“What about the fridge?” Nadine finally asked, hands massaging her neck as she tried to think where in this warehouse of a mansion the cat food would be. For all she knew, Dot had an entire room filled with racks of imperishables, like a nuclear fallout shelter.
“Who would refrigerate cat food?” Wes sounded doubtful as he yanked open the door of the massive Sub-Zero fridge. “Oh.”
She looked around him. “I guess people who get it fresh.”
Wes pulled out a container and read the ingredients. “Organic farm-raised salmon. These cats eat better than me. Are you sure it’s cat food?” He double-checked it. “It is. Wow.”
Grumbling about the amount of money people spent on their pets, Wes opened the container and put it on the floor. The cats crowded around, finally silent as they ate, and Wes checked his intact ankles with relief.
“I have a plan,” announced Nadine after Wes washed his hands.
Wes leaned against the counter, arms crossed. “Okay.”
She’d been prepared for a fight, so she examined him warily. “Just okay?”
“Yeah, Barbault, just okay. We’ve got three weeks and a library’s worth of information to analyze. I’d love a plan. Plus you’d have an aneurysm if I tried to stop you.”
That was true enough not to bother arguing. “First, I want to get familiar with the house. All of it, the nooks and crannies. We don’t know if the attic is the only place she stored documents.”
“Reasonably, the most likely place is her bedroom, which Brent said is off-limits,” Wes pointed out over the sounds of cats fighting over the last scraps of food. “It’s not like she’s going to hide things in the commode.”
“Can you be sure of that?”
Wes looked at the door that led to the library, eyes glazing as he mentally reviewed the clutter. “Point taken, but Brent specifically pointed us to the attic, and we have more than enough to do there.”
“True, but I still want to see the rest of the house. For science.”
“Fine.”
“No arguing?” said Nadine.
“It’s a logical step.” His expression turned shifty. “I suppose I wouldn’t mind looking around either,” he admitted. “This house is better than a museum. God knows what we’ll find. What’s the notebook for?”
“To take notes,” she said. “Also, we can rip out the pages and leave them as a trail in case we get lost.”
That made him laugh, and Nadine would be lying if she said it didn’t make her a little proud. Wes was always hard to impress.
“Let’s go, Gretel.”
Nadine led them to the west wing and a corridor made dark by the closed doors, then turned on the lights. The ornate crystal chandeliers added more sparkle than illumination. “I feel like one of Bluebeard’swives.” Her hand lingered on the porcelain handle of a paneled door decorated with painted cherubs.
Wes brought his hand down on hers and gave a decisive push, cracking the door open. “At least we have permission so we can avoid dismemberment.”
They took their time working through each room, six in each wing. There was only one level, so sadly that meant no grand staircase. When Wes saw Nadine checking behind curtains and in cabinets, he began doing the same without comment, as if he understood the impact of the sheer amount of true crime content she had consumed over the years, intensified by her parents’ paranoia about safety. Her mother had solemnly handed over a dog-eared copy ofThe Gift of Fearto Nadine when she was fifteen.
An hour later, they returned to the kitchen to make some tea and discuss their findings in a more modern, less visually bewildering setting. Nadine checked her notes as Wes filled the kettle.
“We have three bedrooms in the east wing. One gold, one blue, and one Marie Antoinette,” she said. “The east wing also has the carnival room with the carousel horses leaning against the walls and the musical instruments, the St. James gentleman’s club study with the paneled walls and Victorian hunting art, and the games room at the end with the crokinole board, billiard table, and darts.”
“Don’t forget the bathrooms,” said Wes. “Also, that was Regency-era art. Not Victorian.”
She ignored him. “That wing has the bathroom with the fancy marble tub and the unusually plain one that’s all white and bamboo. Only the Marie Antoinette has an en suite.”
Wes held out an Earl Grey tea canister and one of herbal lavender rose without speaking, and she pointed her pen at the latter. “Wasn’t the gold bedroom on the west side?” he asked as he spooned out the strongly perfumed leaves.
“No, the west wing had the silver bedroom with the stained glass on the door panel.”
“Oh, right.”
