Looking at his hands, Casey saw the red cracked skin of someone who spent far too much time with chemicals and hot, soapy water. No wonder the living room was spotless.
“It’s kind of an obsession thing.” He shoved his hands in his pockets.
Poor kid. Casey looked out the window. Theo’s car had been replaced with a police cruiser and Lalonde’s Sebring. How was it that he always managed to stay one step ahead of them? Years of practice maybe? Two uniformed officers were in the front yard while two more were heading toward the back. Lalonde and Krueger emerged from the house.
Casey ran downstairs and bolted straight for Lalonde. “You didn’t find them?”
“We’re checking the beach,” he answered. “Tell me exactly what happened.”
A gust of wind swept over them and slate gray clouds sailed across the sky. After Casey finished her story she waited for a response, but none came.
“Have you managed to track Ziegler down since he’s been back in Vancouver?”
“Yes, we spoke briefly, but there was nothing to hold him on at that time.”
Meaning what? That there might be later? Was he still investigating TZ Inc.’s activities?
“I saw my mother this afternoon,” she said. “Did your people pick her up?”
A pained look deepened Lalonde’s wrinkles. “Mrs. Stubbs said a murderer was in her house, then hung up before we could learn more. I thought she meant Churcott.”
“Since we’re dealing with three, maybe four, separate murders, there could be at least two killers.”
“Four murders?”
“Gustaf Osterman, Simone Archambault, my father, and possibly a waiter at Alvin’s All-Canadian Cafe, which the French police think was a suicide. You really need to see the evidence Theo gave me. It proves that Darcy arranged to give Dad contaminated food.”
She told him what she’d heard on the tape and Theo’s conversation with the waiter. While Lalonde scribbled notes, raindrops began to fall.
“If you can get the evidence out of your safe-deposit box by the end of the day, I’ll have it picked up.”
“Fine. Meanwhile you’ll probably want to pick up Mother too, because she’s leaving the country today. She should be at the airport by now.”
“Then why is she speeding along the Sea-to-Sky Highway toward Whistler?” Lalonde asked. “Her movements have been monitored since she left your apartment.”
Why in hell was Mother heading north when the airport was south? Had she changed her mind, or had she lied about leaving?
“Go home, Miss Holland,” Lalonde said.
“Can I check something out in the house first?”
“Like what?”
“A hiding place for three million dollars.”
Lalonde tried not to smile. “Think you’ll find it, do you?”
“Darcy’s convinced it’s there or he wouldn’t have put a big hole in the floor.”
“He could come back.”
“You’ll have officers around for a bit, right?” She nodded toward the handful of men and women standing about, looking like they needed something to do. “I won’t be long.”
Lalonde nodded. “Fine, but when they leave I suggest you do, too.”
“Sure.”
Casey grabbed the blueprints from her Tercel and dashed inside the house. Starting with the den, she walked through each room, comparing written measurements with the actual size of rooms and examining every cupboard and closet. Upstairs in the master bedroom, she found a discrepancy. The closet looked slightly smaller than the prints indicated it should be.
She stepped into the closet to look at the wall separating Dad’s bedroom from the courtyard. On close examination, the wall seemed a bit too near, as if it didn’t quite extend far enough to be level with the doorway and the rest of the wall. Was there an empty space on the other side of this closet? Casey looked for latches, buttons, and loose boards. Nothing.
She left the bedroom and took a close look at the wood-paneled wall. It was a bit odd that the paneling covered only the lower half of the wall, but then oddity had been somewhat of a trademark for Dad, and he’d loved wood. She felt around for latches, switches, depressions or other weaknesses. Still nothing.
Stepping back, she studied the area. The trees had started to lose leaves and the live plants looked thirsty. The whole place was becoming a jumbled mess.
Casey gazed at the six trees. Three on one side of the courtyard, three on the other. And then she remembered . . . two vertical rows of x’s and o’s, plus squiggly lines on the slip of paper Dad had left in the notebook. A jumbled mess.
Darcy had assumed the insert drawn on the note referred to the entertainment center on the first floor, and that the x’s and o’s represented the furniture. There’d been a sofa and two end tables on one side of the room, and two chairs separated by a table on the other. If he’d taken the chairs apart and come up empty, this could explain why he tore into the floor below the furniture.
But what if the insert referred to a hidden space in the closet on this floor? The x’s and o’s could have meant the two rows of trees. Casey recalled seeing an arrow pointing to the left. Closing her eyes, she visualized the diagram and recalled that the arrow had pointed to an “x” at the top of the row.
She opened her eyes. It was the first tree on her right, the one Lou had said was a Japanese maple. The tree was only a little taller than herself. Casey gazed at the gracefully arched branches and leaves. Its clay pot looked heavy. The floor tiles were about the size of the palm of her hand. The tiles around this pot weren’t as stained as the ones surrounding the other five pots: apparently, Gustaf hadn’t been a great gardener.
It took repeated pulls before Casey managed to move the pot enough to see the tiles beneath. She ran her hands over the floor and grinned when a tile moved. Using the tip of her car key, she pried up the loose tile to find a rusty keyhole corroded by water. So, where was the key?
Casey thought of the extra house key Dad used to keep buried in the potted plant at their old place, and how she’d occasionally asked him to use a fake plant with sand. She studied three silk flower arrangements displayed on a narrow table. Fake flowers sitting in sand.
She yanked the flowers out of the nearest pot, dumped it upside down, and raked her fingers through the sand. No key. Dumping sand out of the second pot, she spotted a piece of plastic. Inside the plastic was a small silver key. Casey smiled.
No wonder the money hadn’t been found; she was the only one who knew that Dad had kept a spare key in dirt and that he liked secret compartments. After some jiggling, the key turned forty-five degrees and a two-foot wide panel next to the bedroom door slowly swung open. Casey shook her head and again smiled. The narrow, vertical rivets in the wood paneling hid the fact that the panel wasn’t completely sealed.
Casey saw a cardboard box sitting on six black briefcases. She lifted the lid and saw her old, one-eyed teddy bear. Beneath the bear was a baby sweater and several crayon drawings. Her heart sank. She’d had no idea he’d been so sentimental.
Casey lifted the first briefcase out. She opened the case and gaped at American bills bundled with elastic bands. Each bundle looked the same size and each appeared to contain hundred dollar bills. She counted fifty bundles, which amounted to half a million bucks. If every case contained the same thing, then all of the missing money was accounted for.
“Casey!” Rhonda shouted from downstairs. “Are you here?”
Casey shoved the briefcase in the closet and pushed the wall back into place. “Upstairs!”
She removed the key and closed the tile as Rhonda ran into the courtyard, her expression frantic.
“Darcy’s got Summer! He says if you don’t give him a cassette tape and the missing three million, he’ll kill her!”
Thirty-one
CASEY GRIPPED RHONDA’S shoulders. “When did this happen?”
