Chapter 9
This was even better than I could have hoped for.
I was expecting to have to sneak into an office and go through physical files, and those hopes had died when I’d seen exactly how much security this place employed.
The doors locked behind us, for fuck’s sake.
Of course I wasn’t going to be able to sneak around without being noticed.
Those were yesterday’s plans, though, and now I had a far superior one.
I pulled the laptop closer and tried to decide where to start. I knew Alice would keep Jacob occupied for as long as she could, but they’d come back eventually, and I had to be ready to shut down everything and look casual as soon as they returned.
When the jewelry case came to the auction house for appraisal, no one had known what it was, so I couldn’t search for ‘Titanic’ or even ‘Insect Brooch’.
The only reason I could think Van der Hausen’s hadn’t figured out what my mom had learned was laziness.
The information wasn’t available online – I’d checked – and since it seemed like Alice’s mom had brought a large volume of antiques to be valued in one go, someone had likely worked quickly, without doing any in-depth research.
A quarter of a million for the entire jewelry case wasn’t offensively low without knowing the connection between the Insect Brooch and the Titanic.
I went straight to the shared drive and started poking into folders, and after a few moments, I found one titled ‘Valuation Records’.
There were literally hundreds of records going back months, then years, in this folder, but I had a feeling the Mulligan name would be attached to a file somewhere.
My heart was thundering as I typed the surname into the search bar.
The results that came back were long. Alice’s family had been using Van der Hausen’s for decades.
My stomach sank as the realization that I was searching for a needle in a haystack – while not even knowing what needle I was looking for – started to hit home.
Somewhere in these files there could be a clue from my mom, but which file?
What could I even achieve in the short time I had before Alice and Jacob got back?
I started frantically searching, looking for anything that made sense, when I spotted a file named: ‘Jewelry Case Appraisal. September 10th.’
That had to be the file that I’d already seen two copies of: the one Alice brought with her, and the other in our filing cabinet at Walker Antiques. I clicked on it anyway.
The first page of the document contained a copy of the valuation receipt.
The next few pages showed pictures of every piece in the collection, including the Fabergé Insect Brooch.
I scrolled back to the first page, to where the contact details for Alice’s mom were listed.
On my mom’s version, this section had been blanked out to remove reference to the Mulligan family.
Between the phone number and the start of the item log, there was a series of dots that I hadn’t seen before and looked weird to me. They could have been decorative. But that didn’t make sense. There was something in here, I was sure of it, I just needed time to review the document in more detail.
With no way of knowing when Alice and Jacob would get back, I grabbed my phone and took pictures of each page of the document. Except the pictures lost definition compared to what was on the screen, and I didn’t want to risk missing any little detail.
I drummed my fingers against the desk and, as a last resort, tapped the Print icon.
The default printer was ‘Second Floor Printer’ – the floor I was currently on.
Why the fuck not. I hit Print.
Somewhere nearby, a printer was spitting out the documents that might lead me to the next clue. I just had to find the printer before someone else noticed.
I closed down all the files I’d had open, cleared the printer and recent documents log, and carefully put the laptop back in the same spot Jacob had left it. Then I shoved my phone in my pocket and stood up.
The second floor was quiet when I stepped outside the meeting room.
A grand staircase opened out into what was a reception area for champagne or cocktails before a prestigious auction, and the elevators that we had come from were just a little farther down the hallway. A few more doors, identical to the one I’d just walked out of, led away from the auction room.
It made the most sense to follow the line of doors – there wouldn’t be a printer in the auction room. This direction was more likely to contain offices, and computers, and, hopefully, printers.
As I walked, the thick gray carpet muffled my footsteps. To keep up pretenses, I put my phone to my ear and muttered some nonsense while scanning the brass plaques on the doors, frantically looking for somewhere that would likely house a printer.
At the end of the hall was a door with a frosted-glass window.
All the other rooms on this floor – the ones used for meetings, or appraisals, like the one we’d just been in – had solid wood doors and brass plaques.
I reached for the handle and twisted it gently, preparing to ask where the bathroom was if someone was in here.
The room was empty.
Inside, there were two desks but no desk chairs, stacks of boxes lined the floor, and the shelves on the wall were covered with a fine layer of dust. It looked like people rarely used this room, and I was about to turn around when I caught sight of something in the corner, blocked from immediate view by the boxes.
Walking over, a boxy white printer came into view.
I quickly stepped around the boxes to check if my file had printed. It hadn’t. The machine looked dead. Then I noticed that its long cord was hanging limply out of the back, clearly not plugged into the wall. I huffed and rectified that.
Nothing happened.
‘Come on,’ I growled, and pressed a promising-looking button until the printer wheezed to life.
It seemed to run through a series of beeps and whirrs until it finally settled, and a glowing message appeared on the small screen.
OUT OF PAPER
Shit.
I glanced around, hoping a stack of printer paper would suddenly appear out of nowhere, but I was out of luck.
With no idea how much time I had left before someone came looking for me, I had to decide whether the copy of the file was worth it – would it even hold the next clue I was looking for? I ran my fingers through my hair, frustrated, and decided to give myself a few more minutes.
The printer was perched next to a small filing cabinet, so I yanked the first drawer open and … paper.
‘I’m such a fucking idiot,’ I muttered as I grabbed a stack and fed it into the machine.
For a few seconds it whirred, then it fell silent again.
TONER LOW
I fought the urge to scream and instead mashed the buttons impatiently until the printer croaked again and offered a new message.
PRINT WITH CMYK?
Sure. Whatever. I hit ‘Yes’.
PLEASE WAIT
I waited. The screen went blank again. Then another message appeared.
PLEASE WAIT
I was very aware that I was physically twitching with nervous energy as the printer took an eternity to consider my request, then, after a thousand years, it stuttered to life.
If Alice and Jacob were back in the meeting room now and had found me missing, Alice would know to play on the phone call excuse. I trusted her to cover for me. But I had no way of knowing whether one of the Van der Hausen staff would walk in at any minute and ask me what the hell I was doing.
At the pace of an elderly, arthritic tortoise, the printer started to spit out one page after another. When the last page crawled out of the machine, I snatched the whole bundle and shoved them into the purse Alice had loaned me.
I shot off a quick text to Alice telling her I was leaving and took a deep breath to calm myself before I walked out of the room, forcing myself to un-clench my fists.
I got halfway down the hall before someone noticed me.
He was another smiling, suited, bland man with uncomfortable-looking shoes.
‘Hello, miss, can I help you?’ he asked, his expression conveying a twinge of concern.
‘I’m just leaving,’ I said sweetly, fighting to stay calm even as it became clear this might be the moment I got caught.
‘This isn’t a public area of the building.’
‘I was just speaking with Mr Yearwood,’ I said. ‘We’re all done now. Thank you.’
I didn’t want to wait for his reply, or the elevator, so I turned on my heel and made my way down the stairs.
I had to move quickly but I also didn’t want to draw attention to myself, especially knowing at least two security guards would be stationed on the main door into the building.
As I turned to take the last staircase down, one of the security guards on the ground floor came into view and I noticed he was talking to someone on the walkie-talkie attached to his lapel and my pulse quickened.
I really, really didn’t want to have to walk past him and potentially get stopped and have my bag searched.
It took a minute for my eyes to locate a door marked STAFF ONLY near the bottom of the staircase, and I walked toward it with as much steely determination as I could manage. The key to getting in somewhere I wasn’t supposed to be was confidence – I just had to act like I knew what I was doing.
I pushed through the door and a corridor opened up in front of me, with a fire exit door at the end that I felt certain would take me out onto the street. I walked speedily toward it and prayed I didn’t need a special code to exit the building this way.
Just before I tried to open the door, I noticed a green button next to a pinboard on the wall – this had to be the staff entrance.
I reached out and slapped the button instinctively, and the door gave a little buzz.
I shoved it and let myself out into a not-great-smelling alley, then immediately broke into a run toward the subway station on 63rd and Lex.
The plan had always been for me and Alice to take separate journeys back to Sienna’s place, and I forced myself to calm my racing heartbeat and pay attention to my surroundings.
It was too soon to tell if this entire whirlwind morning had produced anything helpful or if I’d just potentially put my face on a watchlist at one of New York’s most prestigious auction houses.
I took slow breaths as I ducked into the station and waited for my train, then found a seat at the end of the carriage so I could press my back to the wall, giving me a full view of everyone who got on and off. Feeling paranoid, I forced myself to calm down and behave rationally.
Alice was sitting on the stoop when I walked up the street around thirty minutes later, seemingly unbothered about getting New York dirt on her nice dress, with her bag clutched on her lap. She jumped to her feet when she noticed me.
‘Did you find anything?’ she asked, looking concerned.
‘I’m fine,’ I replied, not wanting to worry her. ‘When did you get back?’
‘Ten minutes ago.’ She glanced down the street. ‘The driver dropped me off.’
‘Let’s go inside.’
‘Oh my God,’ Alice said as she opened the apartment door. ‘I was freaking out so bad in there.’
‘Why? What happened?’
‘Nothing bad, I just felt so guilty the whole time, and then I had to make up an excuse to explain why I needed to leave all of a sudden. Jacob said he’d email over the valuation in the next couple of days.’
‘Well, it sounds like you handled yourself,’ I said, relieved that her part of the plan had gone well.
‘What happened with you?’ she pressed.
I followed her through to the kitchen and swung my bag off my shoulder.
‘It got a little hairy back there, I won’t lie. And I don’t even know if I’ve come away with anything useful.’
Alice’s expression fell. ‘Oh.’
‘I printed out another copy of the appraisal paperwork. Something looks off compared to the copy you have – I thought we could compare them, see if that brings up anything that could help.’
‘Let’s do that,’ she agreed, pulling out her paperwork.
I did the same with the recently printed documents and laid everything out on the kitchen counter.
My pages were a little crumpled from the journey, so I did my best to smooth them out.
My mind felt like it was whirring at a hundred miles an hour, trying desperately to make connections and think like my mom would have, to help me figure out the next clue.
I turned my attention to the two copies of the appraisal.
They were printed on different types of paper – Alice’s was an off-white color, probably recycled, while the copy that I’d printed at Van der Hausen’s was crisp and clear.
It helped that the formatting was identical, because the dots I’d noticed earlier stood out immediately as the point of difference.
‘This is wild,’ I murmured.
‘What?’ Alice asked excitedly.
‘How the hell did she expect me to find this? How did she even do it?’
‘What, Kendra? What are you looking at?’
‘Look,’ I said, tapping the copy I’d printed at Van der Hausen’s.
Alice peered over my shoulder. ‘The little dots? Are they, like, from the printer?’
‘No, I don’t think so. I think my mom put them there.’
‘How, though?’ she asked, confused.
‘She was pretty good at hacking computer systems, but this feels like a stretch even for her,’ I said, leaning back so my shoulder was pressed against Alice’s.
‘Why? Another clue?’
‘Well, yeah.’
‘But what does –’ Alice counted – ‘eleven dots in a line mean? Is it Morse code?’
I shook my head. ‘Morse code is dots and dashes.’
‘So you don’t know what it means?’ she said.
‘Not yet, but give me time.’