“There are no grandfathers present,” the voice finally replied, striking a blow to my comfortable reverie.
I am not normally a combative person. I say please and thank you when called upon. But there were times my Irish temper blew the top of my head—
Seeing the gleam in my eye, Nicholas grabbed my elbow and jerked me down the stairs. “Come along. We can take a hotel room and discuss this.”
EG scampered for the gate without waiting.
I shook him off and returned to slam the knocker again. “What have you done with my grandfather?” I shouted at the sphinx, rattling the door.
And I was serious. I remembered this house. I remembered a tall man with thick pepper-and-salt hair and a bristly mustache, and I wanted his hugs back again. If these monsters had done anything to my grandfather, I’d make them pay. Tears actually stung my eyes as I slammed the knocker, and disappointment and grief spilled into the fury. I wanted my childhood back.
I knew I couldn’t have it, but EG deserved a real childhood with kitchen tables and schools and laughing friends. No kid ought to be brought up as I had. I would claw the face off the damned sphinx to give EG the home she needed. This home. Ripped from my subconscious, it had become my reason for living. To hell with Magda and whatever argument had taken us out of our grandfather’s life. I intended to change all that.
All right, so I had a lot fermenting in the murk of my subconscious, and denial was my middle name. No one ever said therapy helped.
“Maximillian no longer lives here,” the voice intoned again in an accent more posh than Nick’s. “He passed on two months ago.”
EG gave her “I told you so” shrug, sat down on the gate step, and began searching the three-inch band of lawn for four-leaf clovers. I knew she’d been covertly hoping her hitherto unknown relative might help Senator Tex, but EG was not only smart, she’s a cynic. My heart bled watching her give up hope.
Apparently as affected by her plight as I was, Nicholas stepped up to the intercom, shot his cuffs to the proper width from his coat sleeve as if someone could see him, and purred with his best British accent, “Then I suggest you open the door to his heirs, or we will be forced to consult with our attorneys.”
The plural was a nice touch. Attorneys, as if we had an entire firm at our disposal. Nick had learned a few useful things in his ritzy schools besides how to discern sexual proclivity in the object of his interest.
If I could have packaged the silence that followed, I’d use it the next time Magda breezed through to tell me I needed a man. Such splendidly evocative stillness would quell a magpie.
To my amazement, one massive door creaked open. In its place appeared a stiff, barrel-chested man several heads taller than me. Graying hair, of indeterminate age, and his clothing of impeccable tailoring, he could have been a foreign diplomat.
I recognized him. “Mallard!” The name leaped to my tongue from the primeval ooze of my subconscious. I had come home. I immediately stifled that nonsense, but I couldn’t crush the excitement as I stood there idiotically awaiting a joyous welcome.
Mallard gazed uncomprehendingly at me in my nondescript denim, then to Nick, who had opted for aristocratic nonchalance. I doubt ed that he could see EG at the gate, fortunately.
“I beg your pardon,” he replied with a frozen expression. “Do I know you?”
“I’m Anastasia,” I repeated, foolish hopes neatly doused. “I put the nick in the Chinese lion, remember?” The gargoyles were staring at me reproachfully. “Why did no one notify us of Grandfather’s death?”
“Mallard, the door is open,” a mechanical voice proclaimed from the interior. “Do you need assistance?”
Looking as if he’d swallowed hot coals, Mallard glanced over his shoulder, back to me, and heaving a mighty sigh, stepped out of the way. “We have visitors, sir.”
I brushed past, grateful to be out of the sticky heat and in the cool dimness of a long corridor. No wonder I had a penchant for dark basements. I’d spent my formative years in a mausoleum. I immediately traversed the marble floor to the doorway of the front parlor. The bronze spaniels were still there, and my heart did a little pitter-patter of happiness. I almost expected my grandfather’s voice to call for me. He’d had an accent, I remembered now. Hungarian, perhaps?
“I don’t accept visitors,” the disconnected voice responded—definitely not Grandfather’s gruff baritone.
Now that I was inside, the voice was less mechanical and more male, but it contained as much inflection as a robot’s.
The confidence that I was on home turf intensified. The voice was the usurper. I walked straight up to the brass speaker in the wall as Nick and EG entered. “Then you may leave,” I said with the quiet authority I had to have learned from someone other than my excitable mother. “I will call the executor of my grandfather’s estate and demand an explanation of your presence.”
I would like to have known how that bear of a man died, but I was saving the big guns for last. Questions like that were fraught with emotions, and I wasn’t skilled at dealing with them.
It was far easier to calculate that if our grandfather had died only two months ago, an estate the size of his couldn’t have been legally disposed of without notifying his descendants.
Mallard looked as if he might expire at any moment. Unable to perform such unbutlerish acts as screaming or stamping his foot, he tugged on his stiff collar and turned purple during the ensuing silence.
I ran my finger over the eighteenth-century drop-leaf hall table and nodded approval at the lack of dust. As if I owned the place—which I was quite certain we should since I’d done the research and knew my grandfather had no other family—I swept into the Victorian parlor to inspect further. It hadn’t changed an iota. It still smelled of must, my grandfather’s hair pomade, and stale cigars. I’d never been homesick a day in my life, but I felt the tug of nostalgia now.
“I purchased the house from the estate the day it appeared on the market,” the cold voice informed us through the speaker in the hall. “I suggest you depart the premises and invade Brashton’s territory if you require explanations.”
I raised my eyebrows at Mallard, who tugged even harder at his collar. “The executor,” he whispered.
“You won’t find him,” EG said. Apparently having overcome her earlier fear now that she could see we wouldn’t be met with armed Nazis, she dropped onto the plush horsehair sofa, causing an explosion of dust in the fading sunlight seeping past the maroon velvet draperies.
Alarmed by EG’s warning since she seemed to be batting a thousand, I stuck out my hand to Nicholas. Understanding my gesture, Nick handed over his cell phone. Avoiding contact with my family meant I’d never seen the purpose in owning any additional means of privacy invasion —like cell phones. Besides, I never went anywhere to need one.
“The full name of the firm?” I asked of the air.
The disembodied voice ignored me. The owner was no doubt calling security or the cops. I disliked dealing with authority, but I’d done it enough times to know how, so I wasn’t particularly scared. I was simply trying to tamp down the swirl of memories and anxieties and the overpowering longing not to be ejected from this house that I knew was meant to be ours.
Ever efficient, Mallard produced a business card from a file in the hall table drawer. If I hadn’t grown up in a series of strange situations, this disastrous conclusion to our journey might have alarmed me. But living with my chameleon mother all these years had taught me that all is not as it seemed, which developed my healthy sense of curiosity.
Even dysfunctional childhoods could be useful.
Settling into a high-backed wing chair by the window, I pulled on a drapery cord to let in daylight. I didn’t mind basements, but this room was suffocating with all the heavy velvet and horsehair. The furniture was huge and overpowering. Two of me could fit into the chair.
As if I had all the time in the world, I regally punched in the telephone number on the card and w
orked my way through the phone tree until I had the extension for one Reginald Brashton the Third. A secretary answered. I gave my name and grandfather’s and asked for the executor of his estate. An awkward silence followed.
For the first time in my life, I disliked silence.
After putting me on hold, she returned. “Let me put you through to Mr. Johnson.”
I assumed she’d made a frantic call while she had me on hold. This couldn’t be good. EG’s bored expression said she knew it wasn’t good, but she’d bide her time while I proved it. She’d discovered a shelf of ancient tomes by the mantel, so she was making a good show of not caring if I made an idiot of myself.
Nicholas wasn’t in sight. Neither was Mallard. Presumably, he’d followed Nick to protect the silver.
“Blackwell Johnson,” a frosty baritone said into my ear. “May I help you?”
I repeated the routine in my best virtual assistant voice. I didn’t often have to use telephones, but I knew the clipped tones that commanded respect. Having lived around the world, I had no regional accent to label me, and business-like sentences worked better for me than my mother’s purring flattery. Granted, she could squeeze papaya juice out of barnacles with her charm, but it also came accompanied by voluptuous curves, Slavic cheekbones, and slanted, long-lashed eyes that promised naughty sex.
I might have the cheekbones and the eyes, but seduction had never been my style. I had long ago decided I wanted respect for who I am and not what I look like. Darned good thing since I looked like a twelve-year-old shrimp.
The baritone on the other end of the line cleared his throat. “Ah, Miss Devlin. We have been unable to reach you. Or any of your family. It’s only recently been ascertained that Reginald had not yet notified you. "
I waited. I could hear the nervousness in his voice. This wasn’t going to be pretty, but it might be entertaining. He knew who I was. After years of anonymity, recognition was almost pleasing.
I was still struggling with the concept that Grandfather had died. I mourned the loss of the mustached figure in my memory. He couldn’t have been much more than seventy. Why hadn’t I come here sooner? Look at how much I had wasted, how much I might have learned, had I pulled myself out of my self-centered world. And now it was too late. What else had I lost while hiding?
Rationally, I knew why I hadn’t come here, and that Grandfather was more guilty than I in the avoidance department, but that didn’t alleviate the pall of sorrow and raw guilt.
“Could you please tell me how my grandfather died?” I asked, surprising even myself.
“A debilitating illness. He had been incapacitated for some time. I believe there were several factors, including heart failure.” The lawyer tried to sound soothing and sympathetic, but he failed utterly. He was hiding something. I was certainly in a position to recognize avoidance when I heard it.
The very real possibility that my grandfather had left his estate to the King of Mulgravia or Catholic charities or some such had occurred to me the instant I’d heard of his demise. As much as my instincts told me that this house ought to be ours, I didn’t intend to torment myself with it until I had the facts. But I wanted the facts, now. Blackwell Johnson had said he’d been looking for us. It must be for a reason, and I was frantically praying the house was it.
“We will need your credentials, of course,” the attorney stalled.
“My mother is Magda Maximillian Devlin Bullfinch Hostetter...”
EG produced an address book from her backpack, and I read the list of my mother’s various married names with aplomb, concluding with “the only child of Rathbone Maximillian and owner of this house where I’m standing. I can produce a birth certificate and passport, of course, but at the moment I am in the awkward position of defending my right to stay in my grandfather’s home. I wish to know at once why his direct descendants weren’t notified as required by law and how the estate could be sold without our knowledge.”
Johnson cleared his throat again, but before he could speak, the disembodied voice intervened—this time from a black marble lamp near the chair where I was sitting. “It seems we have a problem.” The intruder’s phrasing expressed no emotion, but his tone possessed a sumptuous male wrath that appealed to the female fury in me.
I glared at the lamp and waited for the lawyer to spit it out.
“It seems we have a problem, Miss Devlin,” echoed from the cell phone. I rolled my eyes. EG waited expectantly. Even Nicholas returned, sipping from an eggshell china cup imprinted with royal purple and gold, his pinkie finger delicately extended. Mallard followed with a silver tea tray of goodies.
We’d found our natural habitat—a mansion with a butler to take care of us and antiques to pawn.
“It seems the estate’s executor cannot be found,” said the attorney, “and we cannot locate his files for the Maximillian property.”
“I paid cash for the house, free and clear,” the lamp intoned ominously, as if he could hear every word said.
Cash? For a house like this? Furnished? Bullhockey.
“Under contract law, a purchase made in good faith is valid, and it is up to the wronged party to prosecute the criminal and recover the stolen proceeds,” the lamp recited.
I remembered that from an on-line contract law class I’d taken when establishing my business. That didn’t mean I had to believe it. I can be an optimist when it serves my interest.
“My grandfather’s executor sold the house without our permission?” I inquired, trying to sort out their wildly conflicting statements.
While I waited for explanation, I idly toted up the sum of the antiques in the parlor. I was certain they were the same ones that had been there in my childhood. Why would anyone move into a mansion like this and not bring their own furniture?
I calculated the furnishings alone would pay for a nice snug cottage in a small town in Georgia. I might know antiques, but I couldn’t hazard a guess as to how much an entire mansion in D.C. might command.
More throat clearing on the other end of the line. I waited. “According to the bank, the Maximillian estate has been cleared from the books and the moneys disbursed,” Mr. Johnson finally admitted.
“Disbursed? ” The Catholics win again? Or maybe Grandfather was generous and left it all to the homeless. That ought to include me. And just about all of his grandchildren. I sure hadn’t seen a check.
“Possibly inappropriately disbursed,” Johnson murmured apologetically. “We cannot determine.”
Chapter Three
A deal is struck and an assignment is given.
The lamp remained funereally silent, perhaps in respect for the massive blow I’d just taken. We may have inherited millions but it was all gone? In two months? Gone?
An earthquake couldn’t have been more shattering. I knew. I’d survived one.
After verifying with the attorney that the children of Magda Maximillian—not Magda herself—appeared to be sole heirs to the estate, I made an appointment to speak with Blackwell Johnson in person the next day. I handed the cell phone back to Nick, trying not to shake too hard. I stared at the faces watching me expectantly.
I was too devastated to even want to kick something. Probably because the only thing in the room deserving a kick was me.
I’d learned to deal with disappointment in my life. It’s no big deal. You dust yourself off and move on. I’d done it dozens of times—on my own. I’d never had the hopes and dreams of someone else depending on me. I watched the curiosity die out of EG’s eyes and the anticipation fade from Nick’s lips, and I knew why Magda kept deserting us. She couldn’t handle the responsibility for all our lives and futures. She could barely handle her own.
But I had spent a lifetime proving I wasn’t my mother. Reginald Brashton the Third, lawyer thief, would be mud beneath my feet shortly. And I would take extraordinary pleasure in rubbing his face in it.
I spoke to the lamp. “Mr. Graham, might I have a moment of your time?” I had learned his name from the
lawyer: Amadeus Graham. At least he was a real human being and not a computer ensconced in the attic somewhere.
“No,” the voice replied curtly. “The house is legally mine, and I wish you to leave.”
He might be right, but I didn’t want to argue the point until better armed. Besides, we had nowhere to go. My instinct for survival insisted that possession was nine-tenths of the law, and commandeering other people’s houses was what our upbringing had taught us.
“I need access to a computer,” I replied calmly. Never let them see your fear. It was surprisingly easier to talk to a marble lamp than a real human being. “I can settle this matter quite amicably once I locate my grandfather’s executor.”
The lamp remained silent.
EG and Nick watched me with fascination. We hadn’t seen each other in a few years, and I’d never been prepossessing. My denim jumper and black cotton shirt hid any womanly attributes, and my feet barely reached the floor. Despite my thirty years, I dare say I looked like Barbie’s wicked younger sister. They had every right to be doubtful.
“With the proper equipment, I can locate Mr. Brashton,” I told EG and Nick as much as the dismissive Mr. Graham. “If I could set up my laptop here, I would be able to find him within a week.”
“Absolutely not.” The voice remained adamant. “This is a private home and not a hotel. You will leave at once.”
He sounded formidable enough to have bodyguards descending on us. I tried to keep a stiff upper lip instead of shivering in my sandals. At least he couldn’t see me, and I could sound bigger than I am.
“I am an excellent research analyst,” I insisted. “If we are forced to leave here, I will find a library computer and research the legality of the deed to this house and the owner’s suspect acquisition of an estate meant to support homeless children.” I could also exaggerate on a moment’s notice.
I had no idea which statement stirred our host’s interest. I simply knew I achieved the result I intended. No bodyguards heaved us out.
Evil Genius Page 3