Chapter 7 - THE LOCKED COMPARTMENT
"You can't stay at this hotel tonight," I told Elena, already zipping the blueprint and the leather ledger back into the heavy plastic bag. "Cole Garrett watched my SUV pull out from the direction of this Holiday Inn five minutes ago. If Richard is coming to my house to intercept me, there is nothing stopping him from sending Cole right back here to search the guest registry."
Elena didn't argue. Within sixty seconds, she had slipped Maya's boots on over her wool socks and wrapped the sleeping seven-year-old in her own winter coat. I carried the little girl down the rear stairwell while Elena hauled the oak toolbox and their canvas bags.
Maya barely stirred as I buckled her into the heated leather backseat of my Mercedes, murmuring against my shoulder, "Does Santa know where the new hotel is?"
"He knows right where you are, sweetheart," I whispered, tucking a plush travel blanket from my trunk around her chin. "Go back to sleep."
As I pulled onto the dark country roads leading toward Sycamore Lane, I checked my rearview mirror every ten seconds. No headlights followed us through the snow-covered farmland.
"Tell me about the cedar armoire," Elena said quietly from the passenger seat, her eyes fixed on the dark tree line ahead. "Why would your wife hide my father's camera film inside her sewing room?"
"Because since the day Caroline passed away, I haven't stepped foot inside that room," I admitted, my voice tight as my hands gripped the leather steering wheel. "It's at the back of the second-floor hallway. Her knitting baskets, her sewing machine, her winter charity boxes—everything is sitting exactly where she left it on the morning she collapsed. Every time I walked past that closed door over the last three years, my chest hurt too much to turn the brass handle. And Richard knew that."
"Wait," Elena said, turning in her seat to face me. "If my father's ledger says the key to that armoire box is hidden inside his silver pocket watch, and Richard has the pocket watch in his briefcase... why hasn't Richard already gone into your wife's sewing room and taken the film?"
"Because Richard didn't have the ledger," I said grimly. "He took the silver pocket watch off your father's coat the night the scaffolding fell—probably because he saw your father tuck something inside the case before they argued, or because it fell out during the struggle. Inside the watch case, he must have found a small brass cabinet key with no numbers and no address on it. For four years, Richard has been holding onto a key without knowing which lock in Pennsylvania it opened. That's why he suddenly sent his lawyers after your father's toolbox this week. Something tipped him off that you still had your father's notes."
We turned onto Sycamore Lane. At the end of the winding private drive stood my home—a three-story stone colonial surrounded by towering pines, every window dark except for the carriage lamps by the front portico.
Parked directly in front of the three-car garage was Richard's black Audi sedan.
"He's already inside," Elena whispered, reaching back instinctively to touch Maya's knee. "He has a house key?"
"He's Caroline's brother. He's had a spare key and the alarm code for fifteen years," I said.
Instead of pulling up to the front portico, I killed my headlights at the edge of the driveway and eased the Mercedes around the hemlock hedge toward the rear service courtyard. I parked beside the stone garden wall, turned off the engine, and pressed the interior lock button.
"Keep the doors locked and keep my spare key fob in your hand," I told Elena, pressing the second electronic key into her palm. "The engine battery has enough reserve to keep the cabin heater running on low for half an hour. If you see anyone other than me come out the back kitchen door, hit the panic alarm and drive straight through the open front gate to the state police barracks two miles east on Route 30."
"Mr. Vance, you're fifty-nine years old, and that man killed my father," Elena said fiercely, grabbing my wrist. "Call the police right now from the driveway."
"With what proof, Elena?" I asked quietly. "Right now, a forged signature is my word against his, and the bank checks only prove my late wife paid your father money. The 35mm film inside that sewing room is the only physical proof of what happened on the Riverbend scaffolding, and the key that opens that box is inside Richard's briefcase in my house. If the police pull up with sirens blazing right now, Richard will drop that pocket watch down a storm drain before they read him his rights."
I slipped my smartphone into my breast pocket, turned on the voice recorder app, and unlocked the heavy oak back door into the dark butler's pantry.
From the front of the house, the warm, amber light of my mahogany study spilled out into the central foyer. I heard the clink of crystal against a glass decanter. Richard was pouring himself my thirty-year-old Glenfiddich as if he already owned the deed to the estate.
Instead of walking toward the study, I stepped silently in my rubber-soled boots up the carpeted back servants' staircase to the second floor.
At the end of the dark hallway stood the white paneled door to Caroline's sewing room.
My hand trembled as I wrapped my fingers around the cold brass knob and turned it. As the door swung inward, the faint, unmistakable scent of dried lavender and cedar wood drifted out into the hall—Caroline's scent. For a second, grief hit me so hard my knees nearly buckled.
I flipped on the small desk lamp. Against the far wall stood her mother's antique cedar armoire. Pulling open the double wooden doors, I knelt beside the bottom storage drawer and slid it all the way out onto the braided rug.
Wedged into the floorboards beneath the false cedar base was a heavy steel fireproof document box secured with a three-tumbler brass cabinet lock.
Suddenly, a floorboard creaked right behind me in the doorway.
I didn't have time to stand up. I spun around on one knee.
Standing in the threshold of my dead wife's room was Richard Sterling. He wasn't holding a glass of scotch. In his left hand, gleaming under the soft sewing lamp, was Thomas Hale's cracked silver Waltham pocket watch.
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And in his right hand was a heavy brass fireplace poker from the study downstairs.
"So that's where she hid it," Richard said softly, a cold, joyless smile spreading across his face. "Four years I tore through Riverbend and her charity office looking for the box that went to this little brass key. And my dear sister kept it right over my head every time I came for Sunday dinner."
