The second floor was dark and hushed, thickly carpeted like the floors above and below. The hallway ran the length of the house, and the floodlight outside, on the house’s facade, provided plenty of illumination for her to see where she was going.
The first door was open, and it led into a bedroom that glowed pale and gauzy in the ambient light. Clare knew without going any farther that this was Peggy’s room. She cautiously made her way over to a door set in the wall at the end of the room, but poking her head inside revealed the muffled interior of a walk-in closet, instead of the next bedroom.
The second bedroom was much darker, its heavy curtains drawn against the outside. But it smelled strongly of Diana’s perfume and Cary’s cologne. She crossed the floor toward where she suspected another closet, intending to turn on the light inside it for a discreet look-see. She promptly tripped over an open suitcase. She went down hard, bouncing off the floor with a loud thud and an involuntary “oof” as the air was knocked out of her. Only the plush carpeting saved her from scraping her knee. She scrambled to her feet and stood motionless for a long moment, listening for the sound of steps on the stairs and an inquiring voice. What was she going to say if she got caught up here? Her mind drew a blank. No helpful advice from Msgt. Wright. No words of wisdom from her grandmother. She was on her own.
She made her way back to the door, skirting the suitcase by sweeping her foot in front of her like a blind man’s cane. Her heart rate was up, and she breathed slowly and deeply to try to calm herself as she walked down the hall and then entered the last bedroom.
The curtains were drawn back and the windows were open, which allowed the faint light and sounds from the party below to float up to the wooden beams of the angled high ceiling. Clare could see the four-poster dominating the room, the dressers against the walls, the two doors, one ajar, leading to another walk-in closet, and the other closed. She crossed the floor and pushed the door open, revealing a tiny bathroom. She took the nearest pair of curtains and drew them tightly shut before reaching into the inside of the closet and sliding her hand along the wall. When she found the light switch, she flicked it on, quickly shutting the door until only a crack of light spilled into the room. Then, confident she would be able to see and thus avoid any more unexpected trips, she circled the bed and drew the other set of curtains shut. She went back to the closet and pushed the door wide open, eager to see what she could find.
In the closet was a fortune in Italian wools and enough polished shoe leather to stock a boutique. There might be something hiding under one of the sweater boxes that marched along the upper shelf, but there were probably more fruitful hiding places to try first. She turned back to the room.
The dresser between the closet and the bathroom held an antique mirror and a brushed-steel CD player the size of her first Kenner Close-and-Play record player. A row of CD jewel boxes stood trapped between bronze bookends. A flat leather box, when opened, revealed earrings and bracelets and cuff links, all of them gleaming with the luster only pricey jewelry had. There was nothing else cluttering up the top of the dresser. Either Malcolm was innately tidy or Peggy Landry employed a hardworking maid. She opened the top two drawers and decided it was Malcolm after all, not hired help. She couldn’t imagine a maid arranging rolled socks and folded underwear with such precision. She slid her hands underneath the clothes and then worked her way through the lower two drawers, searching with her fingertips between silky cottons and feathery cashmere and finding nothing except more confirmation that Malcolm had champagne taste and caviar dreams, or however the slogan went.
She closed the drawers tightly and went on to her next search area. What she had thought was a second dresser, placed between the two windows, turned out to be a square mahogany writing desk. She drew out the spindly-legged chair that had been shoved beneath it and sat down. The surface held a cell phone, a cube calendar, and a few pieces of junk mail. She leaned over to check the wire wastebasket and saw that it was empty. So he didn’t believe in the purloined letter theory of hiding things in plain sight. She opened the top left-hand drawer. Old bills, ripped open and restuffed into their envelopes. Second notices. Third notices. She shuffled through them. A whole series of demands from a car-loan agency, leading to an official-looking notice of repossession.
The second drawer held several fat paperbacks. Airplane reading. Evidently, Malcolm was a fan of Clive Cussler and Danielle Steel. She riffled through their pages, just to be sure, but the only things that fell out were old ticket stubs for flights to D.C., Chicago, and Houston.
The third drawer was heavy with telephone books, none of which had anything inside or in between them except white and yellow pages. She shut the drawer in disgust, then started on the right-hand side. There was a stack of mismatched stationery, evidence that Malcolm liked to steal hotel writing paper, but nothing indicating a more serious crime. The second drawer was full of junk—paper clips and matchbooks and half-used pads of Post-it notes, the kind of things that accumulate in your pockets and car but seem too potentially useful to throw away.
The last drawer held magazines that—whoops! She shoved the drawer back in. She did not want to look at those magazines. She especially did not want to look through those magazines to see what might have been stashed between the pages. Idiot, she thought. Maybe that’s the point. Like a woman hiding her jewelry in a box of tampons. She nodded. That made sense. Reopening the drawer, she compromised by pinching each magazine by the staples and shaking it vigorously. Nothing, not even one of those annoying inserts selling perfume or subscriptions. On second thought, it was probably illegal to send stuff like this through the U.S. mail, so why would they need subscriptions? She returned the magazines to the drawer, trying not to look too long at the covers.
She stood up, light-headed, and shoved the chair back into place, staggering slightly as her heels caught in the deep carpet. For the first time, she considered that she might not be in the best-possible shape for the task she had undertaken. She tried to recall exactly how many kir royales she had taken off those circulating trays. Four? Five? Oh, well. Nothing for it but to soldier on. That, she could do. What next?
The bedside stand. It had a single shallow drawer, filled with photographs, a passport, and a well-thumbed guide to restaurants. She pawed through the photos, looking for anything that might show Malcolm with Ingraham, but they were all old—pictures of women with pin curls, wearing floral dresses, and men in shirtsleeves, fly- fishing.
There was a shelf below the drawer, holding more paperbacks—a row of Dungeons and Dragons novelizations. Yuck. She dropped to her knees and then to her belly, stretching out to check under the bed. Under the side closest to her, there was nothing, not even a dust bunny. Under the other side, however, visible as a series of black rectangles, were several suitcases or narrow boxes. They looked promising.
She clambered back up on her high-heeled sandals and circled around the foot of the bed again. She was balanced on two knees and one palm, her hand wrapped around an unseen handle, tugging the heavy suitcase out from under the four-poster, when she heard the faint noise of feet on the stairs. And voices.
She shoved the suitcase back into place and shot to her feet. Where to hide? Where to hide, where to hide, where to hide? She slapped off the light in the closet and stood stock-still, shaking, flushed, her skin hot and prickling, clenching her fists so tightly that her close-clipped nails dug into her palms. Think. Thinkthinkthink. Under the bed? Too obvious. In the closet? There was nothing to hide behind except Malcolm’s suits. All it would take would be a light on in the room and someone to cast one glance inside to notice her legs taking up the space between his jackets and the shoe rack.
