Syndrome

design.

There also would need to be a large stone island-say a Brandy Craig-with a couple of sinks and-depending on what he wanted-maybe another high-Btu stovetop there.

She turned to Ken. 'If you have something else to do. . I just need to walk around and live in this space a little. Then I want to make some notes on the plans. Possibly take a few photos.'

'Take your time,' he said. 'I'll be upstairs.'

He disappeared into the elevator, with his curious catlike gait, and was gone in an instant.

As she looked around she realized the thing that was missing was light.

Wait a minute, she thought, there must be a garden at the rear of this building. There are windows in the front, so why aren't there any at the back?

She turned to examine the back wall. It was, in fact, clearly of recent origin, and there was a door at one side. She walked over to the door, which was locked with a thumb latch, and opened it.

And sure enough, behind the building was an unkempt space the width of the building that ran back for a good thirty or thirty-five feet. When she stepped out into the late-morning sunshine and looked at the back of the building, she realized there also was a row of windows facing the garden that had been bricked shut. What a travesty.

The whole design would depend on whether those windows could be reopened. But if Bartlett would allow it, then there were tremendous possibilities. With all this light, you could-

'Who thehellare you?' came a raspy, over-smoked voice from behind her. 'Are you his new tart? We agreed he would never bring his whores here.'

Ally turned to see a tall, willowy woman, who appeared to be in her mid-sixties. She had shoulder-length blond hair, clearly out of a bottle, and a layer of pancake makeup that looked as though it had been applied by a mortician.

'Perhaps it would be helpful if I introduced myself.' She squeezed past the woman in the doorway and walked over to the counter, where she had left her bag. She extracted a business card and presented it.

The woman squinted at it, obviously having trouble making out the print.

'I work with the design firm CitiSpace, and I was asked by Mr. Bartlett to give him an estimate for some renovations.' She had quickly acquired the sense that the less said to this woman, the better.

'I'm his wife and I still don't know who the hell you are.' She squinted at Ally a moment, then glanced back at the card. 'What is. . CitiSpace?'

'It's an interior-design firm.'

'What are you, then? Some kind of decorator?' She grasped the door to steady herself and Ally suddenly wondered if she was slightly tipsy.

'Actually, what we do is probably closer to architecture.'

Ally was collecting her belongings, hoping to get out before Eileen Bartlett decided to do something crazy.

'This is the first I've heard about all this.' She turned and slammed the rear door.

'Mind if I ask you a question?' Ally said. 'Do you have any idea why those back windows were bricked over?'

'It's for security,' she said. 'No one is ever down here.'

That's obvious, Ally thought,which is why this job is so odd.This space clearly isn't being used now, and the social dynamic here doesn't bode well for a lot of cozy entertaining and dinner parties in the foreseeable future. So why is he spending money to renovate? And in this big hurry? And he just happened to pick me to do this as an audition for designing an entire museum.No, this whole thing definitely does not compute.

But of course it does.The job is a blatant bribe.To butter me up for something.

'Look, Miss Whoever-you-are, I want you to leave. I don't appreciate strange women walking around unescorted in my house.'

'I'm going right now. Perhaps you should speak to Mr. Bartlett and decide together what you want to do about this space.'

'I'll tell you right now whatIwant to do. Nothing. For all I know, he's fixing this up so he can move in some tart. We've lived here for twenty-eight years and he's never done anything down here. So why is that tightfisted SOB suddenly deciding to renovate?'

'That would be an excellent question to ask him.'

'You're screwing him, aren't you?' she demanded, wrinkled brow furrowed and dim eyes seething. 'Like that other little whore of his. That's why he hired you. Well, let me tell you something. I'll outlive you both.'

Without another word she turned and got into the elevator.

Chapter 9

Monday, April 6

12:18 P.M.

'Hey, how did it go?' Jennifer asked the minute Ally came in the door.

She wasn't sure she knew the answer to that. Initially the job looked like a lot of fun, but now she felt the interpersonal dynamics of working in Bartlett's home were already a problem even before she started.

Also, maybe it was just paranoia, but as she took the cab downtown from the mansion on Gramercy Park, she got the impression that somebody was following her in a black SUV. And the stress of that brought on a tightness in her chest. But as she neared their office in SoHo, the vehicle abruptly veered east. She had a nitro tab at the ready, but she didn't have to pop it.

'There's good news and bad news. The good news is he's practically handing us a sweetheart of a job, and dangling another-designing a whole museum-in our face. The bad news is, I don't know why he suddenly thinks we're so terrific. I mean, you and I know that but how didhefigure it out?'

Jennifer looked puzzled. 'You mean he-'

'Oh, did I mention that his crazy wife showed up after he left and essentially accused me of being a hooker? I suppose that comes under the heading of bad news.'

'Great. Does that mean she's going to start second-guessing whatever we do?'

'The communication channels between Mr. Bartlett and Mrs. Bartlett don't appear to be all that great. They live on different floors in his place-which really is a huge old mansion on Gramercy Park, by the way-and the job would be in his part, the lower level.' She explained the Bartletts' living arrangements. 'He wants to redo the garden-level floor. It was originally the servants' quarters. Like Upstairs, Downstairs.'

'So he's upstairs and she's way upstairs.'

'And let's hope she stays there.'

Ally fetched herself a cup of coffee, checked in with everybody to see how they were doing, and then settled herself at her computer. She had the latest program in computer-aided design (CAD) and she wanted to program in the dimensions and layout of the space. And since she had a copy of the blueprints, the first thing she would do would be to run them through her flatbed scanner and incorporate them into the program. She didn't get a chance to take any digital photos with CitiSpace's snazzy (and expensive) new Nikon. But if the job went forward there'd be plenty of time later.

Everybody's computers were connected to the Net via a broadband DSL hookup and they were never turned off. Because of that, the computers were vulnerable to being hacked so Jen had installed a firewall program to keep out snoops.

She sat down and stared at the screen saver, which was an ever-changing series of tropical beaches at sunset. She sipped at her coffee-this was the one cup she allowed herself each day, always saved for the moment when she felt she needed to be most alert-and reached to turn on the scanner. The tightness in her chest that she had momentarily experienced in the cab had completely disappeared and she felt perfectly normal.