I paused behind the closed door, listening for any sounds. Nothing. I slipped through Grandpa’s man-cave room with the couch and the giant TV and into his office. I hadn’t actually been in here in a while, and my six-year-old self broke a sweat at the thought of what I was about to do. I stopped and looked around. It was neat. Tidy. Not too much lying out on top of the desk. I remembered Grandpa’s desk at the police department and it was nothing like this. Although he certainly would have less on his plate these days, even with this mysterious private-eye business he’d been involved in since the summer. Which he still didn’t talk about very much, despite the many times I’d asked. But I wasn’t holding a grudge or anything.
I started with the two bookcases lining the wall behind his desk. Which was no easy task because Grandpa had a lot of books, double and triple stacked. I checked behind all of the stacks. No notebook or suspicious file of papers, but I did find my long-lost copy of J. D. Salinger’s Nine Stories.
I went behind the desk and sat on Grandpa’s leather swivel chair. Comfy. I tipped back a bit and surveyed the kingdom. He’d set his place up nicely. There was a fluffy gray rug under the chair and a blanket hung over the back for the cold winter days down here. He had pictures of us on his desk—him and Grandma, my whole family, and an individual picture with each of us granddaughters. It made me smile. If I weren’t here to snoop I’d be really sentimental right now.
The desk itself was smaller than I remembered. There were two drawers on each side. I wondered if one of them had a secret compartment. But I wasn’t going to look for that now. I had bigger fish to fry.
I rifled through the few things on top of the desk. A couple of bills, the latest issue of The Atlantic. Grandpa had always read voraciously. Books, magazines, newspapers. Some of my favorite childhood memories involved the reading nook up on the third floor, snuggled up with Grandpa while he read me something. He’d brought me to get my first library card, and introduced me to The New Yorker before I was even a teenager. It made me realize we hadn’t spent as much time reading together, or sharing books, as I’d hoped we would when I returned.
I needed to find some time for those things. I didn’t want to waste the time we still had.
That is, if he was still talking to me after all this.
I took a deep breath and dove into the desk drawers. Top right drawer held his extensive collection of gel pens and desk supplies. He’d always been an office supply store enthusiast. There was also a pile of old drawings and handmade cards my sisters and I had done as kids. We’d always been crafty kids, guided by our mother, and every holiday or other special occasion she’d encouraged us to make Grandma and Grandpa something. It was sweet that he’d kept them.
The bottom right drawer held files. I scanned the hanging folders. They were all labeled with benign titles like “Insurance Bills” and “Medical Information.” Nothing glaringly obvious like “Evidence from a Possible Murder Case.” Still, I looked in each folder to see if they were disguising anything.
Nothing.
I started on the left side. Top drawer held all of his police chief stuff, including the retirement plaque he’d received. Funny, he had his other commendations displayed around his office but not this one. Totally Grandpa. To him, retirement wasn’t an achievement, it was something that had been inevitable. He’d be working in that department today if he could be, and probably on patrol rather than behind the desk. It was simply in his blood, which was why I knew he was still finding ways to get involved with certain cases.
I checked the bottom drawer. This one had a stash of candy. No paperwork. I had to smile. Grandpa had been put on a strict diet years ago, and Grandma had been his conscience. Apparently he still felt he had to sneak candy as if she still watched him like a hawk. Which I’m sure she did. I grabbed a Kit Kat and tore the wrapper off, searching under the bags for any hidden compartment while I munched my snack. I came up empty.
I went back through the other drawers with more care, reaching way into the back and feeling around for holes or false panels. Nothing. I made a sound of frustration. Had I been wrong the whole time? What was wrong with me, thinking Grandpa had walked away with evidence the police department could potentially use in this case?
I plopped back down in his chair. It inadvertently rolled when I did so, but I felt one of the wheels jam on something. I had looked down to make sure I hadn’t dropped any candy that was about to get smushed into the rug and reveal my presence down here when I noticed the rug seemed a little lopsided. I pushed the chair out of the way and dropped to my knees, feeling around. Yep, there was something there, but under the rug. I pulled the rug back tentatively.
And blinked to make sure I wasn’t dreaming.
A notebook. And not just any notebook. A black Moleskin notebook.
It really was here. I pulled it out and sat back on my heels on the rug, my hand hovering over the cover. I was kind of afraid of what I might find in here. It could be as simple as an outline for the next fictional plot of Holt’s book.
Assuming this was even Holt’s notebook. I stifled a hysterical giggle. What if I’d gone through all this and this wasn’t even his? Then I sobered. What else would Grandpa be hiding under his rug?
Maddie. Open the stupid notebook and see what’s in it, the rational voice in my head commanded.
I braced myself and opened it. The first page was a crudely drawn timeline with notes jotted down at different points. I squinted and made out a few words like death, fight, explosion. I hoped this was fiction. I flipped the page. A list of names with hair color, eye color, and a few facts for each. I didn’t recognize any of the names. Then again, they could be made up. I had no idea. There were some notes about horses, too, which was kind of random. Names, dates, races. Old dates, from thirty or forty years ago. Names of what I assumed were racetracks. I had no clue. Horse racing was something I didn’t agree with, as an animal lover. But I understood a lot of people felt very passionately about it and about their horses.
Jason Holt—if this was his notebook—had very messy handwriting. I could barely make out what was on the next few pages. Some phone numbers, a few cryptic phrases that looked like some form of shorthand I’d never seen before. Not that I was an expert in shorthand, but jeez. This guy could’ve been a doctor. This was what people were fighting over? I’d be surprised if anyone could figure any of it out, let alone assume it meant anything.
This went on for more than half the notebook. Honestly, I was starting to get bored. And sleepy, finally. Trying to decipher this mess was making my eyes bleed. I flipped ahead a few pages, torn between not giving up until I found whatever made this notebook worthy of being stuck under the rug and going back upstairs to bed to try to finally get some sleep.
But a newspaper clipping stapled to the next page caught my eye. It was old, gauging from the yellowed paper. There was a picture of a man in a jockey’s uniform. His face wasn’t very clear. The heading at the top read: “Jockey Murdered, Left in Horse Stall.”
I scanned the article. Curtis Krump, a well-known and highly respected rider who raced Thoroughbred horses, had apparently been struck with a blunt-force object on the back of the head and left in an empty horse stall, where he was found the next morning by one of the workers at the track. The article clearly wasn’t the first report of this incident, because it was more of a recap of what happened, with a line that said they’d still not found the culprit, and a brief history of Krump’s achievements. However, the story noted that authorities were looking for a person of interest who had been at the track before Krump’s last race. No other info.
Under the article, more of Holt’s messy notes. Apparently a horse had also died that weekend, or at least that was my guess from the scribbled Koda-collapse-euthanized. Torrence family horse. Or maybe that was a fictional horse, belonging to a fictional family. Now I really wanted to know what he was working on. I wondered if McConnell was still on the island. Maybe he knew. But then I’d have to confess I’d found the notebook, and honestly, I couldn’t be a hundred percent certain this was what he was looking for.
There was also a name, Dante, and a phone number. A California area code, 626. I used my cell phone to take a picture of the page. Whoever Dante was, he might come in handy. A few lines down, another name: Anna Wakeland. No phone number.
And then, the entire world shifted as my eyes landed on a name I did recognize: Thea Coleman. Underlined, and with about ten question marks next to it.