Nadine looked down at the bouquet, suddenly realizing that was the reason she hated getting flowers. The trimming, finding a vase, and arranging the stalks were all unwelcome work—andthatwas before the cycle of cleaning up dropped pollen and decayed petals. “I’d be happy to,” she said.
“Then get in. You’re letting in the flies.”
Voline turned with difficulty, shuffling each foot with a deliberate motion to keep her balance. Nadine walked slowly to give her the dignity of moving at her own pace. Also, she was busy trying to take in the sight beyond her host.
“Shut the door, girl,” called Voline.
“Sure, Ms. Voline.”
“Christ on a cracker, that’s for an old woman. Call me Dot.”
“Dot,” repeated Nadine politely.
“I’m right here, girl. No need to chant my name like a Benedictine monk.”
Nadine made the mistake of catching Wes’s eye behind Dot’s curved back and gave him a rude gesture when he smirked.
Once properly through the door, it was easier to see the house’s interior. Nadine had once gone to a French chateau and joined the crush of gawking tourists as they’d obediently filed through gilded rooms tiled with mirrors and painted with cherubs and gods and animals. Dot’s house was the Vegas version via an English country hunting lodge.
“Lamps,” muttered Wes. “I knew it.”
“What?” Nadine asked.
“Nothing.”
A taxidermy cheetah skulked near the wall, an ancient beaver top hat angled jauntily over a crooked blue eye. On the other side of the corridor stood a suit of armor with a conference lanyard around its neck and a large gold coin nestled in the plastic name tag slot. As she passed, Nadine saw the coin’s face had a bearded man gazing off into the distance.
She was looking at a Nobel Prize.
“Do you think if we’re good she’ll let us touch it?” whispered Wes.
“No.” Dot’s voice traveled back and echoed off the marble floor. “That’s not what you get to touch if you’re good.”
Wes made a noise that sounded likemeepas Nadine snickered.
“Good lord, handsome, don’t sound so scared. And girl, don’t think of putting your paws on that gold. Sir Latimer guards it with his life.”
The house had a surprisingly straightforward layout. The main doors led down a wide corridor with two halls branching to the right and left, leading to what Nadine assumed were more rooms. Cats wandered the halls, moving noiselessly along the marble floor. Nadine counted at least three.
At the very end, the hall opened to the left into a huge space filled with a dining table and couches and chairs so tufted and tasseled they were more decor than furniture. The ceiling was a calming mural of a surprisingly realistic sky, complete with wispy cirrus clouds and the silhouettes of birds wheeling near the crown molding. A wall of windows at the rear of the room opened into a conservatory, green withplants and dotted with the occasional bloom. Nadine hoped they were orchids. If it was filled with something prosaic like daffodils, she would be disappointed.
“Is that…a Group of Seven wall?” asked Wes. He sounded faint, which Nadine understood once she looked over. A Tom Thomson pine hung in the center, the dark shadowy tree a contrast against the ivory lines of the snowdrifts. Landscapes and images of isolated barns surrounded it in ornate frames that looked like they cost as much as the paintings.
“My husband collected them,” said Dot, inching her way past a side table shaped like an hourglass and covered with Hummel figurines. “I took my favorites out of the art warehouse when he died.”
Nadine slid her eyes over to Wes to check his reaction. His eyebrows were high enough to turn his forehead into a gigantic wrinkle, and she was relieved to have confirmation that a personal art warehouse was a legitimately wild thing to have in one’s life. She felt like the two of them, despite their hostility, were a reluctant team in this strange new world.
“The kitchen is through that door,” said Dot as she lowered herself to the settee. She pointed at Nadine. “Handsome here will keep me company while you put those in water and get the tea. Vases are in the butler’s. Oh, hello, beautiful.” A brown tabby had jumped up to the chair beside her. “This is Octavia. That’s Murasaki near the door.” She indicated a calico who sat with her tail wrapped primly around her front paws.
Nadine would have made a fuss about Dot asking the woman to do the domestic work, but she was the one holding the flowers, plus her desire to see more of the house outweighed any feminist complaints. As she pushed open the door, she heard Wes say, “You have quite the collection of Chippendale. Is that a cherry tilt-top table?”
Who knew Wes was a furniture nerd?
Nadine took two steps into the kitchen before she faltered, feeling as if she’d stepped through to another dimension. The space in front of her was bright and spare, an austerely functional marble and steel chef’sdream that was the antithesis to the room she’d left.
A rattle came from around the corner. “Who’re you?” It was a woman dressed in coveralls, with a spray bottle in one hand and a roll of paper towels in the other. She looked like she was in her late fifties, but if she’d said she was forty or sixty-five, Nadine would have believed it.
“Nadine Barbault. We’re here to visit Dot Voline.”
