rescue. She hoped Ana was a little less aggressive these days, because Patra intended to make a career of taking down the arrogant asses of the world on her own.

  “Broderick, hmm?” Ana replied with unconvincing composure. “One of Magda’s buddies? I thought you were working for the BBC.”

  Given their mother’s dubious credentials as a power magnet and Broderick’s influential media consortium, Patra could see the connection. “I didn’t say I was taking the job,” she said defensively. “But BM paid my expenses over here. Is it wrong to want to see my family?”

  “This is me you’re talking to,” Ana said bluntly. “The sister who spent twenty years listening to Magda’s schemes and keeping all of you out of them. You don’t have to tell me what’s wrong, but at least respect me enough to be honest.”

  Patra sat up cross-legged on the bed and tossed her hair over her shoulder. Ana still wore her straight raven-black hair in braids wrapped around her head like an old lady, or Princess Leia. With Ana, it was hard to tell her intention.

  “Look, I don’t want anyone else involved,” Patra said earnestly. “I respect that you and Nick want to give EG a normal life. But I’m not the settling down type.”

  Ana shrugged. “Totally understand that. But maybe I should share a little of what I’ve learned in my normal life. Broderick Media is a privately owned international conglomerate of newspapers, broadcast networks, and publishing companies run by Sir Archibald Broderick. Archie is a notoriously amoral eccentric known to keep house slaves in some of his more exotic mansions, of which there are many. He is currently under investigation for encouraging his employees to hack the telephones of political figures with whom he disagrees, which is apparently anyone who doesn’t believe Archie should do anything he blamed well pleases. And for this jewel of perfection, you would leave the BBC?”

  P
atra glared at her through this recitation, but finally, she relaxed. “Okay, I’d forgotten you’re more Magda than Magda. Although I’ll point out that anyone who reads anything except Broderick scandal sheets knows all this. But you did grab the salient points without touching the more salacious.”

  “And your vocabulary has grown since you called me a dirty, turdy pail of slop. Now that we’ve somewhat established our credentials, want to go back to the original question — what brings you here?”

  “Elizabeth Georgiana!” a furious male voice bellowed in the hall.

  Startled, Patra watched her sister fly off her chair as if they’d been attacked by aliens.

  * * *

  Oh crap, I’d ignored the brat too long. I dashed into the hall. Graham did not normally address anyone except me directly, but I’d cut him out of the loop when I’d cut the wires to Patra’s room. The fury was probably for me.

  A bat zoomed past my nose, aiming directly for the stairwell to Graham’s lair. Okay, this wasn’t just about me. I gestured for Patra to stand back and close her door.

  EG’s door at the end of the hall was shut, so the critter hadn’t come from there. I located her in my bedroom, attempting to secure the window over the massive desk that had once been my grandfather’s. She looked up miserably at my arrival, then donned a defiant expression.

  “Why do you keep your window open?” she demanded as if this was all my fault.

  “To attract your pet bats?” I suggested, leaning over to remove the rod needed to hold up the old pane. “I take it they preferred not to return to the attic.”

  “They were making a disgusting mess up there,” she said as the frame slammed closed. “So I let them out my window. And they came back in yours.”

  “Lesson learned,” I said dryly. “Pets make messes their owners have to clean up.”

  She stared at me incredulously. “I am not cleaning the attic! I didn’t invite them in.”

  “Your bedroom could have looked like that,” I reminded her. “You’d better clean it up before it starts stinking.”