Джозеф Файндер - House on Fire

Conrad Kimball was not in listening range, and besides, he was busy berating the waitress who kept refilling his coffee. “I get the goddamned cream and coffee proportions just perfect and you come along and splash more in and screw it up,” he was scolding the terrified young woman.

Lowering my voice a bit, I said to Megan, “The man’s eighty years old. How long is this arrangement going to last?”

A sort of giggle escaped her. “Could be forever.” Hastily she added, to cover her slip, “If we’re lucky. My day will come.”

Maggie took another sip from her wineglass and laughed whoopingly about something.

While our dinner plates were being cleared away, someone started clinking a glass with a spoon or something, and the table quieted down except for loud whispering from the kids’ table.

“And now,” Conrad Kimball said, “as is our custom, we move to the library for coffee, cake, and champagne!”

The kiddie end of the table erupted in cheers. Chairs scraped against the stone floor.

Conrad and his fiancée got up from the table.

I got up and came around to join Sukie. We trundled through an arched doorway into a warm, amber-lit room lined with books, antique leather-bound volumes in sets, all color coordinated. More marble busts here, posing in spotlit niches, every ten or twelve feet. Several waiters and waitresses were holding aloft trays of champagne flutes, all full. The kids were given what looked like apple juice in champagne flutes. One of them said something to Sukie that made her laugh, then pulled her over to the other kids.

Everyone gathered around a table on which was a big cake in the shape of Texas. In the northern part of the state was a big red square that I assumed represented the Kimball Ranch, all five hundred acres, where he’d grown up. In the middle of the red square a single candle had been placed. Everyone sang “Happy Birthday,” and Conrad Kimball blew out the candle. A waitress began slicing the cake while Conrad held up a flute of champagne.

He cleared his throat, and the room hushed.

“Everyone has a drink who drinks?” he said. “I’d like to make a toast. Not to myself, but to my family. To all of you. Because right now there’s all kinds of bad things being said about us out there. All sorts of lies. Blaming us for society’s problems. It’s unbelievable.” His champagne glass trembled a bit in his hand. “We have our enemies, no question about it. But you know, a wise man once said, when there’s no enemy within, the enemies outside can’t hurt us. A house divided against itself cannot stand. But we’re not divided, and we don’t have enemies inside the family. We’re all rowing in the same direction. I know it. I know my boys and girls, and we all share a polestar. Because the strength of a family, like an army, is in its loyalty to each other. And thank the Lord, we have ourselves one loving family.” He lifted his glass even higher. “To family.”

Megan said, “Happy birthday, Daddy.”

“Happy birthday,” the crowd raggedly said.

I took a sip of champagne and felt someone grab me by the biceps. I turned. It was Natalya. She caressed my arm.

“Your name is Nicholas?” she said.

Up close I could see that she was a beautiful woman with too much makeup on.

“Nick Brown. Nice to meet you.”

“Have we met before?” She had a thick Russian accent.

“Haven’t had the pleasure.”

“And you and Susan, you have been together long time?”

“No, just met a few weeks ago.”

A waiter handed her a slice of cake along with a fork, then gave me one too. It was an unusual-looking cake, made up of countless thin layers. Natalya forked some cake into her mouth. “Try,” she said. “It’s very special cake. Like a mille-feuille. A thousand layers.”

I tried some. It melted in the mouth. “Very nice,” I said.

“They make this from twenty paper-thin crepes, and in between is pastry cream. Delicious, no?”

“Delicious. I... I saw what you did earlier. With your scarf. That was awfully nice.”

She smiled. “I’m sure Conrad’s children think I am expert at covering things up. Are you?”

“Am I what?”

“You and Susan — you can’t keep hands off each other.”

I smiled. She was being sarcastic.

“Yes,” she said. “I can see chemistry between you two. Please.”

“Excuse me?”

“You are not who you are pretending to be,” she said. Her tone was playful. “You are here for another reason. Did Sukie bring you to investigate me?”

“What’s to investigate?” I said.

“I have always been outsider, all my life,” she said. “One thing people like me very good at is spotting other one.”

“Very good,” I said. “I’d consider myself an outsider too.”

She held up the plate of cake. “You are like this Napoleon cake. Many layers.”

“Thank you,” I said.

She patted me on the arm again as she turned away. “Maybe I will peel back some layers, Nicholas.”

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.