The office was nearly as big as Werner’s. Though Werner’s was decorated with austere Danish Modern simplicity, Günter’s décor was baronial, with heavy furniture, dark wood paneling, and full brocade curtains on the windows. Riley almost expected to see Rumpole of the Bailey sitting in the embossed leather chair at the monstrous desk.
Emerson stood in the middle of the room, turning slowly around, as if he were a camera, taking it all in.
“There are no mementos, no personal photographs here,” he said.
“His wife came in a few days ago and may have removed them,” Werner said. “I think she’s given up hope that he’ll return.”
“Did Günter have an assistant?”
“Maxine Trowbridge,” Werner said. “She’s just one office away.”
Emerson gave one last sweeping look around and went to the door. “I’d like to speak to Maxine.”
“Of course,” Werner said, leading the way.
Emerson paused at the open doorway and looked in at Maxine.
“Emerson Knight, here,” he said. “Could I talk with you for a few moments?”
Maxine was in her midthirties. Her hair was blond, pulled back at the nape of her neck, and secured with a simple gold clip. Her makeup was tasteful and perfectly applied but unable to hide the dark circles under her eyes. Her conservative designer suit was a snug fit, as if Maxine had recently gained weight. Stress, Riley thought. She’d seemed close to Günter when Riley was interning, and now that Günter was MIA she had to be worried.
Maxine looked past Emerson to Werner, who nodded his assent.
“Do you have any idea where Günter has gone?” Emerson asked Maxine.
“No,” she replied, shaking her head.
“Do you think he embezzled money and ran off with it?”
She shook her head again, more emphatically this time. “No. I know that’s what everyone is saying. But I can’t believe it. Not Günter. He’d just been given a new responsibility. He’d gotten everything he always wanted.”
“Everything?” Emerson asked.
“Well, everything within reason,” she said. “He’d just gotten back from a business trip to New York. He said it was going to make or break him. He was on the verge of something tremendous. He wouldn’t run out now.” She glanced over at Werner, and the line of her mouth tightened. “He is a good man.”
“Do you have any further questions for Ms. Trowbridge?” Werner asked Emerson.
“Not at the moment.”
Werner stepped away from Maxine’s office.
“I should tell you that Günter had not recently been given new responsibilities,” Werner said to Emerson. “And the New York trip was one of those long weekends he took. He wasn’t on company business.”
Emerson nodded. “Understood. I’m off to find Günter. I’ll report back when I’ve located him.”
“Wait,” Werner said. “Take Moonbeam with you.”
“Moonbeam?” Emerson asked.
“That’s what we call Miss Moon here,” Werner told him. “We all have nicknames.”
“What’s yours?”
“Everyone but me.”
“I’ll find a nickname for you,” Emerson said.
“Please don’t.”
“And why would I take Miss Moon with me?”
Werner shrugged. “You could use an assistant. Riley is good with people.”
“And I’m not?” Emerson asked.
“I didn’t say that. But now that you’ve said it, no, you’re not.”
“I can’t argue with that. Personal interaction has never been my forte.”
“Well, then, this is your girl. She can talk to anybody, can’t you, Riley?”
Riley had never before had a panic attack, but she thought she felt one coming on. Werner was giving her away. He was moving her out of the office. Had she just been fired?
“Trust me,” Werner said. “She could talk a dog off a meat truck. She’ll be a great girl Friday for you.”
“I’m not entirely comfortable with this,” Riley said.
“Person Friday then,” Werner corrected himself. “Aide-de-camp.”
Emerson turned to Riley. “What do you say, Miss Moon? Do you want to be my amanuensis?”
Riley had no clue what that meant. She made a mental note to look it up when she had the chance. She hoped it wasn’t just a fancy word for chauffeur.
“Is this a permanent reassignment?” Riley asked Werner.
“Absolutely not,” Werner said. “I’m sure this search will take only a few days, and you’ll be back at your desk.”
“We’ll begin tomorrow morning at seven o’clock at my house,” Emerson said to Riley.
Riley made an effort not to grimace. Seven o’clock in the morning? “Sure,” she said. “Seven o’clock. Do you want me to drive you home now?”
“Of course.”
“I need a moment with Moonbeam,” Werner said to Emerson.
Emerson turned on his heel and strode off to the elevator. “I’ll be at the car.”
Riley followed Werner into his office and waited until the door was closed before she spoke.
“Sir, I’m so sorry,” she said. “He insisted we come here.”
“You did the right thing. He needed reassurance that his assets were being protected. And now he’s going to be occupied by this wild goose chase, so it all worked out perfectly.”
“Do you think he can find Günter?”
“Not for a moment. Just keep me in the loop, and we’ll all be happy, Moonbeam.”
Riley squared her shoulders. She didn’t like being called Moonbeam. And she didn’t especially like her new assignment.
Werner watched Riley leave his office. He hoped he’d chosen wisely. She had two advanced degrees from Harvard but no street cred. She needed Blane-Grunwald to pay off her loans and push her up the corporate ladder. He had her pegged as psychotically ambitious, and he was counting on her to sell her soul for a shot at the corner office. If it turned out otherwise, he might have to kill her.
Riley caught up with Emerson at the car. He was leaning against the right front quarter panel, eyes closed, lost in thought. Probably having an out-of-body experience, Riley thought. Or maybe he was convening with aliens from another solar system.
“Hey,” she said. “What’s up?”
“I’m waiting,” Emerson said.
“For?”
“For you.”
“Of course.”
She unlocked his door and ran around to the driver’s side. She plugged the key into the ignition and backed out of Günter’s space. “Just exactly what is it you expect me to do?” she asked.
“Drive my car.”
“Anything else?”
“I tend to forget details that aren’t important to me. I would expect you to remember them. You might even record them, amanuensis style.”
Crap, Riley thought. There was that word again.
She drove through the bustling streets of Washington, through the pastoral woods of Rock Creek, and up the long driveway to Mysterioso Manor.
“Would you like to take the Bentley home with you?” Emerson asked.
“Nice of you to offer, but no. The Bentley is lovely, but the Mini gets better gas mileage. It’s more environmentally responsible. It’s the car I picked out as the wisest for my new life in Washington.”
“I thought you bought the Mini because it was the only car that would fit in your assigned parking space.”
“That too.”
Riley’s apartment was on Monroe Street in the Mount Pleasant section of Northwest D.C. It was a tiny one-bedroom flat that occupied the entire third floor of a converted Victorian built in 1907. The plumbing sounded considerably older. The radiator clanged, the water pipes gurgled, and she lived in fear of the toilet exploding.
She stripped off her executive uniform and got into her sweatpants and big, roomy Batman T-shirt. She’d wanted to grow up to be a superhero, and in a left-turn kind of way she felt like she was on track. She was going to be a financial superhero, helping people invest in their future, safeguarding the country’s monetary system. At least she had been on track last week. This week she wasn’t so sure. This week she was chauffeuring a goofball around town.
She sat at her small kitchen table and unwrapped the turkey breast and Swiss cheese sandwich she’d picked up at Potbelly on her way home. She switched on her laptop and Facebooked her mother and brothers while she ate. When she’d caught up on her family she went into Oracle mode. Oracle had been her favorite comic book character when she was a kid. And truth is, Riley still loved comic books, and especially Oracle.
Oracle was Barbara Gordon, Commissioner Gordon’s daughter. She was Batgirl first, but after the Joker put her in a wheelchair she became a computer whiz who could find any information about anyone with just a few clicks of her keyboard.
Riley could do almost the same thing. She typed in “Emerson Cranston Knight,” and sources of information flooded her screen. The Knights had been newsworthy for several generations, not just for their wealth but also for their eccentricities.
Emerson was described as an American business magnate, investor, inventor, and philanthropist, the only child of communications and aerospace mogul Mitchell Brown Knight. If Riley read every article on the Net about Emerson’s father she’d be up until dawn, so she skimmed Wikipedia and kept her research to articles that addressed Emerson particularly.
The Knight fortune stretched back to Emerson’s great-great-grandfather Lamont Knight, one of the legendary robber barons of the Gilded Age. Emerson’s father was a confidant to presidents and a close friend of Professor Bertram Grunwald, the architect of the U.S. economy in the post-Vietnam years.
Riley thought it was curious that the Knight-Grunwald connection went back two generations and yet there didn’t seem to be any warmth between Emerson and Werner.
Emerson’s mother, Sophia Delgado, was a supermodel from Spain. She and Mitchell separated when Emerson was two, and she went to live in Paris with soccer star Ronaldo Diaz.
Riley scanned some tabloid articles and found that Emerson was raised by a variety of stepmothers and went to a variety of boarding schools.
The most intriguing article was an extended obituary on his father that included a short paragraph on Emerson, the new heir to the Knight fortune. It stated that Emerson was best known for his dramatic disappearances. Following graduation from college he had sailed off on a luxury yacht for points unknown. The world lost track of him completely for a year. After that Emerson would resurface from time to time but always suddenly vanished again. The obit ended by saying that Emerson had returned to his Washington, D.C., home following the death of his father, and that his whereabouts during his absences remained a subject of conjecture.
At the risk of being cynical, Riley couldn’t help but speculate that maybe Emerson had been at home all along but in his cloud of invisibility. Or maybe Emerson had removed himself to an alien astral plane. Or maybe he periodically checked himself into rehab.