Quaranteam Ch. 46

"He didn't die in the house," Nicolette said. "That's all I know. C'mon, I want to show you his office. It'll probably mean a lot more to you than it did to me."

As they walked down the hallway, Fiona tugged Andy's shirt. "Didn't McTaggart live in LA?"

"Originally, yeah," he nodded. "Hollywood Hills until he was attacked in '89, and then he moved up to Santa Cruz, but he said in one of the last interviews I read with him Santa Cruz was getting too touristy for him. There were also rumors he moved up to NorCal because it was more LGBTQ+ friendly, and he was very much in the B portion of that initialism, although he wasn't that outspoken about it."

"Check out this office," Nicolette said, opening a door for them.

When they stepped through, it almost felt like moving from an underground bunker into a tropical, almost Panamanian office, with a desk sitting at a counter with a nameplate that read "Mrs. Holloway," with an old-style telephone resting next to a typewriter, although it appeared the telephone wasn't plugged into anything. The wallpaper on the far wall was a desert beach at sunset, and the lights inside the room were meant to amplify that sensation. The wall across from the desk was covered in framed copies of each of the Alan Diamond books, like trophies. The desk itself was clearly just a prop, however, since it looked like it had never been used, the chair behind it classic but uncomfortable looking. It was behind the desk where the real action was.

Like an old detective's office, there was a wall of what looked like wood and frosted glass, although Andy could tell by looking at it that it was modern construction. There was also a door with the words "Devin McTaggart, Author" stenciled on it, and a simple door handle.

"He built his writer's room into a replica of his protagonist's office," Andy said with a grin. "That's sooo fucking cool."

"Cool or not," Nicolette said. "We can't figure out how to get into the office. The door seems to be locked, and we can't seem to get in. There's just that note on the desk here."

Andy moved over and glanced it, reading it aloud:

You're almost there. Come and get it. -Devin McTaggart

"Plus," Tala said. "Get this." She picked up the phone from the desk and swung it suddenly against the glass behind the desk. Instead of shattering into a million pieces, the phone bounced off it with rubbery 'thunk' sound. "Polycarbonate, and layers of it. This office is basically sealed in bulletproof glass."

"There's no keyhole for the door either, although we did see there's an inscription on the frame."

"Mus, felis, malus," Andy read aloud, then chuckled. "Oh, that's good. Let's see here." He turned around and walked over to the wall that had all the books in frames on them. The frames were flush against the wall, and there were seven rows of ten each.

"Andy, what the hell are you doing, love?" Ash asked him.

"Mus," he said, pushing in a book called 'The Dying Game.' The frame sunk in just a little bit, and gave a loud, audible click. He moved up and to the right, scanning through the titles before stopping on another. "Felis," he said, pushing in a book called 'Tiny Red Spots,' the frame sinking again to give another click. "Aaaaannnd... here, we go, malus." He pushed on a book towards the bottom right called 'Empty Reservoir.' The wall clicked again and then the door popped open a little behind them, as Andy stood back up, smiling. "You have to know the books to open the door," he said. "There were a couple of other options it could be, but those seemed like the most reasonable ones, based on the inscription."

"C'mon, clever boy, explain it," Fiona said, almost like a proud parent.

"Mus is latin for mouse or rat, and the murderer in 'The Dying Game' is Jimmy The Rat. It's the only time McTaggart used that sobriquet in all 70 books. In 'Tiny Red Spots,' the thing that ends up driving everyone crazy are these little red spot of blood that lead the cops to crime scenes. They turn out to be cat's footprints."

"Felis," Nicolette groaned. "Latin for cat."

"I don't get the last one, though. Malus just means 'bad,' and how does that relate to 'Empty Reservoir?' I actually read that one," Fiona said. "I don't remember the plot having anything to do with the word 'bad.'"

"The critics hated it. Called it his worst work ever," Andy said, stepping over to the now open door. "Writers have trouble letting go of bad reviews." Once they stepped through the now open door, they were in a much more modern writer's studio, a desk on either side of a central desk, a couch along one wall, a reclining chair against another. Next to the reclining chair was an older style stereo system, with two large speakers and a record player in the center of it, a massive rack of records covering most of that wall. There was also an open safe against the other wall.

The room actually felt a little unfinished, however, as there were no computers, no typewriters, nothing for a writer to actually write. But on top of the central desk, there was a large plastic bubblewrap envelope, with a single sheet of paper on top of it.

Andy walked over, picked up the sheet, and purely out of habit, began to read aloud:

To whomever has found my inner sanctum, you are to be congratulated on your knowledge of my literary career, and to your dedication into exploring my now vacant home. As per the terms of my will, the house was to be sold and the buyer not told about any of the secret rooms and passages, nor whom the previous owner was, so I know not how long after my passing you have discovered this. I can only hope that it was soon, and yet, I also find myself longing that it will not have been too soon, as the draw of a good mystery is always inescapable.

In the envelope below this, you will discover my last three gifts to you. The first is a full copy of my will, which is to be delivered to Hemstone, Woodcock & Latham, whom are managing my estate until the will is presented to them. It will pass all my remaining assets and copyrights onto you, the bearer of this letter. They will, of course, being the bloodthirsty, vampiric lawyers that they are, have taken some for themselves, but I estimate I am leaving you around $30 million dollars or so, between assets and royalties from the books, movies and the television show.

Why do this, you may ask? It is a fair question, but the only answer I can give you is that I do not know anyone worthy of my legacy living, and hope that someone will present themselves after my death. If you are unworthy of my estate, I shall never know it, as I am dying, and have only weeks, if not mere days, left to live as I write these final words. There were over a quarter of a million combinations to this door, and if over a hundred were pressed, the room would have been destroyed by fire, including this letter.

(Friendly note: You should remove the fire destruct system. Instructions on how to do are in the desk. Or don't. I'm dead! Ha!)

The other two things I leave to you are the most precious things I can imagine, both of which are manuscripts. The first is 'A Drought Of Sunshine,' the final Alan Diamond novel, as of yet unpublished. In fact, its very existence is unknown to all, but you will find a business card atop it to put you in contact with my literary agent, so she can talk to ZoomZip Books, whom have been my publisher for all of the other Diamond novels. They will be extremely delighted to take your call.

The other manuscript is 'Drowning In Bodies,' my autobiography, also unknown to all. (What, did people think I simply stopped writing back in 2015? I was lying . No writer worth his weight in salt ever truly retires. We simply tell people that to avoid deadlines. This you are free to take to any publisher you like, as long as it does eventually see publication. I am certain that ZoomZip would love to take stewardship of the project, but they are unaccustomed to publishing true stories, as opposed to my purple prose, and so they may not be an ideal choice. The decision is yours.

I am saddened that we will never meet face-to-face but this cancer is killing me, and it isn't the only thing. As you will learn in my autobiography, I have also been suffering from AIDS since the early 90s, and while I was able to endure through that horrible epidemic, so many wonderful friends and lovers were lost to it, that I suppose I never really found my way back into the light. When the colon cancer was discovered, doctors gave me six-to-eight weeks to live. I strove to prove them wrong. I am at the end of week ten, and while I wish I could say I will beat this, the very fact that you are reading this letter ensures that I did not.

Pity.

But as the great Freddie Mercury once sang,'Who wants to live forever?'

There's a bottle of the finest whiskey I know in the safe I've left open. The combination to it is on a piece of paper beneath it.

The first round is on me.

DmcT

22/4/2018

"Holy hell," Andy said, picking up the large plastic envelope beneath it. "We live in a mystery house. The secret room on the second floor was meant to inspire someone to keep searching the house, to find all of this, but Nathan and his family never poked around enough to stumble across any of it."

"I take it you're moving your writing office down here then, love?" Ash asked him with a wry smile on her face. "It certainly seems like it'd suit you."

"Actually," he said. "There's three desks here. I think this might make a good little working studio for you, me and Fi, don't you think?"

Fiona was looking around the room and gave a good nod. "Yeah, between this room and the room outside, we'll have plenty of space to set up whatever we need, and it means we're all close together when we want to be," she said. "And if we feel like we're getting cooped up, there's loads of other places in the house to go and work from."

"As much as this place is meant to look old-timey," Whitney said to them, "there's fiber coming up from the center of the room below the desk and it feeds into a hub switch. You've got all the bandwidth you'd need down here."

"You think anyone's going to want to move into one of the bedrooms down here?" Andy asked.

"I think as soon as Hannah and Asha learn this place is down here, they're going to move into one of the bedrooms in here immediately," Niko said with a laugh.

"I mean, that's fine," Andy said, "although not the secondary Master Bedroom. That'll be ours if we feel like we need to be in a more secure area."

"Or just want more space to play around," Fiona giggled. "We could hang a sex swing in there."

"And a stripper pole," Niko added.

"Ooo! And put mirrors on the ceilings!" Tala chimed in.

"So, the secondary Master Bedroom is officially becoming the Sex Lounge," Andy said with a resigned laugh. "Got it. Well, as you were."

They continued their tour and decided to visit the security office, a smaller room with a bank of monitors, and a computer terminal attached to them. "How the fuck did we never notice any of the damn cameras before?" Andy asked Niko.

"You know, we thought the same thing," Tala said. "So we took pictures of what all the cameras were looking at last night and then went upstairs to find them. They're all so well hidden, even when you know they're there, they can be incredibly difficult to spot."

"And they've been on the whole time?" Andy asked as he tapped a button and started rotating through the cameras. It seemed like they weren't in any of the bedrooms, offices or bathrooms, but were in all the hallways, the stairwell and the exterior of the building, as well as the kitchen, dining room and living room areas.

"They have," Tala told him, "but the recordings are all digital, and they erase themselves after fourteen days, so we can't, for example, go back and look at what the Watkins were doing when they lived here."

"No no," Alexis said, glancing over the screens. "This is good, this is very very good. This is a nice start on making sure this house isn't some pushover McMansion that anyone could waltz into any time they wanted. We've got cameras, we've got guns, we've got hidden passageways and tunnels. We've got ourselves a good little fortress here, although I'd like to get a remote link from these cameras to something I can carry with me. Think you could set that up, Whitney?"

The pale woman smiled and nodded. "I was already starting to think about that last night."

Andy set the envelope he'd been carrying with him down on the security desk once more and glanced at his watch. "As much as I want to rip this open and read it right now," he said, "we've got a very busy day ahead of us. Lexi, we need to get ready to head over to Nathaniel's house, and the rest of you, you need to prep the house for the party. Who else in the house knows about all of this?"

"Only who you see here right now, Master," Nicolette said.

"Good. Let's keep it that way until tomorrow, when we'll give everyone the full tour," he told them. "I want everyone to get used to knowing this place exists before we have company."

"You're not going to show Phil or Xander tonight then?" Fi asked him.

He shook his head. "I mean, I will eventually, but the whole poker group's going to be over, and with their accompanying households, that's like seventy or eighty people. That's too big a circle of trust for right now. I'll tell the guys about it later."

"Maybe when you give Xander his Tesla," Fi teased.

"Psssh. His house came with three of them," Andy said. "A house and a household I helped get him into, so I think we're even, don't you?"

"Probably," she agreed.

"Okay then," he said, walking out of the office with them, heading towards a different exit, one which Tala told them lead to the garage. "Let's go see a man about reassigning a girl."