Celebration (12 page)

And the hooded man seized the Count around the knees, taking him down hard. “One more time, baby,” he whispered even as the Count tried to break free.

Rex came closer and looked down at them, his smile cold. “Come near me, touch anything I own, touch anyone I want, and the whole world will get to see these pictures. They’re quite good shots of you, actually. Anyone would recognize you.”

“No!” the Count roared. “You can’t do this!”

This time he was the one to have a cushion stuffed into his mouth.

“We just did.” The hooded man handcuffed the Count, then threw him on the couch.

The Count struggled to sit upright. Were they going to take turns at him? Bang him again when he was handcuffed? The Count couldn’t even imagine being so used twice in rapid succession.

Rex smiled, obviously guessing his thoughts. “Not that. Even though those were the rules.”

The Count roared into his pillow in frustration, struggling to spit it out but not succeeding.

Rex put the camera into his inside jacket pocket, then leaned on the back of the opposite couch. “Turns out I lied. We were only going to stay until you lost the game and I got my pictures.” He snapped his fingers. “They want to have another show of my photographs at the Eye of the Storm Gallery, by the way. You might want to keep an eye on that.”

He turned to walk away just as the Count finally managed to spit out the cushion.

“How will I know that you’ll keep your word?” he shouted.

“You’ll just have to trust me,” Rex said with a smile.

The hooded man laughed a little, then followed Rex.

“You can’t leave me like this!” the Count roared.

“Actually, we can, but it’s not hopeless.” The hooded man gestured to the house at large. “I hid the key for the handcuffs on our way in.” He nodded confidentially. “You’ll want to get them off soon.”

“You can believe that.” The Count was scanning the room, looking for a likely hiding place.

“What my friend isn’t telling you is that he delayed the alarm notification on your system by thirty minutes.”

“Cool trick I learned in jail,” the other man said with a smile.

“Jail?” The Count was wondering what other souvenirs that man might have from his incarceration. “You mean it’s going to alert the authorities?”

Both men smiled.

Of course. That’s what the system was programmed to do. The alarm company would call first. He looked and saw that the phone jack had been ripped off the wall. He wouldn’t be able to answer the phone and keep the police from breaking down the door.

They’d find him like this.

The Count looked at the clock on the mantle in terror. “But you’ve been here almost that long.

“Twenty seven minutes actually,” the hooded man said.

Rex nodded. “Which is why it’s time to go.” He waved. “Thanks for the champagne, and the insurance. Have a good life.”

They turned to leave, but the Count didn’t care. Where could they hide a key? Could he find it in time? Were all the phones disconnected? Were was his cell phone, and the number for the alarm company?

He didn’t have enough time.

He was terrified to be found like this, handcuffed and alone in his own home. It was a violation of the image he worked so hard to project. The Count hadn’t really needed an incentive to look for the key, but he had one anyway. He started to nudge boxes from the mantle and pulled out table drawers with his feet, his heart racing as the minutes ticked away. He was sweating in terror, his heart racing so fast that he thought he’d have a heart attack. He wanted vengeance on Rex and on his partner-in-crime, a long nasty vengeance that would teach them both not to mess with him...

The Count had a thousand violent thoughts by the time he found the key in the letter holder on the table in foyer. He was trying to get it into the lock just as the alarm began to ring. The phone rang, somewhere in the house. The Count threw the cuffs down and ran after the sound, discovering that there was still a working phone in the kitchen. He was out of breath and still naked when he answered.

He gave the password but hesitated at their question. As much as he wanted to get even, he knew that if he set the police after Rex and his accomplice, he might have another visit like this one, and he wasn’t getting any younger.

Plus Rex had those photos.

“Oh, I’m terribly sorry,” he said to the operator. “I heard something break and I hit the panic button, but it turns out it’s just that silly cat of mine. She broke another lamp. I do apologize for my mistake.”

“That’s no trouble, Mr. Rossini. It happens all the time. We’ll cancel the alarm, and you’ll need to reset the panel.”

“Of course.”

“Please be sure to let us know if there’s anything else we can do.”

The Count hung up the phone with a sigh of relief. His champagne was gone, his debt with Rex was settled and he smelled. He’d have a shower, clean up the living room, then take the first flight that was departing from the airport, no matter where it was headed.

It was time to move on.

* * *

It was mid-afternoon, London time, on Wednesday, and Rex was wide awake.

He was still thinking about the incredible document Julius had given him the night before. He’d been surprised when the lawyer had called him just after he checked out from his hotel, but hadn’t had time to go to the lawyer’s office before the flight despite his curiosity. Against all expectation, Julius had offered to meet him at the airport, his voice filled with an unexpected urgency.

They’d had a quick meeting by the check-in counter. Julius had handed him a folder and said they’d talk about its contents in England. Rex hadn’t had time to even open the folder until he was through security and sitting in the departure lounge.

Whatever he had expected, a proposal from Joanna to write a book documenting and celebrating the Plume hadn’t been it.

It had taken him a few minutes to wrap his mind around the idea, and not much longer than that to fall in love with it.

Rex had spent the entire flight reviewing Joanna’s presentation and her projected costs and revenue. He admired what she’d done already, then made a copy of her file and began to augment all with his own comments. He compiled lists of what he could contribute and suggestions for photographs. He considered how interviews could be done and presented, and who would be the best candidates to interview. He sketched layouts for pages and defined sections for the book. He made lists of documents he needed to find, then began a marketing plan.

The whole project was exciting, and the perfect way to commemorate what he and Athena had achieved. He’d have to have her agreement, as well, but the more fleshed out the idea became, the more convinced Rex was that she’d find it irresistible.

It was such an enticing idea that he couldn’t leave it alone.

His mind was still buzzing with the possibilities when his flight landed and he’d arrived at Athena’s townhouse on a euphoric high. Her housekeeper, Mrs. Lee, had fed him a wonderful breakfast, as promised, and shown him to an elegant room. Rex knew he should have been able to sleep, but he had no luck.

There was so much to think about and even more to do.

He paced for a while, then went in search of Mrs. Lee. Working out would help him clear his mind. It always did, and Athena wouldn’t be Athena without easy access to a gym. Mrs. Lee confirmed that there was a gym in basement, just as he’d suspected, and gave him a ring of keys.

“The keys to the kingdom,” she said with a knowing smile. “Don’t get lost.”

Rex didn’t reply to that. If Mrs. Lee thought he could get lost in the basement of a townhouse, then she didn’t have a lot of respect for his intellect.

Rex held that thought only until he got to the gym.

His first impression was that the gym was too big. He stood at the bottom of the stairs and looked, comparing his memory of the space above with this one. He had a pretty good idea of the footprint of the townhouse, at least he thought he did, but the gym couldn’t fit.

Maybe it was the mirrors that lined the walls, but Rex didn’t think so.

He paced it off, curious, and decided that the main weight room
would
fit under the house. The next part of it, though, the room that contained the lap pool, couldn’t possibly be beneath Athena’s townhouse.

Was it under the adjacent one?

Rex was too intrigued to work out. He jingled the ring of keys that Mrs. Lee had given him, remembered her comment, and went exploring.

After about half an hour, Rex was pretty sure he’d figured it out. The block that contained Athena’s townhouse also included four other townhouses that appeared to be the same. Hers was right in the middle. But the gym and spa spaces branched to both the left and the right from Athena’s staircase, and Rex was pretty sure they extended under the entire block. He found sealed-off doorways and more than a few locked ones. The keys Mrs. Lee had given him didn’t open these, only the interconnecting ones between the sections of the spa.

As far as he could tell, the foundation walls for each townhouse remained mostly intact, with just a single doorway cut into each one. The stairs to Athena’s townhouse remained the main staircase, and there were fire exits at either end. Rex also found what looked like an elevator door at one end, but it required a key he didn’t have. The ceilings were high throughout the spa, and Rex wondered whether they’d always been that way or whether Athena had had the floors excavated.

It was a beautiful, bright and welcoming space. The spa had every amenity and the latest equipment. There were tanning beds and heat lamps, weights, rowing machines and stationary bikes, the lap pool, two large change rooms with lockers and showers, a massage parlor and a sauna. An industrial laundry took up a lot of floor space at the end with the elevator, its racks filled with fluffy white towels and bathrobes.

Rex paced it off again as he considered the space. Did the owners of the other townhouses know that Athena had appropriated their basements? He could easily imagine her feeling entitled to do such a thing, but couldn’t imagine anyone not noticing the sound of the construction work that must have been done down here. It all looked new.

Also, she was sleeping with Julius and Julius had visited her here. Any hint of such illegal activities would send Julius to the moon, and he was observant.

No, there was more going on.

Rex went back upstairs, trying to solve the riddle. He was quite enjoying the mystery of it all and wanted to figure it out before he saw Athena.

If the basements were linked, what about the other floors?

On the main floor of Athena’s townhouse, there was a large foyer with a staircase, then apparently a large room to the left and a smaller one to the right. A dining room nestled behind the smaller library and the kitchen extended across the back of the house. This floor didn’t challenge his expectations of its size in any way.

Rex climbed the stairs to his bedroom on the second floor, thinking. Athena’s rooms were on the third floor, according to Mrs. Lee. Rex didn’t doubt that Athena used the whole floor with closets, a generous bath, bedroom and office. She wasn’t one to skimp on her own luxury. He peered up the stairs, seeing that they extended one more floor beyond that. There must be an attic. He remembered the mansard roof that graced the entire row of townhouses and guessed that the attic was fairly large.

How was Athena going to get hundreds of people into this townhouse for the party?

Why would she want to have such a big spa?

Rex was starting to have an idea.

He returned to his room and shut the door. He paced it off, eyed the closet and tidy ensuite, and guessed there could be four such rooms on this floor. A couple of them might be smaller, but they’d be roughly the same.

The windows in Rex’s bedroom faced the leafy park in the middle of the square. There was a fireplace between the two windows with an elegant mantle. The back wall of his room would be a common wall with the room behind. The headboard of his bed was against it. When he stood with his back to the windows, the right wall was on the side of the foyer and stairs. The door to the bedroom was in the middle of that wall, the closet toward the back and the ensuite toward the front of the house. The bathroom also had a window overlooking the park, although its windows were frosted.

That meant the wall on Rex’s left, opposite the door to the stairway, would be the common wall with the next townhouse.

If there were openings to secret passageways, they wouldn’t be where the furniture was placed. Rex smiled that there was no furniture placed along that wall. He’d admired the paint in the room when Mrs. Lee had first shown it to him: it created the illusion of a paneling with scrolls in between.

It didn’t take long for Rex to figure out which panel hid a real door, not once he knew what he was looking for.

The door had a latch, not a key. He opened it cautiously and peered into the corridor hidden behind it. The corridor ran to the back of the house, where it appeared to meet another broader passageway that extended both left and right. There were glass blocks high in the back wall at the intersection, which admitted some light. He could see three doors in this small passageway between the one he stood in and the back. Two were on the opposite wall.