Malarkey by Sheila Simonson Read Free Book Online Page B

and cathedrals we visited, I recalled the stately home of a
German industrial family, folks who helped bring us World War One.
The house had been built in the 1880's, when the fake-Gothic craze
was already in decline, and it looked much like Stanyon. The interior
of the monumental German house was done in stained wood and
wood paneling with clots of tormented wood carving to liven things
up. It felt like an overdose of Wagner.
    Stanyon wasn't quite that bad. For one thing, the carvers
had been Irish, so harps and shamrocks and Celtic curves lightened
the angst. At some point most of the wood had been covered with
institutional gray enamel. As a rule I dislike gray enamel but it took
the curse off all that dour paneling. The Steins were in the process of
stripping the wood. I had done a bit of that myself, so I sympathized
with the process if not with the goal. The substance you use to
remove stubborn paint has to be classified as toxic waste.
    Up an intricately carved stairway we went and through a
maze of Toss Tierney's hurdles and tarps to the library. The
muniment room, Alex said. He sounded half-ironic, half-
impressed.
    "Lots of wood," I said feebly.
    "Yeah, in a country that was deforested by the seventeenth
century."
    I live in a region where the big lumber companies are busy
exporting the last temperate-zone rain forest to Japan in the form of
logs. I didn't feel competent to criticize. "I like the stained
glass."
    That was a subject Alex could enter into with untainted
enthusiasm. He told us all about the local artists he had hired to
replace missing panes, and the small crest he had commissioned for
the tallest window—with the company logo picked out in gold and
rose.
    My father admired the glass-encased bookshelves, empty
now, with their little pointy windows. The Stanyon book collection
had been sold off long before.
    "Volumes of Debrett's and leather-bound copies of horse
periodicals," Alex said wryly, "and the occasional seventeenth
century divine. I looked at the catalogue."
    All the same I would have liked to see the books.
    Alex checked his watch. "Barbara should be home from the
airport by now. She went to pick up Slade's sister. Shall we rescue
her?"
    Obedient, we followed him downstairs, though my feelings
toward Barbara Stein were not warm enough to warrant a rescue
mission.
    Downstairs, Alex ushered us into a room the restoration had
not yet touched. It was vast and gray, with an industrial carpet and
an angry-looking parlor stove in which a fire was burning. None too
soon. The huge house was cold. Barbara and her guest had not yet
appeared.
    Alex must have seen my raised eyebrows. "We're still
camping here," he said defensively. "The staff uses this room as a
lunchroom."
    "The staff?" I was confused. Did he mean housemaids?
    "Our mass production and packaging facility is in Arklow,
but the design staff, the brains of the outfit, work here in what was
the drawing room. I'll show you the computer stations later, if you
like."
    Dad said, "Did you have to rewire?"
    Alex gave a hollow laugh. "We're still rewiring."
    "Thanks to Toss Tierney?" I ventured.
    He stared. "You must have talked to Barbara."
    I explained.
    His face clouded. "The man has never, not once, brought a
job in on time."
    "Why don't you fire him?"
    "Because old Toss is everybody's friend—or everybody's
cousin. The sucker must have invented networking. The quality of
his work is good," he added, grudging. "When he gets around to
doing it."
    "Has he talked with Sergeant Kennedy yet?"
    Alex was pouring wine, white for me, red for my father.
"Nobody's seen Toss since Monday."
    "Though how that dolt Joe Kennedy could overlook a
daffodil yellow van is a little hard to imagine," Barbara said. She had
crept in through a side door. "Hi, George. Lark. Red for me,
Alex."
    He handed her a glass of burgundy. He was pouring from a
rather nice teak drinks trolley that looked about a hundred and fifty
years too recent for the house. All the furnishings