“What do you mean it depends on the day?”
“Expansions.”
Was he high? I looked down at him as we made our way throughthe impossibly long hallway. We were on the 89th floor. The topfloor of One57. Logistically it would be really hard to expand this property. Andwhy did Tanner even need to expand? He hadn’t even properly moved in yet.
We were almost at the dining room when I had to sidestep awhite sheet that was blanketing something tall and wide. Was it a tree or something?How the heck did Tanner even get something so large up here?
I reached out to push the fabric aside and Nigel slapped myhand.
“Ow.” I pulled my hand away from the cloth.
“Off-limits,” Nigel said. “Now please, Mr. Caldwell, go eatbefore you accidentally catch fire.”
“Nigel, I just…”
“Master Tanner, your guest has arrived for breakfast,” Nigelsaid super loudly.
Normally I’d be distracted by the amazing view of CentralPark from Tanner’s open floor plan. But it was rather hard to look at the viewwhen Tanner was sitting at the far end of a long dining room table being fedgrapes by two topless women. His silk robe didn’t look like it had been closedproperly and I wouldn’t have been at all surprised if one of those women hadjust had something other than a grape in her mouth.
One of them giggled as she plopped another grape in Tanner’smouth.
It honestly wasn’t the strangest thing I’d ever walked in onTanner doing. It didn’t even make the top ten list. I was just surprised thewomen weren’t decked out in weird lederhosen like Nigel.
“Good morning, Matt,” Tanner said. “Did you sleep alright?” Thestupid grin on his face made me think that Tanner probably had a hand inNigel’s antics this morning. The blonde to his left ceremoniously ploppedanother grape into his mouth.
“That depends on if you think waking up to a terrible chorusof bells and finding out a houseboy stripped you in the middle of the night…”
Tanner started laughing. “I thought you’d find that funny.”
“My headache begs to differ.”
“Well, I didn’t give him much time to practice.” He turned tohis houseboy. “Good heavens, Nigel, what are you wearing?”
Nigel looked down at his ridiculous costume. “I’m wearingwhat I always wear. Just like you insisted last night when you and Mr. Caldwellgot lost in the wine cellar.”
“No, you’re supposed to wear the other costume when Matt…” Tanner’svoice trailed off.
Nigel and Tanner both looked like they’d been caught in someweird lie.
“How many costumes does he have?” I asked.
Tanner cleared his throat. “Just that one. Like Nigel said. He’salways wearing that.”
“No, he’s usually wearing that weird Victorian butleroutfit…”
“Nonsense,” Tanner said. “Nigel always wears lederhosen. Don’tyou Nigel?”
“Why, yes, Master Tanner. These are my favorite…pant. Pants? Shorts?I don’t really know what this is. And it’s rather itchy.”
“That’s quite enough, Nigel. Please leave us to eat.”
Nigel hurried off.
“And girls, would you wait for me in my room?” Tanner said. “Ineed a word with Matt in private before he goes to work.” He whisperedsomething in one of their ears as he slapped the other girl on the butt. Theyboth giggled and went off down the hall I’d just come from.
Tanner stabbed his fork into some strange looking sausage. “Helpyourself to whatever you’d like.”
I looked at the huge spread of food on the table. Did he haveten more women waiting for him in his bedroom? Because this was way too muchfor just the two of us. But there were only two chairs. The one where Tannerwas sitting at the other end of the table and the one at this end which Iassumed was for me. Why were we so spread out? We were going to have to shoutat each other.
“Sit, sit,” Tanner said. “I’ve been cooking all morning.”
“You made all this?”
Tanner laughed. “Gotcha. No. Of course not. Nigel’s been upfor hours. He insisted that he knew all your favorites and wanted to cater toyou.”
How on earth would Nigel know all my favorites? And why didthis weird little man seem hellbent on catering to me?
“He even made protein pancakes.” Tanner pointed to a plate fullof them.
I did love protein pancakes. I grabbed a plate and started tofill it up.
“And make sure to drink that green juice. It has a few secretingredients to cure hangovers. Nigel’s top-secret elixir.”
I couldn’t argue with that. I grabbed one of the glasses ofgreen juice too and sat down. One bite of pancakes and I was a little lesspissed at Nigel. These were amazing. “You’ll have to let Nigel know these aregreat. What kind of plant protein is this?”
“I’m not sure, I’ll have to ask him. But he’ll be happy tohear that you enjoyed them. Speaking of Nigel. About his uniform. Forgive him,he’s forgetful.”
“Or maybe you are. He’s definitely never worn that before.”
“Of course he has. Because it’s what he always wears. Regardless,are you excited to execute the plan?”
“The plan?” Honestly, I’d had too much to drink last night. Nigelhad said something about getting lost in Tanner’s wine cellar. Had we drank ourway out of it? And how did he have a wine cellar? There were no basements inpenthouses.
“Yes, the plan.” Tanner abandoned his sausage and stood up. Hepulled a cloth off a whiteboard that was filled with pictures and yarnconnecting them and I was pretty sure there were even words in a differentlanguage linking everything together. Chinese maybe?
I opened my mouth and then closed it again. “What the hell isall this?”
“Our plan to take down Richard of course. We spent all nighton it.”
“Did we? Could you maybe just explain what it means to me? Ican’t read whatever that is.”
“Oh it says…” Tanner started coughing. “I mean. Huh. I don’tknow. What language is that? Maybe Nigel came in here and messed with it. I’mpretty sure he speaks whatever tongue that is. That sneaky little bastard. Itold him to stop touching my things. Let’s circle back to this tonight.” Hequickly covered the weird diagram back up.
“I can’t tonight. I have dinner plans with Penny, remember?”
“Right, I mean after that.”
“I have a feeling this headache isn’t going away any timesoon. I’m just going
