Antiques to Die For (12 page)

I turned back to the small video monitor and viewed my recording again.
What could I have missed?
I asked myself. Rosalie must have left a clue about where to start. I observed nothing.

I counted the characters per wall—there were eight on each, thirty-two total. I decided to experiment by starting with the first character that appeared at the left-hand corner of each wall, a logical assumption, I thought, since it followed the English reading pattern of left to right.

The wall facing the front read:
WGTSERH&.
The wall facing the outside on the right read:
XCYXSJUW.
The back wall contained the letters
GNFTJFEJ.
The characters over the door that led to the dining room were
QSBPHIBO.

A truck rumbled by, breaking my concentration. I glanced at the time display on my computer. It was almost noon.

All I knew so far was that the message
didn’t
start with
WGTSERH&.
I tried beginning with
XCYXSJUW
.

“Leopard!” I said aloud, and continued.

I sighed and started again, this time beginning with
GNFTJFEJ.

“No way,” I said, frustrated. “
‘Fwmk’
isn’t possible.’ ” At least not in English.
What if it’s a double code,
I wondered, where after decoding it you still had to take another step, reading it backward or using every other letter or something? I shrugged. If that’s the case, I’d have to find a professional cryptographer.

I got up and stretched and had some water, then prepared another three-row grid. The last series read:
QSBPHIBO
.

“Paige!” I exclaimed.

I resumed my decoding of the message.

“Wow!” I whispered, hurrying now.

Paige and Rosalie. Sisters and friends.
I picked up the phone to call Paige.

“Yes, I know,” she said when I had her on the line and reported the message. “After she put it up, she showed me how to figure it out.”

“Sounds like fun.”

“Yeah,” she said in her tiny voice. “It was.”

After telling her that I’d just begun the appraisal, and would be in touch soon, I hung up the phone. I spun toward my window and looked out toward the distant woods, frustrated and disappointed. I’d had such hopes that Rosalie’s code would provide a clue about her treasure.

I remembered the boxes of Rosalie’s folders and papers I’d left downstairs. I’d ask Fred to go through them one by one. So far, it was my best shot at finding something of value.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

A

s Officer Brownley and I walked into Heyer’s together, I told her about the message I’d decoded in the kitchen.

She shook her head, but didn’t comment.

Una, at her regular position behind the chest-high reception desk, looked at Officer Brownley, openly curious, and I introduced them as we signed in, but didn’t explain the purpose of our visit. Instead, I turned to Officer Brownley, and said, “This way.”

I felt Una’s eyes on my back as we made our way down the hall, an odd sensation, and as we rounded the corner that led to Gerry’s office suite, I looked back.

She raised her eyebrows and mouthed, “What?”

I raised my shoulders to convey uncertainty.

“Tricia,” I said as we stepped into her office, “have you met Officer Brownley? She’s investigating Rosalie’s death.”

Officer Brownley looked around, taking in the wood paneling, soft lighting, oil paintings, and thick rugs.

“How do you do?” Tricia said. “If there’s anything I can do to help, please let me know. Rosalie was a remarkable young woman.”

“Thanks. Someone will be talking to you about her soon.”

To me, Tricia said, “Gerry thought that under the circumstances we ought to lock Rosalie’s office. He asked me to give you the key.”

“Sounds smart,” I agreed, accepting it.

Gerry was on the phone, his voice booming. We could hear him clearly. I stuck my head into his office and nodded hello. He smiled at me as if we were old friends, and waved me in. When he saw Officer Brownley, he nodded politely, and gestured that she should join us.

We stood there, unable to avoid listening to his side of the conversation with someone he called, “Dougie, Dougie.” He was leaning back, and he looked like he was having a ball.

He winked at me. To avoid eye contact, I shifted my gaze to the picture window in back of him. As he spoke, I watched a big brown bird circle and glide until it disappeared from view, and then I tried to estimate how far the trees were from the building.

“Dougie, Dougie,” Gerry said, “you can’t be missing deadlines, not if you want to play in the big leagues. . . . Tell me in one sentence what the problem is. . . . Fair enough. I’ll tell you what, I’ll give you until tomorrow noon, how’s that? . . . You betcha! . . . No can do, nope, nada, not a chance. . . . Dougie, Dougie, come on now, be realistic. . . . Sounds like a plan, my man. . . . Okay then . . .
Mañana.
”

He punched the button to disconnect the call, sat forward, and said, “Sit, sit. Tell me what’s going on.”

I looked straight at Gerry as I introduced Officer Brownley. His eyes were guarded, no longer warm and encouraging. “I’m here to inventory Rosalie’s things. For her sister’s lawyer.”

“Helluva thing,” he said, standing up. “When you’re done with the appraisal, you okay with finishing the installation?”

“Sure,” I said. “I should have time in between things and for sure next week, if that’s all right.”

Gerry clasped my arm, gave a squeeze, and said, “Josie, doll, whatever’s good for you is good for me.”

I edged away. His touch wasn’t improper, but it made me super-uncomfortable. I was tempted to tap him on the arm, and shout, “Cooties, no touch back!” the way we did in grade school.

“Are we interrupting?” Ned asked in an irritatingly coy tone, entering the office just ahead of Edie. He smirked, and I nearly stamped my foot, I was so annoyed. He sounded like a twelve-year-old with a dirty mind.

“What was
that
about?” Edie asked wrathfully.

“Nothing!” I exclaimed.

“Girls, girls!” Gerry interjected, chuckling. “Edie, doll, you know you have nothing to be jealous about. Josie here is just a good ole girl doing her job. She’s wearing her appraiser hat.”

Edie wasn’t mollified. She’d heard it all before, yet astonishingly, she wasn’t mad at him, she was mad at me. In fact, she looked like she wanted to kill me.
She thinks he’s putting the moves on me,
I thought,
and she’s worried.
I wished I could reassure her that I had no designs on her husband, but there was nothing I could do or say that wouldn’t simply fuel her wrath. Her viperlike expression was terrifying.

“An appraisal?” Ned said with a nasty sneer, and I could almost hear his unspoken,
Is that what they call it these days?
He turned to Officer Brownley, extended his hand, and said, “Hello, there. I’m Ned Anderson, the CFO.”

I mumbled, “Excuse me,” and nipped out of Gerry’s office into the anteroom. Officer Brownley followed close behind and was standing beside me near Tricia’s desk as I unzipped the video carry case.

“What’s up, Ned?” Gerry asked, his booming voice audible through the open door.

“I need a few minutes to go over some numbers.”

“Not today, I’m afraid. I gotta run. I’ve got an appointment.”

Seconds later, Ned stepped into the outer office. “Well, that was fun, don’t you think?” he said to me.

“Gerry,” Edie said, in an arctic tone. “I just heard a news report naming you as a suspect in Rosalie’s murder. Is it true?”

“Edie, sweetheart, we’ll talk more tonight. Not now.” He strode through the anteroom and down the corridor, a man on a mission. “See ya later,” he called to no one in particular.

Edie followed close on his heels, and after a moment, I exhaled, relieved that they were gone.

“Tricia, can he fit me in tomorrow? He’s such a busy man,” Ned scoffed.

Tricia didn’t rise to the bait, although I wouldn’t have blamed her a bit if she had.

It was awful to see Gerry treat Edie with such cavalier disregard. And I knew the truth about his urgent departure. He wasn’t going to a business meeting as he’d implied. He was off to his regular appointment at the tanning salon.

“We’re here to look through Rosalie’s things,” I explained to Tricia. “My firm’s been hired to appraise everything.” I pointed to Rosalie’s little cubbyhole and spoke to Officer Brownley. “This is—
was
—Rosalie’s office.”

She nodded and watched as I began the recording process. I flipped through the jamboree of papers and files, and all of the reference books stashed in a cabinet mounted over the desk, and I found nothing personal. There were neatly organized notes of conversations she’d had with Gerry, along with related documents like copies of his birth certificate and school report cards.

There were only two personal items—a recent photo of the two sisters on a sofa with bowls of ice cream raised in a mock toast to someone out of sight and a porcelain artichoke on top of a pile of folders and papers—a makeshift paperweight.

When I was done, I locked the door and gave Tricia the key.

The entire process took less than fifteen minutes.

Officer Brownley followed me to the health club, located on the lower level overlooking the pond. I showed my letter to the woman on duty. She was tall and thin, sinewy and healthy looking with a mane of red hair and an easy smile. Her name tag read MANDY.

“Her locker’s over there,” she said as she pushed open the door to the women’s changing room. She pointed. “Number eight. Do you have the key?”

I pulled out the ring and held it up. “You tell me. Do you recognize it?”

“Everyone brings her own padlock. Could be that one, though,” she said. “Or this one. Those are about the right size.”

The padlock came off easily. Officer Brownley was right next to me when I swung open the door. A blue cotton robe hung on a hook at the back. Dirty white sneakers and sky blue flip-flops sat on the floor. There was a toiletry kit on a shelf. I took it to the counter, and as I extracted the contents one by one—shampoo, conditioner, mascara, foundation, powder, and eyeliner—a bulge on the bottom caught my eye. I touched it gently. Something hard had been placed under the satin liner.

“What is it?” Officer Brownley asked, watching me.

“I don’t know. Some kind of bump.” Using a fingernail, I peeled back the fabric and gaped. “Look,” I said, pointing to a key under the cardboard bottom.

Before touching it, I recorded everything. Then I removed the key and compared it to the others on the ring—it didn’t match. It was an ordinary-looking brass key, a house key, maybe.

“I just thought of something,” I said, picking up the key ring. “Have we used all the keys on the ring?” I slid each one around the metal circle as I recounted its use. “Front door, car, file cabinet, this locker . . . look! These two are extras,” I said, indicating a standard-sized silver-colored key and a small brass-colored one.

“So we have three that we don’t know what they go to, right? The two on the ring and the one you just found.”

“Right. I bet this one goes to the back door of her house,” I said, wiggling the unused standard-sized key on Rosalie’s key ring. “I didn’t try it because we were already inside. I didn’t think of it.”

She nodded. “But we should. We need to know what all the keys open.”

“Agreed.”

“What do you think it goes to—the one you just found?”

Our eyes met and I shook my head. “I don’t know . . . maybe a friend’s house—in case the friend locked herself out.”

“Not real convenient.” She shrugged. “How about the other one?”

“Another padlock?”

“We have no way of knowing without testing them. Let’s go to the house and check them out.”

I took one final look throughout the locker, added the new key to the ring of Rosalie’s keys, and thanked Mandy, the attendant, on the way out.

I couldn’t imagine what lock the key fit or why Rosalie had felt it necessary to hide it away.
A man,
I thought.
There’s got to be a man involved. Maybe she and Gerry had rented an apartment somewhere. A private place, just for the two of them. What else could it be?