Chapter 21 #2
The Manor’s apparently impenetrable front doors had been smashed in, a whole section of the stained-glass panes shattered entirely, with shards littering the ground.
The area felt cold, as gusts of wind crawled in through the broken barrier of the entrance.
Police tape adorned the foyer, which already felt boxed in with all of the stacked chairs blocking the doorway, and a sense of doom hung in the air.
“I thought you said it wasn’t a big deal,” Bilal said to Henry, his eyebrows raised in shock, his pulse thrumming.
Henry’s face pulled into a taut expression.
“The incident wasn’t as small as I may have originally suggested.
But it is nothing that can’t be contained.
It was just a rogue reporter who’d managed to bypass your father’s security systems and had attempted to break through the door using a large drone camera that had a note attached to it.
It appears he knows about your father’s …
passing and is threatening to leak the news unless we pay him for his silence.
The police suspect word got out from the … er … crime scene in the Hamptons.”
“Christ,” Bilal said, his eyes wide and alert. A drone camera? He hated how the fanatics that stalked his family seemed to get more creative as time passed. “What are we going to do?”
“The reporter was found with the controller, close to the estate, and has been arrested. But that doesn’t mean he hasn’t told others or doesn’t have some of insurance in case this happened.
So we are currently working with your father’s lawyers on the likely scenario that the news will be made public in advance of our intended schedules,” Henry said.
“So what you’re saying is … we’re going to do nothing?” Bilal replied, stunned and little horrified. “Shouldn’t Claire be here planning some kind of announcement?”
Bilal didn’t know his father’s publicist all that well, but he knew she had been the one to orchestrate the media release of his injury to the world—mostly against his will.
He’d hoped to somehow lie low and fade into obscurity with no one ever knowing about it, but his father and Claire had other plans.
“Claire is unfortunately no longer with us,” Henry stated.
At first, it sounded like Claire was dead too, like his father.
But Bilal suspected she’d probably just gotten herself fired like most of his father’s staff.
Poor Claire, he thought. “Nevertheless, your father was always clear as to how he wanted his death to be reported. There is already a statement ready to go, drafted this morning once the news reached the lawyers. We are still hopeful that we can publish our own statement first, and, as the threat may be just that, we are holding fire until we are in a better position. This all of course means that people here are no longer permitted to leave directly after their interviews. They must first sign a nondisclosure form before they leave, to avoid further leaks. But hopefully once the police have made a formal arrest, we will be able to return back to normal.”
Bilal wasn’t sure normal could even exist anymore. He felt the uneasy rise and fall of panic in his chest. This was all becoming too much. “You seem to have everything under control,” he said, not sure what else to say.
“Of course. Everything has to be under control in times like this. Your father made sure there were several plans for his death. All potential circumstances have been planned for.”
All potential circumstances have been planned for.
Bilal wouldn’t say that. Being here at the Manor past midday had not been in his day’s plans.
He had hoped to already be back in his apartment in Brooklyn by now, in the discomfort of his own silence.
But nothing in the last twenty-four hours had gone to plan.
He did not plan to spend the night at the Manor.
He did not plan to hook up with Anwar. And he certainly did not plan for his father to die.
Bilal turned suddenly away from the crime scene and over to Henry, who was looking somberly across the foyer at the guests in the drawing room.
They were a mix of ages. He figured a number of them were the legal guardians of the younger prodigies, but mostly everyone in here was an expert, the gods of their respective fields.
And yet right now, these gods looked so very human.
He could see agitated faces, as well as worried and frightened ones, like they could feel that something was amiss.
He suspected even that some of them knew.
They were geniuses, after all. It wouldn’t take much to put the pieces together.
For one, the brunch was now about two hours behind schedule.
And they were all being held in the drawing room without explanation, surrounded by police tape with furniture blocking them in.
And they were being asked to sign nondisclosure agreements, or would be soon.
But most questionable of all: Mr. Button was nowhere to be seen in all of this.
He’d disappeared. Gone. Shoved off the face of the earth.
“Wait,” Bilal said, only now just registering some of Henry’s earlier words. “Before, did you say there was going to be an arrest? Why would there be an arrest?”
Henry didn’t respond.
“And you called the Hamptons a crime scene … Henry. What’s going on? I thought Chief Waxler wasn’t concerned?”
Henry wiped his brow with his pocket handkerchief. “Yes. Erm. That was before. The police hadn’t yet reviewed his body, it was all very new then.”
“And now?”
“Things appear to be much more complicated than we’d previously thought,” Henry said in a low voice, so as not to alert those in the drawing room to this development.
“When your father’s … body … was finally examined, it was clear that there had been foul play.
The police chief thought it best to hold off on telling you kids.
As a close friend of your father’s, I think he …
the chief just wants to do what he believes is best for you all.
I told him you would all much rather the truth, but he didn’t want to cause any more upset or pain. ”
Bilal’s jaw clenched as he took a moment to figure out what all of this might mean.
How this revelation would change everything.
Because it surely would. “Are you sayi—” He was cut off by the sound of a bell tolling.
He looked across the foyer at one of the officers, who was now standing next to one of the housemaids, tugging at the rope that hung from one of the walls to the side of the foyer, triggering the main house bell, which chimed loudly now, as it had done earlier that morning when they’d been called down for breakfast.
Silence settled instantly.
Four officers, including Waxler, stepped out of the shadows before the police chief moved to stand in the intersection of the spaces, where all could see and hear him. The expression he wore was grave.
“Thank you all for your patience and cooperation today. We come to you with a rather unfortunate update. I imagine you will have a good deal of questions, but I ask that you hold these for now.” He paused a moment, before continuing.
“It gives me no pleasure to inform you all that Mr. Button was found dead on the Titania yacht this morning at approximately 7:21 A.M. I am very saddened to be delivering this news, especially on what was meant to be such a celebratory day. But, in light of this update, I must confirm that this is now being treated as a murder investigation. As everyone here was on the yacht last night, you are all considered suspects.” Chief Waxler’s voice was firm above the gasps.
Murder investigation. Bilal’s hands grew cold. That’s right … Dad was murdered.
“We will be starting questioning in due course. Thank you in advance for your cooperation.”
As the police chief exited the scene, the entire world around Bilal descended into utter chaos.