entries showing when each bottle was used, with notes on what guests were present, how the wine had fared and other personal comments. His father had been meticulous about keeping the log up to date until the day he died.
He looked forward through the log and saw that his mother had tried to keep it up also. He'd do an inventory one of these days.
He needed a houseman. His father's servant had died a year to the day after his father. Gilbert understood that it would be difficult for him to find someone with that kind of loyalty. Perhaps Mr. Nakamichi could help.
He moved further into the cellar, turned right and moved across an open area toward a solid oak door. On the door was an old brass U-shaped handle. It had a keyhole for a large old-fashioned key, but no lock mechanism.
Near the right side of the door, out of sight on the backside of a twelve-by-twelve oak post, was a small square metal box with a black matte finish. He reached up and snapped a catch on the front and a hinged door dropped down. On a panel above a keyboard red and green LED indicators flashed alternately once every second.
He quickly punched in a series of numbers and the lights stopped flashing, leaving only the green LED lit.
After the last number the door jumped back and a light inside the room came on automatically. When he went in, the door closed quietly behind him.
The room, compared to the rest of the cellar, was surprisingly bare. In the center there was a Spanish refectory table, twelve feet long and three feet wide. There were drawings and charts spread all across the top of the table.
The most prominent was an architectural floor plan of a large building covered with marks and notations in different colors. In the lower right corner in the clear style of the professional draftsman, it said:
PLAN VIEW-CABRILLO SPRINGS PSYCHIATRIC HOSPITAL & CLINIC
Included were areas showing exterior grounds, entrances, paths, delivery spaces and fences; it was all there in elaborate detail. Weaving through the whole drawing, yellow lines had been added to the drawing. In small neat letters next to a small red box, which joined all the yellow lines at one location, was the legend, 'Alarm System'.
At the other end of the room on a low table covered with electronic equipment sat a modern computer. Surrounding it were several display screens, a high-speed laser printer and a separate rack of telecommunications equipment.
In an office upstairs he'd installed an IBM PC, and a printer connected to a stock-market program. It was a fully functional system that served no practical purpose except to give a legitimate reason for all the phone lines that went to the room in the cellar.
Gilbert wasn't interested in the stock market. It certainly wouldn't have accounted for the almost continuous traffic on three different lines since he'd returned three weeks earlier.
In a world of computer hackers, unknown except to those with his security clearance, Gilbert was a master among amateurs. As an engineer he never undertook a project without all the facts and a thorough plan.
Spread across the rough-planked walls of his subterranean CIC—Combat Information Center—were the products of his training. A close look by someone trained to understand flow charts and the symbols of the systems engineer, would reveal no information about the number of products shipped to customers. There were no graphs showing on-time delivery of sub-systems performing at or above customer expectations. No blocks on his carefully created charts contained engineering information.
What appeared at the top of an elaborate flow chart were four names; the names reduced to code. Beside each name a timeline of one week had been created. The last date noted was two weeks in the future. The closest to present time was one week in the past.
On or about the dates entered beside those names, the persons represented by the codes in the blocks were scheduled to die. To die in ways the public wouldn't understand, but those in the business of clinical psychiatry who committed murder in the name of therapy would surely understand.
At the moment Gilbert applied power to the computers, Grace Melville sat down with her grandmother for afternoon tea. She was late for the event and in a state of high excitement.
Her grandmother was a Porter from Boston and would have been as comfortable in an upper-class English drawing room as she was here, in this house in Los Angeles. A shrewd judge of people, she knew her granddaughter very well.
At five foot one, with rounded cheeks, bright-blue eyes and a cap of pure-white hair she might have been taken by some as a harmless old lady. She was anything but.
"Sit down, Grace, stop fidgeting. You've been up and down four times. You're making my neck sore trying to follow you around the room."
Grace sat, but even sitting she looked in motion.
"Tell me what's happened, dear, I can't stand the suspense any longer. You've met a man that much I'm sure of." She smiled. "Nothing else I can think of would have a girl your age in such a state."
Grace giggled like a schoolgirl. "You're too smart for me, Grams. I went looking for Rachel and found her next door at the Piers'." She smiled to herself, remembering.
"Oh, do go on, Grace. This isn't a serial to be continued next week. Tell me about him," the diminutive lady demanded.
"Well, you know his mother died recently. I gather that he was overseas somewhere at the time and rushed home. I don't know any of the details of her death, but it must have been strange, I mean I'm sure if everything were normal, you and I would have been invited to the funeral.
"Anyway, Rachel was with him. He feeds her sardines and they've become friends. Do you know he named her Rachel without even knowing her name? He's very sad and tries to hide it. When I got there he was reading to Rachel: So strange, Grams, about torture and electroshock. I was in the garden and he didn't know I was listening. Whatever happened to his mother has affected him deeply."
"Grace, you're going to drive me to drink. What does he look like? Is he presentable? What did you talk about?"
"Oh, Grams, I did something really stupid. I wanted to see him again so I told him he should invite me to dinner. He didn't say anything for the longest time. I was mortified," Grace said.
"You should be. Good Lord, girl, you were taught better than that. I don't care if these are the liberated nineties. You can't go around scaring off every eligible man that comes along. He is a bachelor, I hope, not like that contemptible Grayson Dawes."
Grace had met Grayson four years earlier and they'd had an affair, until she discovered that he was already married, which somehow he'd neglected to mention.
"I don't know." She looked worried. "Oh, I hope not."
"Don't worry, his mother and I had some lovely chats. I shall miss her, such an intelligent woman, always so cheerful. Anyway, she said he never seemed to have any interest in specific women or marriage. She imagined he must have girlfriends, living overseas and all; but quite certain there were no particular ladies he'd taken a fancy to."
"Good!" Grace spoke with such force her grandmother looked at her and broke out laughing.
"My, my, you do have a case, don't you?"
"No, no, Grams. I just think he's very nice: A bit unusual, very intense and passionate. I think he'd be nice to have as a friend."
Now
