X (Kinsey Millhone 24)

I parked and made my way to the front door, which was standing open. I rang the bell, which I could hear sounding inside in the sort of soft chime that suggests the intermission is over and we should all return to our seats. While I waited, I listened to the birdies chirp. The air smelled of lavender and pine. I was wearing my usual jeans, tennis shoes, and a turtleneck that was ever so faintly stretched out of shape. No sign of my fairy godmother, so Ari would have to take me as I was.

When no one appeared after a suitable interval, I peered in. The marble-tiled hallway ran the width of the house and it was currently so crowded with furniture, they might have been preparing for a liquidation sale. Most of the pieces were antiques or very good reproductions: chairs, side tables, armoires, a chest of drawers with ornate bronze drawer pulls. A woman in a white uniform applied wax to a handsome mahogany tallboy inlaid with a lighter wood.

I took one step in, thinking someone would notice me. At the far end of the hall to my left, the elevator door stood open and two men in coveralls coaxed a rolling pallet into the hall; framed works of art were stacked against the end panel at a slant. Their progress was supervised by a gaunt woman wearing jeans, a white T-shirt, and tennis shoes with no socks. I was hoping to catch her attention, but no one seemed aware of me. There were other paintings leaning against the wall on either side of the corridor. I leaned around the door and rang the bell again. This time when the chime sounded, the gaunt woman in jeans looked in my direction. She broke away from the two workmen and moved to the front door.

I handed her a business card. “I have a meeting with Mr. Xanakis.”

She gave the card a quick read and stepped back, which I took as permission to enter. She turned and walked down the hall. There was no hint of her place in the household. She might have been Ari’s new bride, his daughter, his housekeeper, or the woman who watered his houseplants and walked his dogs. In the warm air that wafted from somewhere in the back of the house, I picked up the scent of roasting chicken.

Two women stood near the double doors that opened to the dining room. One was rail-thin, blond, late thirties, wearing a black velour lounging outfit that consisted of pants and a matching zippered jacket with something sparkly underneath. The other woman was also rail-thin and blond, in a snug black power suit and spike heels.

The portion of the room I could see had unadorned walls padded with a pale green silk. There were fifteen oversize squares and rectangles of darker fabric where paintings had once hung, protecting the fabric from fading. In the center of each was a recessed receptacle that contained an electrical outlet. That way picture lights could be affixed to the frame without a length of unsightly electrical wire hanging down to the baseboards. In my Aunt Gin’s trailer when I was growing up, she’d sometimes have power strips hosting double and triple adapters with eight brown cords trailing from a single socket like piglets nursing at a sow. I thought all sockets looked like that.

The two women studied the room and the woman in the power suit said, “That’s all going to have to come out.”

“What do you suggest?”

“Quick fix? Get all that fabric out of there and paint the walls charcoal gray. That’ll hide some of the flaws.”

The woman in black velour looked at me sharply. “Who’s this?”

The woman who’d answered the door said, “She has a meeting with Mr. Xanakis. I was going to show her to the gym.”

The woman looked annoyed, but resumed her conversation without further reference to me. That one had to be the wife.

I followed my fearless leader through an enormous kitchen where a young woman in a white double-breasted chef’s jacket and striped pants stood at the white granite counter chopping onions. A middle-aged man in a tuxedo vest and a dazzling white shirt sat at the kitchen table polishing silver sconces. Through a doorway I could see the laundry room. A Hispanic woman in a white uniform looked up at me as she took a damp white linen napkin from a clothes basket. She gave the seams a sharp snap, laid the napkin on the ironing board, and took up her iron.

When we arrived at the French doors along the back wall, my companion opened one and pointed. Outside, an ocean of lush grass covered the shallow hill to the swimming pool. The gym was apparently located in the pool house, a structure identical to the main house, only in miniature.

I said, “Thanks.”

I took a stone path down the hill, past the koi pond, past an orchard of plum and apricot trees. Sprinklers came to life and shot out fans of water that created a rainbow against the cloudless sky. Had anybody heard about the drought in this part of town?