Jake and Mrs. Miller stood silent for a minute, and then she asked, “So what are you going to do about this professor?”
“I’m open to suggestions,” he said. “I guess I have to talk to her, but I have no idea what to say. Under other circumstances I’d ask them” — he nodded toward the window — “for a script, but they’d say I created this problem by being too scrupulous about taxes, and now they’d clean up my mess. And the worst part is they’d be right.”
“Maybe you could seduce her,” she said. “You know, wine and dine her. That’s what James Bond would do.”
He burst out laughing. “I’m a forty year old confirmed bachelor who rarely leaves his house, hasn’t done more than drink tea with a woman in” — he squinted for a second, calculating — “twenty-two years, and your first thought is of my romantic appeal?”
“You’re not so bad,” she said. “You’re rich.”
“And I have a wonderful housekeeper,” he added. “Until she decides to stay home and put her feet up.”
“Why would I do that? You know my husband. What are we going to do, look at each other all day? Neither of us is interested in travel, and we don’t have any grand — ” She cut herself off, glancing sidelong at him. “Anyway, I enjoy coming here. It occurs to me that seducing the professor is unappealing, but her little sister is quite pretty and seemed much more demur.”
“You said she was eighteen!”
“I’m probably wrong about that,” she said. “Everybody looks young to me these days.”
“Well, maybe we’re fretting about nothing. Debi and the others have blocked her, so she might give up. Meanwhile, I’m going to hire that private detective in Dubois to do a deep dive on her. Maybe she can be bribed.” He shook his head. “Financially incentivized to do something else. Offer her a million dollars to write the history of Punxsutawney Phil, or research the financial inequity of the Johnstown flood.”
“I’d start lower,” she said. “People get suspicious when you throw big money at them.”
“Good point,” he said. “Meanwhile, let’s hope they” — he nodded toward the window — “don’t get worked up about this.”
“Poof,” said Mrs. Miller. Then she shrugged. “It’s a solution.”