Page 20 of Buck Baxter and the Mysteries of Love

“Like what?”

Harry pointed. “He added the landing pad over by the maze for his personal airship. But only after he launched the fleet.”

“I guess you were really slumming it before that happened, huh.”

Harry ignored my sarcasm and pushed the enormous front door open.

It struck me as odd that a house this big didn’t have staff to open the door for us. “Where’s the butler? Don’t you have a housekeeper or a maid or a dungeon master or something?”

“For some reason, my father ordered the entire staff to take the day off. I guess he was feeling generous. It doesn’t happenvery often, so when it does, nobody questions it in case he changes his mind.”

I followed him into a large vestibule with a Grecian mosaic floor, a curved grand staircase at one end, and a crystal chandelier the size of my office.

He led me left, through a high-ceilinged, gold-columned, grand ballroom, then through a large gallery housing some of Howard’s private art collection, a sitting room with wallpaper featuring geese and fair maidens, a library and a map room, another sitting room with wallpaper featuring a fox hunt, another gallery, another sitting room, and finally he opened a door that led into a lavish den replete with a large ornately-carved mahogany desk and walls lined with honors, awards, and certificates of appreciation for Howard Hart’s many contributions to various business ventures.

“I’m guessing that desk is locked up tighter than a Wells Fargo vault,” I said, eyeing the opulent desk up and down.

Harry confidently made his way behind the desk and sat in the throne-like chair. “It is. But I know the key to open it. There’s a hidden cipher.”

Harry pushed on a carved panel on the left side of the desktop, and it opened to reveal a secret compartment. I looked over his shoulder to see a small metal gadget set inside the compartment, like a series of dials and locks.

“Something tells me you’ve done this before.”

Harry winked back. “When I was a kid, I used to sneak the odd cigar from his drawers.”

“You smoked? Are you telling me the golden-haired child of the richest family in town smoked his old man’s cigars?”

“No, I never smoked them. I sold them to the other kids at school.”

“Don’t tell me you needed the money,” I said, gesturing to the amount of luxury that practically dripped from the walls.

“No, it wasn’t about the money. It was about being my own man. Starting my own business venture.”

“Like the nightclub.”

Harry nodded. “My father can have his ships and trains. All I ever wanted was a place where people can dance and be happy and forget about life for a while.”

Listening to his words, it suddenly struck me that Harry’s nightclub was indeed the perfect metaphor for his need to step out from under his father’s shadow. He was constantly referred to as the heir to his father’s business, but I wondered if he even wanted Hart Industries at all.

“This is kinda fiddly,” he said, turning one of the dials on the cipher. “These things are tricky to move. You could break a nail doing this.”

He turned the first dial to the number fifteen.

He moved his attention to a small wheel like a clock featuring the months of the year and swiveled it to March.

His fingers then scrolled through a third dial, this one containing letters, until he formed the word “IDES.”

“The Ides of March,” I observed. “The fifteenth day of March, when all manner of chaos descends upon the world.”

“You know about the Ides of March?”

“I’ve heard it’s an unlucky day.”

“That depends entirely on your point of view. Julius Ceasar was murdered on the Ides of March. For him, unlucky indeed. But what some people consider unlucky, others—such as Marc Antony—deem as fortune’s favor. As my father will often say when he’s about to expand his global empire, ‘Cry havoc and let slip the dogs of war.’ He’s obsessed with Shakespeare’sJulius Ceasar. To him it’s not a tragedy, it’s a heroic struggle for power.”

Suddenly a series ofclunksandclackssounded inside the bones of the desk, and in the next moment all the drawers unlocked with aclick.

Harry moved to close the cipher panel—eager touncover what secrets might be concealed inside the drawers—but before he did something caught my eye. “Wait.”

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