Aunt Myra handed Emerson a tweedy gray sports jacket as he went out the front door and told him to behave himself.
“Of course,” Emerson said, the tone suggesting that he couldn’t care less about his behavior.
“It might be a little messy in here,” Riley said, leading him to the Mini and unlocking the door. “I wasn’t expecting a passenger.”
Emerson looked down at the tiny car with the black-and-white checkerboard roof. “What is this?”
“This is my car.”
“It’s small.”
“It’s a Mini Cooper.”
Riley reached in and cleared the passenger seat of a folder containing random legal documents, a pair of running shoes, a fast-food bag that had held her breakfast sandwich, and a couple crumpled candy wrappers. She was almost sure that her suit skirt was long enough to cover her hoo-ha when she bent over, but she gave the skirt a subtle tug just to be sure.
“Cute,” Emerson said.
Riley straightened. “You meant the car, right?”
“What else would I mean?”
“You never know,” she said. “Please get in. And watch your head.”
Riley neatly slipped behind the wheel, and Emerson folded his six foot two form into the passenger seat as best as he could. He pulled a weather-beaten rucksack in with him and settled it on his lap.
“Sorry about the lack of leg room,” Riley said. “I had to get the smallest car I could find. That’s the only way I can fit into the little parking space they gave me at work.”
“Blane-Grunwald gave you a bad parking space?”
“Well, not bad. It’s just…well, it is bad, but I’m a rookie, so it’s only to be expected. It’s okay.”
“That’s inexcusable. I’ll talk to Werner about it.”
A bolt of panic shot through Riley’s stomach, and she made a silent promise to speak more carefully in the future. It was a promise she made often, with varied results. Werner Grunwald was Günter’s brother. He was the Grunwald of Blane-Grunwald. The head honcho. The topmost of top dogs. The last thing she wanted to do was come off to him as somebody who whined to clients about petty things like company parking spaces.
“Thank you, but it’s not necessary to talk to Werner about my space,” she said. “Honestly, it’s really not necessary.”
“No problem. Consider it done,” Emerson said. He opened his door, planted a foot on the ground, and wrangled himself out of the Mini. “I’m not comfortable in this. We’ll take one of my cars today.”
Riley did some mental swearing, unfastened her seat belt, and followed after him. The driveway led around the side of the house and ended in a large parking area that backed up to a multi-bay garage. A humongous old Jayco Redhawk Class C motorhome with tinted coach windows was hunkered down in front of the garage. Coming from north Texas, Riley knew her RVs, and she knew this monster slept five and sucked gas faster than you could pump it in.
Emerson walked past the Jayco without so much as a passing glance and rolled one of the garage doors up, revealing a mind-boggling collection of classic cars. Everything from muscle cars, like a ’65 Shelby Mustang, to luxury dreamboats like a ’39 Rolls-Royce Phantom III Cabriolet, to funky little cult cars like the Zastava 750 were lined up row on row in the pristine garage. Bright overhead pin spots bounced light off the polished chrome and glass.
Riley was mesmerized. Her father, when he wasn’t busy being a county sheriff, had spent his weekends tinkering with a ’64 Pontiac GTO. He read automotive magazines, was devoted to NASCAR, and dreamed of owning his own fleet of muscle cars. And Riley, her wild red hair bunched back in a ponytail, had been his pit crew, handing him wrenches and nut drivers and ratchets while he operated on the GTO with the precision of a brain surgeon.
She had inherited her father’s love of old cars, so she looked at this garage the way some women would look at a display of every Manolo Blahnik shoe in existence.
“Oh man,” Riley said.
Emerson dispassionately surveyed the garage. “My father collected things. Wives and cars mostly. Not that he worked on the cars, or even drove them. He just liked to own them. So other people couldn’t, I think.”
He stopped in front of a ’93 Bentley Turbo R. “I guess we could take this one,” he said. “What do you think?” he asked Riley.
Riley would rather have taken the ’74 Pontiac Firebird Trans Am that was peeking out from behind the ’69 Dodge Charger Daytona Hemi, but she was too intimidated to voice an opinion.
“This is a beautiful car,” she said, eyeing the butter-soft leather seats and the dashboard of pure, not imitation, walnut.
“It was always Larry’s favorite.”
“Larry?”
“My chauffeur. He used to drive me to school when I was ten.”
When Riley was ten, she was riding her older brother’s bike to Bushland Elementary. At least on those days when she could steal it.
Riley got behind the wheel and took a deep breath. “This is a lot bigger than my Mini.”
“Everything is bigger than your Mini.”
She rolled the engine over, and it purred like an overfed lion. She shifted gears and backed out of the garage, careful to avoid the RV.
“Was that your father’s too?” she asked as they drove past the motorhome.
“It’s Vernon’s. Aunt Myra’s son. My father wouldn’t have been caught dead in one of those. So, naturally, he was.”
“Pardon?”
“Long story. For another day.”
He pulled an iPad from his rucksack and touched an app. A blueprint of the house appeared on the screen. He tapped the screen a few times and gave a small grunt of satisfaction.
“That’s Mysterioso Manor,” Riley said, stealing a glance at the iPad.
“Yes. I was checking my security system. This will inform me, from anywhere in the world, if there’s a break-in.”
Riley turned off the driveway onto Park Road and then onto Walbridge Place. She thought about calling the office and warning them that Emerson was coming in, but decided against it. What good would it do?
She drove down the Rock Creek and Potomac Parkway and circled around the Watergate complex, skirting along the Potomac River and past the Kennedy Center.
“About the tent in the library,” Riley said.
“I was wondering how long it would take you to ask.”
“I was trying to be polite.”
“And now?”
“Now I’m asking politely.”
“It’s a very large, complicated house, and I’ve become a person with simple needs. The tent is a more comfortable scale for me.”
“So you basically live in the tent?”
“Correct.”
Riley found it hard to believe he was a person with simple needs since he’d needed to ride in the Bentley.
“And the name of the house?” she asked. “Mysterioso Manor.”
“My great-great-grandfather was something of a Spiritualist,” Emerson said. “He claimed the spirit of Christopher Columbus gave him the name during a séance. Originally ‘Mysterioso’ referred to my great-great-grandfather. When he died, he bequeathed the Mysterioso title to his son.”
“Mysterioso Junior?”
“Just Mysterioso.”
“And are you the fifth-generation Mysterioso?”
“I suppose I am, although I don’t often use it.”
“Too mysterious?”
“Too confusing. Vernon took the Mysterioso name as his nom de plume on his blog.”
“Why don’t you tell Vernon to stop?”
Emerson went still for a moment. “I hadn’t thought of that,” he said.
She knew from his bio that he’d graduated from Dartmouth, so he couldn’t be stupid. Still, she suspected he’d get lost trying to find his way out of a parking lot.
“Truth is, I enjoy Vernon’s blog,” Emerson said. “It’s quite entertaining and every now and then I add my thoughts.” He looked over at Riley. “Do you blog?”
“No.”
He tapped her name into his iPad. “You have a Facebook page.”
“My brother set that up. I don’t know how to quit it.”
“You can’t quit it. It’s there forever. That Mark is such a rascal.”
“Mark?”
“Zuckerberg. Have you heard of him?”
“Of course I’ve heard of him. I suppose he’s a close personal friend?”
“Not close. It says here that you were born in Bishop Hills, Texas. Your mother is a grade school teacher. Your father is a county sheriff, retired. You have four brothers. You’re the youngest. You were a tomboy when you were a child, I think.”
“You only think?”
“A conjecture. You went to Harvard. On a scholarship, I suppose.”
“You suppose right.”
“Then Harvard Business School. Then Harvard Law School.”
“You’re thinking I wasn’t in a hurry to get out into the real world?”
“On the contrary. The real world is where you find it.”
“Who said that?”
“A very wise man. How do you know the Grunwalds?”
“I got a ten-week internship at Blane-Grunwald last summer.”
“Is that hard to get?”
“Almost impossible. And almost impossible to get through. They run you ragged, day and night. You have to get a rabbi or you’re sunk.”
“A rabbi?”
“A mentor. An advisor. Like Obi-Wan Kenobi. Günter was my rabbi. I wouldn’t have gotten through the training program without him.”
“And now you’re working at Blane-Grunwald.”
“Yes, as a junior analyst. I guess I have Günter to thank for that, too.”
“Only you haven’t been able to thank him?”
“I’ve been at the firm for a week, and he’s been absent.”
“And Werner?”
“I only just met him this morning. He told me to visit you and set your mind at ease.”
“Why do you think he sent you?”
She could lie and say it was because she’d been trained by Günter. But her father had taught her that if you tell the truth, you don’t have to remember anything. “I really don’t know.”
“He probably thought I’d be distracted by a pretty face.”
“And?” she asked.
“And what?”
“Were you distracted?”
“Not at all.”
Riley slumped in her seat. It would have been nice if he was at least a little distracted.
“Not that you aren’t pretty,” Emerson said. “You’re actually very cute. It’s just that I’m not easily distracted.”
“I see.”
There was an awkward silence.
“I’m not especially good with women,” Emerson finally said.
“No kidding?”
“I find them confusing.”
She turned onto Third Street and circled around to Constitution Avenue where the chrome and glass headquarters of Blane-Grunwald took up almost a whole block of prime real estate. She swung into the parking garage, drove down the loop-de-loops to her assigned space, and stopped just short of pulling in.
“Darn,” she said. “I’m not going to fit. Your car’s too big.”
“Go back to the upper level.”
“I can’t go up. Executive parking is up.”
“Perfect. Go up to executive parking.”
Riley went up to where the executive parking spaces were laid out, and Emerson read the names on the parking spaces as she drove by.
“Here. This one,” he said.
Riley looked at the name on the curb. “This is Günter’s.”
“Exactly. And he’s not using it.”
“How do you know?”
“Because he’s not here.”
“But he might show up.”
“I don’t think he will.”
Riley pulled into the space and cut her eyes to Emerson. “If we get caught, I’m saying you were driving.”
“That would be a fib,” Emerson said. “You would be starting your day in a cosmic deficit for fibbing.”
“Seriously?”
“Of course you haven’t had to fib yet, so unless you’ve done something terrible that I don’t know about, you’re on safe ground.”
Riley blew out a sigh and got out of the car.
They took the elevator to the lobby, she carded them past the reception desk, and they rode the next elevator to the top floor, the exclusive domain of the senior executives. The average junior analysts had never even seen the seventeenth floor, condemned as they were to spend their days in the rat’s nest that was the fourth floor. Riley had visited this floor as an intern. That she had made it up here again, first thing on her second week of real employment, had seemed to her like a significant vote of confidence. That was at nine o’clock this morning, and now a little over two hours later she was thinking this might not have been a good career move.
Emerson left the elevator without the slightest hesitation, seemingly oblivious to the blindingly white high-arching walls or the huge, expensive abstract art that was hung there. The whole place reminded Riley of the inside of the Death Star after Grand Moff Tarkin had taken over. The interior of the Death Star, like the seventeenth floor of Blane-Grunwald, was designed to awe and subdue.
Clearly it would take more than the Death Star to subdue Emerson, Riley thought. Whether this was due to his privileged upbringing or his own basic weirdness, she couldn’t guess, but his attitude gave him an air of invincibility.
Emerson marched straight for Werner’s office, and Riley made an end-run around him in an attempt to head him off. She stumbled past Emerson, crashed into the door, and careened into the office.
Werner Grunwald looked up from his desk at Riley’s unexpected entrance. “Ah, Riley,” he said, with a smile, “did you take care of our reclusive client?”
Emerson breezed past her into the room. “Your client is right here,” he said. “And he’s concerned.”