And when they couldn’t find it and the effect of the sedative was likely to wear off, Sophia volunteered to try to get the information out of Brendan. It was then that she’d produced the gun, loaded even. Arthur never showed when he was mad. He just got quiet. She didn’t need a lecture from him on the A to Zs of successful house burgling. So she quickly said, “I’ll wake him up and ask him. He’ll be so scared, he just might tell us.”
“He just might see us too.”
“We’ll do it in the complete dark. I’ll put the gun to his head and he’ll be blabbering within two minutes.”
“And if he doesn’t?”
“You’ll be right here.”
Arthur had agreed, but she knew he hadn’t been happy about it and now an “I told you so” was written all over him.
“You didn’t give me enough time with him,” she repeated.
“Time for what? Having sex him? Was that part of your plan, my dear?”
“No. I just… Fine. Never mind. Let’s get out of here. It’s probably somewhere else.”
As they went out onto the balcony to scramble back up to the roof, she took one last look through the glass doors at the darkened bedroom. He was going to have an awful headache in the morning.
Brendan wasn’t a morning person. Admittedly. But he wasn’t a “what fresh hell is this?” person in the morning either.
“Time to rise and shine, Master Beckett.”
“For Christ’s sake, if you call me Master one more time, I’m going to fire you. I swear I will.”
Why the hell he even had a butler, he had no idea. In fact, it hadn’t been his idea. He just happened to be at a house party over in the UK a few months ago when this bitch of a hostess fired Mandrake here for no good reason. Of course, her reason had probably seemed good to her at the time. Mandrake had been caught in bed with her own current lover, an annoying Italian young man of obviously confused sexuality who had been hitting on everyone, Brendan and his own date—a fresh-faced English girl—included all weekend. Brendan hadn’t felt that Mandrake here should bear all the brunt of the hostess’ ire. So he’d hired him on the spot.
Unfortunately, Mandrake took his duties very seriously. Even though Brendan had put his foot down about letting him live in, which Mandrake had somehow suspected was a homophobic move, Mandrake insisted on showing up for work here every morning as if he was punching a time-clock. What he did during the day while Brendan was gone, he had no idea and he didn’t care. His fondest hope was that Mandrake would someday be the beneficiary of New York State’s groundbreaking rules on same-sex marriage and retire after tying the knot with some similarly inclined rich man.
And then he remembered. Last night. Or the middle of it anyway. He hadn’t dreamed it, had he? The pounding in his head and the bump he could feel at the base of his skull suggested not.
As Mandrake busied himself putting the unasked-for tray of coffee and rolls down on the nightstand, Brendan said, “I was robbed.”
“Really? Where?”
“Here. Last night. A woman.”
“You brought a woman home and she robbed you? I’ve warned you about that kind of thing, Master Beckett. There are so many nice, suitable girls in Manhattan. I don’t know why you insist on—”
“I didn’t bring her home! She was just here.”
“You had a girl waiting for you when you got home? Well, I suppose that’s not so unusual for you. But it would serve you well to be on your guard a bit more, if you don’t mind me saying.”
He stood up. “Get me some aspirin, would you, Mandrake?”
Mandrake pursed his lips and hurried in to the adjoining bathroom. When he came back out, he had the aspirin and a robe. “I would really appreciate it, as I’ve mentioned to you before, Master Beckett, if you would not parade about in the nude around me.”
Brendan took the aspirin and shrugged into the robe. “Oh, yeah. Sorry about that. I forgot.”
“It’s common courtesy. I would ask the same of a woman employer.”
“Yeah, sure. Sorry.” He downed the aspirin with a slug of coffee, burning his throat in the process but not caring. He was starting to think that hostess had maybe just used her boyfriend in bed with Mandrake as an excuse to fire him. He was kind of a pain.
“And the thief wasn’t waiting for me when I got home. She was sitting on top of me when I woke up. With a gun to my head, by the way.”
“Oh, dear. Would you like me to call the police?”
Brendan looked around. His wallet was on the dresser as usual and nothing, in the bedroom anyway, seemed out of place. “She was asking about a safe. Maybe she didn’t really take anything. Does anything look missing?”