Chapter 14

The next morning Martin and Irena decided they would like to try the Forest Trail and they spent the day hiking. They invited us along, but Emily was generally uninterested in working up a sweat outside the bedroom and Darla had a showing in the morning. I, frankly, did not want to be a third wheel.

By lunch Darla was back and the three of us threw together some sandwiches.

“I think I’ll hit the hot tub,” Darla said. “I wouldn’t mind some company.”

“Maybe later,” I said. “I want to get that CNC set up for cutting metal. We promised to have that wall hanging finished by next week.”

“Emily?” Darla asked.

“Setting the CNC up is a two person job,” she said finishing off her sandwich. “Maybe during or after the party.”

“Suit yourselves.”

We were deep in the bowels of the CNC when Darla showed up in the workshop dressed in a monkini and still soaked.

“Do you have a tape measure?”

After hitting my head on the cutting table I said, “Yeah sure. Why?”

“There’s something not right with this building.”

Well that was a hell of a wake up call.

Emily and I were standing on the roof with Darla now wearing a light beach cover-up. We were next to the edge of the roof and looking out toward the front of the building.

“So tell me what’s wrong with the skylights and light pipe covers.”

I looked out over the roof. Most of the roof was covered with a deck. The space between the deck boards allowed rain to reach the roof, which was contoured to direct the rainwater to gutters. In certain places the deck had gaps which were filled, in the case of the living room, dining and kitchen spaces and the bedrooms, by skylights and in the case of the hall, closets, bathrooms and office, by clear caps for the light collectors for the ducted mirror lighting. In one area was the large heat pump that provided chill and heating water to all of the individual room temperature units, each with its own smart thermostat.

“I don’t see anything. Is one of the skylights broken?”

“No. Just picture the rooms below. Can you tell what skylight or light pipe goes where?”

“Well sure,” Emily said. “Those three go to the front living areas. There’s the light pipes for the hall and guest bathrooms. There’s the bedrooms.” She pointed. “Closets, master and guest baths.”

“What’s there?” Darla pointed to an area of the roof that was solid decking. It adjoined the area where the office light pipe was visible. The office was part of the master suite.

“I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe the stairway from the master to the roof?”

“No look that comes up over there. Close, but there’s no way the stairway takes up all that space.”

We used the tape measure to record the distances between the light collector covers, skylights and building walls. Typically Emily had grabbed a tablet and used the stylus to sketch the locations to scale.

Then we went back to the bedroom suite and made some measurements on that floor.

“Maybe its a vent space?” Emily said.

“That doesn’t make any sense,” I pointed out. “That’s the wet wall,” I pointed toward the bathroom. “The temperature control pipes come down that wall. There are no vents per say. Each room has its own unit. It takes air from the room sends it through the heat exchanger and then blows it back into the room.”

“So secret room?” Darla said.

“Or Panic Room. Vault. Considering my uncle, dungeon?”

“Ooow,” Emily said. “I want to play in a dungeon.”

“So how do we get in?”

“The office maybe,” I said. “It’s either that or guest bedroom one.”

“I don’t think that makes any sense. No one would put their entrance to a secret room, vault, dungeon, or whatever in a guest bedroom.”

“I agree,” I said. “Let’s check out the office.”

The office was not very big. Besides can lighting and the solar light diffusers the room had a few table and desk lamps, including the one on the desk itself. There was a couch, I called it my thinking couch, I always suspected to Uncle Tony it was more like a casting couch.

And in one corner there was a built-in bookcase.

“Bookcases make great secret doors,” Emily said. “What? I saw it on YouTube. There’s lots of videos on making secret doors using bookcases.”

We tried the easy shifting the bookcase away from the wall. It was solidly mounted. Then Darla and Emily emptied it of all the books and inspected it in detail. After we found nothing Emily pulled out her phone and began to surf through videos.

I examined the bookcase looking for levers or buttons or anything that might trip a latch.

Finally Emily said, “Switches. This video says you can use an electric magnet to hold the door closed and release it remotely with a switch.”

“Any switches on the desk?” Darla asked.

“I don’t think so,” I answered. “I’ve used the desk to pay bills and other stuff for months. Never found any hidden switches.”

Just then the doorbell went off. The desk had a display, of course, and I opened the front door camera.

“Hi Megan.”

“Hi Danny. I’ve got a package for you.”

“Does it need to be signed for?”

“No.”

I unlocked the door. “Just drop it inside...” Suddenly it hit me.

I opened the house control app on the display. It was divided into functions. When the door bell rang the display would show the door and video controls. But if I wanted to control the doors remotely any other time I had to go to the door controls. I had added the roll up door since moving in because Uncle Tony did not regularly park his cars in the building.

When I got to the door control page there was an icon for the front door. One for the roll up door. And one that was labeled as back door. The loft did not have a back door. The second entrance was the balcony off the bedroom, which did not have a remote lock and was also on the front of the building.

I pushed the button and we heard a click and the bookcase swung about an inch away from the wall on one side. I swung it open. It was indeed a door. The room beyond was dark, but as soon as I stepped in can lighting in the ceiling came up.

“What the hell?” Emily said.

The room was larger than the office.

Along one wall were a number of equipment racks of the same brand as the ones in the workshop, but taller, going from floor to ceiling. One rack had a couple of networking patch panels with bundles of cat 6 cables plugged into them. There were a couple of heavy duty rack USPs. A router. A couple of rack mounted computers. And hundreds of disk drives.

Along another wall was a massively large wall display, at least 100 inches. It was dark but had a green indicator in the frame that glowed brightly.

In the center of the room was a desk. It had another monitor, in this case an ultra wide 49 inch dual monitor. There was a keyboard on the desk along with a mouse. The monitor was sharply angled. On its screen was a layout of the house, including this room. Spread throughout the house were dozens of red dots. The dots were not in every room. This room and the office had none. Neither did most of the closets. The hall only had clusters at each end.

Darla shivered.

“It’s cold in here.”

It truly was. Like all of the loft’s rooms this one had a smart thermostat on the wall. I saw it was set for 68 degrees.

“I’m going to go put on some clothes,” Darla said.

As she left the office I saw the dots indicating the bedroom change from red to green. I reached out to touch one, hoping maybe it was a touch screen. It was. Suddenly a square appeared on the big wall monitor and I was looking at Darla doffing her monokini.

“Holy fuck!” Emily said. “This place is totally wired.”

Well my absentee father ne uncle ne sisterfucker always managed to reach a new moral low.

“I can see the allure,” Emily said, checking out Darla as she walked around the bedroom naked until entering the closet, whereupon all of the cameras turned off. When she entered the room the dots turned green again and I found that I could pull up multiple cameras to get a variety of views of my lovely naked wife. She shimmied into a set of jeans and a long sleeve sweater and reentered the office whereby the cameras turned off.