TWENTY-ONE

Jack replaced the boxes under the bed and stood up. He offered me a hand and pulled me to my feet.

“Let’s go look at that index again,” I said. “Did it say what the item was?”

Jack stood behind me and read over my shoulder. “Arrowhead. Onondaga chert. Early Woodland Meadowood Phase circa 1,000 B.C.,” he said.

“That doesn’t tell us much.” I frowned. “A three-thousand-year-old arrowhead?”

“No idea. What would somebody want with it?”

“Clearly it was specifically targeted. It couldn’t be random.” I tapped my finger on the paper. “I don’t suppose Monty kept photocopies anywhere?”

Jack laughed. “Pretty sure he didn’t, but we could ask Gladys when she gets back. This paperwork goes back to the days of mimeographs and ditto machines. And Monty’s been dead for twenty years.”

“I’m not sure it would tell us anything anyway. If you look at the contents of the rest of these files, it’s pretty simple. Photographs and a write-up of the procedure used to uncover the item.” A yawn escaped my lips. I was suddenly dead tired.

“Come on,” Jack said. “Let’s get you to bed.” He rose.

I looked at him quizzically, not sure where this was going. In theory I would have loved to sleep with Jack. Had thought about it often. In reality, I was a bit reticent to take our relationship to the next level. And it probably had something to do with the fact that historically I had Titanic-like taste in men. Disasters. It was difficult to trust myself to know how I really felt, let alone trust someone else.

He brushed his lips across mine. “Don’t worry. I’ll behave like a gentleman and sleep on the couch.”

I leaned in closer. “I’m more worried about myself not acting like a lady.”

He laughed and took my chin in his hands, lifting it up so I could see his forget-me-not-colored eyes. “When the time comes, it’s going to be spectacular. I promise.”

“Do you always keep your promises?”

“I do my best. If I ever don’t, you’ll know there’s a very good reason.”

That was all I could ask for.

*   *   *

I woke the next morning in Jack’s arms, wearing one of his T-shirts, with my head nestled on his shoulder. I could get used to this. He pulled me in closer and I caught a faint whiff of yesterday’s aftershave. Nothing had happened. And yet something had. My defense shields had dropped a little.

“Mmmm,” he said. “This is nice.”

“Yes, it is.” I took a deep breath and blew it out. The clock said six thirty—later than I usually slept until the restaurant closed for the season. I sat up and a shiver went through me.

“Come on, get dressed. Let’s go out for breakfast at the Family Diner. I feel like pancakes with real maple syrup and some of those homemade sausages they make. We’ve both got busy days lined up.”

I grabbed my clothes and went into the bathroom to change. I ran a finger through my hair and inspected my teeth. After pizza last night, my breath could not be fresh.

“There’s an extra toothbrush in the medicine cabinet,” Jack called.

A couple of decades of living with Spiro Nikolopatos had made me suspicious. Why would Jack keep an extra toothbrush? Did he have a girlfriend? Did he do one-night stands with women he picked up at Fat Max’s? I reviewed what I’d seen in his nightstand when I looked for the flashlight last night. Nope, there’d been no condoms. Not that that meant anything. He could have kept them somewhere else. I brushed my teeth.

“Uh, should I just throw away this toothbrush?” My voice was tentative and I hated the wussy sound of it.

“Why? I bought it for you. Just put it in the holder. It’ll be fine right there next to mine until the next time you need it.”

I relaxed. Right. Next time. He’d bought it for me.

When I reentered the bedroom, Jack was dressed in a navy polo shirt and khaki shorts that showed off his long, tanned legs. He threw on a fleece jacket. “Ready to go?”

My jacket was where I’d left it on the hook by the front door. “Do you think we should take Monty’s collection with us? What if someone tries to break in again?”

“We could, but it wouldn’t be safer in my soft-top Jeep. There’s no point even locking it, you know. Anybody who wants to get in will just slit the fabric top. No, I think whoever our intruder was, he got what he came for.” He held the door open for me and I brushed past him out onto the stairs.

“You’re probably right.”

The ten-minute drive to the Family Diner, a little greasy spoon in the next village over, was uneventful. The Jeep was loud and it made conversation difficult without yelling. I reviewed what I knew, but I couldn’t make sense of any of it. When I got back to the Bonaparte House, I would try again.

We sat down in the same booth we’d sat in the first time we’d been here. Jack’s idea. I was glad I was wearing jeans because the vinyl seats here were always sticky with duct tape repairs. But the table was clean. Patty came out from behind the counter, her pink and white uniform hugging her voluptuous curves. Her face broke into a broad smile as she set a plastic-coated menu in front of Jack and dropped one in front of me without acknowledging my lowly existence.

“Hello, handsome,” she said. “Did you come back to take me away from all this?” She waved her long metallic burgundy nails around the diner.

“You can do better than me,” Jack said with a laugh.

“I haven’t yet. Coffee?” She filled our cups, then left and came back with glasses of ice water. “Do you know what you want?”

We gave our orders: pancakes and sausage for Jack, Mexican omelet for me. Neither one of us was a sparkling conversationalist this morning, and though we hadn’t come right out and said it, we each knew it wouldn’t be a good idea to talk about anything that was going on. As it was, I heard people at the counter discussing the murders. Not that you could blame them. Other than arrests for public drunkenness and bar fights, we didn’t get a lot of excitement in Bonaparte Bay or out here in this little village either.

The omelet should have been delicious—three fluffy eggs, fresh salsa, a fat gooey layer of local cheddar cheese, and the best part, I didn’t have to cook it or clean up after it. But the thoughts running round and round my head overrode my taste buds.

“Don’t worry, Georgie.” Jack forked up a pile of pancake soaked in maple syrup. “I’ll stay. Trish will just have to wait for this stuff.”

I shook my head. “No, go do what you have to do. Nothing’s likely to change between now and tomorrow when you get back.”

“Promise me you won’t be alone.” His eyes held mine.

Truth was, I had a plan. And it involved me going somewhere . . . by myself. “I’ll be fine.”

“Promise me,” he repeated.

I squirmed, then relented. “Okay, I promise.”

“Good. Now eat something. I’d like to get on the road as soon as I drop you off.”

Within a few minutes, Jack had cleared his plate and even tried some of my mostly uneaten breakfast, which made me feel a little less guilty about leaving so much food on the plate. He paid the bill and walked me out to the Jeep.

He dropped me at the kitchen door of the Bonaparte House. Dolly’s enormous Crown Vic was in the lot, taking up its usual space and a half next to Sophie’s white Lincoln and my little blue Honda. Sophie and Marina were due back from their trip tomorrow, so it was just Dolly and me in the kitchen today and that suited me fine.

“I’ll be back tomorrow by early afternoon,” Jack said. “If you can get away, we’ll go talk to Gladys and see if she’s got any idea what’s so important about that arrowhead.”

I nodded. “I’m going to call to check on Melanie. If she’s awake, I’ll go see her. Otherwise I’ve got plenty of work to do here, and Dolly’s around to keep me company.”

Jack pulled me close and gave me a soft kiss. “Be careful.”

“Keep kissing me like that, and I’ll forget what ‘careful’ means.”

He grinned. “See you tomorrow.”

“Bye.”

Country music was turned up loud in the kitchen, a song about pickup trucks and freedom sung by a guy with an overdone twang and a gravelly baritone. Dolly was at her usual station, behind the prep counter.

“Mornin’, boss,” she said, her face lighting up with a smile. Her hair was teased up higher than usual today, so I wondered if she’d just had it done. “I got started early. I see you did too.” She waggled a sharply plucked eyebrow at me.

Let her think what she wanted. As soon as Sophie came back, I was going to tell her about Jack and get our relationship out in the open. Chances were she already knew, but I’d feel better if she heard it directly from me.

“I’ll be right back,” I said, heading for my office.

Dolly waved me off with her chef’s knife. “Go on. Things are under control.”

I sat down behind my big desk, the one that had once belonged to Sophie’s husband, Spiro’s father, Basil. I dialed the hospital. The nurse on duty said that Melanie had had a good night and was doing well. She was heavily sedated and probably wouldn’t wake up until this afternoon. A little stab of guilt pricked my gut. I was relieved I wouldn’t have to go see her until later. Was that wrong of me? Probably.

Thoughts continued to swirl. There was some kind of connection between all the events going on here. Something I was missing. And it must have to do with that arrowhead. But what?

Gladys was out of town until tomorrow, on the same seniors’ bus trip to Niagara Falls and the casino as Sophie and Marina it turned out. So she’d be no help.

Melanie was hospitalized and unconscious.

Caitlyn knew something, but she wasn’t telling.

My fingers drummed on the surface of the desk. There was one place where answers might be found. I knew what I had to do.

Back in the kitchen, I grabbed a clean apron from the stack on the shelves back near the walk-in cooler, put it on, and tied the ends around my waist. After washing my hands, I snapped on disposable gloves and got to work.

Dolly had already started on the salad. We could probably expect to sell a hundred dinners or so this late in the season, so the prep didn’t take long.

We worked together companionably for a few minutes, each of us knowing the rhythm without the need for chitchat after so many years. Finally, I wiped my hands on my apron.

“Dolly, what do you have planned for the afternoon?”

She paused. “Well, I was going to go home, maybe turn on the wrestling match and clean the fish tank. Why?”

“How’d you like to make some extra money for your trip to Branson?”

“You’re playing my song, boss.”

An hour later we had passed Rainbow Acres and pulled into the driveway of Doreen’s house. Before we got out of the car, I scanned the house and countryside. This place was so far out in the sticks someone would have to have a vehicle to get here, and there was none visible. Unless someone walked down the dirt road or across the fields from the Acres. Hank had seemed pretty keen on buying this farm for his yoga retreat. He’d been involved in some shady business before. But would he kill just to annex this property? Didn’t seem likely, yet the possibility was there.

“So this is where you got shot at, huh?”

She didn’t have to remind me. I felt bad about possibly putting Dolly into harm’s way. But I’d promised Jack I wouldn’t go anywhere alone. And Dolly, well, she was as savvy as they came. She could take care of herself. She could probably take care of me too. And I had to get into this house.

“Ready? Let’s go.”

We exited the car and made it to the front porch. I put the key, the one I’d taken from Melanie’s purse before we left the Bonaparte House, into the lock and gave it a twist. The door swung open. The house was silent as I cautiously stepped inside the door. We went to the kitchen. The back door was still locked. So it seemed probable that we were alone. An intruder—or killer—would hardly lock himself inside a house.

I debated how much to tell Dolly and decided the less she knew, the better. “I thought you could go through and sort the rest of Doreen’s clothes for me, then wash them and take them out to the Salvation Army in Watertown. Also the bedding, dishes, and pots and pans. Of course, keep anything you want, or if you know someone who needs this stuff, go ahead and take it for them. Leave the red stand mixer,” I added.

I directed her toward the bedroom, and she got right to work. “I’ll be upstairs.”

The upstairs was full. Four bedrooms’ worth of full. And dusty. It was clear Doreen, and probably my grandparents before her, had never lived up here, just continued to add to the piles with items they might someday need.

Problem was, I didn’t know what I was looking for. My gut feeling told me it would be paper of some kind. Perhaps a copy of the Bloodworth Trust documents? That would explain so much, but it seemed unlikely.

There were a number of boxes lined up along the wall in the hallway. That seemed as good a place to start as any. As I pawed systematically through them, I was gratified to see that most of them were empty. The box for the coffeemaker. A ceramic hair-straightening device. The box and instructions for the expensive stand mixer. How had she afforded it? Those things cost several hundred dollars. Well, perhaps she had won it at Bingo or bought it on installments at QVC.

I decided to kill two birds with one stone and opened the two-foot-by-two-foot window that looked out on the driveway, the road, and the overgrown field beyond. The window stuck as though it hadn’t been opened in years, which was almost certainly the case, but after giving it a little muscle, I raised it. I tossed the empty boxes out into the yard. Doreen had a fifty-five-gallon oil drum out back that she probably used for burning. Not very environmentally conscious, but this was a big job.

Other boxes contained clothes of varying sizes. Doreen had been a Rubenesque woman. I wondered if these were her skinny clothes. Or her fat clothes. Or some combination thereof. They seemed to be of fairly recent vintage, so I assumed they had not belonged to my grandmother, who’d been gone for decades. I gave the boxes a quick going-through then set them aside to add to Dolly’s hoard.

A cool breeze fluttered in through the small window, blowing dust around. I sneezed, three times in rapid succession, then headed for the first bedroom. The room was small, containing two twin beds with brown metal frames and a small dresser in between them. The old-fashioned floral wallpaper had peeled away in a couple of spots, revealing another layer underneath. This room seemed to be full of old linens. Musty sheets and pillowcases, a couple of old quilts made from charming feed sack fabrics, probably dating to the nineteen thirties. They appeared to be intact, though I saw some rusty-looking stains. Perhaps they could be cleaned. I set them aside.

The dresser drawers revealed nothing. There did not appear to be a closet, which I guess was normal in an old farmhouse like this. I checked under the mattresses and under the beds. Nope.

When I opened the second bedroom door, my spirits soared, then sank even lower. The room was full of paper. Books, boxes, and loose papers covered the double bed and the small table in between them. And yet paper was what I thought I was looking for. I fanned quickly through old farm records. Receipts for milk pickup. Records of gallons produced by each cow. Breeding documentation.

My eyes fell on an old-fashioned scrapbook, the kind with two hard covers held together by a string tied with a bow. I didn’t really have time for a trip down non–memory lane, but I was curious. Were there photos of my bitter, angry grandparents in here? I wondered why they were so bitter. Farming was a difficult life, no question, and their only daughter had disappointed them. But according to Melanie, they’d been disagreeable even when she was a child.

I flipped through the pages. Melanie’s report cards from elementary school. She’d done well in reading and social studies, not so well in math. So we had that much in common. Her school pictures were placed inside glued-on corner tabs. She looked happy enough in her pigtails and Peter Pan–collared blouse. And I could see the resemblance to my own daughter. Teeny, tiny twinge of nostalgia. I missed Cal so much.

The next few pages were newspaper clippings, yellowed and brittle. Wedding and anniversary notices from the Bay Blurb for people I’d never heard of were pasted onto the pages. Each clipping had a date, presumably the date the announcement had appeared in the paper, written in fading ink in a flowery hand. My grandmother’s?

My hand stilled. The next clipping was an obituary with an accompanying photo. I stared. Herman “Monty” Montgomery, age sixty-seven, dies at home. Underneath the caption was a photo of Monty, one I recognized from the photos hanging on the wall in the artifact room at Gladys’s house. He looked young and handsome with his shirtsleeves rolled up and a pre-Indiana-Jones-style fedora pushed back on his head.

Herman Montgomery, age sixty-seven, long-time resident of Bonaparte Bay, died at home with his wife at his side on February 23rd. Montgomery owned and operated several marinas along the St. Lawrence, and was a silent partner in many local businesses.

Once she sold the businesses, Gladys would have been quite well off, which explained her ability to maintain both the river house and a condo in Florida.

He was the son of Gerald and Melvina (Bloodworth) Montgomery, both of this town, who died many years ago. Montgomery was the last surviving grandchild of Elihu Bloodworth, who was at one time the richest man in the North Country. Arrangements are with the Miller Funeral Home.

I sat back on the bed, causing a small cloud of dust particles to rise into the air. Monty had been a self-made man, Gladys had said. Why had none of the Bloodworth wealth trickled down to him, though? Or through my grandmother, for that matter? It appeared she’d never had it easy. There could be any number of reasons, all of them speculation at this point.

My eyes returned to the clipping. The written-in date was February 25. Twenty years ago, the date the notice had appeared in the paper. And written underneath was a second date: February 23 . . . of next year.

This date was in the future, just a few months from now.

I did a quick calculation, my math skills being adequate for the job. Twenty-one years from the date of Monty’s death.

What was it Doreen had been telling people? The time is almost up. I wished I could have seen the Bloodworth Trust documents, which would probably have confirmed my thoughts. From the attorney’s letter, I knew the trust was about to expire and I would bet that date was February 23 of next year. “Just how much money are we talking about?” I mused out loud.

But this just confirmed what I already knew. The unanswered question was what, if anything, that arrowhead had to do with this puzzle. After an hour’s worth of work, I was no closer to solving it.

I jumped at the sound of a sharp whistle. “Georgie,” Dolly called from the bottom of the stairs. “Come take a break. There’s no cream for coffee, so I made tea. She had orange spice in a box on the table.”

I must have missed that when I cleaned out the food, when? Was it just yesterday?

“Be right down.”

I squirted some dish soap on my hands and gave them a good scrub before sitting at the table. Dolly was dunking her tea bag up and down in the china mug.

“This ain’t too bad,” she said, slipping into the sometimes sloppy speech patterns of the North Country. “If you want, Tuesday I’ll borrow Harold’s truck and we can start loading up the big stuff.” She slurped up some tea. “Unless you want to have a garage sale or something with the furniture?”

“Can Harold get along without the truck for the day?” Dolly’s second husband worked a civilian job at Fort Drum. I wasn’t quite sure what he did, come to think of it.

“Yeah, he can take my Ford. I can round up some muscle for us too.”

Muscle. I thought of Channing, naughty girl that I was. “Oh. I should get somebody to winterize the house. Melanie has to decide what she’s going to do with this place, but we could get a hard freeze anytime. Don’t want to be dealing with burst pipes.”

“Harold’s putting in overtime at the base until we leave for Branson, or I’d have him come out and do it.” Dolly did some more dunking, then placed her soggy tea bag on a small saucer.

“That’s okay. I’ll hire a handyman.” Might as well give Liza’s boyfriend some work. “Have you ever heard the name ‘Bloodworth’?” Dolly had lived in Bonaparte Bay her entire life. Couldn’t hurt to ask.

She pursed up her bright pink lips and shook her head. “No, can’t say that I have. How come?”

“Oh, no reason. I just came across it recently and thought it was an unusual name.” Back at my office, I’d run a quick search and hadn’t come up with anyone in the Jefferson County area who still bore the name. And poor Elihu. Apparently famous—or at least very, very rich—in his time, today he didn’t even have a Wikipedia page about him.

I changed the subject. “Where’d you find the tea? I thought I’d cleaned out all the food. Did I miss a cupboard?”

“Doreen must have liked her tea at Bingo. She kept some in her Bingo box.” Dolly indicated the needlepoint plastic canvas box on the table. I’d meant to take that with me yesterday and see if Paloma or any of Doreen’s other buddies wanted it.

I pulled the box toward me. “We may as well keep the bags here at the house, along with the kettle. It’s going to be a lot of work cleaning this place out and we may want it.”

The lid lifted off easily since there was no latch. Inside were half a dozen orange spice tea bags, which I retrieved and stacked on the table. “I guess these will be all right. The mice won’t bother them with the house being unoccupied, will they?” Even though the bags were wrapped in a coated paper, a strong scent of orange rind and clove wafted up. It reminded me of Christmas.

“Nah, they won’t like the smell.”

I dumped the contents of the box onto the table. Two tokens for free drinks at the Legion, which I passed to Dolly. She and Harold could use them, whereas I—or Melanie—never would. Two fat Bingo daubers. I shook each one and was rewarded with the sound of sloshing ink. Paloma would want these. A single Bingo card lay on the bottom of the box. The B and the I were scribbled out. The number 68 was circled with a purple gel pen, not daubed, in the O column. I picked up the box to replace the items and felt something shift inside it. Huh?

The box was empty. And yet something was definitely inside it.

My cell phone rang. The charge nurse was calling. Melanie was awake and asking for me.

I stowed the box under my arm. There had to be an explanation but figuring it out would have to wait till later. “Let’s head home, Dolly. You want to take the clothes now or come back for them?”

“I still haven’t checked all the pockets for stray cash. Why don’t we come back next week? It’ll give you and your mom a chance to decide what you’re going to do with this place. We should be able to sort through everything in a few days. There’s no rush, right?”

Dolly was right. There was no rush.

We drove back to the Bay with the music turned up loud. Fine with me because I didn’t really want to talk. Dolly offered to empty my trunk and deliver the food to the Methodist Church Food Pantry on her way to work tomorrow. I took her up on it.

I went into my office and pulled out a pad of paper and an “I Heart 1000 Islands” pen that some customer had left on a table.

Melanie had made me wait a long time for her. She could wait a little longer for me.

I started doodling, letting my thoughts wander. Doreen. I drew a circle around the name. Spencer. Another circle. Bloodworth Trust. Arrowhead. I continued till I had pretty much covered the paper with my bubbles.

Melanie and Caitlyn had come back into town and visited Doreen the day before she was killed.

According to the tabloids, Melanie was in financial trouble. That might or might not be true, but what was certain was that she stood to inherit not only the farm she’d grown up on, but Doreen’s share of the Bloodworth Trust, which was about to be distributed. That gave her a pretty good motive for murdering Doreen. Except she herself had been shot by an unknown assailant. What if Melanie killed Doreen, then somebody else who’d gotten a letter from MacNamara and MacNamara, attorneys at law, had tried to kill her to increase his or her share?

Caitlyn was sneaking and snooping around and doing some kind of research. Melanie had apparently sworn her to secrecy and she was getting paid to be loyal. Yet it wasn’t outside the realm of possibility that Melanie had provided for Caitlyn in the event of her death. Melanie had told me that she’d recently written a will with my daughter Cal as the beneficiary. That didn’t mean she hadn’t left something to Caitlyn. But would it have been enough to kill for?

And what about Spencer Kane? He’d said he had something important to talk to me about, and he’d been doing some research of his own. But before he could tell me, he was bludgeoned to death in the yard behind the funeral home. Could I get a look at his notes, see what he’d been working on? My guess was no. The police would almost certainly be examining the notes as evidence in their search to find the killer. One thing I did know: Spencer had been looking into the history of the Bay.

And I was willing to bet he was researching the Bloodworths. Everything seemed to revolve around the trust. Not for the first time I wondered just how much it was worth.

Inky had been framed, and rather clumsily so. As far as I knew, he had no connection to Melanie or Spencer or Gladys and her husband or the Bloodworths. My guess was that someone had taken advantage of the fact that Spinky’s was undergoing renovations and had used that opportunity to pick a convenient target. It could just as easily have been Spiro who was arrested.

I drew a second circle around Arrowhead and tapped the pen against it. That was the piece that didn’t fit, and I kept coming back to it. The artifact had been found at my grandparents’ farm in the sixties, according to Monty’s index. It seemed to be unremarkable—there were several similar artifacts and entries on the index, and Jack had said that arrowheads turned up all the time. So what was special about this one? Someone had stolen both the arrowhead and the associated folder. It meant something. It had to. But what?

The small clock-radio I kept on the corner of the desk read eleven thirty. Time to go see Melanie, then come back here and get ready to open at three o’clock.

Dolly had finished unloading my tiny trunk into her own more spacious one. “I’ll go drop this stuff off at the church, run a couple of errands, and be back by two.”

“Thanks.” I honestly, truly did not know how we would manage without Dolly.

Nuts. I still had to find Spiro and Inky a cook or they’d try to steal her away again. And that was a headache I did not need. Of course I wanted Spinky’s to succeed. Just not at the expense of the Bonaparte House.

I pulled into the front parking lot of the hospital and went in through the main doors, which slid open noiselessly in front of me. I nodded to the nurse at the main desk, someone I didn’t recognize, and took the stairs to the second floor rather than waiting for the elevator.

A Jefferson County sheriff’s deputy sat in a molded plastic chair outside Melanie’s room. He rose when I approached.

“Name?”

“Georgie Nikolopatos.”

He consulted a clipboard and checked something off, presumably my name. “You’re on the approved visiting list. Let’s see your ID, then you can go in.”

I pulled out my license, which he examined. He nodded his head toward the door.

Melanie lay in the hospital bed with her upper body at a slight incline. She was hooked up to various intravenous drips and the same beeping monitors I’d seen yesterday. Her eyes fluttered open as I came toward her and sat in the chair by the bed.

“Hey, Mel. How’re you feeling?”

“Water,” she said, her voice raspy. “Don’t call me Mel.”

“Right. Sorry. Has the doctor been in yet this morning?”

“How long could rounds take in a place this size? Yes.” She wrapped her lips around the straw and sucked. Even without makeup, she didn’t look too bad. Plastic surgery, insanely expensive skin care products, and a dermatologist on call could probably do that for you.

“And?” I reached over and took the plastic cup from her, placing it on the tray table.

“And I’m going to be here at least three more days. He doesn’t want me traveling for a few weeks. So I’ll be staying at the Spa during my recovery.”

Wow. That was going to cost a mint. Not that I wasn’t glad for Liza. Castles weren’t cheap to run. I just hoped Melanie wouldn’t try to stiff her on the bill.

“Where’s Caitlyn?”

“Running errands for me. She’ll be back soon.”

“What kind of errands, Melanie? If you needed something from the drugstore, Kinney’s is just down the street from the restaurant.” But I had a feeling she wasn’t out buying deodorant or a hairbrush. How much longer was my mother going to hold out on me?

“Oh, I had her working on a research project for me.”

Research. There was that word again.

“What’s she researching?”

She shifted in the bed and let out a groan, her face contorting with the effort. “Not now.” One of the machines attached to her IV drip made a little chirp, perhaps dispensing medication.

I leaned in closer and dropped my voice to a harsh whisper. “Do you not realize you were almost killed? And that two other people are dead? I found Doreen’s letter. I know about the Bloodworth Trust. Did you get a letter about it?”

It was probably unfair of me to grill her when she was in an obviously weakened state. But I didn’t want any more deaths and she and Caitlyn were the only ones who might have answers.

“Yes. Letter. Trust. Rumors.” Her eyelids fluttered, then closed. “Rumors,” she whispered, and fell asleep.

That had gone well. Rumors. It could mean anything.

The deputy checked me off his list as I headed toward the elevators. I punched Caitlyn’s number into my phone. She didn’t answer.

Damn. I’d promised Jack I wouldn’t be alone today. Although I was pretty well convinced at this point that I wasn’t a target. Melanie and Doreen were heirs to the Bloodworth Trust. I, however, had received no such letter from the attorneys. Which must mean that I wasn’t eligible to receive the proceeds, for whatever reason, and therefore I stood in no one’s way of getting the money.

I could go and confront MacNamara Junior or Senior, but I counted my chances of getting any information out of them at slim to bupkus. That pesky attorney-client privilege would prevent them from telling me anything about the trust. I could go in and say I was handling Melanie’s affairs while she was incapacitated, but without a properly executed power of attorney, they’d never buy it.

Which left me with Caitlyn as my only source of information. I went into the family lounge and closed the door. I pulled Melanie’s cell phone out of my purse. My intent had been to leave it on the table for her, but I’d forgotten while I was upstairs. Caitlyn might not answer calls from me, but she would from Melanie. I fired off a quick text.

Call me with update.

It was a matter of seconds before a response came back.

Georgie? Is that you?

Curses. Foiled again. How had she known?

The phone rang and I answered it.

“Melanie doesn’t text,” Caitlyn informed me. “She says it ruins her manicure. What do you want?”

My eyes darted around the room, making absolutely sure I was alone. “I want to know what’s going on. What are you researching?” My tone was harsher, more demanding than I’d intended.

“I’ve already told you I can’t talk about this until Melanie gives me the okay. Which she hasn’t done.”

“Caitlyn, people are dying. An innocent man is accused of murder. And I think you’ve got information that will explain everything.” I was just getting warmed up when she cut in.

“You’d be surprised what I don’t know.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” My blood pressure rose.

“It means that I don’t have all the answers. And when I do, I’ll go straight to the police with them.”

“What do you know about an arrowhead?”

“Huh? Like a Native American thing?” She sounded genuinely surprised by my question, but it was hard to know for sure without being able to see her face.

“Never mind. I’ve got to go to work. But this isn’t over. As soon as Melanie wakes up again, I want you over here getting permission to tell me what you know.”

“Uh, sure.” What she really meant was probably something like, No way in hell. You’re not paying me.

I rang off and threw the phone into the depths of my purse.

When I got back to the restaurant, Dolly had also returned. “Be out in a few minutes,” I called, closing myself up in my office. I reached into my secret drawer and pulled out a half-eaten bar of dark chocolate. The square melted in my mouth as I closed my eyes, leaning back in the chair. When I opened them again, they fell on Doreen’s Bingo container. I dumped the contents onto the surface of the desk and gave the box a shake. There was something in there, and yet the box was empty. How could that be?

What would Nancy Drew do? She’d check for a false bottom, that’s what. I grabbed a ruler and stuck it inside the box, jotting the number on a piece of scrap paper. Then I measured the height of the box from the desk. Sure enough, there was a discrepancy. It was only a quarter inch, but it was there.

The sides of the box had been needlepointed in a pattern of raised stitches. And one row of stitches, a quarter inch from the bottom, was done in white yarn that was a couple of shades off from the rest of the box.

I grabbed the scissors from their usual spot in the mug containing my pens and pencils and gave a snip. The stitch popped open and the yarn, which had been under a bit of tension, relaxed. I straightened one loop of a paper clip and used it to pull out the stitches one by one. When I made it all the way around, the false bottom broke free and I took it out.

I half expected to see an arrowhead. But on the real bottom of the box lay a key.

I blew out a breath, then picked up the key for a closer look.

It was small and flat with an uncomplicated profile. Definitely not a door key. It might go to a desk or dresser drawer, a cabinet, a padlock, maybe a small lockbox. My thoughts flung back to the farmhouse and I groaned. It would be like looking for a needle in a haystack. This key could go to anything.

And yet, Doreen had gone to a lot of trouble to hide it. She would have had to create the false bottom and sew it in, and this was about as obscure a place as she could find. My eyes landed on the daubers. They seemed ordinary enough. The Bingo card, though, wasn’t.

She clearly hadn’t played this in any Bingo game at the Legion or the Reservation. The crossed-out letters at the top, the circled number 68. They meant something. I just didn’t know what.

I shoved the box and its contents into my bottom drawer with the almost-gone chocolate bar and my private bottle of wine. The key went into my pocket. Perhaps proximity to my body might allow it to communicate with me. What do you open, little key? And what’s inside the thing you open?

My musings were cut short by the sounds of footsteps and voices in the hallway outside my door. The wait staff had arrived.

I took a moment to call the hospital. Melanie was still in and out of consciousness, but seemed to be improving, so there was no cause for concern there. The nurse predicted she’d be more alert tomorrow when the effects of the anesthesia and pain medication would have lessened. She was still under police guard, and would be until the person who shot at her was caught.

The second call I placed was to Liza.

“Hey, girl,” she said. “I haven’t seen Caitlyn, if that’s what you’re going to ask. She doesn’t seem to have been back in at least a day.”

“I think she’s been staying at the Camelot. Maybe the boat rides were cramping her style.”

“Any idea yet what she’s up to?”

“No, but I’m working on it.”

“I took it upon myself to help your investigation. Since she’s felt free to wander around my castle pretending to be lost, I felt free to freshen her and Melanie’s room personally.”

“Did you find anything?” I leaned forward with interest.

“I would never invade my guests’ privacy.” Damn. I might. “But in my general straightening up, nothing seemed out of place.”

“How about any paperwork? Notebooks, folders, anything like that?”

“I put fresh sachets in each of the drawers in both rooms. Nothing but clothes and some toiletries. Same with the closets. And nothing under the mattresses or the beds.”

I was willing to bet that Caitlyn kept everything electronically on her phone. It would be simple enough to snap pictures of whatever she was working on, then organize everything into folders she could access anywhere. Simple enough for a young woman of her generation anyway.

“The reason I called was to ask for Channing’s number.”

Slight hesitation. “Channing? I’d thought I might keep him . . . engaged for a while this afternoon.”

I laughed. “Tempting as the divine handyman is, Georgie doesn’t poach, you know that. I want to hire him to winterize Doreen’s house before it freezes. You know, drain all the water pipes so they don’t burst, that kind of thing. I was hoping to meet him tomorrow morning, say nine o’clock. It has to be early because we’re open for lunch tomorrow.”

“I had him scheduled to work around here tomorrow morning, but that can wait. Unless one of us calls you back, expect him at nine.”

“Thanks. And, uh, have a nice afternoon.”

Her laugh was mischievous. “Oh, we will.” She rang off.

The Bonaparte House did a bustling business that night. A hundred and forty dinners—significantly more than I’d expected—and we managed not to run out of anything. I put aside several of the cash transactions for Sophie. That always made her happy. She didn’t know—or maybe just didn’t care—that the computerized ordering system kept track of it anyway and we still paid taxes on the income. It was a sport for her.

By the time eleven o’clock rolled around and I called eighty-six, I had a roster of happy servers with pockets full of tips. I offered them each a complimentary dinner for a job well done, but they’d all made plans to go to Fat Max’s after work. “Have a good time,” I called out after them. “Don’t drink and drive.” All I got was laughter.

Well aware that I was breaking my promise to Jack, but unwilling to ask Dolly to stay with me, I set all the alarms and went to bed.