It was ten o’clock on Thursday morning, and he was standing in the reception area of the offices of Grandison, Harcum, Slater & Cole just off Wall Street, waiting for Bartram Cole to stop blathering and lead them all back to a conference room. Today was the day that had been set for the reading of Grandfather’s will, and it was going off as planned, in spite of what had happened to Rosalie. Martha and Ida had both come down from the Sojourner Truth Health Center. Martha looked pinched and angry, the way she always looked. Ida looked oddly attractive in an ugly way, dressed in jeans and a shirt and a bright red linen blazer. When they had handed out the brains in this generation, Ida and Rosalie had definitely gotten all there were. Victor knew that almost everyone thought that Martha was more intelligent than he was, but he didn’t credit that. He knew Martha.
Bartram Cole was a small man made entirely out of globes. He had globular cheeks on a globular head over a globular belly. Cole made his expensive suit look as if it had come off the rack at Sears. He bounced up and down on the balls of his feet, keeping time to the rhythm of his monologue.
“Well,” he said after a while. “I suppose we ought to go back there and get down to business.”
“He charges three hundred and fifty dollars an hour,” Ida said into Victor’s ear, in a whisper so soft Victor was sure he was the only one who could hear her. “At those rates, I could learn to bore people to death for hours on end, too.”
In Victor’s estimation, Ida could bore people for hours on end without being allowed to charge anything for it. Ida always made him tired. Victor hated serious people. They never had any fun. His sister and his girl cousins were all serious. Ida and Rosalie were at least useful, every once in a while—at least, Rosalie had been—because they helped him with that infernal contest. Martha couldn’t even do that.
Bartram Cole was leading the way back into the bowels of the office suite. The bowels of this particular office suite might as well have been lined with mink. It might have been cheaper than what it had cost to outfit them as they were. The last time Victor had been up here—which was for his twenty-first birthday—the decor had been rather drab and office-y. Now it was high-tech pink, with lots of shiny metal surfaces and tinted glass. Victor knew decorators. This was the trademark of a famous one. Victor put the price down at about a hundred and fifty thousand dollars, no structural changes included.
The office suite was not quite so pink and shiny as the rest of the suite. The big custom-carved teakwood table that had been with the firm since its founding in 1867 had been retained. It had been surrounded by what Victor put down as a Ralph Lauren Polo version of English country-house chic. It had also been decked out in too many flowers. The room smelled like perfume.
Victor sat down in one of the chairs near the head of the table—you could always tell the head of the table at Grandison, Harcum, Slater & Cole; it was the seat closest to the Sargent portrait of the founder, old William Grandison the First—and stretched his legs. Ida sat down next to him and tapped him on his arm.
“I don’t see why we have to go through this,” she said. “I don’t see why he can’t just mail each of us a letter with the particulars and that would be that.”
“That’s so modern,” Martha said. “We’re in the wrong place for modernity. They wouldn’t know what to do with it around here.”
“Well, they ought to find out.” Ida was indignant. “I had to get someone to cover for me this morning, and it wasn’t easy. I have work to do. The days when nobody had anything more important to do than attend meetings like this one are over.”
“They’re not over for me,” Victor said. “I intend to be as idle and indolent as I possibly can, as soon as I get my hands on some cash. I’m certainly going to quit my job. Somebody else can present the grand prize check to the lucky Father’s Day winner.”
“Can’t you just imagine what they say about us around here when we’re not around?” Martha demanded. “They’ve probably got an office pool going on which of us did it.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Ida said. “You always exaggerate everything. Nobody thinks we did it.”
Martha shrugged. “That police detective does. Sheed. And I think Gregor Demarkian agrees with him.”
“Hector Sheed thinks nothing of the sort.” Ida sounded ready to explode. “He thinks Michael did it. You would have realized that if you weren’t always so self-absorbed. And as for Gregor Demarkian—”