Grace Under Pressure (3 page)

I WAS TEN STEPS UP THE NEAREST STAIRCASE when I thought about Bennett behind me. Although the man was in great physical shape, he
was
seventy years old. Running up four flights of stairs into possible gunfire was probably not a great idea. For him, or for me. But I hadn’t been hired to run away from crises. I’d been hired to handle them.

I took comfort from the dispatcher’s report: Shots had been fired. She hadn’t said shots “were being” fired. I was betting this was a false alarm. And so I raced upward into the fray, convincing myself that my actions would do my career a lot of good. Especially during the probationary period.

I worried for Bennett, though. Slowing at the first landing, I turned. “Why don’t you take the elevator?”

He growled an unintelligible reply. But I got the message.

“Okay,” I said, resuming my race up the stairs. Although these were considered “back stairs” in that they were not open to the public, they were nonetheless ornate. My feet crushed into the thick carpet runner that spanned each step. As I cleared the third-floor landing, the stairway narrowed. We were getting into Bennett’s private rooms here, an area of the mansion I was not privy to. Not yet.

My thighs burned as I hauled myself up the final set of stairs, panting. I wiped a thin bead of sweat from my hairline, thinking it had been too long since I’d hit the gym. Looking back, I wondered if I should wait for Bennett, but he was two flights behind me now. I pushed through the double doors at the top and walked into mayhem.

Rosa Brelke was sobbing. Our head of housekeeping sat on the floor of a wide wood-paneled corridor, her legs splayed out from her pale blue uniform skirt. She held her hands over her face, but there was no mistaking her cranberry red hair or her fireplug build. Next to her was one of our younger housekeepers. An attractive girl, her face was a pale mask of fear. For the life of me I couldn’t remember her name. She was trying to comfort Rosa, crouching next to the sobbing woman, rubbing her back. Every second or two, the woman whose name I couldn’t remember stole a glance across the hall. She looked as though she might throw up.

“Rosa,” I called, but she didn’t hear me. Her high-pitched wails went right up the back of my spine.

This was no false alarm. But I saw no blood. And except for her screams, she seemed unhurt. “Rosa!” I called again, as I crossed the floor toward her.

The crouching woman gently shook Rosa’s shoulder and pointed to me. Rosa peeled her fingers away enough to look up. Her blotchy face expressed pain—loss—terror—and intense grief. All at once. Her wails became deep-throated moans and she pointed to her left across the corridor. A door was open.

As I reached the room, a door far down the hall banged open and four security guards rushed in, Terrence Carr at the lead. “What happened?” he shouted.

I had no words. Inside the room—Bennett’s private study—Abe lay facedown in a puddle of blood. I started to move forward, but in the two seconds it had taken for my mind to process what I was seeing, Carr had reached me. He grabbed my arm. “No.”

“But . . .” I pointed toward Abe. He wasn’t moving. My words felt slow and hard to form. “We have to see if he’s okay.” That sounded stupid. He was definitely not okay. “I mean, if he’s alive.”

Carr met my eyes. “Stay here,” he said and pushed me back a step. I complied.

By this time, Bennett had made it to the top of the stairs. He was panting worse than I had been and as he ran a hand through his white hair, I noticed him shaking. Striding slowly across the hallway, he stopped to talk to Rosa and the other woman, who were still on the floor. “Are you okay?”

Rosa’s sobs had quieted to hard hiccups. She didn’t answer. The other woman kept her hands on Rosa’s shoulders, but her face turned toward the wall.

I backed away from the open door to allow security access to Abe. He lay in the room’s center, as though he’d had his back to the windows when he fell. He was wearing a charcoal suit, but I could see the wet shine of blood between his shoulder blades. Carr crouched beside the elderly man, and reached around, groping for Abe’s neck.

I held my breath.

The look on Carr’s face told me all I needed to know.

A moan bubbled up from somewhere deep inside me. My vision went bright and sparkly. The room around me buzzed.

Struggling to catch his breath, Bennett grabbed my elbow just as my knees gave out. “Grace,” he said. “Grace, what happened?”

The moment of weakness passed; I felt my body regain its strength. Still, I could do no better than Rosa had. I pointed into his study. “Abe,” I said.

He let go of me. “Abe?” he asked, and started into the room.

One of the security guards stopped him. “Please, sir. It’s best if you stay back.”

“But this is my study.” Bennett seemed more confused by an employee rebuffing him than by the body on the floor. “I must go in. Abe and I have a meeting planned.”

“Sir,” the guard said gently, stepping into the doorway to block Bennett’s path. “If you could just wait out in the hall for a while.” He flicked a glance at me and I tugged Bennett’s arm.

Carr shouted to me. “Take Mr. Marshfield to his room. But wait until my guys secure the premises.”

“Come on.” I walked Bennett down the long corridor, the opposite direction from Rosa. “Let’s let them do their jobs.”

My boss’s glower from earlier was long gone. He stared at me as though he had never seen me before. “Abe?” he asked. “Is he all right?”

Although I had never been in this part of the building, I figured I could find a place for Bennett to sit. Double doors at the end of the hall looked promising. “What’s in there?” I asked, to distract him. “Can we find a seat?”

He nodded. “My room.”

An officer jogged up behind us. “Wait,” he said.

I didn’t think Bennett would be steady enough to stand up much longer. “But—”

“Let me secure the area first.”

Dutifully, Bennett and I waited until the young man came out and gave us the all-clear. I nodded my thanks.

I didn’t care if I was breaking every level of protocol by escorting Bennett into his personal space. These were not ordinary circumstances. “Let’s get you settled in there, okay?”

Like a little kid, he obeyed me. I held on to his arm while I propped open one of the doors with my behind. My breath caught the moment we were inside. Even in the dim light, I recognized its abundant splendor.

Bennett Marshfield was a chronic collector who had amassed treasures from all over the world and had adorned every nook and corner of Marshfield Manor with his finds. But in here, his accumulating had gone wild. There was not a single empty spot in the room. Racing vertically, horizontally, and in wide circles to take it all in, my eyes could not find a place to rest. It was too much—even for me. Could that be an original Rembrandt? No way to tell—there were too many trinkets piled in front of it, including a vase that looked suspiciously like a genuine Egyptian canopic jar. Books, maps, and papers covered and surrounded what might have been a Louis XIV chair. Unable to help myself, I gasped.

I couldn’t leave him in here. There was nowhere to sit, even though this was clearly a sitting room. Two love seats placed opposite one another in front of a giant hearth were covered with . . . stuff. I glanced at Bennett and realized he wasn’t focusing. “What’s in there?” I asked. There were four sets of doors leading out of this room. I headed toward one of them.

He frowned. “What about Abe? When will they let me talk to him? I have to find out what happened.”

“Let’s get you settled,” I said, hoping I’d chosen well. Gripping the knob, I pushed the door open to find Bennett’s bedroom and breathed a sigh of relief. The clutter was minimal. There were places he could sit or even lie down. Bennett’s bed was clear. I walked him to its side. “Why don’t you just relax for a little bit. I’ll get someone to stay with you.”

As Bennett lifted himself onto his giant bed—a canopied monster with raw silk dressings in a muted butternut—I pulled up my walkie-talkie and requested medical assistance in the private rooms. The dispatcher asked if this was another emergency.

I spoke quietly, but Bennett had rolled over and had his back to me. I don’t know that he even knew I was still there. “No,” I said. “But Mr. Marshfield has suffered an enormous shock. I think it would be a good idea if the doctor looked in on him.”

“Roger that,” she said.

I was about to take a seat to wait for the doctor when I remembered the walkie-talkie Bennett carried. Fortunately for me, it was on his left hip and easy for me to slide off without his noticing. I had just gotten it pulled away when he twisted back, grabbing my forearm with both hands.

“Tell me,” he said.

I took a shallow breath. “Tell you what?”

Letting go of my arm, he tried to sit up. “Abe. Is he . . .”

I bit my lip.

At that moment, our walkie-talkies came back to life, still broadcasting the private channel. “Security alert. Emergency shutdown. Homicide confirmed. One dead. I repeat: Emergency shutdown. Initiate Level One security protocols.”

Bennett’s eyes sought mine. Swollen red, they leaked rapid tears. He swallowed. “Abe was my friend.”

I squeezed his hand. “I’m so sorry.”

“WAS THERE A LOT OF BLOOD?” BRUCE ASKED He grimaced, exaggerating a shudder. “Except for my great-aunt Agatha, I’ve never actually seen anybody dead except in a casket. And definitely not bloody.” He placed a hand on Scott’s knee and turned to him expectantly. “Did you ever see a dead body? I mean, besides at a wake?”

On the love seat next to him, Scott nodded. “Yeah,” he said, but didn’t elaborate.

I was extraordinarily grateful for my roommates right now. When I’d gotten home, still stunned from the day’s events, these two wonderful men had listened then comforted me as best they could. Leading me into the highceilinged parlor of our Victorian home, they sat me down on the sofa and pressed a glass of their finest Merlot in my hand, urging me to sip slowly. As the deep red liquid trailed down my throat and warmed my insides, I tucked my feet up under me and let the wine work its magic.

Handsome, buff, and tanned, my roommates could have played the Hardy Boys at thirty-five. A former Wall Street executive turned entrepreneur, Scott was surfer blond and had deep dimples that made women swoon. At least until they realized they were no competition for Bruce. For his part, Bruce was shorter, and though not nearly as elegant as Scott, he was no less handsome. He had broader shoulders, darker hair, and a nose that had been broken once. The two men owned and operated Amethyst Cellars, a darling little wine and tchotchke shop in town. Although always thoughtful and willing to help, right now they looked ready to leap into action if I so much as sighed.

Scott asked, “What happens now? I mean . . . your boss has been killed. Does that automatically make you the new curator?”

Down to the last drops of a second glass of wine, I’d calmed enough to converse without shaking. But I hadn’t relaxed enough to consider what Abe’s death meant for my career trajectory. “I doubt that,” I answered slowly. “It seems awfully cold to be thinking about that, doesn’t it?”

Scott leaned forward to pour me more Merlot, but I placed a hand over the top of my glass. “Come on,” he said. “You’ve had a bad scare. One more glass and maybe you’ll be able to sleep.”

“I’ve had two. I’ll sleep fine. A third would put me into a coma.” I shook my head. “Remember, I have to go back there in the morning. Can you imagine how it would look if I called in sick?”

“That’s what I’m trying to tell you, sweetie,” Scott continued. “Somebody has got to take charge over there. Why not you? The place is going to be an insane asylum until they figure out who killed the old guy. You have to step into his shoes first thing in the morning, whether you feel ready or not. Show them what you’re made of.”