“Did you clean up here?” Kip asked with a frown.
The three of us were again standing in the entry hall where I had found Mrs. Arlington, and I had just gone into great detail about the intruder’s exit through the squeaky front door.
“I didn’t want Diva traipsing through. Why?”
“If this turns out to be a crime, you just tampered with the scene.”
“Look at you, Mr. CSI,” Tom said. “If we thought it was a crime scene, we would have secured it before we left.”
Kip’s scowl deepened as we climbed the staircase, leaving Mrs. Arlington’s slipper on the step as we passed.
The second-floor landing mirrored the front-to-back bottom-floor entry. Unlike the downstairs, however, this landing had two narrow hallways funneling off it, one to the left, the other to the right. Neither had any paintings on the plaster walls or carpets on the hardwood floors. While over time the downstairs had experienced a facelift or two, the antique upstairs hadn’t aged well.
Both long narrow hallways were lined with closed doors, reminding me of a dormitory. I could think of several houses in town that had once served as boarding schools, including the Victorian that houses the Ridgefield Police Department on East Ridge and a colonial on High Ridge with original brass dorm room numbers, all restored and polished by the new owners, who wanted to preserve the history. Maybe this house had once been a school.
We chose the hallway to the left first, because Kip said that was where we’d find the master suite. Kip and Tom cleared a string of smaller rooms before reaching wide-open double doors, a welcome relief from the tunnel-like atmosphere of the rest of the second floor.
Through the doorway was a small vestibule with a table and two side chairs. An ornate gold mirror hung above. A large bowl on the table held several keys, one of which I recognized as a twin to the antique skeleton still in my back pocket.
“Do you think all the doors use the same key?” I asked.
“Probably, why?” asked Tom. He then took the key from the bowl and placed it in the bedroom lock. It turned with a click.
“The doors were all locked when I got here, so the intruder would either have had a key or would have been let in by Mrs. Arlington, who would have then locked the door behind them.”
“Or they could have known that Mrs. Arlington keeps a key above her doorframe,” said Kip.
“That too, although why take the time to put it back and then relock the door from the inside?” I asked.
I stepped into the master suite.
“Wow,” I said.
The room was large, with an expanse of casement windows overlooking the back lawn and the swimming pool beyond. One window was cranked open, and I swear I could smell the fragrance of the sweet peas growing in the garden below. A horizon of trees was broken by a sliver of silver, a distant lake, and beyond that the unmistakable shadowy outline of tall buildings.
“Is that what I think it is?” I asked.
“Manhattan,” confirmed Kip.
I didn’t doubt it. Ridgefield is only sixty miles northeast of New York City, with an elevation high enough in some places to view the city skyline. On 9/11 you could see the smoke pouring from the Twin Towers.
The decor in Mrs. Arlington’s bedroom was much simpler than the ornate palette of the downstairs. A muted blue carpet with matching walls made me feel like I was floating at cloud level. A king bed rested against a wall, perpendicular to the windows, so its occupant could look out while snuggled in. It was covered in a silver duvet that was rumpled and had been pulled down, as if Mrs. Arlington had been in bed before she was disturbed. An unlit lantern sat on her nightstand. On the opposite side of the room was a comfortable sitting area with two chairs and ottomans facing a fieldstone fireplace.
This is the kind of money that must make it hard to die, I thought. Kip stood in the center of the room and studied each segment, doing a slow turn as he did.
“Nothing seems out of place,” he said.
I followed him through another doorway, this one leading to the master bath, where more opulence made that little green monster rear its ugly head. It’s only money, I reminded myself. Although it was hard not to be impressed when I had so little of it myself.
Another doorway led to a dressing area. Kip continued his appraisal, looking for something out of place, while Tom wandered to the windows to stare outside.
“What about that?” I asked, pointing to a dressing table with several drawers on either side and a mirror above it. One drawer had a tiny red speck peeking out, a nip of cloth caught by a careless close. Kip took out a bandanna from his pocket, wrapped it around his hand, and gently eased the drawer open. We peered inside.
“Just scarves,” I said, disappointed. “Was this scarf sticking out like this when you checked the house earlier?”
“I can’t remember,” said Kip, shaking his head. “Tom?”
Tom turned away from the window and joined us. “We were mostly looking for someone else in the house or something to indicate why she lost her balance. I wasn’t focused on drawers unless it looked like things were messed up. Which it didn’t.”
“Someone searching through Mrs. Arlington’s belongings could have cut it short when they heard me,” I said.
“If someone was even in here searching,” said Tom.
“Do you think I’m making up the opening and closing of the front door? I know what I heard. Diva heard it too.”
“Some of these casements up here are cranked open. You probably just heard them blowing in the wind,” said Tom, dismissing me.
“No,” I insisted. “Windows creaking don’t sound like a squeaky door slamming shut.”
Kip said nothing.
We covered the rest of the house, checking the places someone could have hidden—more bedroom suites, a door to an attic filled with a lifetime of stuff, and a small room on the opposite end of the house with the same grand view as the master that looked like Mrs. Arlington’s office. It housed a desk, file cabinets, and built-in shelves holding an array of books crammed so tightly together that I wondered how one could even be pried out.
Papers were stacked on the desk, pens overflowed a caddy, and the wastebasket held several crumbled castaways. A sleek-looking rose-colored MacBook Air sat closed on her desk. It looked like a place someone worked in rather than something choreographed for a magazine. The only thing off-putting was the tightly shelved books that looked almost painted in place. The well-ordered tomes misaligned with the well-used space and the old working bones of the house.
“This office door was locked earlier,” said Kip. “We didn’t bother to open it, because by the time we got down here to this end of the house, we were pretty sure it was empty.”
“Looks like you were wrong,” I said.
Kip’s cheeks flushed, and he rubbed his hand across his brow.
“We had no reason to believe anyone was in the house,” said Tom. “Still don’t.”
“What about the now-unlocked study door?” I said. “Someone had to open it.”
Tom gave me a look.
“What, you think I opened it?” I asked.
“You were the one who pointed out that the same key opens every door,” he said.
“Leave it alone, Tom,” said Kip. “If Winter heard an intruder, then this was probably where he was hiding.”
The room didn’t look disheveled, just well used. I wrapped my shirt bottom around my hand and opened one of the drawers.
“Hey, guys, look at this.”
Kip physically grabbed both my shoulders and firmly guided me away from the cabinet.
“Stop touching things,” he said, before peering into tousled files.
Papers jutting out of bent manila folders were crumpled, as if mashed down quickly to allow the drawer to close. The files were in no order. Whoever had invaded Mrs. Arlington’s office had been in a hurry.
“Looks like my mother has been here,” said Tom, chuckling. “You could eat off the floors, but don’t dare open a closet.”
I knew people like that. One wrinkle in the bedspread and they freaked out, but open the pantry and the chaos would keep you from cooking. While not an anal neatnik who organized for appearances, Mrs. Arlington didn’t seem like the type to tag files with a label maker and then stuff them haphazardly into a drawer.
Kip echoed my thoughts. “Half these files aren’t even right side up, let alone alphabetical.”
I leaned closer, careful not to touch. As if reading my mind, Kip pulled his pen out and gently lifted so we could read labels. There were the obvious ones like Frontier, Eversource, Comcast—utilities folders where she probably saved paid bills. Then there were things like Contributions and Home Repair. Just normal household files.
The next drawer down was more personal, and I noted one that said Medical. If I could just peek inside, maybe I’d have the answer to the question that had been eating at me since she first called.
“Winter,” said Kip. “We aren’t opening any of these files because of the privacy issues.”
I looked up, startled, and nodded.
We continued to skim the file labels—Travel, Botanical Gardens, Book Club. This was her personal life drawer, and if ever there was a treasure trove of information for an obituary, it could be found here.
The book club file interested me. I am always curious about what types of books people read and how friendships born out of a mutual interest in books can be so enduring. My mom was a fan of medical mysteries—no surprise there, since she was a nurse. She hated historical novels, anything with a love story, and nonfiction. She didn’t last long in her book club because her tastes weren’t varied enough.
I was less interested in what the book club was reading and more curious about the gaps fellow members might fill. This club had been important enough for Mrs. Arlington to list with her other interests and hobbies.
“I’ll be right back,” I said. “I’m going to check on Diva.”
Instead, I headed toward the master bedroom.
“Don’t touch anything,” Kip yelled after me. That guy seemed to know my intentions almost before I did.
Sure enough, Premonition sat on the bedside table. Sticking out amid the pages was the familiar Books on the Common bookmark. If Mrs. Arlington frequented our local independent bookstore where area book clubs registered their selections, maybe they could provide contact info for other members.
Downstairs, I wandered back to the living room window, where I watched Diva hot on the tail of a rabbit. She put the brakes on when she came to the pool. Taking advantage of the lead, the rabbit skittered across the pool patio and buried itself in shrubbery. Diva sniffed, assessed the water, and made a quick exit in the opposite direction.
Great, a claustrophobic dog afraid of water.
From the living room I quietly stepped into the front-to-back hallway and tiptoed across to the large sunroom where Mrs. Arlington and I had spent yesterday afternoon. Next to the useless portable phone, her iPad was like that sweet you can’t resist.
I flipped it open and then closed it again. Even if Mrs. Arlington’s electronic devices held the answers to my questions, hacking was way beyond my skill set. And if I could open the iPad, it would be like reading her diary. I was about to put the small black device back where I found it when another thought struck. Maybe I should hide this so no one else tried to unlock the secrets it might hold. I lifted the cushion on her chair and shoved it underneath just as I heard Kip and Tom heading toward the stairs.