Secret Sisters (6 page)

CHAPTER TEN

“This settles one question,” Jack said. He studied the gaping hole in the wall of room 209. Chunks of broken wallboard and insulation littered the floor. “Looks like whoever murdered Tom Lomax has the briefcase.”

“I was afraid that was what Tom meant when he said he had failed.” Madeline shook her head. “And we have no clue what was inside. We don't even know if it's still dangerous. After all, a lot can happen in eighteen years. Maybe whatever was in the briefcase is harmless now.”

Jack looked at her. She stood in the center of the dusty room, bundled up against the damp chill of the rainy day. The collar of her black parka was pulled up around her neck, framing her expressive face and arresting eyes. There was an edgy tension about her. He knew that in spite of everything that had happened, she had been clinging to the possibility that the killer had not found the briefcase. He wanted to reassure her, but offering false hope was not part of his job description. Besides, he was no good at faking unfounded optimism.

“Someone murdered Lomax for the briefcase,” he said. “Trust me, whatever is inside is still dangerous.”

She flinched a little at the unvarnished statement of fact, but she dipped her chin in a single crisp nod.

“You're right,” she said.

He glanced at his watch. “We've got some daylight left. Time to take a look around Lomax's place. You say he lived in one of the cottages on the grounds?”

“Yes, I'll show you.” She turned away from the ripped wall and went toward the door. “We don't have to worry about the daylight. The electricity was turned off in the main hotel buildings but not at Tom's cottage.”

He followed her, circling a sagging bed draped in several hundred generations of spiderwebs. With the exception of the damaged wall, the hotel room looked as if it had been caught in a time warp. A shroud of dust lay over everything. The layers of grime on the window were so thick that very little daylight made it through the glass.

But the floor had been swept. Recently.

Nevertheless, he took out his penlight, switched it on, and aimed the beam at the floor. There was one faint set of prints.

“Huh.”

Madeline halted. “What is it?”

“Whoever wore those boots was here within the past few days,” he said. “After the floor was swept.”

“Tom was murdered yesterday.”

“If those are his footprints then he came up here recently, presumably to retrieve the briefcase.”

“That doesn't make any sense. Why would he do that after all this time?”

“Let's go take a look at Lomax's cottage.”

They left room 209 and went down the hallway toward the main staircase. With most of the room doors closed and no electricity, it was a trek made in deep shadows. The only natural illumination was
the weak daylight coming through the windows at opposite ends of the corridor. Jack aimed the beam of the flashlight at one of the rusted metal numbers on a nearby door.

“Did the person who pursued you yesterday seem to know his or her way around in here?” he asked.

Madeline considered briefly. “Somewhat. The intruder knew enough to follow me into the hallway beneath the lobby stairs. But whoever it was didn't know about the service stairs in the kitchen. I could hear him stumbling around, opening and closing doors before he found the service stairs. That's what bought me enough time to get into one of the rooms and lock the door.”

“Just wondering how long the killer had been hanging around the hotel.”

“Long enough to know about the service road in the woods behind the place,” Madeline said grimly. “That's where the car was left.”

“Why was your grandmother so afraid of the local cops eighteen years ago?”

“She wasn't, at least not that I know of, not before she opened the suitcase. But whatever she found in the briefcase convinced her that she couldn't call the police.” Madeline paused a beat. “There is one thing I do know, though.”

“What's that?”

“Egan Webster pretty much owned this island eighteen years ago, including the local cops. Money was rolling in off his hedge fund and he used it to buy anything and everyone who was for sale.”

“So it's possible that Edith was afraid that the contents of the briefcase were connected to the Webster family and she assumed the Websters would not have wanted the material made public.”

“That's been one of my working theories over the years. But there are other possibilities. What if it was a shipment of drugs or cash
connected to a violent cartel or the mob or terrorists? But every time I tried to talk to Grandma about it, she just said,
Let sleeping dogs lie
.”

They left the main building through a back door and walked through what had once been a gracious garden. The area looked like a scene from a dark fairy tale now, Jack thought. The foliage was wildly overgrown and choked with forbidding weeds. It was as if nature were trying to reclaim what had once been a civilized part of the island.

Madeline led the way through a narrow opening in a sagging trellis clogged with half-dead vines.

On the other side of the trellis Jack saw a dilapidated wooden structure with a low roof. The small windows were murky with the evidence of decades of weathering. No one had bothered to clean them in a very long time. A garage door was set into one wall. At the far end of the building there was another, regular door secured with a padlock.

The maintenance building, Jack thought. He glanced at Madeline. She did not look at the building.

The maintenance building, he decided. No doubt about it.

He had to work to suppress the icy fury that threatened to sweep through him. He reminded himself that Edith Chase and Tom Lomax had killed Madeline's attacker.

“That's Tom's place,” she said, indicating the first cottage in a row of small, rustic structures. “It's the only one that isn't boarded up.”

Years ago the quaint little houses perched on the bluff above the rocky beach would have appeared cozy and welcoming to guests, Jack decided. But now they were just more elements in the bleak fairy tale of Aurora Point.

Behind the cottages was a thick stand of trees. He caught a glimpse of a gazebo.

“Is that—?” he asked. He did not finish the question.

“Yes.”

Madeline did not look at the gazebo, just as she had not looked at the maintenance building.

She went around to the front of the cottage and climbed the steps. When she tried the doorknob, it turned easily. She paused on the threshold.

“Brace yourself,” she said. “Eighteen years ago Tom was something of a hoarder. Also, he had a passion for photography. He never threw any of his photos away.”

“I've been warned,” Jack said.

Madeline opened the door and moved into the shadows of the tiny front room. She flipped a switch. Somewhere in the shadows a dim light came on. A dank, musty miasma swirled amid the accumulated clutter of decades.

“Ugh.” Madeline wrinkled her nose.

Jack glanced at her. “Don't worry, it's not the kind of smell you get when there's a dead body around.”

She flicked him a quick, startled glance. “Good to know. Thanks for that cheery observation. Should I ask where you learned about the difference between the smell of a hoarder's house and a dead body?”

“I used to do some consulting work for the FBI, remember?”

“Grandma mentioned it. I got the impression you didn't profile folks engaged in art fraud or Internet gambling.”

“Sometimes. But not often enough. The company I was with specialized in behavioral analysis of other kinds of bad guys.”

Madeline whistled soundlessly. “Serial killers.”

“I changed career paths a while back.”

“I can certainly understand why.”

He looked mildly surprised. “Thanks. Not everyone does understand.”

“They watch too much TV.” She swept a hand out to indicate the
interior of the cottage. “What does all your experience tell you about this place?”

Jack surveyed the interior. “I'd say Lomax's hoarding tendencies did not improve in the past eighteen years. And I see what you mean about the photography thing.”

The cottage had clearly been furnished with leftovers from the hotel—a shabby armchair covered in worn leather, a floor lamp with a torn and badly yellowed shade, odd chunks of carpeting from assorted eras, and curtains decorated with faded floral prints.

The room was crammed with the flotsam and jetsam of a life lived on the fringe of paranoia. Crumbling, yellowed newspapers were piled high in various corners. Books and magazines were stacked everywhere. There were plastic containers filled with assorted lightbulbs and small batteries that were probably no longer viable. Boxes held frayed extension cords and small tools. What looked like a century's worth of mail—bills, catalogs, and requests for charitable donations—overflowed old packing boxes.

And everywhere there were photographs of all descriptions and every conceivable size—black-and-white, sepia toned, and full color. The subjects, as far as Jack could tell, were mostly Cooper Island scenes. There were dramatic shots of the northern lights over the island—brilliant images that captured the spectacle of waves of green and purple fire rippling across the night sky. Striking photos of fierce storms. Atmospheric scenes of the Aurora Point Hotel caught in various stages of renovation and decay.

More than a dozen large prints had been framed and hung on the walls.

“Those were his favorites,” Madeline explained, “the only ones he signed. He considered himself an artist. This was his own private gallery.”

Only a few of the images featured human subjects, usually the same two people—young girls on the brink of womanhood. In some of the scenes they raced carelessly, wildly, across a rocky beach. Other images featured the pair in a more pensive mood, dreaming at the edge of the cliffs. In a few photographs they were silhouetted against sunsets and sunrises. But in every picture there were storm clouds gathering in the distance.

The inescapable takeaway from every photo was the same. You knew that the innocence of girlhood would not last. Real life was bearing down on them in the form of a storm.

Jack looked at Madeline. “You and Daphne?”

“Yes.” A wistful smile curved her mouth. “Tom was a brilliant photographer, but he didn't like to take pictures of people. Mostly he preferred landscapes. Grandma asked him to take some shots of Daphne and me so that we would have them to give to our children. He agreed. But in the end we left the island without them. I don't think any of us wanted any reminders of Cooper Island or the hotel.”

“Understandable.”

Jack turned away from the pictures.

“Doesn't look like Tom ever threw anything away,” Madeline said.

“He was paranoid. Seriously paranoid people are afraid to toss things into the trash. There's always a chance that someone will find something that could be used against you—a bank account number or a compromising photo. You never know.”

Madeline smiled faintly. “Sounds like you've dealt with the type on more than one occasion.”

“Oh, yeah. My favorite kind of suspects. There's always plenty of stuff to find.”

“Because they never throw stuff away. Got it.”

“Tomorrow we can take a closer look, but right now I just want to get a feel for the place.”

He walked through the living room and into the miniature kitchen. There were not a lot of pots and pans and only a handful of plates, cups, and silverware, but what there was looked as if it had come from the hotel's kitchen.

The refrigerator was mostly empty, but the old freezer was full of frozen meals. The cupboards were crammed with canned goods. There was an old-fashioned calendar pinned to the wall. Jack took it down and flipped through it quickly. At first glance he saw no helpful notes in any of the squares. But he rolled it up and stuck it in the inside pocket of his jacket.

He was about to leave when he noticed the newspaper clipping thumbtacked to the wall. The picture showed a handsome couple smiling over a picnic basket.

PATRICIA WEBSTER SHARES FAMILY CORN BREAD RECIPE AT COMMUNITY PICNIC

Madeline came to stand in the doorway. “Find something interesting?”

“Just a recipe for corn bread.” Jack gave the kitchen another cursory glance. “Doesn't look like Lomax was into cooking.”

“Not that I remember.” Madeline moved into the kitchen and glanced at the photo. “So that's how Travis Webster turned out. A younger version of his father.”

“Wonder why Lomax cut out the recipe.”

“I have no idea.”

Jack glanced through the article.

. . . Patricia Webster, the new bride of island resident Travis Webster, arrived at the annual Cooper Days picnic with a basket of
corn bread that brought raves from attendees. In response to requests, Mrs. Webster explained that it was an old family recipe with a secret ingredient . . .