Page 62

“May I remind you, dear Summer Sister, that this little caper was all your idea?” Avery asked. “And it’s pretty ballsy of you.”

Cam smiled. Ada and her quest had certainly been pushing Cam out of her comfort zone. A month ago, she never would have contemplated doing something so bold—or possibly so reckless.

Fifteen minutes later, the three women made their way through the small employees-only parking lot at the rear of Merriweather House. They had come on foot—far better than parking Trixie or Birdie’s ancient Volvo, both of which were known to just about all of Silver Cove. And going in the front entrance, where the holiday lights that lined Main Street illuminated the gate, had been out of the question. Cam looked around for a motion-sensing light in the back. Even if a light did flip on, it was unlikely anyone would see them because the house’s lot was large enough and screened from the neighboring houses by trees. Still, the less attention they drew, the better. She led the trio up a small set of wooden steps and gripped the key Birdie had procured for them with a clammy hand.

“It worked,” she whispered in relief as she turned the door handle to let them in. Cam blinked. Just enough moonlight was coming in through the tall windows to allow her to make out shapes, and Cam stepped carefully. They had decided that flashlights should be used minimally. The sight of lights bobbing around the darkened house might catch someone’s eye from the street and would certainly rouse suspicion.

They found themselves in the office that Birdie had described, which contained a desk and a table that held large stacks of brochures. Cam opened a second door leading to the museum portion of the house where she had examined the manuscript.

“Welcome to Merriweather House, ladies,” Cam murmured. “Let’s take a tour.”

The women crept through the exhibits, past the Stormy manuscript on its velvet bed, and into the grand foyer. Cam imagined that Marshall Merriweather seemed to be glaring down at them from his portrait. Cam caught his eye but wasn’t about to apologize for the incursion. They took in the wide staircase with its ornate banister. A velvet rope with a NO ENTRY sign stretched across it. Without hesitation, Avery unhooked it and motioned for them to mount the steps.

The second floor was different from the one below. The plaster walls were cracked in various places, and the wide-planked floors were rough and unfinished. Cobwebs were everywhere. Ian would love this, Cam thought, and instantly felt annoyed with herself. She was on a mission, and now was definitely not the time to be dwelling on distractions.

“I wish we could use the flashlights,” Francine said. “It’s dark up here.”

“Let’s try to get the lay of the land first,” Cam replied. “Just be careful.”

Three doors from the central hallway led to bedrooms, each with an ornate wooden fireplace. Some of the tiles around them were cracked, and the wood needed cleaning and restoring. One of the rooms was clearly the primary bedroom. It was larger, and a massive mirror—now spotted and cloudy with age—hung over the mantel. Another door from the hall opened into a single bathroom with an old-fashioned pull-chain toilet and a clawfoot tub. It looked like the Merriweathers had updated the bath sometime in the early 1900s.

“Do you think they shared a bedroom?” Avery asked as she crossed paths with Cam in the threshold of the largest room. “People did that back then, right—slept separately?”

Cam scanned each room in the dim moonlight and felt disappointment at finding each one bare. She had been hoping for old boxes or steamer trunks. Instead, there was just a lot of dust and cobwebs. In the last bedroom she inspected, she saw several cardboard boxes, but a quick look suggested they were far newer than Ada’s era. She opened the flap to one and saw a stack of posters promoting the town’s centennial celebration of Marshall and the publication of Stormy.

She considered Avery’s question. If Marshall and Ada had slept in different rooms, she was almost sure that Marshall would have taken the largest, grandest room, befitting the man of the house. She took an extra turn through each of the smaller bedrooms, running her hands across the wainscoting and tapping her feet along the floorboards, looking for… something. A loose plank? A secret door?

She found nothing.

She met back up in the hallway with Francine and Avery, who were similarly empty-handed.

“The main floor that’s been restored has probably been gone over,” Francine said. “If there was something to find, they would have found it during renovations.”

“The attic was wiped out in a fire and later rebuilt,” Cam said. “It looks like we’re heading down into the kitchen and servants’ quarters.”

The women carefully descended the stairs, clutching the railing to keep their balance, and when they arrived on the main level, they reattached the security barrier. Locating the door that led downstairs proved a challenge.

“Found it!” Avery called softly. The door was in the far end of the ballroom-turned-museum space, painted the same color as the wall paneling. They opened it, and the three women peered down into near-complete darkness.

“I think it’s flashlight time,” Cam said. “Since we’re going to be mostly belowground, I don’t think anyone will see us from the street.” They clicked on their flashlights and carefully navigated the steep stairs. The lower level was markedly different from the two above it. Even if the uppermost floor was not renovated, it was obvious that, in its glory days, it had been an opulent space with high ceilings and intricate trim. It just needed a little care—and a lot of money—to bring it back to its original beauty. But this space was purely utilitarian with a worn, paved-brick floor and ceilings that seemed like a particularly tall butler could knock his head on. Small windows high on the walls offered no views onto the lawn.

The cobwebs were even thicker down here, and Cam trained the light into the corners, fearing they might be harboring mice, or something worse. She didn’t feel up to doing battle with another squirrel.

They arrived in what was obviously the kitchen. One wall was taken up by an enormous hearth with a spit for roasting meats and a hook that had probably once held a pot over the fire. This was where most of the household’s food had been cooked before the advent of the stove. There was one of those, too, a massive, cast-iron beast that seemed to run on firewood. Nearly everything else from the room had been removed, but Cam figured this thing was far too heavy for anyone to lift.

The only other things that remained were a built-in cabinet with drawers and a long, narrow table that ran the length of the room. A worktable, the old-fashioned version of the modern kitchen island. It was where all the chopping, stirring, and plating happened. Even through the thick blanket of dust, Cam could see that the bones of this kitchen were good. She imagined what it had been like back in its heyday, lit by the soft glow of lanterns, warm from the fire, with the aroma of roasting meat in the air. The rest of the house had a stifling, stuffy feeling—Ada, Cam thought, would have preferred this cozy space. And the kitchen was somewhere that Marshall probably rarely ventured, which would make it a likely hiding spot for something Ada would want to conceal from her husband.

“If we’re going to find something, it’s going to be here,” Cam announced.

The three women fanned out, knocking on walls and tapping the bricks below them. Cam opened each of the cubbies of the built-in, panning her flashlight around every one, seeking the kind of false backs or hidden drawers she had read about in mystery novels. One by one, they turned up empty.

“Find anything?” she called to her accomplices.

“Nothing,” said Avery, sounding as dejected as Cam felt. She had known this mission was probably in vain, but still, she had been holding out a little hope.

“I checked the servants’ rooms. Man, those were tight spaces,” Francine said. “And they were totally bare. No places to hide anything.”

“This,” Cam said, swinging her backpack off and opening it on the worktable, “is my Hail Mary.” She plucked out a few wet wipes from a plastic envelope and used them to clean the dust from a square in the center of the countertop. She pulled Ada’s cookbook from its plastic bag and unwrapped the cloth around it. “Let’s see if Ada can help us out.”