Page 92 of Charmed Forces
I opened my mouth to reply, then spotted Lily walking over. When she arrived, she cooed over the food arrangement.
“Didn’t you say you wanted to find the powder room?” I asked her.
“I did? I did!” she agreed, catching on quickly.
“I’ll join you,” I said as Louise’s mom followed us, and along with another woman, a small queue started at the table. I tried to put my plate on the table but a passing waiter scooped it up, leaving me free to link arms with Lily as we headed towards the powder room near the entryway. “Can you cause a distraction as soon as possible?” I whispered softly. “I want to go upstairs and I need you to make sure everyone is engrossed by your diversion so no one else comes up there.”
“I’ll think of something,” said Lily.
We stopped at the powder room and tried the door but it was locked so we lingered until a man came out, ignoring us when he walked past before grabbing a glass off a hovering server’s tray.
The server waited, two glasses left, clearly thinking about whether to foist them on us, but deciding not to.
“Oh, that won’t do,” I said loudly, pointing to the tray and clicking my fingers rudely.
“Beg your pardon?” he asked.
“No, that won’t do at all. Angelica won’t like that. I know I’m butting in but if you want her to hire your company again, you must not let the champagne get warm.”
“Right,” added Lily, picking up on the ploy. “She threw a fit last time that happened. You should get a freshly chilled bottle from the kitchen and no less than six glasses.”
“Yeah,” he said, glancing at the door.
“If anyone arrives, you can give them a glass on their way through. Hurry!” I said, pointing to the kitchen while Lily mimed running with her fingers. As soon as he was far enough into the house, and the entryway was empty, I said, “Make that distraction as fast as you can. I can get upstairs but I don’t want anyone to follow me.”
“No limitations?” Lily wondered.
“No death,” I said.
“Cool.”
I darted for the stairs, racing up them as fast as I could in very high heels. The stairs opened onto a mezzanine. The long glass chandelier was still rising past me, and the floor was divided in three directions. Two doors were on either side and then a corridor that led towards the back of the house. The house plans I saw designated all the upper rooms as bedrooms, not home offices so I had no idea which one Tom Victor would use.
I checked the left doors quickly, since they could be seen from the stairway, finding two bedrooms that didn’t look occupied. As I crossed the mezzanine in the other direction, the server walked to the front door, a fresh tray in hand. I hunched over, pressing my body against the far wall so he wouldn’t see me as he moved back to the rear. Cautiously, I opened the other two doors, finding two more bedrooms, both as subtly decorated and unoccupied as the previous ones.
The master bedroom had to be at the back of the house with the best view over the garden. The office must have been nearby, but out of sight from prying eyes like mine.
I headed down the corridor, opening a door to a bathroom, then a large linen and storage closet that might have turned out to be handy if I needed to hide. The door at the end of the corridor had to be the bedroom, so I opened the only other door, finding myself in a modestly sized office. Light flooded through full-length windows framed with pale velvet drapes, and a balcony was visible beyond. Unlike the show study below, here one wall was laden with shelves of well thumbed-through books, mostly non-fiction, and attractively interspersed with plants. I didn’t figure Tom Victor for having a green thumb…
A desk near the windows held a laptop, monitors, and several picture frames.
From outside, I heard a scream and some commotion, and I smiled. Whatever Lily’s plan was, she enacted it but I couldn’t count on the distraction for too long.
Hurrying to the desk, I checked the laptop — password protected, of course — and turned on the monitors just in case they were connected to the laptop. Their screens showed an image of the night sky and the password box. No use. I couldn’t fathom a guess as to what word and numerical combination Tom Victor might use.
I was about to ignore the trio of three silver thin-frames when one caught my eye. The largest had a photo of Victor, and an attractive woman in a pale blue dress, their arms around each other as well as two children.His wife and kids.Another showed Tom and two men, so alike in their features, they had to be his brothers. The one that caught my eye, the third frame, was a group shot of close to a dozen people. Victor, his wife and kids, his brothers, and several other adults and kids. Besides Victor, I only recognized one other person. The last time I saw the young woman on the far left of the picture was when she jumped through the hospital window!
She was a little younger here, but I was sure she was the same woman. I snapped a picture with my phone, curious as to how the pair could be connected. Were they related? It looked like a family shot, taken after everyone was called together to pose for a picture on vacation. Not that it mattered. She’d be easier to track now that I had a starting point.
Just as I slid open the first drawer, a sound made me stop. Then I heard a voice that was getting louder and heading towards me.
There was nowhere to hide! The bookcase was open shelving with no concealed cabinetry. There was no door leading to a bathroom or closet. Getting under the desk was pure lunacy. That left only the balcony. I darted towards it, just turning the handle as the office door opened. With nanoseconds to spare, I stopped and slid behind the long velvet drapes, checking to be sure my phone was definitely switched tosilent.
“—take care of business,” a man was saying as the door closed again. “That’s what I pay you for. Well, you should have thought of that.”
I didn’t dare risk peeking out but it had to be Tom Victor. No one else would be crazy enough to use his office... no one except me.
“Don’t you think you should have thought of that?” he continued. “Or do you want another bag of cash? You said that would be enough. Why haven’t they found him? Dammit, Tony. Do I need to do this for you? Plant a burner phone in his car or something. Make sure it has evidence of the hit on it. Nothing that can be explained away. Make sure it’s more than damn obvious that we’re doing the police’s job for them. Yeah, yeah. That sounds good.”