Chapter Twelve
Okay, confession time. I always wanted to be Nancy Drew when I grew up. And now—with Jill offering the prospect of a spare key to Belinda’s room—it felt like this might be about as close to emulating that sleuth as I’d ever get. I couldn’t wait to say yes.
Jill went to get the key and I ran Faith upstairs to our room. She’d be much safer there. It was one thing for Jill and I to conduct a clandestine mission inside the inn, but Faith always drew attention. She was hard to miss.
I’d agreed to meet Jill on the third-floor landing in five minutes. I was closing the door to my room, about to speed upstairs, when Bertie emerged from her room next door.
I stopped, surprised. “What are you doing here? I thought you were out snowmobiling with the guys.”
“I was. But it turned out that mostly what they wanted to do was drive too fast, slide on the icy snow, and skid around sharp corners. After ten minutes, I’d had enough of that.”
“Men,” I said.
She nodded. “So I came back here to see what you were up to. I was just dropping off my outdoor gear, then I was going to come looking for you.”
While inside my room, I’d exchanged my boots for running shoes. Bertie was wearing the same. Perfect. We were both dressed for sneaking around.
Maybe I was getting a little too into my Nancy Drew vibe.
“I’m going on a mission,” I said, grabbing her arm. “And now that you’re here, you’re coming too.”
“What kind of mission?” Bertie was ever practical. She wanted specifics before she committed.
There was no one else in the hallway. I lowered my voice anyway. “We’re going to search Belinda’s room.”
“What?” Bertie pulled back. “You’re kidding, right?”
“Nope. Dead serious.” I began to tug her in the direction of the stairway. “Don’t flake on me now. We’ve got work to do.”
“You are such a bad influence,” she muttered, following reluctantly. “If we get arrested, you’re paying my bail.”
“We’re not going to get arrested,” I told her. “You can be George to my Nancy.”
Bertie, bless her, understood the reference right away. “Honestly, I’ve always felt like more of a Bess.”
“Bess is the timid one. She’s afraid of adventure. That’s definitely not you,” I said. “Now hurry up. I’ll explain on the way.”
Jill was already waiting by the time we reached the third-floor landing. She stared at Bertie suspiciously. “Who are you?”
“George,” said Bertie. She extended her hand. Neither woman looked particularly pleased to meet the other.
“She’s my best friend,” I said. “Don’t worry, she knows how to keep her mouth shut.” Suddenly, for some reason I was talking like I was in a 1940s gangster movie.
Jill still didn’t look happy, but she led the way to a plain door at the end of the hall. A sign on it said STAFF ONLY.
“This stairway leads to the staff quarters in the attic,” she told us. “It’s pretty basic up there, but since this is a resort area, most of the employees can’t afford to live in town. So we’re lucky to have rooms we can call our own. Belinda’s room is second to last on the right.”
Jill held out her hand. A small key was resting in her palm.
“Wait,” I said. “You’re not coming with us?”
“Not a chance.” She was already backing away. “If you get caught, you can probably talk your way out of it. Just say you got lost or something. If I get caught, I’ll lose my job. I’m not risking that.”
“Bess,” Bertie muttered under her breath.
I covered a sudden laugh with a cough.
Jill stared at the two of us like we were nuts. “Be sure to bring that back to me as soon as you’re finished,” she said, nodding toward the key. “I want to return it before it has a chance to be missed.”
“Will do,” I told her.
Bertie and I waited until Jill was gone before opening the door. A draft of cool air greeted us. The enclosed stairway leading up to the attic was narrow compared to the sumptuous staircase meant for guests, but it was carpeted and well lit.
“After you, Nancy,” Bertie said.
“You know that’s going to get old pretty quickly.”
“Maybe.” She closed the door behind us. “But I intend to get full use out of it until it does.”
When I reached the top of the steps, I could see all the way down the long attic corridor. Thankfully, it was empty. Midmorning, most of the dorm’s inhabitants should have been busy at their jobs. Even so, I had no intention of pressing my luck. My plan was to be in and out of Belinda’s room in under ten minutes.
Bertie and I crept down the hallway. Which was probably silly since there was no one around to see or hear us. When we reached the room we’d been told was Belinda’s, I quickly unlocked the door with the key. Bertie and I slipped inside.
The room was bigger and more comfortable than I’d expected. A single bed, covered with a flower-print duvet, was pushed up against one wall. A vertical chest of drawers sat opposite it. There was a small closet just inside the door, and a compact desk beneath the window. Icicles hung from the eaves just outside, but it was warm enough in here.
Belinda had hung a cork bulletin board and a calendar featuring pictures of kittens on the wall. Her bed was neatly made. A hardcover book—Harlan Coben’s latest thriller—was splayed open on the pillow, possibly to mark the page she’d been reading when she left.
The closet held several changes of clothing and four pairs of shoes. A toiletries kit and a fluffy bath towel were hanging from a rack on the back of the door. Bertie and I had passed the communal bathroom on our way down the hall.
Two framed photographs were displayed on top of the dresser. Both looked like they’d been taken on vacation. In one, Belinda was standing in front of the Eiffel Tower, pointing up at the landmark with a big smile on her face. In the other, she and a man were sitting on a beach. The two of them had their arms around each other’s shoulders.
Even though I’d only known Belinda briefly, seeing these pictures of her in happier times made my breath lodge in my throat.
“Is it just me,” Bertie whispered, “or does this feel kind of creepy to you? Like we’re invading Belinda’s privacy.”
“I wish she was still here to care.” I sighed. I hadn’t expected that seeing Belinda’s room—filled with her belongings as though she was about to return at any moment—would hit me so hard. “Let’s just get this over with, okay?”
The opportunity to look through Belinda’s things had been fortuitous. So I hadn’t had time to make a plan. Now I had no idea what I was looking for, or what I might expect to find. A diary would have been helpful. Or maybe an address book with a list of important contacts. I got out my phone and snapped a picture of both photographs.
Bertie rifled through Belinda’s desk. There were only two small drawers. One held a couple of pens and pencils, along several Sudoku puzzle books. The other had a box of stationery, a pair of scissors, paper clips, and a roll of tape. Hardly scintillating stuff.
Bertie looked behind the bulletin board, then thumbed through the pages of the hanging calendar. All were unmarked. She reached across the desk and shook out the curtains.
I opened Belinda’s dresser drawers and looked under her bed. I checked the pockets of her clothing and looked inside her shoes. I even lifted the edges of the rug and peered beneath them.
Time was passing quickly. It was beginning to look as though I’d dragged Bertie along on a wild goose chase.
“You know what our problem is?” She stood in the center of the room and gazed around. “Someone’s beaten us to it. Where are Belinda’s laptop and her purse? What happened to her phone? That’s where we’d have been most likely to find something interesting.”
“The police probably have those things,” I said. “Don’t you think?”
Bertie frowned. “Either that, or the person who left her outside in the snow to die came here afterward and took them.”
“They would have needed her key,” I pointed out.
“Right. And how hard was that for us to come by?”
She and I shared a nervous look as the reality of our situation suddenly hit home.
“I guess we’d better get out of here before someone comes upstairs,” I said. “I’d really rather not have to explain why we engaged in this exercise in futility.”
I reached the door and turned around. Bertie was staring at the novel on Belinda’s bed.
“What?”
“Belinda was a mystery fan.”
I had no idea why that mattered. “Good for her?”
Bertie was already walking over to the bed. “I read this in a book once. A guy hid something he didn’t want anyone to find inside his pillow.”
She reached for Belinda’s pillow and lifted it up. The thriller that had been on top of it slid off to one side. Bertie peered into the pillowcase. Then she stuck her hand inside.
“What’s in there?” Eagerly I stepped closer.
“Nothing so far. I’m just fishing around.”
“Try taking the case off,” I suggested.
“That was my next plan.” Bertie tossed the empty pillowcase back on the bed. The pillow appeared to be stuffed with feathers. It was sewn shut.
I felt my way along the edges. Then I pushed down in the middle. I didn’t feel anything.
“There are scissors in the desk,” Bertie said.
I considered only briefly before shaking my head. “We can’t cut the pillow open. If we do, it’ll be obvious that someone searched Belinda’s room.”
Bertie made a gagging noise. Abruptly I realized that the same dismaying thought had just occurred to both of us. We weren’t wearing gloves.
“Okay,” I said briskly. “ Now it’s really time to go. Let’s put everything back exactly the way it was and get the heck out of here.”
Bertie stuffed the pillow back into its case and tossed it toward the head of the bed. I reached over and grabbed the book. Its colorful jacket had come unhooked from the back cover when it tumbled off the pillow. With clumsy, hurrying fingers, I turned the book around and tried to slip the jacket back where it belonged.
For a moment, the slick paper resisted my attempts to make its crease slip into place. “Damn it,” I swore under my breath. Then all at once I realized something. My fingers stopped moving.
The book jacket should have felt nearly weightless in my hands. It didn’t.
Bertie was already standing by the door. “Hurry up,” she said. “If you can’t get it on right, just leave it. Nobody will notice.”
Suddenly I wasn’t so sure about that.
I opened the book’s front cover and slipped the jacket off entirely. My breath caught. A slender piece of paper was taped to its inside. A list of numbers was written on it in pencil.
I glanced over at Bertie. She quickly crossed the small room.
“What is that?”
“Numbers,” I said. “Some kind of list.”
I loosened the tape with my fingers and gently peeled the paper free. Bertie grabbed the book jacket, slid it back on, and spread the book open across the pillow. I folded the small piece of paper and slipped it in my pocket. Then we both hurried back to the door.
“What do you think it means?” she asked.
“It means that Belinda had something to hide. Maybe something important enough to get her killed.”