But if the meeting was being held somewhere else, so might the postmortem.
He listened awhile to hear if Thomas and his Middle Eastern wallet man would drop anything worthwhile, but they didn't seem to be buddies: Thomas read the paper while the stranger stood at the window and stared at the street below.
Jack eased back into the larger duct and checked out his options.
2.
"What are we doing here?" Alicia said as Gordon Haffner ushered them into a mahogany-paneled conference room.
"Having a meeting," Haffner said. He looked confused as he laid a file folder on the gleaming surface of the oval mahogany table. "Isn't that why you called? To have a meeting?"
"We met in your office last time, so I thought—"
"This is much roomier."
Alicia glanced at Sean O'Neill, who replied with a barely perceptible shrug.
"Is something wrong?" Haffner said.
Yes, but Alicia couldn't tell him what. They'd set up this meeting to allow Jack to identify Thomas's backers. But what if the backers met in here instead of Haffner's office after the meeting? Jack would be eavesdropping on an empty room.
If she demanded to meet in Haffner's office, would that make him suspicious? And what would that accomplish if the backers were set to meet here afterward?
Jack needed to know about this conference room. And she could think of only one way to do that.
"Wrong?" Alicia said, letting her voice rise. "You want to know if something's wrong! Let me tell you what's wrong!" She raised the volume, pushing it to a shout. "Your client, my half brother Thomas Clayton, is what's wrong! Do you have any idea what kind of a slug you're representing? Do you know what he did to me Thursday night?"
She saw O'Neill turn her way and give her a quick smile and a wink.
But as she started in on the details of her abduction, she found she no longer needed to force the volume, or act angry. Suddenly the rage was real and her pitch rose.
Gordon Haffner's face went a little pale, and Sean O'Neill's smile faded.
Alicia heard her own voice… screaming…
3.
You're beautiful, Alicia.
Jack smiled as he watched her wind down from her tirade. He'd been crouched outside the return from Haffner's office, pondering his next move, when he'd heard a woman screaming. He hadn't recognized the voice—a scream was a scream—but he'd followed the sound. After all, no one should be screaming in an attorney's office, unless maybe it was a client who'd just got a bill.
A few turns this way and that, and here she was, sliced by the louvers of a register high in the wall of some sort of conference room, doing a very convincing Screaming Mimi.
Finally, she began losing steam. As she wound down, Jack eased back into the larger duct and positioned himself facing the way he'd come. He turned on his headlamp and narrowed the beam to check his watch. Barely past nine-thirty. He'd be back on the street before eleven—hopefully with the answers to some of his questions.
All he had to do was wait until the meeting was over, then see where the other side chose to hash over Alicia's proposal.
* * *
Jack didn't have to wait long or go far. Sean presented Alicia's asking price of ten million dollars, Haffner expressed shock—genuine, Jack was sure—then tried to bargain her down. But Alicia held firm and finally Haffner said, Thenk-yew-veddy-much, and the room emptied out.
Jack gave them a few minutes, and was about to crawl back toward Haffner's office when he heard the conference door open.
"You can have the room as long as you want," Haffner said. "I'll be in my office should you need me."
Jack wedged himself into the duct in time to see the door close, leaving Thomas and the Middle East guy together. Neither sat down.
"Ten million," Thomas said, shaking his head in what might have been admiration. "Christ, she's got balls." He glanced at his companion. "Well, Kemel, what's it going to be? Are your people going to go for it?"
"I do not see that we have a choice," the guy called Kemel said. His accent was definitely Middle East, but his English had a faintly British accent. He spoke rapidly, clipping his words.
"You've got to be kidding! You heard Haffner. He's sure he can get the will set aside. Ten million for that place? That's crazy."
Jack too was shocked. He'd hauled that asking price out of the air, never dreaming they'd even consider it.
"My people want this matter settled. It has dragged on too long. And after all, what is ten million against what we will gain by keeping it out of the wrong hands? A pittance."
The wrong hands? Jack thought, mentally rubbing his own hands together. He was hot, sweaty, and cramped, but suddenly that no longer mattered. Now we're getting to the good stuff. Keep going.
"A pittance to you, maybe. But a hell of a lot of money for something that might not be there."
"If it is not, it is of no loss to you. It is not your money."
"Yeah, but then Alicia will be a millionaire and I'll have zilch. Less than zilch. I quit my job to help you with this."
"You are being well compensated. And don't forget that you will have the house—after all, we are buying it in your name."
"Yeah…the house," Thomas said. "What's left of it. I mean, we've turned the insides upside down—at least as upside down as you can without making it obvious—and we've come up empty-handed. We push it much further and we risk getting arrested for trespassing and vandalism."
"There is something there," Kemel said. "Perhaps not the plans and diagrams themselves, but if not, then I believe it is reasonable to assume that your father left some clue as to their whereabouts."
"That's becoming an expensive assumption."
"The will all but says so. One cannot ignore your father's message to that ecology group—what is it called?"
"Greenpeace."
"Yes. Greenpeace. Such a strange concept. We have no such groups in my land. But your father, he said, 'This house holds the key that points the way to all you wish to achieve. Sell it and you lose everything you've worked for.' That to me is proof enough that the house is hiding something."
"Fine. But we've got to find it."
"Have no fear. We will find it. As soon as the house is ours, we will begin a most thorough search, breaking down the walls if necessary. And if we still have not found it, we will dismantle the house brick by brick, beam by beam, until we succeed."
"And if we don't?"
"At least we will have prevented others from finding it and using it."
"Yeah, but then I don't get my payday."
"Well, certainly you would not expect us to buy something that you do not have. Would you?"
Thomas shrugged. "What's our next step?"
"I contact my superiors to approve the purchase price—a mere formality, I assure you—and then we let Mr. Haffner arrange the details."
"Ten million bucks," Thomas said, shaking his head as he'd done when this little tete-a-tete started. "Well, I guess I should be thankful my dear sister has no inkling what we're after. If she did, she'd be asking ten million per brick."
"Yes," Kemel said. "And that would still be a bargain."
He's got to be exaggerating, Jack thought. But somehow he doubted it.