He stiffened but muttered, “Okay, okay,” sounding like the universal teenager fed up with adult bossiness.
I switched on my lamp again to navigate the hall. With no furnishings or rugs to soften it, the high, wide space seemed not just barren but menacing. Shivering from more than cold, I opened doors on empty rooms, checking windows and locks, until I got to the back of the house, where the hall opened onto the terrace room. This was the area that led to the gardens and the pond, with the French doors that Catherine Bayard had used.
I switched off my lamp and peered into the night, wondering if she might be going to show up, after all. It was one-thirty in the morning; Catherine might try to slip out if she thought her house was sound asleep. It would be helpful if she arrived with her key.
If I couldn’t get out any other way, I’d break one of the glass panels in the French door, but I moved on to my right, looking for the kitchen, moving past Geraldine’s father’s study, its floor-to-ceiling bookshelves empty, except for a CD by ‘NSYNC, presumably left behind by the nounous. I came to the swinging door that I’d expected after my jaunt to the Bayards’, and again found myself in servants’ space: narrower hall, cheaper wood in the floors, lower ceilings.
The kitchen held an array of appliances, still shiny with newness-a sixburner, restaurant-weight stove; three ovens, including a stand-alone bread oven; a walk-in freezer, two refrigerators. The current vanity of wealthy homeowners, these monstrous toys-although maybe Mrs. Nou-Nou really was an accomplished chef. Maybe she’d been baking thousands of quiches to support the family since her husband’s dot-com business went south.
I looked in the pantry, which was windowless. The computer for the house was there, too. Catherine had apparently switched off the motion detectors, but I’d need a code to turn off the current to the doors and windows.
Beyond the pantry I found a small bathroom. It did have a window, built high into the wall. Not only would it have been hard to climb out but it, too, had white security piping across it.
The back door had a heavy dead bolt, which I undid, but it was also keyed shut. I looked hastily through the cabinets, brushed stainless steel, covering one whole wall. A colander had been abandoned and a box of decorative toothpicks. I’d have to try to use the small knife in my day pack, but I needed a secondary tool. That meant the plastic toothpicks with their whimsical animal heads.
With the diver’s light trained on the door, I began working the lock, using toothpicks to hold the tumblers in place as I found them. The first time I had two pressed back, the toothpicks broke. The second time, a soft footfall behind me made my blood run cold. I dropped the knife and jumped up to see Benjamin standing anxiously behind me.
“I think you are leaving me,” he said simply.
“Just trying to open this lock. Look: kneel down here next to me, and hold this toothpick in place.”
He was still carrying his book, but he laid it now on a counter and came to kneel next to me. I showed him how I was pushing the cylinders back, and how to hold them in place.
“There are three altogether. You’ll have to hold two while I undo the third. No, don’t push so hard.” I spoke too late; the toothpick snapped in his nervous fingers. “Not to worry. Feel my fingers, feel the way I’m holding it:’
His hands brushed mine nervously, as if contact would burn him, but the next time I had the roller pushed back he held the toothpick in place, and then a second. I was working the third and trickiest roller when we both heard the car.
“Don’t move,” I said sharply. “We’re almost there.”
His hand gave a convulsive jerk and the toothpicks clattered to the floor. “Is the police?”
“I don’t know. Let’s get this damned door open. Come on.”
On the kitchen side of the house, we couldn’t see the drive. We couldn’t hear activity at the front door. We’d only heard the car because it had driven past the main entrance toward this side of the house.
Maybe Geraldine Graham had seen my light and called the sheriff, in which case the deputies would make a brief survey and leave. But if fiddling with the lock had set off the alarm, or if Renee Bayard had summoned the law, then we were in trouble.
Benjamin Sadawi was shaking too hard to help me. I looked around the kitchen. He’d suffocate in the refrigerator. But he was a small, slim boy and the bread oven was big. I hustled him over to it.
“I’m not going to leave without you, unless I’m arrested and can’t help it. But you stay in this oven until you hear from me.”