Even though they’d taken the forger by surprise, and she’d been loading up her bag when Hallie and Girard had found her, Zurine had left nothing of great interest behind. There was a shallow drawer of expensive pens and bottles of ink, all nestling in velvet inserts. Another drawer held writing paper and envelopes that, even through her gloves, Hallie could tell were of premium quality. The kind of luxury that few people could afford. The rest of the drawers were filled with the sorts of odds and ends that Hallie imagined might be found in any household with a decent income. It reminded her of a sideboard in her mother’s house which had held a collection of rarely used but still useful items. Wrapping paper and blank gift cards. Napkins and table mats - the good sort that would be used for dinner parties. Scented candles, all unused. And a miscellany of other odds and ends. All unremarkable, apart from the price point which was several degrees higher than anything that had been found in Wilona Talbot’s house.
The only thing of note in Zurine’s desk was the empty drawers. One was large enough to have held the leather bag last seen across Zurine’s shoulder. The others looked as if they might have held papers, but not even a paperclip was left.
“She cleaned out very well,” Hallie commented, pulling off her gloves and turning to meet Girard as he finished his call. “There’s nothing here I can see that will help us.”
“Peredur is going to get a couple of people to start looking at family and property records. He’s also sending Jasper and Dudon to help us once they’ve completed their task. He said to tell you that the sweet wrapper turned out to be a very good lead.”
“I’m glad,” Hallie said.
“I don’t want to wait for them before we get started on the building search. See if we can find Miss Halinburn’s office.”
“Let’s have a quick look around her home before we go. It might help give a better sense of her,” Hallie suggested.
Looking around the forger’s apartment took very little time. Apart from the large main room, there was a kitchen full of high-end items such as a coffee machine that looked like the grown-up cousin of the one in Hallie’s new kitchen, a bathroom and a large bedroom with an extensive, walk-in, wardrobe full of the sorts of clothes that would have looked at home in the shop on the ground floor. Zurine had clearly believed in advertising the goods she sold.
Running her hand along the body of a velvety smooth cardigan, to check if there might be anything hidden in the pockets, Hallie cast her eyes back along the row of clothes.
“She dresses for her day job,” she said. “All of these clothes could be on display in the shop below. It’s a uniform of sorts. I’m sure she likes the clothes, but they don’t feel really personal.” Hallie thought of her own wardrobe, which contained a few items that were old and threadbare but which she couldn’t bear to part with. There was nothing like that in Zurine’s collection. “There’s not much here to tell us who she really is. Which makes me wonder if she’s assumed her name as well.”
“Oh?” Girard prompted. He was standing in the doorway of the wardrobe, as if a little uneasy about entering the woman’s private space.
“I mean, she makes false identities. So, she’d have the skills to create one for herself. And she lives here alone. There’s not a single trace of anyone else. And there are no photographs. Not of Zurine, or any friends or family members. I didn’t find an address book in her desk. I mean, she might keep one on her phone, but she had letter paper and envelopes, which says a paper address book to me.”
“So, Zurine Halinburn might not be her real name. That might explain why I’m not getting a fix on her. The false identity doesn’t fit.”
“That would be my guess,” Hallie said, leaving the wardrobe and moving to stand in front of Girard. “I’m also going to guess that she won’t have wanted to reinvent herself too much or too many times. From what I could gather, this shop has been here for a decade, perhaps more. So her name change, if she did one, is at least ten years old.”
“An identity she’s held for that length of time would be pretty solid,” Girard said, as if he was thinking aloud, “but she might have made a mistake or two when she set it up or in her early days. So we need to look back to the start, see if we can trace when she first appeared and if anyone else disappeared at the same time.”
Hallie wrinkled her nose. Research was not her favourite thing to do. Old records tended to be incomplete. Although the city’s ID database went back decades, a lot of low city paperwork a decade or more older tended to be on paper. The newer records would be digital, and much easier to look into, but someone was going to have to go to the city’s administration offices and do a hand search.
“I’m sure Jasper and Dudon will find it fascinating, if we can’t find her from what we turn up in her office,” Girard said, a hint of laughter in his voice. She didn’t think she’d discussed her dislike of paperwork with him before now, but he apparently knew her well enough to read her face.
“Good plan,” Hallie approved.
In perfect harmony, they left Zurine’s apartment and headed back down the stairs to the stockroom behind the shop, ready to keep searching for the forger.
Chapter sixteen
“There’salmostnopaperworkin here,” Hallie observed, looking around the stockroom. “I know most things are digital, but she’d need a laptop at least to keep track of inventory and communicate with suppliers. The shop has a website, too, so she’d need to manage that.”
“There was nothing out on the shop floor, either. It’s always possible she took it with her?” Even without her truth sense, Hallie would have known Girard was just speculating.
“Possible, yes.” But it didn’t feel right. Anyone who’d managed to escape the attention of law enforcement for so long, and who was so skilled at their work, wouldn’t be careless enough to connect the two parts of their lives. It was far more likely that Zurine had an office space somewhere. “If she was working on things for the shop - the legitimate business, I mean - then she’d want it close by, I would think. And it would make sense to have it close to the stockroom. A hidden door, perhaps?” It was Hallie’s turn to speculate.
“Hidden in plain sight. Like her,” Girard agreed.
They turned their attention to the shelves that lined the walls, moving away from each other. Hallie focused her attention on the concrete floor. If she was right and there was a hidden door somewhere, then the constant opening and closing might have left scuff marks on the otherwise polished surface. As she reached the end of the stockroom, she found what she’d been looking for.
“Got something,” she told Girard. There were marks on the floor in a perfect arc, coming from the shelving unit out onto the floor. There was a slender gap between one set of shelves and the next, but no obvious mechanism that Hallie could see. She started moving the boxes that were on the shelves, and on one of the lower shelves found a plain metal lever hidden behind a box.
Pulling the lever got her a dull thud and the whole shelving unit swung towards her, brushing against the floor. Hallie stood back, one hand on her gun as a precaution, watching as the shelves moved away then stopped at a right angle, revealing a modestly sized office with a plain desk, laptop, and filing cabinet. Overhead lights clicked on as the door came to a stop. Hallie moved into the room, noticing that there were also scrape marks on the floor in front of the filing cabinet. With a glance across at Girard, she pushed the chest-high, metal cabinet and was rewarded when it swung quietly out of place, letting her see a plain door knob in the otherwise bare, painted wall.
The knob turned but the door didn’t open under Hallie’s grip. There was a keyhole under the knob. She didn’t bother looking for a key. Zurine would not be foolish enough to leave one lying around on her desk, not when this door was so well hidden. So instead Hallie set her shoulder against the door. It creaked but didn’t give at her first attempt, then Girard joined her and between them they forced the door open.
The room beyond the shop office was meticulously organised and crowded with equipment that Hallie didn’t begin to understand. But Girard muttered something under his breath and strode towards a machine that sat on the floor but rose to head height. He was scowling as he opened a panel on its side.
“You know what this is?” Hallie asked.
