“It’s a long story.”
“You can tell me over brunch this weekend,” Aubrey stated. “Hey! Even better idea.”
“There’s a better idea than day-drinking on a Sunday?”
“Bring Calvin along. I’ll bring Jun. We can make a double-date out of it.”
“Is it double-dating if one of the parties is married?”
“Seb.”
“Calvin and Jun don’t even like each other,” I remarked.
“They do too.”
“It’s a jurisdiction jousting match every time they’re within ten feet of each other.”
“I’m going to get upset,” Aubrey warned. “And I might scream or cry and it’ll trigger a cataplexy attack and then I’ll crash and break your King spaniels.”
“Christ. Okay, fine, yes, I’ll bring Calvin…. And it’s KingCharlesspaniels, you goddamn diva.”
Aubrey was grinning from ear to ear as he wiped fake tears from his eyes. “You’ve made me so happy.”
“You’re the devil in a junior’s medium.”
The rest of the drive was, thankfully, uneventful. Aubrey tended to be interested in my sleuthing—that is, polite inquiring—on a superficial level. He said I had some kind of aura that attracted “dead people drama,” and after one accidental exploit of his own while in the Keys, he’d kept his distance from anything and everything remotely suspicious. I found this slightly ironic, given that Aubrey had once agreed to pawn a customer’s collection of haunted pennies and cock rings and then explained to me, with noted exasperation, only the pennies were haunted. We’d hit a traffic snag in Lenox Hill, but passed the time spent moving inch-by-inch talking about The Percy House’s upcoming anniversary, Aubrey’s boyfriend’s recent trip to Tokyo—which had resulted in a knife attack requiring stitches, but Jun wouldn’t say how or why because Big Brother’s got to keep his secrets—as well as the typical, day-to-day activities at the Emporium.
We’d hit East Seventy-Ninth by ten o’clock, and Aubrey made a swift turn south on Fifth. The left side of the road consisted of multimillion dollar townhouses, luxury apartment buildings with awnings and awaiting doormen, several private physicians’ offices catering to insurance policies unobtainable to small business owners such asmoi, and I was pretty sure the French Consulate was around here too. To the right was the walled-in and heavily forested Central Park. Even on a weekday morning during the middle of a heat wave, it was busy with pedestrians. Aubrey pulled to the corner at Seventy-Seventh when the GPS announced he’d reached our destination.
He looked out the driver’s-side window and asked, “How many floors is this place?”
I unbuckled and glanced at the Beaux Arts–style townhouse with the ornate stone arch and decorations above the gilded double-door entrance. “Seven floors, including the cellar and roof.”
“Holy cow.”
“Built in 1898,” I said. “Fourteen-foot ceilings, original staircase and columns—”
“It has columns?”
“As any good Beaux Art mansion would. A skylight, rooftop garden… there’s a functioning fireplace in the master bathroom.”
“In thebathroom?”
I’d been to Chris and Cynthia’s home enough times in the past few years that I wasn’t really shocked by the grandeur of it anymore. I opened the passenger door, got out, and moved around the SUV to the sidewalk. I carefully removed both spaniels from the back seat, shut the door, and said to Aubrey as he rolled down the window, “Thanks again for the drive. You know how I get about these things.”
“Delightfully neurotic,” he confirmed. “You don’t need help unpacking, do you? I still need to get the SUV back to the parking garage before heading to work—”
“No, no, I’ll be fine. Thanks again.”
“See you Sunday. Nice Chucks, by the way.” Aubrey gave me a wink before flicking on his blinker and merging into traffic.
I hurried each statue up the steps to the front doors and then rang the bell. The Manzis’ housekeeper answered—a matronly woman whom I didn’t recognize from my last visit. She must have been new. “Morning,” I said to her. “Sebastian Snow. I’m dropping off—”
“For Mrs. Manzi, yes? Come in.” She took one of the packages without warning and strolled through the foyer with it.
I grabbed the second and let the door fall shut behind me as I entered. The air inside was delightfully cool against my skin, which was tacky with sweat, despite having been outside for only a minute. “Please be gentle with that,” I called, my voice bouncing back and forth between the vaulted ceilings and marble floor like a ping-pong ball. “It’s porcelain.”
She tactfully didn’t reply to what was probably an offensive comment, considering it was literally her job to maintain a house full of precious stones, metals, crystals, and yes, porcelain. While starting up the grand staircase, she called over her shoulder, “Mrs. Manzi would like these set up beside the fireplace in the dining room.”
