“What about Jessika?” Jeremy asked.
“Jessika’s wonderful,” Asher said. “She’s been really accepting during all of this. I enjoy her company a lot, too. Maybe Beatrice and her can spend more time together, too. Maybe… maybe it’ll help? I don’t know.”
“You’re thinking from a business point of view again, Asher. To use your own words, that’s an obtuse creative solution. Except, you know, sometimes it’s better to keep it simple. You don’t always need to do something the hard way just because you can.”
Asher frowned. He didn’t know what he should do, or how he should do it. During important business meetings he could always come up with a plan, and if he didn’t know what to do it only took him a little while to concoct a call to action. Business was easy that way. He understood the rules and he knew how to use them to his advantage.
This, though, it wasn’t that. Jeremy was right. Jessika wasn’t some rule to be understood, a piece of a puzzle that he needed to set into place. Jessika was so much more than that. And, truthfully, Beatrice was, too. It was just so difficult. What should he do and why should he do it? He didn’t have a plan and there was no call to action. It was him, alone, a corporation of one, needing to decide the future for himself.
He needed to figure things out fast.
…
The inside of the passageway was easy to traverse. Whoever had built it made it more simplistic than otherwise, with emergency-style maps placed at even intervals along the hallways. It didn’t split off into different routes often, and when it did there were easy-to-read signs explaining which way was which. Very logical and nice and it helped me a lot in figuring out where I was going.
Apparently, as far as I could tell, the passageways went to every major point in the Landseer main house. I checked a map to make sure and saw exits at all the rooms I knew. The dining hall, the front foyer, Asher’s bedroom, even Jeremy’s room. And then, of course, Beatrice’s bedroom. Down the hall from Asher’s, clearly indicated on the map and easy to find.
I walked there while the dim light from emergency floodlights glared onto me, illuminating the pathways and leaving a large shadow behind me. It felt like I was somewhere in a horror movie, almost, escaping the zombie plague. Not the best of thoughts to have while on a mission like this, but the idea stuck.
Once I arrived at the doorway to Beatrice Landseer’s room, I paused. Did it open as easily on the inside as it did when I entered the tunnels from the guest home? And where exactly would I come into her room? What if someone was there cleaning the room and I burst inside? If they saw me, if…
I glanced at a console in the walls. “No motion detected,” it said.
Oh, well, that was easy. I tried the handle of the door and it opened just like that. On the other side was a panel that slid away when I touched it. I knew Asher liked this kind of thing, the whole high tech science fiction fantasy feel, but it just seemed so strange. Was I stepping onto a spaceship somewhere or was it Beatrice’s room?
It was Beatrice’s room. Her walk-in closet to be specific. The panel moved out of place at the back of her closet beside a huge rack of shoes and shelves full of folded towels. I snuck through the closet—the massive closet that was about as long as two of my bathrooms combined—and made my way to the door. I opened it an inch and peeked outside, listening for anyone on the other end, but there was no one.
So, now what?
I stepped into the room and looked around. It was extravagant and excessive, but I expected that. Beatrice owned an old-fashioned four-poster bed that stood high off the ground on stilted legs. The bed had a curtain around it with a canopy above it, and a mirror built into the top so anyone laying on it could look at themselves by looking up. Then she had a private bathroom, currently darkened but with more than a hint of a myriad of feminine luxuries peeking through. A double sink and wall-sized mirror with counters covered in premium skincare products.
The desk with her laptop laying on it was near to the window. Dressers and bureaus sat against one wall, with a sofa against the opposite one, and a wall-mounted TV situated so that she could watch it from the bed or the sofa. Beatrice’s room alone was about twice the size of my entire apartment, give or take a regular sized closet or two.
I stopped gaping and convinced myself to check out the laptop. This was probably my best option, right? Except I wasn’t some kind of genius computer hacker. I knew spreadsheets and word processing programs and email and the internet, but…
Oh well, I didn’t come here for nothing. I lifted the screen and pressed the power button. The laptop wasn’t fully shut off, just in sleep mode, and it powered up fast. No password protection, either, just straight to the main screen. Beatrice had left a website up with a description of a hotel in California: the Solage Calistoga.