As I got my bearings, I whistled under my breath: the original owners had done things on a grand scale. Besides the mansion itself, the property held a garage, stables, greenhouse, even a cottage, which I assumed was for the staff who tended the grounds-or would tend the grounds if someone could afford to have the work done. The estate agent wasn’t putting much into maintenance-an ornamental pond, which lay between the mansion and the outbuildings, was clogged with leaves and dead lilies. I even saw a carp floating belly-up in the middle. A series of formal gardens was overgrown with weeds, while no one had mowed the meadows for some time.
The neglect, and the number of buildings, was oppressive. If you were grandiose enough to buy such a place, how could you possibly take care of it? Circling each building, trying to see if there were holes in foundations or windows, looked overwhelming. I squared my shoulders. Whining doubles the job, my mother used to say when I balked at washing dishes. I decided to work from smallest to largest, which meant inspecting the cottage first.
By the time I’d finished prying at windows, balancing on fence posts to see if any of the roof glass of the greenhouse was broken, and making sure that the doors to the stables and garage were not just secure, but showed no recent signs of tampering, it was past noon. I was hungry and thirsty, but dark still comes early the first week in March. I didn’t want to waste daylight searching for food, so I grimly set about circling the house.
It was an enormous building. From a distance it looked graceful, vaguely Federal in design, with its slender columns and square facades, but all I cared about was four floors’ worth of windows, doors at ground level on all four sides, doors leading off upper-level balconies-a burglar’s paradise.
Still, all the windows on the two lower floors held the telltale markers of a security system. I checked some on the ground floor with a meter, but didn’t see anyplace where the current was interrupted.
People did come onto the land: beer bottles, the silver foil from potato chip bags, crumpled cigarette packs, the inevitable condom, told their tales. Maybe Ms. Graham was only seeing local kids looking for privacy.
I was debating whether to shinny up the pillars to check the balcony doors when a squad car pulled up. A middle-aged cop came over to me at an unhurried gait.
“You got some reason to be out here?”
“Probably the same one you do.” I waved my meter toward the house. “I’m with Florey and Kapper, the mechanical engineers. We heard some woman thinks little green men are hovering around here in the night. I’m just checking the circuits.”
“You set something off in the garage,” the cop said.
I smiled. “Oh, dear: I was trying brute force. They warned us against that at IIT, but I wanted to see if someone could actually lift those doors. Sorry to bring you out here for nothing.”
“Not to worry: you saved me from our eighty-third call to look at suspicious mail.”
“It’s a hassle, isn’t it,” I said, hoping he wouldn’t ask for my ID. “I’ve got friends in the Chicago PD who feel stretched to the limit these days.” “Same out here. We’ve got the reservoir and a bunch of power stations we have to keep an eye on. It’s about time the FBI nailed this anthrax bastard-we waste an unbelievable amount of manpower, responding to hysterical calls about letters from old Aunt Madge who forgot to put her return address on the envelope.”
We hashed over the current situation the way everyone did these days.
Police forces were badly affected, because they had to gear up for incalculable terror attacks and couldn’t keep up with their local crime loads. Drive-by shootings, which had dropped to their lowest level in decades, had jumped in the last six months.
The cop’s cell phone rang. He grunted into it. “I’d better be going. You okay out here?”
“Yeah. I’m taking off, too. Place looks clean to me, except for the usual garbage-” I pointed a toe at an empty cigarette wrapper near the foundation. “I don’t see how anyone could be using the place.”
“You find Osama bin Laden in the attic, give me a call: I could use the extra credit.” He waved good-bye and got back into his squad car.
I couldn’t think of anything else to look for, and, anyway, it was getting too dark to see clearly. I walked to the edge of the gardens, where they faded into a substantial woods, and looked up at the house. From here I could see the attic windows, but they presented a blank face to the sky.
CHAPTER 2
The Iron Dowager