Chapter 3
I sent Alice outside while I set the alarms and locked up, and by the time I joined her on the sidewalk she’d hailed a cab and was soon ushering me into it. I would have been happy to take the subway, though I wasn’t about to complain if she was willing to pay for a taxi.
Mid-morning traffic was terrible, and I stared out of the window hoping Alice wouldn’t try to talk to me. I’d managed to dig out two Tylenol from my backpack and washed them down with cold coffee, so now the fog was lifting from my brain, leaving behind a scrambled mix of thoughts and emotions.
If my birthday challenge for this year was to find Alice’s grandmother’s jewelry case, that could mean one of two things: either the jewelry was junk and fakes, so my mom hadn’t cared about scattering them around the city as part of the scavenger hunt, or the pieces were actually more valuable than the two hundred and fifty thousand dollars she’d paid, and she’d decided to hide the case somewhere behind layers of clues while she decided what to do with it.
The thing was, because I’d checked over some of the pieces myself, verifying the maker’s marks, testing the quality of the diamonds and gemstones and checking for any damage that could affect the price, I was convinced it was all real. And I wasn’t going to second-guess myself now.
That meant the second scenario was more likely. And then she’d been killed …
‘We’re here,’ Alice said softly, shattering me out of my intense thinking.
Though I’d been to Grand Central plenty of times before, I was more familiar with the subway than the taxi drop-off point, so I let Alice walk ahead through the pale-tiled corridors. All of a sudden we emerged into the concourse with its famous pale-blue ceilings and elaborate gold constellations.
She paused for a second, letting me look up, then headed for the information desk in the center of the room. I let her take the lead, happy for her to think she was in control for the time being.
‘Midday tour?’ a woman with a clipboard asked.
‘That’s us,’ Alice said brightly. ‘Alice Mulligan and …’
‘Kendra Walker,’ I said.
‘I’m Gina,’ the woman replied in a thick Brooklyn accent. She was short and curvy, with curly hair that she pushed out of her eyes as she leaned back against the counter. ‘We’ll be getting started in just a tick.’
She passed us both lanyards with a tag that said GUIDED TOUR and the Grand Central logo.
I carefully hung it round my neck and looked around the group that had started to form by the information desk.
It seemed like there would be at least ten of us going on the tour, which was great.
It would make it easier not to be noticed.
‘There’s a big group of us today, folks,’ Gina said. ‘So I’m going to need you to stick close to avoid getting lost. Let’s get moving.’
‘Have you been here before?’ Alice asked as we trailed across the huge main concourse.
‘Of course. I live in New York.’
‘I didn’t mean it like that,’ she said, sounding amused rather than annoyed. ‘I meant the guided tour.’
‘No,’ I said, unable to stop myself from rolling my eyes. ‘I live here. I don’t make a habit of doing touristy shit in my own city.’
‘I love touristy shit,’ Alice confessed, sounding almost giddy with excitement. ‘Who doesn’t love learning more about New York’s history?’
I humphed in response.
‘Most people refer to this building as Grand Central Station,’ Gina said, raising her voice above the noise around us. ‘But it’s actually a terminal, not a station. Trains start or end their journey here, they don’t pass through.’
Gina took us on a wide loop round the main concourse, pointing out its most famous features and rattling off facts at a speed that I had to admire.
Then she shuffled us all along again and we trailed through a door marked STAFF ONLY, Gina counting our heads as we moved into the part of the station – terminal – that regular people weren’t allowed access to.
We’d entered a plain white corridor, then turned to go through a locked door into another plain white corridor, except this one looked much, much older.
I assumed that my mom had been on this same tour, taking the same route we were now, and that meant keeping my eyes peeled for any hint of a clue from her, one that could be hidden anywhere.
‘We’re really getting into the guts of Grand Central now,’ Gina said. ‘You’ll start to see some signs of the building’s history.’
Down here it was cold, dark and incredibly creepy. The corridors were narrow, with concrete floors that made every step echo, and only the occasional door. Most of them weren’t labeled and didn’t seem to be unlocked when I gave them an experimental prod.
We passed an old sign stenciled on the bare wall in a fancy font, declaring: THE BILTMORE HOTEL.
‘The Biltmore Hotel opened just after the terminal, in 1912,’ Gina said as we all huddled together to hear her better. ‘It was built right on top of the terminal, so the foundations went through the building and the basement is under the tracks.’
As we entered a room, it felt like the decades had melted away. Despite the wear and tear, I could pick out the remnants of an elegant space, with a gold chandelier hanging from the ceiling and intricate coving around the edges.
‘This is the vault of the old Biltmore Hotel,’ Gina said as we looked around.
‘One of the few remaining relics of the hotel that was built by the Vanderbilt family, who also financed Grand Central.
In its time, it was one of the most exclusive hotels in the city, though it closed in the eighties and was turned into offices.
‘That’s the old entrance, over there.’ Gina pointed to an arch, which seemed to lead into another room. ‘You used to be able to get an elevator from the Biltmore down here. Some people used to say your valuables were safer in the Biltmore vault than in the New York Federal Exchange.’
The door to the vault was open and pinned back, and I guessed it had been decommissioned so no one could accidentally lock something – including themselves – inside. I stepped into the metal box and looked around. Inside, there was another line of smaller safes that were all empty.
‘Feel free to take pictures,’ Gina said, and I hung back for the tourists to take their selfies before I stepped forward.
I ran my fingertips over the black metal as I peered inside each safe in turn, my mind desperately at work as I tried to look for a clue.
This felt promising in a way the big open spaces and bare hallways we’d traveled through to get here hadn’t.
A safe was a good place to hide valuables, after all.
The first two safes were covered in a light layer of dust and an enterprising spider was building a web in the corner of the second.
The third safe was different, though. The inside walls were much cleaner, like someone had bothered to wipe down the sides.
But why only this safe? Why not clean all of them?
Then something on the inside wall of the safe caught the corner of my eye – something I couldn’t chance taking a closer look at while a dozen other people were in here.
‘Okay, let’s move along,’ Gina said, and I reluctantly fell into the back of the line.
Then, when Gina and the other visitors had turned round the next corner, I darted back to the vault. With a gentle push, the door swung open silently on its hinges – but, just as I was about to step inside, Alice rushed back.
Damn it. I thought I’d lost her.
‘Kendra!’ she gasped. ‘You got left behind.’
‘I didn’t get left behind,’ I said, annoyed. ‘I wanted to look at something without anyone else around.’
‘Oh.’ She seemed to deflate when she realized I didn’t need rescuing.
The noise from the rest of the group started to fade as we ducked back into the old Biltmore vault.
‘We’re going to get caught,’ Alice said as I pulled out my phone and hunched down in front of one of the old metal safes that were lined up inside the vault.
‘No, we’re not.’
I’d spotted something on the inside of one of the safes, just a tiny mark out of the corner of my eye. I’d wanted to look at it in more detail without anyone else peering over my shoulder, but now I had Alice doing exactly that.
I turned on my phone’s flashlight and held it up against the inside wall of the safe.
Bingo.
‘What are you doing?’ Alice demanded, elbowing her way in too.
‘Nothing,’ I said quickly.
‘Did you find something?’
‘No,’ I lied, and Alice’s eyes narrowed at me.
‘I want to see,’ she said, her voice tight. ‘Please.’
For a second I cursed myself for letting her come along. Then I decided, Fuck it, and pointed out the marks I’d found.
‘Okay, fine. Look at this,’ I said.
She leaned in close, pressing her shoulder to mine as she peered in to look.
There was a strange property to black Sharpie – a reddish glint that caught in the light even when it was printed on a black background. Flashing the light across the ink revealed a message.
K S M
I A O
W S M
‘Did you know that was going to be there?’ Alice asked breathlessly.
‘Nope,’ I said. ‘I just had a hunch.’
‘What the hell is it?’ Alice asked. ‘Some kind of code?’
‘Yeah. And it’s not even that complicated. You need to read it down, not across.’
I pointed to the letters. ‘K I W. That’s me – Kendra Iris Walker.’
Alice read the second two lines. ‘S A S. Mom.’ She looked up at me. ‘Your mom wrote this?’
‘It sure looks that way.’ I was still a little reluctant to tell her the truth, but I knew my instincts were right and this was the next step in the scavenger hunt my mom had laid out for me.
‘What does this have to do with the jewelry?’ Alice demanded. Her cheeks had turned pink with indignation.
I held up both my hands to calm her down. ‘My mom didn’t know the jewelry was stolen,’ I said, which was almost certainly not true, but I couldn’t afford to tell Alice that. ‘She bought it from one of our regular suppliers.’
‘I understand that, but –’