Chapter 7

Ding. “You gotta call. Hey-hey you, you gotta call...” He sat up. Soft fingers of sunlight reached across the large room. Tiny dust particles danced in and out of the rays.

He located the vibration next to his thigh and swallowed dry morning mouth. “‘lo.”

“Zeke?” the voice asked.

“Ayah.” He cleared his throat.

“Zeke, this is Clifford. Dude, did I wake you?”

“Uh, yeah. S’okay.” The sleep wouldn’t shake loose from his mind. He sat up straighter.

“ ... with the TV, man?” Clifford said.

“I’m sorry. What?”

Clifford chuckled. “Getcha some coffee, man. Call me back when you’re awake.”

“Kay.” The phone screen was blank. He took a deep breath and stood up. His body stiffened into a stretch that shook his limbs and caused him to lift his arms and rise up on his toes. He almost fell forward, but the muscle spasm ceased and he caught his balance. After he found what he needed to make coffee, he located some bagels and strawberry cream cheese. “Score.”

With half a bagel in his left hand and a cup of steaming black coffee in his right, he walked down the hall behind the kitchen. The next room was some sort of pantry. It had a full set of appliances just like the kitchen and a butcher-block island on wheels. He blinked hard and smiled at the four soda fountain pulls protruding from the wall.

The next room was a large bathroom, strikingly decorated in black and white floor tile, black ceramic sink and counter top. Stark white walls, and cabinets contrasted by neatly folded stacks of black towels. Four black and white prints of aspen trees hung on the wall in a neat square. A glass enclosed shower with black granite tile on two walls finished the length of the bathroom. It had six shower heads and looked big enough for four people. Party down, Luther.

He continued down the hall. It opened into the back of the game room, behind the staircase. To his left was the library. Ms. Rivers was right; it was well stocked. Thousands of books made residence in floor-to-ceiling shelves on each wall. On the wall to the right, the shelves framed a solid wooden door. He pushed the last of the bagel into his mouth and washed it down with his coffee. Setting the cup on the table, he stepped over to the door, and reached for the brightly polished handle. Locked.

“Hmm.” Must be a key somewhere. After scanning the shelves on the right and the left of the door, he found no key. He reached up along the top of the doorframe. Nothing.

Curious. He made a mental note to look for keys later. He left the library and walked toward the front of the house. In the game room, he rolled the cue ball across the kelly-green felt. It smashed into the triangle of billiard balls. He pulled a plunger on one of the two pinball machines and chuckled. One was Donkey Kong and the other, was Harry Potter.

“What the bloody hell, Harry...” he said in his best Ron Weasley accent.

Back around to the entrance, he stood between the two staircases. “Hmm, which staircase to take?”

He decided on the right one.

At the top of the stairs, he glanced over the wrought-iron railing at the great room and entrance below. The room was enormous. To the right of the loft, a hall led to four bedrooms, two on either side of the hall and two walk-through bathrooms between them. On the back wall of the loft, an over-sized bathroom like the one below, except the theme of this one was bright red. To the right, above the TV room, he noted in order to get his bearings, was an enormous bedroom suite.

This had to be Luther’s bedroom. Wow! There was a huge king-size sleigh bed with plush emerald green covers and pillows. A painting of a mountain and lake hung above the dark wooden head board. Each of the wooden nightstands supported a crystal ginger-jar lamp. A crystal glass sat on the one to the right and a book balanced on the corner of the other. It gave the unnerving feeling Luther had just walked away.

Emerald curtains and two stiff-back chairs filled the corner, with a waste-high bookshelf behind them. A cylindrical crystal and gold-leaf light fixture hung from the ceiling between the chairs.

A large chest of drawers sat on the far wall and an upright dresser sat on the wall close to the door. A double-door chifforobe stood on the wall across from the bed.

He peeked in. Nice. It had been converted into an entertainment cabinet. On the left, a TV, DVD, and VHS players, a shelf full of DVD cases, most of them Tom Cruise and Clint Eastwood movies.

“Hmm.” The drawers under the shelf were full of VHS tapes. All with handwritten labels—the same name, different dates, “P. Vince James.”

Whoever P. Vince James was, Luther recorded him a lot.

On the right there were shelves. The first had a radio receiver, and below it, a turntable, next was a taller space tightly filled with LP records. Below that was a satellite receiver and beneath it were drawers filled with miscellaneous wires, headphones and remote controls.

Two doors flanked the chifforobe, a huge emerald green and white bathroom on the left, and the King of all walk-in closets on the right.

Zeke shrugged and slowly walked out of the massive room. He returned to the downstairs TV room. He tried the remote again. Forty minutes later, he concluded he’d wait for Clifford to reveal the magic trick.

He looked past the staircase. Wonder what rooms are behind there? He walked around the wall that encased the stairs. After the formal dining room, there was a long narrow room with a white vinyl-tiled floor. A utility room. Along the left-hand wall, there were ceiling-to-floor doors. He quickly opened the cabinet doors. No keys. He walked over to the glass-paneled exterior door. The garden was beautiful and inviting, but, there was another room to explore. He exited the utility room and turned right. There were two doors along the wall that ran the length of the house, front to back. Through one of the doors, the room was brightly lit by windows at both the front and the back of the house.

“Whoa.” He eagerly entered the exercise room and touched the stacked weights on the fully equipped workstation. He scanned the other equipment. What to try first? He rubbed his hands together and hissed, “My precious.”

The treadmill had a touch panel, like the security system. A huge white screen covered the wall in front of the treadmill. A stationary bicycle faced this screen, too. “Coolio. Reality exercise.”

He couldn’t help himself. He touched power on the treadmill and watched the screen come to life. He set random settings for speed, incline, and a timer.

The floor of the machine began to move and so did he. Soon he was jogging comfortably. The heart monitor wasn’t doing anything. He pushed the “stop” button and searched the control panel. He didn’t see how to connect with the heart monitoring system. “Hmm, I’ll ask Clifford about that, too.”

“Oh, Clifford.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out his cell phone, 9:57. “Wow, almost ten.”

He touched the phone icon, “recent,” and the number for the law firm.

“Law office,” Clifford answered.

“Clifford, this is Zeke.”

“Dude. How much coffee do you need?” Clifford said in his natural voice.

“Sorry, I got side tracked.” He rubbed his shaved head.

“Yeah, it’s a big house, isn’t it?”

“Man. Have you seen this gym?”

“I know, right?”

“How does the heart monitor work on the treadmill?”

“Oh, there’s a wrist attachment. Look on the side of the tread track, there’s a door. Push it and it pops open. Connect it to the control panel, obviously—” Clifford’s phone shrilled. “Hold on.”

Elevator music. Nice. Zeke rolled his eyes. He squatted down and found the door. He removed the wire and Velcro wristband. “Cool.” He hung the monitor across the control panel.

“Okay, sorry,” Clifford said. “So, you had questions about the tiny TV.” He chuckled.