Chapter 6 - The Third Floor Windows
The third floor of the Alpine estate smelled of cedar and dust.
It was a wing that had been built in 1935 for guests who never came back after the war, featuring six large bedrooms connected by a long corridor covered in dark blue wallpaper patterned with faded silver lilies.
Claire’s room was at the far end, facing east toward the Hudson River.
When she stepped inside, she saw that Joseph had indeed been there before them. The fire in the brick fireplace had been lit, casting flickers of red and orange light across the heavy mahogany bed, the brass-trimmed wardrobe, and the small writing desk by the window. On the nightstand sat a glass pitcher of water, a clean porcelain cup, and a small blue bottle of salt-water mouthwash prepared by Dr. Aris.
Her canvas tote bag sat on the rug near the door where she had dropped it.
Claire walked to the window.
The glass was thick—three-quarter-inch insulated plate glass set into heavy iron frames that had been painted white six times over seventy years. Beyond the pane, the rain was coming down in long, slanted grey sheets, blurring the dark shapes of the hemlock trees three hundred yards away.
Down on the driveway, forty feet below her sill, she saw two men in dark oilskin coats walking slowly along the edge of the blue flagstones. They carried long flashlights that threw yellow beams of light into the wet rhododendron bushes every ten seconds.
They were not watching for intruders coming in from the road.
They were watching the third-floor windows.
Claire turned away from the glass. She walked to the bathroom—a cold, high-ceilinged room lined with white subway tile and silver fixtures that looked like they belonged in a nineteenth-century hospital.
She looked in the oval mirror above the pedestal sink.
Her face was pale under the bright overhead lights. The dark-blond hair around her ears was damp and matted from the rain. The left side of her lower lip was swollen to twice its normal thickness, the skin stretched tight and dark crimson where the tooth had cut through. Across her left cheek, a faint yellowish-red shadow was already forming where Dominic Rainer’s knuckles had struck her six hours ago.
She washed her face with cold water from the chrome tap, avoiding the lip, then used the salt rinse Dr. Aris had left for her. The salt stung sharply against the raw tissue, bringing fresh tears to her eyes, but she did not spit it out until she had counted to thirty in her head.
When she walked back into the bedroom, she did not unbutton her black trousers or remove her dress shirt.
She sat on the edge of the mahogany bed, pulled off her cheap black oxfords, and set them side by side on the rug. She undid the navy canvas apron from around her waist, folded it into a neat blue square, and placed it on the small writing desk beside her mother's silver earrings.
Then she lay down on top of the heavy wool blanket, her hands folded across her chest, staring up at the plaster crown molding on the ceiling.
She didn't sleep.
Every forty seconds, the pendulum clock in the hallway below made its heavy clack-thump, the sound traveling up through the floorboards like a slow, dull pulse.
At two o'clock in the morning, she heard the faint sound of a car engine pulling up to the side entrance below.
It wasn't a Maybach. It was a smaller, louder vehicle—a diesel truck or a heavy SUV—that idled for four minutes beneath her window before its doors opened and shut with hard metallic slams.
Footsteps moved up the rear staircase—not the smooth, measured steps of Joseph or the doctor, but the heavy, uneven tread of a man who was walking with a bad knee.
Claire sat up on the bed.
The footsteps stopped outside her door.
A key turned in the brass lock—a dry, raspy sound that took two turns before the heavy oak door swung open three inches.
A man stood in the doorway, framed by the dim yellow light of the corridor behind him.
It was not Augustus.
It was a man named Miller—the senior security chief with the white scar running from his right ear into his collar. He was fifty-eight years old, his shoulders slightly rounded beneath a grey tweed jacket that smelled of wet dog and pipe tobacco. He had worked for Augustus Carver since 1992. He had been the man who drove Claire to school when she was twelve years old after her mother died.
"Charlie," Miller said softly.
Claire did not move from the edge of the bed. "Hello, Miller."
The old security chief looked around the room—at the clean linens, the burning fire, the cheap black oxfords sitting neatly on the rug.
"Your father wants to see you in the library," Miller said.
"It's two in the morning, Miller," Claire said flatly.
"Dominic Rainer's uncle is downstairs," Miller said quietly.
Claire went still. Her gray eyes narrowed as she looked at the old man in the doorway. "Frank Rainer?"
"Yes," Miller said. "He drove up from Elizabeth twenty minutes ago with four of his men. He's sitting in the library right now with your father."
"Why?"
"Because Dominic didn't go to the airport, Charlie," Miller said, stepping one inch into the room and closing the door behind him so his voice wouldn't carry down the long corridor. "Dominic went to his uncle's house in Elizabeth at eleven o'clock tonight. He told Frank that your father stole the Marlowe Club using a forged deed and a fake phone call."
Claire let out a small, bitter laugh. "Dominic is stupider than I thought."
"Frank Rainer isn't stupid," Miller corrected her grimly. "Frank Rainer owns three shipping terminals, ninety union stewards, and two dozen men who don't care about legal deeds or state prosecutors. He brought two binders of his own to show your father tonight—binders that show where your father's concrete companies buried four hundred tons of toxic waste in the Meadowlands back in 2004."
Claire looked at the fire dancing in the hearth. "A war."
"It's already started, Charlie," Miller said softly. "Frank told your father that if Dominic doesn't get his club back by nine o'clock tomorrow morning, two trucks are going to unload eight tons of scrap iron across the driveway of your father's concrete plant in Newark, and five hundred dockworkers are going to strike at the South Amboy terminal."
"And what does my father say?" Claire asked.
"Your father told Frank that if those trucks move, Frank's eldest son will be arrested at his home in Red Bank before breakfast for tax evasion," Miller said. "They're sitting across from each other right now, Charlie, drinking twenty-year-old scotch and measuring who can ruin the other man faster."
Claire stood up slowly from the bed.
She walked to the writing desk, picked up her navy canvas apron, unfolded it, and tied it back around her waist over her black trousers.
She picked up the two small silver earrings her mother had given her, slipped them through her ears, and adjusted them until both hung level against her neck.
"Where are you going?" Miller asked, his scarred brow furrowing.
"Downstairs," Claire said.
"Charlie... your father told me to bring you down so Frank could see that you were unharmed," Miller warned her, stepping between her and the door. "Frank thinks Dominic only slapped you once. He thinks your father is using you as an excuse to seize the West Side properties."
Claire looked at the old man who had driven her to school fourteen years ago.
May you like
"Dominic didn't slap me once, Miller," she said softly. "He slapped me in front of sixty people because he thought my life was worth twelve dollars an hour. Now his uncle is down there trying to trade my lip for a liquor license."
She brushed past Miller into the quiet, cedar-scented hallway, her cheap black oxfords silent against the crimson runner as she headed toward the stairs that led down to her father's war.
