And then I realized Patra had left both the CDs and her USB drive on the table where anyone could pick them up. I wasn’t convinced Graham had the ability to leave the third floor since I’d never seen him do so, but Mallard was his flunky, and our butler was home now. The old Victorian’s kitchen was in the cellar, just down the hall from my office. He had a suite right next to it. With a good lock pick, he had access to my office.
As a precaution, I ran Patra’s files through the Dell, verified there was nothing obviously explosive, then uploaded them to the Whiz for a more thorough investigation.
“I was wondering if you’d trust me with that information,” the intercom said dryly.
This is the reason I usually turn off the machine. Admittedly, I have trust issues, but I’d conquered a few of them where Graham was concerned. He’d let us stay here when he didn’t have to. He’d helped us save EG from a kidnapper. While I resented his high-handed authority, he was currently on the Good Guy side of my list — except for that owning my house business.
I sat back and began scrolling through the pages that Graham was apparently reading as we spoke. “Trust? What does trust have to do with it? They’re Patra’s files. Her privacy is the concern here, not your nosiness.”
As usual, he ignored my snark. “Patrick Llewellyn was a brilliant man who despised Broderick. You won’t be able to run your usual search on his private data. He learned coding from the British army. I’m sending you links to several databases that might help unlock the code he’s using.”
My eyes might have popped out of my skull except Nick chose that moment to arrive home. I could hear him singing overhead and cheerfully greeting Mallard. He’d apparently found better libations than the fresh orange juice and champagne I’d asked Mallard to have ready for him.
Since the intercom light had gone out, I assumed Graham was done with me. I made a mad dash for the stairs. Nick was waiting for me with a big grin. Even though he was wearing grubby cut-offs and a fishy-smelling polo, I flung myself into his arms and nearly bowled him over.
We might not do affection in our family, but enthusiasm comes with the drama queen territory. He swung me around in circles until he staggered.
“That was fun. When can we do it again?” he asked, dropping me back to the floor under Mallard’s unsmiling reproof.
“The staggering or the Caribbean?” I inquired.
“The catching of sniveling thieves. The bondsman you sent was a hunk and a half, thank you!” Tanned to a golden brown, with new gold highlights in his disgustingly blond hair, handsome Nick looked as if he’d been born on a yacht. Knowing Magda, maybe he had.
“I didn’t think you were into blue collar hunks, but whatever works. I hope next time you go sailing, we can all go with you.”
Nick shook his shaggy hair. “I’ve found a buyer for the Patsy. If I never have to sail it again, it would be too soon.” He held out the front of his striped shirt with disgust. “Verify the value of the yacht, if you will. I have a cash offer of half a mil. And now I’m off to bed to sleep for a week. Or until I go back to work in the morning.”
He stumbled toward the stairs, met Patra coming down, gave her a hug and an air kiss, and ascended in a cloud of eau de poisson. Fish and lack of dry cleaners would explain his dislike of yachting. Nick favors tuxes and delicate sauces flavored in fresh herbs with veggies. Fish that stinks isn’t his forte. If he had to gut his own meals these past weeks, we’d be going on a no-seafood diet for a while.
Petra stared after our normally sartorial perfect half-sibling in astonishment. “What happened to him?”
“I’m assuming he sailed without crew to protect his prisoner. I’m sure we’ll have the whole story later. Your father’s files may be coded. Eat while I start looking into them.”
I dashed off, trying not to gloat too much over the cool mil we’d soon have in our coffers. I, of all people, knew money corrupts. I’d much rather have the house. But it takes money to run a house like this. No mixed feelings here, no, sir.
I began sifting through Graham’s code websites using various seemingly innocuous documents from Llewellyn’s files. While the programs did their thing, I had time to start ticking off my to-do list.
Grandfather Max had left everything to his daughter Magda’s children — which divided our funds worse than was immediately apparent. Five of us had more or less grown up together. A sixth, who would be a couple of years older than EG had he lived, had died in a fire-bombing I hadn’t been able to prevent. Poor little Antony was the reason I’d gone ballistic when Magda had become pregnant with EG. We couldn’t protect the kids she already had. Adding another to the menagerie had been more than my heart and soul could bear at the time.
After that, I’d sworn off all religion along with my parents’ Catholicism and walked out. I eventually flew to the U.S. and hid, until EG had found me.
And now here was Patra, leading trouble straight to our doors again. All of which left me debating whether I really ought to provide the home we’d never had — or just parcel out the funds and be done with it and them.
I really wasn’t liking that last idea, but I hadn’t been appointed ruler of the world either. And there was still another issue that I wasn’t entirely certain the others realized. As the oldest, I’d always been Magda’s secret keeper, and she had more secrets than even I knew.
But I knew about the twins. They’d been born in the eight-year gap between Patra and Tudor. Patra might be too young to remember. Nick had been off getting educated in England, courtesy of his lordly father. Magda had been living in the Rand outside of Johannesburg with a South African diplomat. The twins had been adorable, more coffee colored than white, a boy and a girl. They’d been kidnapped by their father’s family, and I hadn’t seen them since. They’d be about twenty now, and I saw no reason they shouldn’t be included in our bounty.
Magda never spoke of them, but I was betting our Mata Hari had never stopped looking for them. Magda isn’t an airhead by any means. She was tenacious and she was smart and as underhanded as the devil. If the twins were alive, she’d know where, and if she hadn’t gone after them, it would be because she’d decided they were better off where they were. Money might change that.
So for now, the funds would only be used to pay the lawyers for the sake of the whole family. I researched the yacht as requested, and learned Nick’s offer was less than Snake Brashton had paid but a fair enough price. I should have asked Nick if he’d coerced the thief into signing over the yacht title so we didn’t have to bring in cops and lawyers. My bet was on Nick’s smarts, but I added the question to my list.
Then I returned to the de-coded documents on my screen. Negative. No coding found. I plugged in some more pages from different folders, and started looking for more coding programs. If Patrick Llewellyn had thought it necessary to use very obscure codes to hide his work, he’d been playing with nuclear material.
And home-burning thieves probably had lots of incentive to be hot on my sister’s trail.
Patra’s perspective
Patra ate the amazing breakfast Mallard laid out for her and almost forgot her agenda. Their family had a butler! And a mansion. Well, maybe they didn’t own either if she listened to pessimistic Ana, but all this splendor had belonged to their grandfather — a man she’d thought existed only in Magda’s fairy tales. They could have been living like kings all these years instead of running one step ahead of creditors or bumming off whoever was unlucky enough to invite them in. She’d like to hear the real story behind Magda’s exile.
But at least the family’s roller-coaster upbringing had made it possible to move in any circle and survive anywhere, which she would need to do if she were to fill her father’s very large shoes. Had he finished his book on the atrocities of war, and the real reason they’d been committed, he might have single-handedly put an end to the Mideast conflicts. He certainly would have exploded a lot of erroneous patriotic beliefs.
It was too late to stop
the damage already done. Her journalism degree was just a piece of paper in comparison to what she’d learned from her father.
Not that she’d ever spent a great deal of time with the late, great Patrick. He’d always been traveling. But his papers were an insight into the man she wished she’d known, and the journalist she wanted to become, so he hadn’t died in vain.
To that end, Patra couldn’t keep relying on her big sister for answers. She had every intention of infiltrating Broderick’s insidious conglomerate and proving that it was cynically and deliberately manipulating information to achieve an agenda that looked blacker and nastier the deeper she dug into it.
She’d ace the interview with Broderick. And then the fun would begin.
Four
Hearing the ancient plumbing gurgling through the pipes over my head that afternoon, I finished up what I was working on and dashed up to the ground floor for Nick’s grand entrance.
EG was home and almost bouncing with excitement by the time he sauntered downstairs after his beauty nap — which meant she was reading the encyclopedia and glancing at the stairs every three minutes. Patra had been out all day and only just returned home. She, too, looked up eagerly from her paperwork.
“What did you do with the toad?” EG demanded the instant Nick entered. “Torture him into returning our money? Are we rich? May I have my own computer now?”
Nick rolled his eyes and looked to me for help. He’s not too much into family decisions. I nodded at the front door, prepared for this. “Celebration time! Get your jackets, we’re going out.”
Last time we had celebrated, we could only afford gelato. Not this time. This time we had money. I was practically dancing in my sandals.
But my main goal in going out was to keep family business in the family. That wasn’t possible in the house with our omniscient landlord. My secondary goal was to give EG the kind of family experience the rest of us had never had.
I’d booked a table at a new Cajun restaurant down the street in Dupont Circle. We’d eaten Moroccan food in Casablanca and Greek food in Piraeus, so we didn’t need an ethnic dining experience, but we’d had very little American cuisine. One of these days we might make it to New Orleans, but for now, this place would suffice.
The zydeco music was catchy as we walked in, and the table was as private as I’d requested. Admittedly, my siblings were dressed a little better for the occasion, but my denim skirt and T-shirt weren’t all that bad. I worked in a basement and didn’t need to dress for the public. Well, except now.
“Interesting choice,” Nick said mockingly, scanning the menu. “Mind if I skip the gumbo?”
“Blackened everything for you,” I agreed. “Next time, you choose. We can still order champagne if you like.”
“I think this is cool. I particularly like the red satin shirt.” Patra nodded approvingly at a roving fiddle player with dark eyes and thick curly hair.
Nick glanced over his shoulder. “Greek, not Cajun. Met him in a bar last month,” he said dismissively.
“Will you quit stalling?” EG said impatiently. “Are we rich? Can we buy our house?”
“No and no,” I told her. “But we have a nice nest egg that gives us options. Let’s hear Nick’s story. He’s the hero of the hour.”
We ordered a pitcher of beer and a pitcher of non-alcoholic punch and Nick took great pleasure in regaling us with his adventures. He could have just called our thieving lawyer a drugged-up pushover and been done with it, but where was the fun in that? So over our meal we heard about Snake Reggie’s wild orgy aboard the yacht that Nick had crashed. The party had ended with the crew mutinying and Reggie trussed in the hold while Nick sailed off one step ahead of the authorities. No one cared enough about Reggie to rescue him or his yacht.
“Do you think we can nail him for Max’s murder?” I asked as the tale wound down. “He was the only one who could have delivered the poisoned envelopes.”
A few months back we’d arrived too late to save our grandfather’s life or our inheritance. We arrived in time to uncover Reggie’s embezzlement, and for EG to be kidnapped by a rogue from a mysterious political cabal called Top Hat. I’d been rescued by a hunk in a tux and diamond cufflinks after I’d wiped the floor with the baddies. Reggie had been part of the mess we were still cleaning up.
Nick shrugged. “Reggie was sobbing so badly by the time I turned him in that his lawyers can probably beg him off on an insanity plea.”
“He can’t afford lawyers. We have our money back,” I said with the satisfaction of knowing the funds were safely transferred back to our account. “He’ll have to be assigned a public defender. I don’t think he has any family left who cares what happens to him.”
Karma paid off. Reggie had hurt a lot of people. It was time he paid the price.
Patra’s phone tinkled, and she held up an apologetic finger as she answered. Her excitement as she talked caught our curiosity. When she hung up, we waited expectantly.
Unaccustomed to this much family interaction, she hesitated.
“Our new family motto is all for one, and one for all,” I informed her.
“That’s a stupid motto,” EG retorted. “Who’s the one and who’s the all?”
But Patra had had time to consider, and she beamed obligingly. “That was Bill. He’s been playing with the audio file I sent him, and he thinks he’s found a match for one of the speakers already. I told him to meet us over here.”
I didn’t like mixing dangerous business with family, but at least she wasn’t bringing her contacts home. “Try not to let your friends know where we live,” I warned.
Nick and EG waited to be filled in, but it wasn’t my story to tell, and Patra returned to admiring the wait staff. Annoyed, EG resorted to her best attention-getting device. “If you mean Bill Bloom, he’s a loser. You won’t get anything useful out of him.”
“So says our very own Cassandra,” Nick said, lifting his glass in toast. “Anyone into making wagers on the outcome of this charming prediction?”
“Not me.” I was on to EG’s pessimistic prophesies. “She’s already run a dossier on all Patra’s connections, and useful is a subjective judgment she gets to call.”
“Bill’s not a loser,” Patra said with irritation. “He’s a geek who knows more than schools can teach him. He took this project and ran with it on just the promise of payment.”
Speaking as an independent contractor and someone who would have given her eyeteeth for a chance at college, I thought that spelled loser, but again, the call was subjective. I’d wait and see what he produced.
“Let’s celebrate by going to the mall again,” EG demanded.
Nick didn’t look as interested as usual, to my relief. Weeks at sea and he’d probably arranged a hot date for the evening. Patra was looking at her watch. I hated disappointing the kid — this was a poor sort of celebration — but I despised the mall.
Tentatively, I suggested, “What if we look at Macs on-line and study what you need first?”
EG lit up like the Washington monument. “You mean it? You’ll let me have my own computer? Can I have a Macbook?”
I’d known it was the Apple store she wanted at the mall. Nick and Patra looked suitably impressed that I’d pushed the right buttons. And then the hunky fiddle player strolled over, and the real celebration began.
A sumptuous repast and pitchers of ambrosia were consumed. Patra swirled between tables, learning zydeco dancing from the appreciative staff. Nick flirted with the wine steward.
A screech of tires and bloodcurdling scream abruptly blared over the racket of the accordion. I looked up from letting EG admire the new Mac desktop on my smartphone. We both glanced to the distant windows, but this was the city. Accidents happened. No one else seemed disturbed, even when sirens wailed. We went back to our own selfish concerns.
Not until the bill arrived, and Patra had returned to the table, frowning that her contact hadn’t arrived as promised, did we notice the police near the entra
nce. We hadn’t been among the diners placed on display in the front window, so we weren’t of interest to the policeman currently interviewing restaurant patrons seated there.
“Would your Bill have reason to dodge the cops?” I asked uneasily as I signed off the meal on the family credit card. With our experience, the cops outside seemed the most reasonable excuse for the no-show.
“None that I know of. Let me call him before we leave.” She punched his name on her phone and wrapped a colorful Pashmina around her bare shoulders, while watching the action on the street.
Other diners were starting to glance around, too. Cops inside pricey D.C. restaurants are not common. The men in blue were being circumspect, but the flashing lights outside had become obtrusive. An ambulance screamed to a halt in the middle of the street, and I was glad we’d walked. A D.C. traffic jam was a spectacle to behold.
“Maybe we should look for a rear exit?” Nick suggested, eyeing the mob gathering outside the door. “That’s looking like a pickpocket’s paradise out there.”
My infernal nosiness really wanted to know what was happening, but practically speaking, Nick was right.
“Ask your steward friend about an exit,” I suggested. “I’ll see how bad it is in front.” As a family, we preferred avoiding authority. As a professional researcher, I liked having information. I lived a life of internal conflict.
I heard the persistent ring of a phone before I reached the front door.
I didn’t like coincidences. My trouble alert radar clamored as I glanced back to see Patra frowning and still holding her phone to her ear. I hurried and caught sight of the street just as a policeman directing traffic located the ringing phone in a pile of leaves in the gutter.
I froze as he lifted it to his ear. If we’d been in Africa, I’d have swung around and herded my chickies out a rear entrance and into the nearest plane right about now. Self-preservation relies on strong instincts.
But this was the United States of America, and we were having an innocent family dinner. I had no reason to expect terrorist plots on our doorstep. But I knew, even before Patra’s expressive features screwed up in horror, that the man she was talking to was the policeman outside. I had less than thirty seconds to decide whether we should get involved.
Undercover Genius Page 3