Sex, Lies & Serious Money

25

Chris, from strategic services, had already been through the house with Laurence and had pointed out where his cameras should go. Now he was looking at a plat of the twelve acres the house sat on. “We’ve got something new that will be particularly good outside,” he said.

“Tell me about it.”

“It’s basically a motion-detector camera, but it has an important new feature. If it sees motion, it rotates or pans up and down to zero in on the intruder, then it fires a very powerful strobe light for a fraction of a second. It’s like ten old-fashioned flashbulbs going off all at once and concentrated on one spot. It does two things very well — it blinds the intruder, temporarily, and it scares the shit out of him.”

“I like it,” Laurence said. “Install it.”

“I’ll order it, then work on the interior stuff today. The new stuff will be here tomorrow.”

“Great, Chris, I’ll leave you to it. Let me know if you need anything.”

Laurence went into his new study and busied himself learning to operate the house’s built-in sound system from his iPhone. That done, he chose a classical music station from New York and turned on all the speakers in the house.

Theresa came into the study. “Can you turn that down a bit, please?” she shouted.

Laurence obliged. “Sorry about that. I was learning the system.”

“The books you ordered from the Strand bookstore in New York have arrived. Shall I have them bring the boxes in here?”

“Yes, thanks.”

Two men with handcarts wheeled in fifty or so boxes and followed Theresa’s instructions to set them on the floor near the bookcases. Laurence tipped them. “Shall we put them away?” he asked.

“Sure. How would you like to do it?”

“You tell me what the books are, and I’ll put them where they should go.”

She opened the first carton. “Winston Churchill, history of the Second World War.” She began handing him the books, two at a time, and he put them on a shelf.

“Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.”

They repeated the process and continued until he had a well-organized library of more than five hundred volumes in the bookcases, with plenty of room left for new books.

Laurence surveyed their work and mopped his brow. “I think we deserve a drink.”

“Just as soon as we break down all these cardboard boxes and put them out for the trash collector.”

They sat on the deck facing the Jemez Mountains and let the late-afternoon breeze wash over them. Then Chris came out.

“I’m pretty much finished with the indoor fixtures,” he said, “and they’re up and running. Would you like me to set up your iPhones to run the system?”

“Sure, Chris. Would you like a drink?”

“A beer would be nice,” he said, accepting Laurence’s phone and starting to work. Theresa brought him a cold beer, and he set up her phone and showed her how to run the system. One of the cameras captured them on the deck and the setting sun.

“Wow!” Theresa said. “We’re on live TV.”

“Zoom in,” Chris said.

“Wow again!”

“My guys have done the trenching and laid cable for the outdoor fixtures,” he said. “All we’ll have to do is connect them and set them up. We’ll be on our way to Palm Beach by mid-afternoon.”

“How do the plane connections work for that flight?”

“No problem there. We have a Citation that will take us there, nonstop, with a decent tailwind. Equipment has already been shipped there, and we’ll be at work the following morning.”

“My turn to say wow,” Laurence said. “That’s very good service.”

“That’s what you get from Strategic Services,” Chris said. “Oh, and Viv Bacchetti sends her regards. She’s our boss.”

“Please give Viv our best,” Laurence said.

Chis polished off his beer and said good night, leaving them to the sunset.

“Nice guy,” Theresa said.

“Everybody Stone Barrington has introduced me to has been a nice guy,” Laurence said, “starting with you.”

“I talked to my boss today and made my resignation official. I’ll use up my accrued vacation time, then I’m off their books. He was sweet enough to let me keep my employee discount.”

“Do they have a ready replacement for you?”

“I recommended Butch. He needs a couple more weeks of training, but I think he’ll be good at it.”

“Good for him.”

“I also rented Butch my apartment, with an option to buy it eventually. He’ll box up my things and send them to the Fairleigh.”

Laurence grinned and squeezed her hand. “A step in the right direction. By the way, the Eagles have invited us to dinner tomorrow evening, and I accepted.”

“Oh, good, I like them. Would you play something for me on the piano?”

“Of course. What would you like to hear?”

“Some Gershwin?”

“Coming right up.” He played Gershwin while she got dinner together, then they sat down together.

“I have an idea,” she said.

“Shoot.”

“Why don’t you record a whole lot of things on the piano, then we can listen together at dinner?”

“I like it. There must be a recording studio in town, I’ll see if I can find it.”

The following morning, Chris turned up with the newly arrived outside cameras with their flash warning. While his people were setting them up, he marked the plat of the property with their locations. “I’ve set this up in a way that you won’t blind passing motorists on the road, and, also, I’ve made sure they aren’t pointed at any of your neighbors’ houses. I’m sure you wouldn’t want complaints from them.”

“Good thinking,” Laurence said.

“By the way,” Chris said, “these things will detect coyotes, too. I understand you have them around here.”

“I haven’t seen any, but I’ve heard them at night.”

“You don’t have any pets, do you?”

“No — not yet, anyway.”

“If you get a dog or a cat, it would be a good idea to keep them indoors at night. Remember, coyotes are carnivores.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.”

Chris finished up his work and added the outdoor cameras to the iPhone app. “That’s it,” he said.

Laurence handed him a key. “This is for the Palm Beach house. There’s no security system to get past.”

“I’ll call you from there if I have any questions,” Chris said, then departed.

“I wish I had done the Palm Beach house weeks ago,” Laurence said to Theresa. “Then the tabloids wouldn’t have found us so easily.”