Chapter 16 Hidden in Plain Sight
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The heavy wrought-iron deadbolt slid home with a resonant, echoing *clack* that sounded remarkably like the closing of a medieval dungeon cell.
"And stay out," Birdie Jenkins muttered under her breath, resting her forehead against the thick mahogany paneling of the front double doors for three glorious seconds of silent recovery.
"If one more woman in crushed velvet tries to convince me that a chipped Staffordshire spaniel is an authentic Ming dynasty artifact, I am going to lose whatever Christian charity I have left in my body. "
"You did remarkably well, Birdie," I said, leaning against the banister of the grand foyer staircase and unceremoniously kicking off my left orthopedic clog.
The relief was instantaneous, sending a shiver of pure, unadulterated comfort straight up my calf.
"Especially when that gentleman from Charlotte tried to shove a Victorian butter churn into his trench coat. "
"The man was seventy-five if he was a day, Maggie.
He wasn't stealing it for profit; he was trying to prove he still had upper-body strength.
" Birdie turned around, blowing a stray curl of dyed copper hair off her forehead.
She peeled off her silk scarf and tossed it onto the walnut hall table like a gladiator shedding armor.
"Either way, the public preview of Blackwood Manor is officially closed.
The bargain vultures have dispersed, the county deputies are parked at the front gates until morning, and I would commit several minor misdemeanors for a glass of dry pinot and a bowl of salted almonds. "
"Give me twenty minutes," Luke Sterling’s deep voice rumbled from the arched hallway leading to the service wing.
He walked into the foyer carrying a heavy iron security bar, which he dropped into the floor brackets across the front doors with a practiced, effortless thud.
His canvas work jacket was dusted with ancient plaster, his sleeves were rolled up over forearms corded with muscle, and he smelled pleasantly of cedar shavings, damp autumn air, and black coffee.
When his hazel eyes met mine, the faint, weary lines around his mouth softened into a slow, reassuring grin that made the hollow fatigue in my ribs vanish completely.
"All the perimeter windows in the parlor and dining room are latched and pegged," Luke said, wiping his hands on a clean shop rag he pulled from his back pocket. "I checked the carriage house locks on my way in. Sheriff Lawson’s cruiser is idling at the end of the long driveway, and he’s promised to keep a spotlight on the terrace every forty-five minutes. Nobody’s getting inside tonight, Maggie.
Not Gregory Vance, not his cousin, and not whoever ransacked the appraiser's trunk. "
"Unless," Birdie noted darkly, "they happen to possess a set of nineteenth-century skeleton keys, an unnatural affinity for climbing ivy, or a complete lack of self-preservation."
At our feet, Buster gave a low, rumbling yawn that ended in a squeak.
The golden retriever had spent the last four hours serving as the estate’s unofficial greeter, positioned on an oval braided rug near the parlor door where he had successfully extorted artisanal biscuits, cheese straws, and sympathetic ear scratches from half the historical preservation society of Western North Carolina.
He looked up at us with drooping, heavy-lidded eyes, his tail giving two lethargic thumps against the parquet floor before he flopped his muzzle onto my discarded shoe.
"Buster agrees with Luke," I said, reaching down to stroke the warm, velvety fur between his ears. "The house is secure. Which means we finally have two hours of uninterrupted quiet before the final auction begins tomorrow morning."
"Quiet for what?" Birdie asked, arching a penciled eyebrow. "A nap? Because I am ready to curl up on that velvet chaise lounge in the morning room and hibernate until Sunday."
"Not a nap," I said, pulling a folded square of ivory parchment from the interior pocket of my canvas utility apron. "An excavation."
Birdie straightened up instantly, her fatigue evaporating behind the sharp, inquisitive glint of her cat-eye glasses. "The journal entry?"
"The journal entry," I confirmed.
Luke stepped closer, his boots nearly brushing mine on the marble threshold, looking down at the yellowed slip of paper in my hand. "You think it's still here in the house?"
"I know it is," I said. "Eleanor Vance didn't trust banks, she didn't trust lawyers, and she certainly didn't trust her cousins.
When Julian Croft showed up here waving an appraisal contract, he was looking for the original 1845 Moravian covenant ledger because he knew it proved the Vance family never held title to the timber ridge.
But Croft tore the carriage house apart and came up empty-handed.
Gregory Vance broke into our workshop and found nothing.
Why? Because neither of them actually listened to the woman who lived here for eighty-nine years. "
I unfolded the paper, reading the cramped, elegant fountain-pen script Eleanor had penned in her private diary just six months before her death:
*‘Greedy men always look into dark corners, locked safes, and hollow walls, convinced that value must be buried where it is difficult to find. They are blind to the obvious. The real 1845 ledger—and the covenant that preserves this valley—is resting exactly where no thief would ever think to look: right in plain sight.’*
Luke let out a low whistle. "Right in plain sight. In an eighty-room mansion stuffed with forty thousand items."
"She had a wicked sense of humor," Birdie said, shaking her head. "A wonderful, terrifying, mountain-matriarch sense of humor."
"Come on," I said, slipping my clog back on and nodding toward the grand west wing. "If Eleanor was hiding the heart and soul of Blackwood Manor, she wouldn't leave it in the cellar with the coal dust or the attic with the wasps. She spent four hours every single day in one room."
"The library," Luke and Birdie said in unison.
* * *
The library of Blackwood Manor was less of a room and more of a two-story cathedral dedicated to the printed word.
Floor-to-ceiling shelves of polished black walnut lined three walls, accessible by brass-wheeled rolling ladders that slid along tarnished tracks.
The fourth wall was dominated by a colossal hearth of hand-chiseled river stone, crowned by a rough-hewn chestnut timber that Luke had previously identified as coming from an eighteenth-century gristmill.
Heavy burgundy velvet drapes, thick with the scent of aged beeswax, dried lavender, and century-old paper, framed tall casement windows that looked out over the mist pooling in the hollows of the Blue Ridge.
Dusk had completely fallen outside, painting the windowpanes in deep indigo. Inside, the solitary brass banker's lamp Luke switched on cast warm, buttery pools of light across the vast expanse of Persian rugs and dark leather armchairs.
"Alright," Birdie said, rolling up the sleeves of her cashmere cardigan and scanning the towering walls of books like an admiral surveying an impossible battle line.
"There must be six thousand volumes in here.
If 'plain sight' means reading every title on these shelves, we’re going to be here until the turn of the next century. "
"We don't need to read six thousand titles," I said, pacing slowly across the center rug, letting my eyes adjust to the shadows.
"Think like Eleanor. She was eighty-nine.
She had arthritis in her hips. She wasn't climbing a twelve-foot rolling ladder to check on an 1845 covenant ledger.
If it was within her reach, it had to be at eye level or near where she sat. "
Luke walked over to the immense carved desk in the center of the room. It was a massive Renaissance Revival piece with lion-paw feet and heavy brass hardware. He ran his calloused fingertips along the side panels, kneeling down to inspect the kneehole with a small penlight he drew from his belt.
"No hidden springs," Luke murmured, his knuckles gently rapping the side pedestals.
The wood answered with a dull, solid thud.
"Solid quarter-sawn oak all the way through. No hollow spaces behind the drawers, no false bottoms. If she put it in the desk, it was sitting out on top—and there’s nothing on this leather blotter except an empty brass inkwell and a crystal paperweight. "
"What about behind the portraits?" Birdie suggested, already tiptoeing behind the high-backed wing chairs to tilt a heavy, gilt-framed oil painting of an austere gentleman sporting mutton-chop whiskers. "Old money loves hiding things behind portraits of people they disliked."
She swung the painting outward. The plaster wall behind it was pristine, undisturbed save for a single cobweb.
"Darn it," Birdie sighed, letting the frame settle back against the wall with a hollow click. "Just Augustus Vance staring at me like I committed a social faux pas."
I walked over to the massive stone fireplace. On the mantel sat an elaborate French mantel clock under a glass cloche, its pendulum frozen at twenty past four, flanked by a pair of heavy brass candlesticks shaped like winged griffins.
I carefully lifted the glass dome, setting it onto the hearth rug, and inspected the carved mahogany base of the clock. Nothing. No catches, no concealed drawers. Just the faint smell of machine oil and sixty years of mountain dust.
"Hollow floorboards?" Luke offered, walking the perimeter of the hearth with measured, heavy steps, listening to the acoustic reverberations of the floor. "Old houses always have one loose plank near the chimney where the joists shrink."