I smiled. “Just what I was thinking.”
We quietly approached the door to the lounge and peeked inside. Mac was right; the entire group watched Mom lay out her cards. Emmett, René, Linda, and Jessica were all there, as well as all of the knitters—even Selma. They focused on Mom’s hands as she shuffled and cut the cards. We went to the back hall and peered around like a couple of kids skipping out of school.
With most of the hotel staff occupied in the lounge, it seemed a good time to rummage in the office. Mac and I split the room and searched quickly through the small desk and file cabinet. Nothing. It was all bills and invoices for supplies for the inn. A stack of glossy flyers sat on the corner of the desk touting the benefits of deep-tissue massage and regular facials. This must have been Clarissa’s promotional campaign. I thought again about the family and their conflicting wishes for the future of Carlisle castle.
With no new information, we climbed the stairs to the second floor and walked toward the turret room stairway. I had climbed this set of stairs enough that I hardly got dizzy anymore as we twisted up and up into the tower.
We entered the room again. This time there were no thumps from Vi, or howling winds from open windows. It was just a silent, still room with a silver wintry light lending a gray cast to the white furniture.
“Let’s check the dresser and bedside drawers and see if she kept any papers here in her room,” Mac said. He handed me a pair of plastic gloves and donned a pair of his own.
Mac headed to the bedside table that had two shallow drawers.
I took the dresser and started at the top. I swept my hand toward the back of her underwear drawer, feeling for anything that wasn’t silky. It was all just as it should be—clothing, scarves, and sweaters. I didn’t have that feeling that tells me to keep looking in a particular place. Sometimes it feels like an actual pull toward a certain location, other times I get flashes of an area—often even after I’ve looked in that spot. It reminds me of a camera flash in the dark and it means I’ve missed something. It wasn’t until I had checked the whole dresser that I decided to pull the drawers out of the dresser and check the backs.
Still nothing. And Mac appeared to have come up empty as well.
“If she hid anything up here, it wasn’t anywhere obvious,” I said.
If she was a seasoned blackmailer, she probably knew better than to put evidence in a drawer where anyone could find it.
A secret staircase seemed like a good place to stash something unless the people you were blackmailing used that staircase to deliver their payoffs. I reflected that I had been spending too much time with Vi—my own imagination was starting to sound like her. Blackmail, payoffs, and nefarious schemes were more Vi’s area than mine.
I wandered to the window and looked out at the snowy view. From this vantage point, the woods were quite beautiful with each branch outlined in white. I sat in the chair by the window and tried to think of any other place she might have hidden her blackmail evidence.
I closed my eyes, and breathed deeply. I tried to relax and clear my mind as Neila had taught me to do. After a few moments I felt a tug. That’s the only way to describe it—a gentle pull toward the wardrobe. I opened my eyes and looked across the room.
Mac rummaged in the wardrobe, which seemed to contain a lot of dresses and shoes. The shoes spilled out of it and I began to realize why they always littered her floor—the woman had a serious problem. She even had shoeboxes stacked on top of the wardrobe.
I got up to help Mac sort the shoes out and counted fifteen pairs that had been tossed into the bottom of the freestanding closet under the dresses. She had tossed high-end couture in with drugstore flip-flops.
The tug was stronger here, but didn’t seem connected to her shoes. Then I looked up again at the shoeboxes.
“Mac, can you reach those shoeboxes up there?” I pointed.
He caught my eye and grinned. “Good idea—she didn’t seem to care about organizing her shoes.”
He brought down the three boxes, which didn’t rattle like shoes and were heavier than I would expect.
The first two contained journals dating from fifteen years previously going up to about two years ago. The third contained a locked metal box. It was one of those heavy fireproof things that are nearly impossible to break into. And underneath, a worn leather notebook.
Mac picked up the notebook with his gloved hand and flipped to the back. The pages were filled with letters and numbers in what looked like a code. He snapped it shut and slipped it into a large baggie. I examined the metal box.
“Did she have a key on her when she died?” I asked, hoping we wouldn’t have to go to the shed and search her body.
“I don’t think so. She wasn’t wearing a necklace and I did check her pockets.”
“Now we’re looking for a key,” I said. “That’s even harder to find.”