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 what I want 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.