I visited with Maximillian the next afternoon. Benny was playing tennis with my cousin. She proposed the idea during breakfast, catching me off-guard, in the middle of a sip of coffee. I coughed while Benny grinned his standard grin and happily nodded his head in reply.
“Do you even know how to play tennis?” I asked him.
He started to reply. Matilda cut him off. “I can show him how.”
I turned her way. She looked like the cat who had just eaten the canary. Or who was about to eat the canary. Benny, of course, was the canary. Benny didn’t seem to mind he was about to get eaten. Me, I’d suddenly lost my appetite.
In any case, Maximillian was in his office and I was soon sitting across the desk from him.
“Everything going okay, Ted?” he asked me.
Okay? I was sleeping in a mansion, in a b
