He looked back at the door.
“Don’t you have people who come clean your pool house?” Rad looked at her, wondering if she was on something.
Her expression turned glacial.
“No one goes into my house without my consent. Not even the cleaners.” Sienna’s tone matched her stare.
“Oh.” He was getting annoyed now, wondering if she’d called him here because she’d probably forgotten to close her door. “What’s out of place?”
“Follow me.” Sienna’s chin went up before she spun around.
She led him down a hall, and he had just enough time to register that the place had three bedrooms and a primary suite the size of a small apartment before he saw the damage inside the room.
The closet door hung off one hinge, splintered and twisted. Inside, part of the wall had been ripped open with ugly force.
“There,” Sienna said, pointing at it. “Now do you see it?”
“What was in that closet?” Rad stepped closer.
He pulled a pair of latex gloves from his pocket, snapped them on, and crouched to study the torn opening in the wall. It looked as if something rectangular had been fitted there, then yanked free hard enough to damage both the frame and drywall.
“My safe was in there,” Sienna told him. “I keep that closet locked at all times. I’m the only one with the key.” She pulled a long chain from around her neck and showed him. “No one else has access to it or even knows it’s in there.”
“No one?” Rad glanced at her. “None of your family, staff, or friends?”
“Well…” Sienna frowned. “Maybe two friends.”
“I’m going to need their names,” Rad told her.
“I’d rather you didn’t involve them either,” Sienna told him. “They didn’t do this.”
“Sienna…” Rad began, but he could see by the set of her jaw and slightly raised chin that he wasn’t going to move her on this. “I still need their names.”
“Okay,” Sienna agreed, “but don’t contact them. I’ll write them down.”
Rad nodded and turned back to the place where there used to be a safe.
“They took the entire safe?” It was a rhetorical question as he stared at the wall in awe. Who took an entire safe?
“Yes.” She nodded as if he were being unusually slow. “The entire safe.”
“How?” Rad said his thoughts out loud.
“That’s why you’re here,” Sienna pointed out.
“Sorry, I was thinking aloud,” Rad told her. “I was wondering how someone would do this without anyone hearing it, as you must have a house full of staff.”
“No, not that many.” Sienna shook her head. “We have a housekeeper, a chef, and a butler. The cleaning crew comes three times a week, but haven’t been for a week because my mother fired them, and we haven’t been able to find another agency.”
“Still,” Rad said, picturing the layout of the pool house in proximity to the main house. “This was a pretty big task to do.” He glanced back toward the bedroom door. “I mean, how the heck would they get it out of here?”
“Through the back garden,” Sienna told him, and moved to the glass door, pulling it open. “This door backs into the back garden that is hardly used. I used to come through the pool house and sneak out here when I was a kid.” She stepped up to it and stared out, pointing. “The back garden connects directly to the forest, and it’s only a few miles to the campsite.”
A cold feeling began seeping up his spine as he realized the Morrisons’ proximity to Ember Lake and Memorial Campground.
“That’s a scary place for a young girl to run to,” Rad commented as he made a mental note about Ember Lake.
Sienna gave a soft laugh as she stared longingly at the forest at the end of the garden. “Not as scary as my house sometimes.” Her voice was so soft that Rad had barely heard the words. “I used to pretend I was Goldilocks and wished I’d find the cabin the three bears lived in.”
