Chapter Fourteen

Kate half expected the door to bump into the edge of the wine cabinet the way it used to, on the far-off cry of tag, you’re it! Of course, there was no cabinet now. No dusty bottles. No trunks stacked in the corner.

“I can’t believe you picked the lock last night. Well done.” Marcus was dressed for the job at hand, wearing beige slacks and a blue polo shirt. Casual for his standards.

“The lack of faith.” Kate shook her head at him.

“After you.” He stepped aside to let her into the room first. Elaina and Roselyn Marsh followed, carrying cleansers and packing boxes.

In the light of day, the room looked just as neglected as it had last night. And just as ordinary.

The sheets on the bed were swirled into a heap. A white blind covered the window. Stained at the corners. Clothes everywhere. A gym sock caught in the drawer. A fly buzzed around the mug on the desk.

“Everything must be spotless.” Great-aunt Roselyn looked down at the scratches on the hardwood floor. Immaculate as always and nothing like the woman Kate saw walking the orchard last night. “I’ll be letting the room again, as soon as possible.”

Elaina picked up an empty crisp packet from beneath the bed. Potato dust sifted to the floor. “I don’t know if spotless is possible.”

Marcus went straight to the wardrobe. “I’ll go through the clothes.”

“Why doesn’t that surprise me?” Kate pulled on a pair of disposable rubber gloves with a snap.

“Absolutely no idea.” Hangers rustled. “Ah, spider!”

“Oh, the horror!”

“You try battling an eight-legged fiend, while swathed in the arms of a polyester robe. Take that!” A thump. “It’s still alive.” Marcus’s voice was muffled.

“Try not to think about it and you’ll be fine.” Kate deposited a wad of take-out napkins in the bin.

Elaina grabbed a towel hanging off a lampshade and revealed a poster of a voluptuous blonde with blood-red silicone lips, leather bikini bottoms and a whip. “Urrgh!” She reeled back.

“Are those nail holes?” Great-aunt Roselyn moved closer to examine the wall.

“Does anyone else feel strange about this?” Elaina asked.

“Worried about ghosts with pickles on their breath?” Kate teased.

Marcus gave an eerie howl from within the wardrobe.

Elaina lobbed a rolled-up sock in his direction. “Going through his things like this, it feels odd.”

Marcus groaned. “It’s what any decent private investigator does for a living. The police do the same with a search warrant, and most people are alive to witness it.”

“We couldn’t have left it as it was,” Roselyn Marsh reasoned. “The room has to be cleaned. And no one else seems to want the job.”

“Has anyone else noticed that there aren’t any photographs?” Kate looked around.

“Some people don’t like mementos. I don’t.” Elaina tossed a vest into the box.

“It isn’t just the photos. Where are the opened bills, the office documents?” Kate moved to the desk. “No notes. No shopping lists. Just a laptop. A used cup. It’s like a stage set.”

“Says the girl who devours mystery novels stacks at a time,” Marcus said. “He may simply have kept electronic files and managed his accounts online.” Loud zip of the packing tape as he sealed a box.

“Maybe.” One of the desk drawers was open a crack. Kate tilted her head and squinted at the desk. Something about the height and depth of the drawer didn’t match up. She pulled the drawer out farther and peered inside. Staples, a broken pencil, and a short length of twine. The space was shallow, the base a good five centimeters higher than it should be. Custom made?

“Looking for something, Kate?” Marcus asked.

“I don’t know.” Kate slid her fingertips over the rough surface of the wood, testing for unevenness or gaps. Her index finger ran over a circular indentation at the back of the base. She gave it a tug. With a scrape of wood, the base slid back.

Marcus leaned over her shoulder.

“It takes a certain amount of courage to stick your hand down a dark trap hole.” Kate could feel Marcus’s breath against her neck.

“Like the Mouth of Truth in Roman Holiday.”

She glanced at him. “Do you want to do it?”

“The honor is all yours, Kate.” He nudged her. “Go ahead.”

“That’s what I was afraid of.” Kate gritted her teeth and carefully worked her fingers into the slot. She touched something cold and smooth. Sucked in a breath. She maneuvered the small rectangular object until it fit through the opening.

Lying in the palm of her hand was Mr. Wendell’s MP3 player. Kate pressed a key and the screen lit up. Instead of a colorful image of the album being played, the display was simply black and white. The last played song untitled. The MP3 player was surprisingly low-tech, without internet connection or flashy widgets.

“Did the man have such an eclectic taste in music he felt the need to hide it in a secret drawer?” Marcus wondered.

Kate shrugged. “Only one way to find out.” She unwound the headphones coiled around the device. Grimaced and stuck the headphone buds into her ears, trying not to the think about the last place they had been. “What’s the worst that could happen? A playlist consisting of ‘90s pop songs on repeat?” She pressed the Play button.

They stared at her expectantly.

Silence. If she strained her ears, she could hear a faint electronic whirr, but nothing that could be described as music. Kate gave it a few seconds, then shrugged. “Nothing.”

Marcus frowned. “Really? Nothing at all?”

Static crackled through the headphones. “Hold on.” A rhythmic creaking sound, a male grunt. A whimper. Kate’s eyes widened. Moans, then a breathless, throaty female voice, “Yes. Yes. Oh, yes!” Kate yelped, and yanked the headphones out.

Elaina and Marcus each took an earbud. Kate heard a muffled scream. A wide grin spread across Marcus’s face. “This gives a whole new meaning to oral sex.”

Elaina doubled over with laughter. “This is priceless!”

A shudder ran through Kate. “He listened to that thing at the breakfast table!”

“He had a strange taste in audio books.”

Great-aunt Roselyn frowned at the device. “This is shocking.”

“I don’t think it was an audio book.” The sound hadn’t been clear enough. Nothing like the full-cast radio dramatizations Kate kept on stock at the store.

“No wonder he hid it.” Marcus chuckled.

“Mr. Wendell, the man of mystery,” Elaina summed up in a smoky voice.

“Mr. Wendell, the peeping Tom,” Marcus corrected. “It does seem odd when you consider the camera, the telephoto lens and the Dell laptop.” He picked up the camera and zoomed in on a bird outside the window. “High resolution. Lovely.” He swung it around and pretended to take a picture of Kate.

“Mr. Wendell never struck me as computer-savvy.”

Marcus shrugged and put the camera back on the desk. “This stuff definitely takes some expertise.”

“You can always tell the techno-fanatic,” Elaina said knowingly, “and Mr. Wendell wasn’t one.”

“Technology these days is so complicated.” Great-aunt Roselyn frowned. “I don’t know what any of it is good for.”

Marcus shrugged. “My line of expertise runs more to shoes and trousers, but I’d say this is either the property of an avid hobbyist or the tools of a professional. What did Mr. Wendell do?”

“I have no idea,” Great-aunt Roselyn admitted.

“I suppose they could be prototypes.” Marcus took the floor. “All right then. What do we know? Mr. Wendell was a chap who worked at a company dealing with technology, but didn’t fit the label of what an electronic genius is supposed to look like.” He counted the points off on his fingers. “He was an avid bird watcher, hence the lens—” Marcus pointed at the camera Kate had replaced on the desk—”and kept no personal hardcopy files on hand. He had a strange sex fetish. His door was always kept locked, with good reason when the MP3 player is taken into account. He was a slob, which Kate here thinks was a deliberate ploy. A typically optimistic sentiment, in my opinion.” He winked at her. “Ergo, he must have been a corporate spy or a thief. Am I missing anything?”

“The pickles,” Elaina said. “Don’t forget the pickles.”

“Right. And an abnormal fondness for pickled cucumbers.”

“As well as a tendency to hoard gold,” Kate added.

“What?” Marcus stopped pacing and turned to look at her.

“In this tin of travel sweets.” Kate went to the dresser. “Do you remember, Aunt Roselyn, the mixed berry drops you used to put out for us? In that beautiful bowl.”

“Yes, I do.” her aunt said dryly. “I remember you broke it.”

“Did I? Are you sure it wasn’t Ethan or Chris?” A vague memory rose in her mind of a lecture on manners, made more intimidating by her great-aunt’s crisp diction. One can be a lion tamer, but not near the Waterford crystal. “Never mind. I suppose I did. But that’s why I noticed the tin yesterday. You used to have three or four of these stacked on a shelf in the pantry.”

“Out of reach, or so I thought.”

“It was like a treasure hunt.”

“Sugar drops as jewels in the rough?” Marcus grinned.

“Exactly. And now here’s a tin, being used to store actual gold.” Kate picked the tin up, metal clinking within. “Well, just bits and bobs really, but a pretty necklace, too. Like an enchanted talisman in a book—” She stopped mid-sentence. There was nothing in the tin but the dental gold and the broken bracelet. “It was here last night.” She’d held it up to the light, watched the pendant swing from the chain. For a moment, she’d been tempted to take it. To keep it safe. But she’d put it back in the tin. She was sure of it. Had it fallen on the floor?

“What did it look like?” Elaina asked.

“Gold. A pendant like a wax seal with an impression of an orchid on it.”

“An orchid?” Great-aunt Roselyn echoed. She was surprised into a smile. “Sunday orchids,” she murmured beneath her breath.

“Pardon?” Kate looked at her aunt, surprised.

“Oh!” She startled. “Well.” Great-aunt Roselyn seemed flustered. “It’s nothing really. Just that,” she lowered her voice, “whenever he could, Frank, your great-uncle, would bring me an orchid on Sundays. He’d say—” A blush spread across her cheekbones—“‘The most elegant flower for my elegant Rose.’” She trailed off, lost in the memory. She blinked and shook off the reminiscence abruptly. “Anyway, I haven’t seen it. I don’t know why Mr. Wendell would keep a necklace in a tin. It seems highly unpractical. Perhaps it’s time for a break. We should give Elaina the chance to have a cigarette, for our sake.”

“We all have our vices.” Elaina shoved a box out of the way with the toe of her shoe, clearing a path to the door. “Mine just happens to be cigarettes.”

“Mine is tea, and I could murder a cup right now.” Marcus straightened and arched back, arms above his head, to stretch his spine. “Magpies must have stolen the necklace, Kate, or a master thief.” His eyes twinkled the way they did when he played along with her stories.

“Maybe.” It hadn’t been a trick of the light or an over-active imagination. Kate remembered the sugary scent of the old tin as she replaced the necklace. The liquid feel of the chain as it slid through her fingers.