Chapter 7 #2
‘You’re welcome,’ she said. ‘I couldn’t exactly leave you back there.’
‘Well, I appreciate it,’ I added as I carefully maneuvered myself to my feet.
‘Don’t worry about clearing up,’ Alice said in a rush as I reached for our dirty dishes. ‘I’ve got it. Honestly.’
‘Thanks,’ I said. ‘Again. I think I’m going to try to get some sleep now, if you don’t mind?’
‘Good plan. Goodnight, Kendra.’
‘Night,’ I replied, and wondered how I was supposed to interpret the look of disappointment in her eyes.
My bone-deep tiredness meant I slept for ten hours, waking to a blast of sunshine on my face and a fuzzy, confused head. It took me a second to remember where I was.
I got up and removed the pile of books I’d stacked in front of the bedroom door – books that would tumble over if anyone had managed to follow me to this apartment and tried to get in. It was unnecessary, but an aching, bruised face had made me paranoid.
Once I was dressed and had brushed my teeth, I wandered through to the kitchen to find Alice still in her pajamas, drinking coffee at the breakfast bar and scrolling on her phone.
‘Good afternoon,’ she said, clearly trying to hide her laughter behind her coffee mug.
‘Oh, fuck off,’ I muttered. ‘It’s not even ten yet.’
Alice’s pajamas consisted of blue-and-white-striped shorts and a matching button-down shirt. The outfit made her eyes look even bluer. I caught myself staring and forced myself to focus on the question she was asking instead.
‘How are you feeling? Will you let me take you to the hospital today?’
‘Fine, and still no.’
Alice sighed. ‘Well, did you at least sleep okay?’
‘I did,’ I said. ‘Thanks for asking.’
‘Even with the snakes just next door?’
‘I’d forgotten about them,’ I admitted. ‘Thank you so much for the reminder.’ I helped myself to coffee from the pot when Alice gestured to it. ‘What are you looking at?’ I asked as I filled a mug.
‘Nothing important. Sienna’s been sending me updates from her hospital bed. Apparently she’s puffy and in pain, but she’s getting ready to move to the “recovery” suite, which is basically just a fancy spa.’
‘Good for her,’ I murmured. ‘I meant to ask you yesterday … where do you normally live when you’re not staying here?’
‘My family live uptown.’
‘How far uptown?’
Alice looked a little guilty. ‘Ithaca.’
‘Ithaca?’ I exclaimed. ‘That’s not uptown, that’s upstate.’
‘Tell me about it. We used to live in the city, but my mom got a job teaching at Cornell when I was ten so we moved.’
‘What about your dad?’
‘He’s retired,’ she said lightly. ‘He worked on the stock market for years. He always says it nearly killed him. I guess he still has some savings and investments, but mostly now he just plays golf.’
‘Sounds like a sweet deal.’
‘I guess.’
‘So where’s your grandmother’s house?’ I asked. ‘Where the jewelry was stolen from? Not in Ithaca as well, I assume?’
‘No,’ she laughed. ‘It’s in Chelsea.’
‘Not that far from here, then.’
‘No, not too far,’ Alice replied as I leaned against the other side of the kitchen island. ‘So, what’s the plan for today?’
‘I need to figure out what the letters in the Fabergé book are supposed to mean,’ I said.
‘And we should find out as much as we can about Abigail De Lacy, the Titanic and the Biltmore. I don’t know what may or may not end up coming in handy.
’ I sipped my coffee – strong and black, just how I liked it – and almost sighed with relief.
‘I can talk to my family,’ Alice offered. ‘They might know something useful.’
‘That would be great. It would be good to know if she stayed in New York or moved somewhere else after 1912, what she did for the rest of her life, any details really.’
‘Okay.’ Alice tipped her head to the side, clearly thinking. ‘How are you going to work out the next clue?’
The letters had been bouncing around in my head since yesterday, but I still hadn’t come up with a decent answer.
‘Leave it with me,’ I said. ‘I’ll focus on the clue, you focus on Abigail.’
Working to each of our strengths seemed smart.
‘Sounds good,’ Alice said, looking pleased.
I knew from experience that this kind of research was often long and tedious, and it could be hours or even days before we stumbled on something. Alice seemed enthusiastic, though, and for now, at least, I’d let her stay that way.
Alice got up, showing off her incredibly long legs, and toenails that were painted a shimmery peach color, and went to get dressed for the day. I finished my coffee and then went to grab my iPad.
Despite the living room being more comfortable, I knew I wouldn’t be able to work in there with the pair of snakes watching me, so I settled for the kitchen.
It had a warm, almost womb-like feel to it this morning with the sunshine pouring in through the wide windows, and that felt infinitely better than the jungle.
After a while, Alice came back into the kitchen and took the second stool next to me. She didn’t say anything, just opened her laptop and started tapping away.
I stole a glance over my shoulder at her outfit. Her jean shorts were frayed at the hem and rode up her tanned thighs. At least her boxy, oversize T-shirt wasn’t provoking any inappropriate thoughts.
With great reluctance, I turned my attention back to the photos Alice had sent to me, of the Fabergé book, and the letters my mom had underlined.
Color, Queen, The, Escape, Purity, Whatever
I gave the words some consideration, just in case they contained a hidden meaning, though I was confident it was the capital letters I was supposed to be paying attention to.
C Q T E P W
Alice’s first assessment that the letters didn’t make sense was right, and I was certain the message had been encrypted using some kind of codex.
That was fine, I knew how to use a codex, but it needed a key to help me solve it.
Without the key, working out the message would take forever and was potentially even impossible.
I had to start somewhere, though, so I started with what I knew.
The six letters were all different. That mattered.
If there was a repeated letter, that was most likely a common letter in the language the code was written in, which wasn’t necessarily English.
I wouldn’t put it past my mom to leave me a clue written in German or Spanish or French – languages that I knew, even just a little – to make it more difficult for anyone other than me to solve it.
It didn’t matter what the key word was, the process remained the same: you wrote out your key word, then the rest of the letters of the alphabet, skipping the letters in the key.
In the codes that my mom would use to test me, she’d often use ‘zebra’ as a key word, since it contained both A and Z, and so it scrambled the alphabet totally.
In that instance, the encrypted text would be:
Z E B R A C D F G H I J K L M N O P Q S T U V W X Y
Then all I had to do was write the alphabet out underneath, and A would become Z in the encrypted text, B would become E, C would become B, and so on.
I tried ‘zebra’ as the key word and came out with a jumbled mess of nothing. I scribbled down the answer anyway, wondering if it was an anagram, but soon realized that was a dead end.
I set it aside, just in case it came in useful later.
The most obvious next choice was ‘Walker’. Slightly less secure, since anyone also trying to work out the clue would likely know who had set it, though I could see the benefit of simplicity.
The ‘Walker’ key turned out the letters A E H N S U. I wrote them out on my iPad and doodled around them for a second, feeling like I was on the right track.
H A U S E N
‘Nice,’ I said, sitting up straight to crack my spine.
‘Got it?’ Alice asked. ‘Already?’
I nodded. ‘Look. It’s gotta be Van der Hausen’s.’
‘What about it?’
‘That’s where the next clue is,’ I said, and put my elbow down on the counter so I could rest my chin in my hand and study her profile. ‘Tell me more about the appraisal they did for your family.’
Alice had washed her hair earlier, and it was still a little damp.
I watched intently as she combed her fingers through the long, blonde strands.
‘We took a lot of my grandmother’s belongings to their shop on 5th Avenue after she passed.
Then they sent an employee to the house to look at the bigger items, like furniture. ’
‘What sort of items did you take in?’ I pressed.
‘The jewelry case, obviously. A few other pieces of jewelry that came in their own boxes. Some vases, statues, clocks, watches … The type of stuff you take to an auction house to get appraised,’ she finished with a laugh.
‘Do you still have the paperwork they gave you?’
‘Yeah, let me get it,’ she said, sliding down off the bar stool and crossing into the living room to grab her backpack.
When she came back and handed it to me, I set the page with the jewelry case appraisal to one side, then quickly scanned through the rest of the paperwork again.
‘What are you thinking?’ Alice asked.
‘It’s all really good-quality stuff,’ I said honestly, and she beamed. I grit my teeth and forced myself not to be ridiculously endeared by her. Which was becoming more and more difficult. ‘It’s a shame.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘It’s a shame someone decided to tip off a clever thief to break into your grandmother’s house and steal pieces right after the appraisal,’ I said grimly.
Alice’s mouth dropped open. ‘No.’
I winced and nodded. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘That’s …’ She gaped, lost for words. ‘Despicable. Illegal!’
‘Very illegal,’ I confirmed.
‘I’m calling the police,’ she said, reaching for her phone. I grabbed her wrist.
‘Oh no you’re not.’
She drew herself up, full of righteous indignation. ‘Yes, I am, Kendra.’
‘You know what the police will do?’ I asked.
‘Arrest them!’
I wanted to laugh. She was adorable.
‘Remind me, how long have the police been investigating the theft? Eight months? Nine?’
Alice visibly deflated.