On my way to rescue Matt, I noticed that most of the living room quilts had been boxed up. The top flaps hadn't been sealed yet, so I peeked inside one. Craig had been doing his work diligently, refolding the quilts so that they fit comfortably, not simply rolling them up and stuffing them inside. That boded well for his legal career, where taking shortcuts too often got lawyers into trouble.
Craig was gushing about how his mother would never believe he'd met someone so famous, but he still refused to let Matt inside. Matt offered to let Craig take a selfie of them together, but apparently Mrs. Pitts was not a particularly trusting person and would assume it had been photoshopped.
"You can let him in," I told Craig. "Matt's here to help."
For a moment, I thought Craig was going to protest that he was all the help I needed, but apparently he had the good sense to know when persistence and eagerness went over the line to harassment. He silently stepped back to let Matt in and went straight back to his packing.
I was fairly certain that Matt was here to let me know if he'd found any evidence that Miriam had been shoplifting her supplies. That information might be a little too juicy for someone as young as Craig to resist the temptation to share it, so I didn't ask Matt for an immediate report while we walked down the hallway. Matt seemed to have picked up on my caution, because he held off saying anything until we reached the sewing room and I closed the door behind us.
"I'm glad you brought the bouncer with you," Matt said, keeping his voice low even though we were out of casual hearing range. "The more I look into Miriam's death, the more I don't think it's safe for you to be here alone."
I settled at the worktable where I'd left my laptop. "I doubt anyone would hurt me simply because I figured out Miriam had been stealing her supplies. Or whatever she was doing. She's dead, so she can't be charged with a crime."
"She might have had a partner though, and he could still get into trouble," Matt said.
"So she had been stealing her supplies?"
"Whatever she was up to, it wasn't that. No one around here had any significant problems with shoplifting of fabric, at least not to the extent that would have been needed for all of this." Matt gestured at the wall of fabric. "That's why I've been thinking Miriam might have had a partner in crime, someone who would roam farther afield to steal the supplies."
"I can't imagine who might have worked with her," I said. "I'm told she was something of a hermit. She hardly ever had any visitors, spent most of her time right here at home, and hardly talked to anyone other than the mail carrier."
"I'd heard the same thing, so I figured the best bet would be family." Matt patted his many cargo pants pockets until he came up with his notebook. He didn't actually open it, just held it ready if he needed to refer to his notes. "Miriam's cousin isn't exactly a model citizen. He doesn't stick with a job for more than a few months. That's not so unusual for a short-order cook, but in his case he's been fired more often than he's quit for a better job. He worked at the Smugglers' Tavern for a while, but it was too long ago to get any reliable information on why he left. I talked to the owner there, but Hope Foster only took over the place recently, so she never met Herb. She checked, but there was no record of him being an employee of the owner before her either. I did talk to one of Herb's current co-workers, and he said Herb had been bragging for months that he was making plans to start his own restaurant. Herb wouldn't say where he was getting the money for it though, and he certainly couldn't have financed it on his salary."
"Wayne Good claimed that Herb was always asking Miriam for money, and she was always turning him down," I said. "That doesn't sound like they were working together. But it does sound like someone with a motive to kill his only living relative. I can't even figure out how she produced enough income for her own needs, so I can't imagine she had enough extra to finance a restaurant. At least not as long as she controlled the purse strings. Once she was dead though, and this house could be sold, the proceeds would go a long way toward starting a modest business."
"Herb should definitely be a 'person of interest' in the murder investigation," Matt said, tucking away his notebook "The only thing is, he seems to have an alibi. I talked to a colleague who's working on a story about the murder investigation. Miriam's time of death was between 4:00 p.m. and 9:00 p.m. Herb worked the dinner shift that night, so he'd have been at work by 4:00 and didn't leave until well after midnight. And it's too far for him to have made the round-trip here during a break. I don't know if the police were able to confirm the alibi beyond any doubt, but presumably there are payroll records to show that Herb was at work."
"I wonder how certain they are about the time of death," I said. "From what the mail carrier said she must have been dead for more than a day before the police found her. If they're off by an hour or two on the time of death, then maybe Herb could have killed Miriam and still gotten back in time for his shift."
"Except apparently Herb doesn't have a car." Matt sat on the edge of the worktable next to my chair. "His co-worker said he was frequently late for his shifts, blaming it on delays in the public transportation."
"He might not have owned a car, but he could have had access to one shortly before Miriam died," I said. "Her car seems to have been missing since before the body was found. Wayne told me Herb had asked to borrow it. Miriam might have given him the keys before she died, and then he used the car to come kill her and get back to work on time."
"No way to know for sure," Matt said.
"And Herb's not the only one who might have taken it," I said. "Wayne Good mentioned that the loan was overdue. He acted like he didn't know where the car was, but he could have been lying, thinking it wouldn't look good to admit he'd repossessed a dead woman's property without giving the estate a chance to catch up on the debt."
"Or it could have been a random theft, someone who read her obituary and figured no one would report the car stolen for a while."
"I'd really like to know who has it," I said. "It's possible whoever killed Miriam grabbed the keys on the way out of the house."
Matt nodded. "I have some sources who might know how to find the car."
"I never thought of you as a car guy," I said, thinking of his battered pickup.
"I'm not," he said ruefully. "I do know my limits, and I'm terrible with mechanical things. It's not something I like to talk about, though. It makes me feel like too much of a cliché, the pretty boy who's afraid to get his hands dirty."
"I would never think that," I said, although it wasn't entirely true. I knew better now, but I had misjudged him initially, at least in part because of his extreme good looks, but also because he was a reporter. As a lawyer—even a retired one—I was instinctively distrustful of journalists. "But if you're not into cars, then why would you have any sources for information on missing vehicles? It doesn't seem like something that would be useful for an arts reporter."
"You'd be surprised where my work takes me. Or where I want it to take me, like inside an abandoned bank vault," he said with a grin. "I've never written about missing vehicles, but I do know some guys who use old car parts for their found-art sculptures. They'd know where the chop shops are, both legal and illegal. They probably have a source for running VIN numbers to confirm that the parts they buy are legit, and that might get us a lead on Miriam's car. It can't hurt to ask them anyway."
"Just don't get yourself arrested by an undercover officer who thinks you're trying to buy stolen parts," I said. "And before you check with your sources, I think Herb's staying at the Ocean View B&B. He doesn't seem to be the brightest guy on the planet, so if he 'borrowed' the car, it might be parked there."
"I'll try not to get myself arrested if you'll try not to get attacked by Miriam's killer."
"I'll be fine," I said. "Craig won't let anything happen to me. He's a wannabe lawyer, and he's convinced I've got the secret to being the cover story on NWLawyer magazine. He's going to stay within shouting distance whenever I'm here."
"Good." Matt stood and glanced around the sewing room. "I've got a bad feeling about this whole situation. Anything I can do to help here, so your work is done faster?"
"Not unless you've been certified as an appraiser since the last time we talked."
"Afraid not." He glanced in the direction of the living room as if he could see through the door and walls. "I'd offer to be your hired muscle, but you've already got that covered."
"I promise I'll be careful."
"I'll hold you to that," he said. "You owe me a visit to your vault, after all, and you can't pay up if someone succeeds in killing you first."
Despite his light tone, I thought he was truly worried about me. It was time to show him that I appreciated his concern. If I didn't commit to a specific date to show him the vault, I'd keep putting it off forever. Or until he lost interest.
The disappointment that swept over me at the thought of not seeing him again convinced me I didn't want that to happen if I could avoid it. Like he'd said earlier, sometimes a person had to take a chance and not worry excessively about the possible consequences.
"You can have your tour as soon as I finish this project."
He didn't look as pleased by my concession as I'd expected, and instead peered at me suspiciously. "I've dealt with more than my fair share of lawyers before, you know. How do you define the project? Just the inventory? Or the much bigger project of figuring out who killed Miriam?"
"You'll have your tour by the beginning of next week," I said. "The inventory report is due then, and if I don't have any leads for Detective Ohlsen by the time I finish that, I never will."
* * *
Matt opened the sewing room door to leave, and we could hear Craig's heavy footsteps heading in our direction. The hallway was too narrow for the two of them to pass side by side, so Matt turned and leaned against the wall to let Craig into the sewing room.
"Excuse me, Ms. Fairchild," Craig said, "but I've boxed up all the loose quilts. I don't know how to disconnect the one on the sewing machine setup, and I'm not sure what to do with the one on the wall. It's kind of raggedy and all, so I don't know if it's worth taking with us."
"It's definitely worth taking." In fact, it was probably worth more than all of the other quilts in the living room put together. "It's fragile, though, and the frame may be heavy. As long as Matt's still here, perhaps he'll help us with it."
We all trooped into the living room. By unspoken agreement, I supervised, and the two men did the heavy lifting. Matt and Craig each grabbed one side of the frame and, judging by the tightening of the muscles in Craig's arms, it was far heavier than it looked.
The two men looked at each other and let go of the frame. As if they'd planned it, they moved in perfect synchronization to peer between the frame and the wall on their respective sides.
Craig abandoned his inspection first and turned to look at me. "It's stuck somehow."
"Not stuck, exactly," Matt said without looking up. "I think the frame is attached directly to the wall instead of hanging from it." He ran his long, elegant fingers along where the left side of the frame touched the wall and then along the bottom and up the right side, stopping about three inches above the lower corner. He bent down to peer up at the spot where he'd stopped and then grunted triumphantly. He poked at the same spot again with his right hand and gripped the left side of the frame with his other hand. The frame swung out from the wall on a hinge.
Behind the frame was the door to what looked to me like a professional-quality safe with a digital keypad.
"Does anyone know what Miriam's birthday was?" Matt asked.
"Not me."
"If I can find out," Craig said to me, "will you give me a letter of reference for a job in Seattle?"
"I was planning to give you one anyway," I said.
"Matt too?"
Matt shrugged. "Not sure a reference from me is worth much, now that I'm just a reporter, but if you want it, sure."
"My mother really isn't going to believe this," Craig said as he pulled out his phone. "Give me a minute. I just have to call the office. I'm pretty sure the birth date is listed on the death certificate."
While Craig stepped out to the front porch to make the call, I asked Matt, "Do you really think that's the combination to the safe?"
He nodded. "I did a story on digital security for art collections once. Turns out that birthdays are the most common passwords for anything that requires numbers. All the instructions tell people not to use something as easily guessable as that, but I think the warning is probably counter-productive. People see the advice and even if they hadn't previously thought of using their birthday, now it's all they can think of."
Craig returned and held his phone up so Matt could read the date from the text displayed there.
Matt keyed in the numbers, but only got an error code.
"Never mind," I said. "The estate's attorney can probably contact the safe's manufacturer. They must have some kind of over-ride combination for situations like this."
Matt shook his head. "No, let me try it a little differently. I used all the digits. Miriam might have skipped the first two numbers of the year."
He tried the new combination, and there was a beep and the door opened. Matt stepped back so we could all see what was inside.
Stacks and stacks and stacks of cash.
Not neat little official bundles from the bank, but ragged piles, all different heights, and wrapped with homemade bands. I could see small, precise handwriting on the bands of the topmost bundles but couldn't read the words.
Matt, who was a little closer than Craig and I, whistled. "There must be a hundred grand in there."