House on Fire

19

Well, I’d been warned. The family was instinctually suspicious of me. I was like a virus invading the bloodstream, and they were sending out their antibodies. I felt sure I’d neutralized the security guy with my fake McKinsey texts. He’d be thinking his source at McKinsey had made a mistake. Not that I was an impostor.

But Natalya surprised me. How suspicious she was. She knew how unpopular she was with Kimball’s kids and what lengths they might go to to expose her if possible. So she was right to suspect me, an outsider. She clearly was a survivor and wasn’t going to take any chances. She was someone to keep an eye on.

Which made me wonder whether Maggie was going to cause me problems. What she was here for. Whether she was trying to get into Dr. Kimball’s private files as well. Or maybe she had some other agenda, some other reason for being here undercover. I wondered whether Sukie had any idea her brother had hired a private investigator too.

Fortunately, cake and coffee and champagne were over fairly quickly, and the old man went back to his elevator with his young Natalya. The security chief left. The kids were racing around the room, and one of them broke a plate. Someone hit someone else. Tears were shed. This was so clearly not a house designed for kids. It was like living in a museum.

I was expecting some sort of after party with the siblings, drinks in the game room or whatever, and more opportunities to schmooze with — interact with — the adult Kimball children. Also greater opportunity for my cover to be blown. But the party broke up shortly after the old man departed. Megan left with her brood to go home. She also lived in Westchester County, in a normal, ten-million-dollar house in Chappaqua about a fifteen-minute drive away.

That left us, Hayden, Paul and his brilliant girlfriend, and Cameron — and Maggie.

Now I had two missions, which was not good for focus. I had to get into the old man’s home office files; that was what I’d been hired to do. But now I also wanted to talk to Maggie. I wanted to find out why she was here undercover too, what she was after. I wondered if she was looking for the same thing I was.

And I wondered what had happened to her these last seven years.

But Paul and his MIT girlfriend went up to their room, or rooms, followed by Maggie and Cameron, who seemed bleary and about to collapse after pounding all that booze.

I put my arm around Sukie’s waist and walked with her up the staircase. I thought it was important to keep up appearances. In case anyone was watching. In my other hand I carried my garment bag with my street clothes.

She led me down the hallway to my bedroom, pointing out the rooms on the way. She silently pointed at a bedroom door that I assumed was her father’s suite. Outside my room I gave her a kiss on the lips, the way real lovers would. She didn’t exactly respond, but she didn’t bat me away either. I think she was surprised. But at the same time she was making it clear that I was to stay within the boundaries we’d agreed on. Keep it strictly professional. Yes, I was playing her boyfriend, but Dr. Kimball didn’t believe in cohabitation before marriage. So it was separate bedrooms.

Mine was a blue-painted guest room with a four-poster bed. On the wall, an antique tapestry. A dresser with folded towels on top.

The next part was hard: waiting until the house was asleep, which I’d worked out with Sukie would be by around two o’clock in the morning. I was too tense to nap. I was as tight as a bowstring. So I lay on the bed and read my email on my phone, then read the news, and thought. I kept checking my watch. The minutes crept by. I thought about Maggie.

I heard nothing from any of the adjoining rooms. Attribute that to top-notch work by artisan stonemasons imported from Italy and their early-twentieth-century craftsmanship. When labor was cheap, and good stone and fine wood were plentiful.

Then I retrieved my tools from the pockets of my suit and placed them in my leather dopp kit, my shaving kit. I changed into sweats and a T-shirt. Lay back down on the bed and waited.

Finally, it was two in the morning.