AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“You’re the one who should do that, cuz,” says Colin. “It’s your world, not mine.” He cocks a significant eyebrow at Jane. “Don’t tell anyone,” he says, “but sometimes Lucy has to go undercover into the drug world.”
“Voluntarily?” Jane says, staring at Lucy, who calmly reads her book, looking, for all the world, like someone who belongs in an armchair crocheting doilies and eating crumpets. She’s wearing pearls again this morning, around her neck and in her ears.
“Mm-hm,” says Colin. “Often, the only way to recover a masterpiece is to set up a sting.”
“You do that?” Jane says to Lucy. “What do you pose as? A drug dealer? What do you wear?”
“Colin,” says Lucy, putting her book down and fixing her cousin with quiet eyes. “I’m going to invoke my position as family badass and tell you it’s time to shut up now.”
“But, Lucy,” Jane says, “does this mean that last night at dinner, when you said you couldn’t picture the Panzavecchias getting involved in organized crime, you knew what you were talking about? Like, from experience?”
“Yes,” says Colin, looking upon his cousin with amusement. “Lucy knows what she’s talking about. She’s met some of those people.”
“Colin,” says Lucy. Her voice is a warning.
“Well, I don’t see any reason not to believe it,” Phoebe puts in. “If Lucy poses as drug dealers and executes undercover stings, why shouldn’t Giuseppe owe money to mobsters?”
“Sure,” says Lucy, frustrated and sarcastic. “Why not.”
“Lucy recently managed to intercept a stolen Rubens,” Colin says pleasantly, “in the Poconos. She traded a big pile of heroin for it and, once she had the Rubens in hand, called in the FBI, who arrested all the bad guys. It was a great triumph. Then some random carjacker stopped her and stole the Rubens before she could pass it on to the FBI. Very embarrassing. It’s made her a bit touchy. Has Ravi met you yet?” Colin asks Jane, transitioning subjects abruptly. “He’s going to like you.”
“What? Why should Ravi like me?” Jane responds, confused, then suddenly mortified, remembering that Lucy is Ravi’s girlfriend and Ravi is sleeping, shirtless, on her sofa.
“Oh, he likes variety,” says Colin.
“Variety!” says Jane as Lucy claps her mouth shut and sits there looking startled and stung. Why is Colin taking digs at Lucy?
“I’m sure Ravi will barely notice me,” says Jane. “I’m nobody.”
“We’ll see,” says Colin.
Lucy rises to her feet, closes one hand around her book and the other around her phone, and stalks from the room.
“Why did you do that?” asks Jane.
“Do what?” asks Colin.
“Try to make your cousin jealous of me.”
“It’s family stuff,” he says with a benevolent expression. “Don’t worry about it.”
“Okay, but don’t use me as one of your weapons.”
“Good girl,” says Phoebe crisply, nodding at Jane, surprising Jane so much that she can only stare back.
“I can see I’m being ganged up on,” says Colin. “Where’s Philip this morning, Phoebe?”
“Philip was called out in the night,” says Phoebe, a crease of worry appearing in the center of her forehead.
Jane’s eyes are riveted to Phoebe’s face. “Out?” she says. “Out where?”
“For his work,” Phoebe says.
“What did he do, swim to the mainland?” Jane asks.
“Philip knows how to operate a boat. The Thrashes have lots of boats. It happens. He’s a medical doctor.”
“Oh,” says Jane, picturing Philip Okada again with latex gloves on his hands. “His germophobia must make his job difficult,” she adds, fishing.
Phoebe blinks. “His germophobia,” she repeats.
“Yes,” Jane says. “He mentioned his germophobia.”
“It’s a recent development,” says Phoebe.
“Since when?” says Colin. “I didn’t know he was germophobic.”
“It’s not unusual for medical doctors,” says Phoebe. “He doesn’t like to talk about it.”
“What kind of doctor is he?” asks Jane.
“A GP,” says Phoebe.
“I see,” says Jane. “Doesn’t that mean general practitioner?”
“Yes. Why?”
“No reason,” says Jane. “I’m just sorry there isn’t another doctor who can fill in for him while he’s on vacation. I mean, it’d be one thing if he were the only doctor in the world who could attach someone’s brain back to their spinal cord, but lots of people are GPs.”
“My husband is very devoted to his patients,” says Phoebe. “Are you belittling his work?”
“Oh, Phoebe,” says Colin. “I’m sure she wasn’t. Have you eaten enough? Here. Have some fruit.”
“I’m sorry,” says a new voice, speaking with a mild accent Jane can’t particularly place.
They all turn to stare at the East Asian man with salt-and-pepper hair who’s stepped in from the kitchen and stopped just inside the doors. “I forget the way to the receiving hall,” he says, clutching a bucket to his chest. Jane assumes he’s one of the seasonal staff, cleaning for the gala.
“It’s that way,” says Colin, pointing to an exit at the other end of the room. “Pass into the ballroom, then choose the second doorway on the left.”
“Thank you,” says the man. He disappears through the exit.
At that moment, the door to the kitchen swings open to reveal Mrs. Vanders, who pointedly locks eyes with Phoebe.
“Well then,” says Phoebe. “I’ve finished my breakfast.”
She crosses the room with loud claps from her high-heeled boots and takes the same exit the cleaner took.
Mrs. Vanders stays in the kitchen doorway and directs another impenetrable expression at Jane. Then she swings away.
Kiran never showed up for breakfast at all. Colin is being insensitive to Lucy. Phoebe is lying about her husband and almost seemed as if she intentionally followed that cleaner. Jasper’s got nothing on these people.
Jane finishes her breakfast. Then she goes straight through the adjoining door into the kitchen. It’s time to ask Mrs. Vanders what’s behind that stare.
* * *
But Mrs. Vande
rs is gone.
Mr. Vanders is there, sitting in the enormous kitchen, his back to Jane, bent over messy piles of blueprints at a long table. Regular blueprints, not Ivy’s detailed ones. He’s muttering angrily.
Patrick mans a mountain of eggs and a pot of boiling water at an oversized stove with about a dozen burners. He’s rubbing his eyes and yawning, no doubt because first he and Ravi had a late night together—brooding, wasn’t it?—on the mainland, then he snuck around the house with the Okadas until dawn, being mysterious. Patrick’s jaw, Jane notices, is strong and elegant. He probably looks like a Brontë hero when he broods.
“Out until four in the morning with Ravi, two nights before the gala,” grumbles Mr. Vanders, “and all of us scurrying to find that damn thing. You owe Cook, young man.”
“How about I pay him back by cooking breakfast this morning,” says Patrick sourly. Then he notices Jane near the door. “Janie. Are you looking for Kiran?”
When Mr. Vanders hears Patrick’s words, he turns, pushes up from the table, and stares at Jane exactly the way his wife does, except that he does it from a dark face and under shaggy white eyebrows. Jane can just imagine their wedding photo, the two of them glaring out of it with withering expressions. Next, his gaze takes in Jane’s eclectic outfit.
“I’m looking for Mrs. Vanders,” says Jane.
“You might have some of your aunt Magnolia’s style,” Mr. Vanders announces gruffly, “but she had a subtlety you lack.”
Jane is thunderstruck. “You knew my aunt Magnolia?”
He waves a pen in an impatient gesture. “My wife wishes to explain it herself,” he says. “I think she went up to our rooms. Fourth door on the right. Either that or she’s on the third floor, east wing, beginning her daily inventory of the art. Or she’s dealing with the day staff, which would place her anywhere in the house.”
“How helpful,” says Jane.
“Hmph,” he says. “Your aunt was not sarcastic.”
Distantly, a noise begins, like a shrilling teakettle. It stutters, fluctuates so that it’s hard to tell where it’s coming from—the vents in the walls? The burners of the stove? In the very moment Jane recognizes it as a wailing child, it turns to a wild sort of laughter and she clenches her teeth. “What is that?”
