Chapter 17 #2
Unlike her son, Mrs Wilson did like fussy, feminine antiques and jewelry, and she had plenty of them in her dressing-room-slash-closet.
The dressing table was covered in jewelry: from incredible rings with enormous, glittering stones, to delicate earrings and tiered necklaces dripping with jewels.
All of them must have been presents from her son, especially if Marcus’s intel was right and they’d come from a humble background.
I yanked open a drawer and found stacks of jewelry boxes. Not what I was looking for.
I moved over to one of the big display cabinets where I found a few small decorative antiques that gave the closet room a little more charm – a mahogany and gold mantel clock, a few bronze and jade statues and a selection of small snuff boxes.
My chest pinged with excitement – this felt more like I was on the right track.
Instead of moving anything, since I was certain I’d never be able to put things back in the exact same place, I slowly, methodically shone the pen light over each shelf in turn.
When my light illuminated the little trinket box tucked at the back of one of the shelves it took all my willpower not to shout with relief. I reached over to pick it up, then sat down cross-legged on the floor to pull it apart.
This was another reason I’d packed my bag with tools.
The interior of the box was lined with an indigo silk, just like the clue had said, and I used a thin blade to pry it up.
The lining resisted for just a moment, then it popped free.
Inside was a tiny silver key, attached to a white business card that was made of super-fancy paper.
My hands were shaking so hard I almost dropped it.
The gloves weren’t helping, but I didn’t dare take them off. Not now.
The paper was totally blank. I turned it over quickly, searching for any kind of marking.
It was clean, unblemished. The key, too, didn’t have any engraving on it to say where it might have come from or what it was for, just a number: 348.
I wracked my brain for anything Alice might have mentioned about her great-grandmother, or the Titanic, that would relate to the number 348.
It was no use. I’d have to think about it later when I had more time.
I shoved the card and key into my bag and started to put the box back together, carefully tucking the silk lining in so it wasn’t obviously torn.
Then I carefully placed the box back on the shelf – there was no reason to piss Wilson off by actively stealing from him.
I had what I needed now, and the box itself didn’t matter.
I quickly checked my watch, wanting to know how long I’d been in the house. Twenty-two minutes. I was rapidly approaching my thirty-minute in-and-out target, so I started to work a little faster, getting all my tools packed away in my bag …
When I heard a voice.
Coming from the bedroom.
Shit.
I pressed myself to the wall trying to eavesdrop. A moment later, I heard the faintest sound as the bedroom door opened and a sliver of light spilled under the closet door.
‘Stuart, thank you for coming.’
‘Don’t be silly,’ Stuart said.
‘I could swear I heard a noise. It’s probably nothing, but could you check for me?’
‘Of course.’
‘Oh, thank you,’ she said, sounding grateful.
‘It’s no trouble.’
Who the hell was Stuart? He couldn’t be staff – I knew Wilson wouldn’t let anyone into his home who might end up snitching on him. Possibly a nurse, for his mom? That made a lot more sense since she’d recently been in the hospital.
I’d been frozen in place while I listened to their conversation, and with a jolt I realized I had seconds to find a decent hiding space before everything really went to shit.
I pulled open one of the cupboard doors as quietly as I could and found, to my relief, that there was a high shelf.
This cupboard was full of winter blankets, but in the next one over the space was empty.
I used a suitcase as a toehold to lever myself up onto the shelf, which was at least six feet in the air.
If I fell now they would absolutely, definitely hear.
I had just managed to pull closed the cupboard door when the closet was filled with light.
A tiny chink of light squeezed in through the cracks of the cupboard door, and I shuffled myself back as far as I could go in the narrow space, pressing my back to the wall and hoping – praying – that Stuart didn’t check in here.
My panicked breath was catching in my throat, and I was too terrified of making a noise to take long, deep breaths to calm myself down. I swallowed hard and pressed my freezing fingertips to my lips, hoping to quiet the noise of my breathing.
‘I can’t see anything, ma’am.’
The light dimmed slightly, and I guessed Mrs Wilson was now standing in the doorway.
‘It must have been a dream. Or one of the cats. I’m sorry for dragging you out of bed.’
‘It’s what I’m here for,’ he said warmly.
Soft footsteps crossed into the closet room, and I held my breath.
‘Do you want me to stay a while?’ Stuart asked. ‘I can get you some of your pain medication?’
‘No, no. I’m fine. I think I might make myself some tea, actually.’
‘Tea sounds good.’
‘You don’t have to hover,’ she said fondly.
‘I wouldn’t dream of it.’
The light shut out again, and I held my breath and counted to ten, let out the breath and counted to fifty. When I was sure there was no one left in the room, I nudged open the cupboard door an inch at a time. Then I carefully slid to the floor.
This was better than I could have hoped for – with Mrs Wilson out of the bedroom, I could sneak out without risking her seeing me. Otherwise I’d have had to wait in here, potentially for hours, until I could be sure she was asleep and I could sneak out again.
Before I left the closet, I took a second to run through all my kit, making sure I had everything that I came in with. I wasn’t going to be stupid enough to leave something behind, especially not when I’d gotten what I needed.
The lights through the house were on now, meaning I had no shadows to lurk in. My best chance of getting out safely was to do it as quickly as possible.
I retraced my steps back to the basement, thanking all the gods and goddesses that the kitchen was on the other side of the house, and decided I wouldn’t bother trying to climb back through the window.
It was audacious, ridiculous and the most obvious option – I opened the back door and walked straight out.
Once I was out of the house, my stomach still in knots, I decided to walk all the way back to the Midtown hotel rather than taking a cab or the subway. I was high on adrenaline, twitchy with it, and I wanted to get some of that energy out.
The key felt symbolic in a way none of the other clues had.
The jewelry was almost certainly locked up somewhere safe, and I was sure this key was what I needed to finally get my hands on it.
Having successfully broken into – and out of – Wilson’s house, and with the potentially final clue in my hands, I was feeling almost euphoric.
I cut through the bottom of the park at 65th Street to get to 7th Avenue, then I walked straight down into the mess of Times Square. It was one thirty in the morning, but you’d never know based on the amount of people still milling about. New York really was the city that never slept.
I’d only walked through here a few days ago, with Alice, which was funny in a way because, like all New Yorkers, I avoided this area at all costs.
Even in the early hours of the morning, lights were flashing, horns blaring, the dime-store Spider-Man and Cookie Monster trying to bilk tourists out of their money.
In one corner, a hot-dog cart billowed steam, proudly declaring: We Serve Nathan’s. My stomach clenched uncomfortably, reminding me that I’d missed dinner. A few drunk college kids were waiting off to the side, swaying slightly as they picked over a tray of fries.
‘What can I get you?’ a guy with a mustache barked at me as I approached.
‘Can I get a hot dog? With mustard and onions.’
‘You want relish?’
‘Yeah,’ I replied.
‘Four bucks.’
God bless New York.
I pulled a crumpled five-dollar bill out of my bag and handed it over, waving away change as he exchanged the bill for my dinner.
It had been years since I’d eaten a hot dog from a cart, but right now, it tasted incredible.
The bun was cradled in a handful of white paper napkins and I tried to keep it steady as I headed back toward Port Authority.
Typically, the elevator was broken when I got back to the grim hotel, and I had to walk up three flights of stairs to my room.
By the time I got there I was a little out of breath.
Shutting the door, I decided that I didn’t trust the lock, so I jammed the rickety desk chair under the handle before closing the curtains tight and pulling off the wig – my head was too hot – and flinging it across the room.
Now that I had the next clue, I wasn’t going to risk anyone breaking in and taking it from me. Finally feeling like I was totally alone, I sat down on the bed and pulled out the key and business card.
Even though it was late, I wasn’t ready to sleep yet, too high from my success tonight and wanting to let the hot dog settle before I went to bed.
If I was as close to finishing this scavenger hunt as I felt I was, I wanted to work straight through – to figure out this final clue and locate the jewelry as soon as possible.
I laid out the key and business card on the battered desk and studied it under the harsh fluorescent light, while absently pulling out the pins that had been holding my hair in place under the wig.
The business card had a tiny hole in it for a loop of thin wire that connected the card to the key.
Even under the light, I couldn’t see any kind of marking on the card that would tell me where the key could be used.
For a second, I drummed my fingers on the desk, then I grabbed my phone, turned it back on, and pulled up a microchip-scanning app.
Most people used these apps to check the microchips in their pets. I’d only heard about it in theory, though I knew some people in my mom’s circle put the chips into important pieces before they were sold on so they could be stolen and re-sold.
The scanning app wasn’t hugely accurate so it took a few moments of running it over the paper, waiting for a response to pop up on the screen, before I could confirm it was clean.
I had one idea left, and if this didn’t work, I didn’t know what I’d do next.
It took a couple of minutes of digging through my duffle bag to find the tiny UV flashlight. I turned it on and the light glowed, bluish purple, as I held it over the card.
Bingo.
My heart tripped, then started to hammer as the note became clear.
N 40.7066
W 74.0087
It was coordinates, written in UV pen so they’d be invisible except to someone who knew to look for it.
I grabbed my phone and typed the coordinates into Google Maps with trembling fingers.
They led to the bank on Wall Street. My heart slammed into my chest, and all of a sudden I couldn’t breathe.
My mom couldn’t have known when she wrote this clue that this neighborhood would be where she would die, and the grief of a thousand terrible what ifs washed over me again.
What if she’d chosen somewhere else? What if she’d gone there another day?
What if she’d never set this scavenger trail?
But she hadn’t, and I knew for sure now that this was the last clue. It seemed right for her to have put the jewelry somewhere she trusted for safekeeping, and it was likely she’d placed it in a safety deposit box just a few minutes before she’d been killed.
My heart hurt, so much, and I knew I wasn’t ready for the challenge to end and for this last connection to my mom to be over forever.
Once I had the jewelry case in my hands I’d have to decide what to do with it: give it to Alice, which would be the right thing, or hand it over to the man who had murdered my mom.
If I didn’t give it to him then I was in the kind of danger that would have me running for my life – not just around the city, but leaving it altogether.
I had no idea where I’d go. Where would be safe.
And I was absolutely certain that Wilson would use the people I loved against me – my uncles and their sweet kids, or Alice …
But if I didn’t give it back to her, I wasn’t sure I could ever live with myself. For a moment, I let myself wallow. Alice was the first person in a long time that I’d cared about, and I didn’t want to lose her.
I couldn’t resent her for walking into Walker Antiques looking for her family heirloom, but I cursed that the jewelry that had been saved from the Titanic and lain hidden for over a hundred years was the reason my mom had been killed in cold blood.
I had a lot to think about, but it was incredibly late now and I was exhausted from the adrenaline crash. After everything I’d been through tonight, that wasn’t really surprising. I crawled into bed, wishing I was back in the library room … or maybe even the warmth and protection of Alice’s bed.