He opened all the doors and drawers in the bathroom and found feminine products, cleansers, a stack of towels, and spare toilet paper. Nothing, absolutely nothing out of the ordinary.
With that, he headed into the bedroom. And again noted a massive queen-size bed, perfectly set up like at a hotel, with six pillows, as if she were a movie star. Well, she was a model, but did she live this lifestyle? It looked so darn perfect.
He walked into the closet to find clothes, but it wasn’t stuffed with clothing. That led credence to the fact that she potentially didn’t live here full-time.
Then he stopped, and something hit him. It was almost like the place was staged. Was she planning on selling it? Had it gotten that far and not gone any farther? He called Cayce. “Elena’s apartment is sterile. As if she didn’t cook or even sleep here.”
“It’s the way she liked to live. She was a free spirit in relationships, but she kept her home immaculate.”
“So she wasn’t planning to sell it? It looks staged.”
“No, she was creating and living the life she wanted. That was just her.”
After the end of that call, the manager of the building called him. “I have the records you were looking for,” he said.
“All her visitors in the last six months?”
“Yes,” he said, “and there’s a lot.”
“Email them to me, please,” he said.
“Will do.” The manager hung up.
Richard refocused on the bedroom. He checked under the bed, under the mattresses, between the mattresses, behind the headboard, but nothing was out of the ordinary. It was just way too clean.
He checked the night tables, under and around them, but nothing. On the wall were great big paintings, all of herself. And they were stunning. He didn’t know who the artists were who had painted her various portraits, but three were very, very similar, and he’d bet his next week’s paycheck that they were Cayce’s work. He took photos of them and then carefully lifted them off the wall, checking to see if anything was behind them, but again found nothing. Frowning, he went back into the closet and moved the hangers, and, sure enough, he discovered a small hidden cover. He opened that to find a safe. He immediately sent Andy a message and a photo.
We’ve got to get into that pretty fast, Andy texted back.
Contact her lawyer, he typed. See if we can get the combination. Otherwise we’ll bring in somebody to break this lock.
How are your skills?
They suck, he said.
Don’t you know somebody who has magical abilities pertaining to locks?
No.
The thing was, he did know somebody, and he’d lied twice just now to his partner because Richard was that somebody, but he wanted it on record with his texts that the safe was here, without giving away Richard’s special skills. He looked at the dial and sighed.
“Well, we said we wouldn’t do this again, but we pretty well have to.”
He reached up with his fingers, already gloved. Using his inner eye, with his acute hearing locked down on this point, he turned the dial, waiting for the tumblers to click. He’d learned to do this a long time ago, but he couldn’t do it very often with very many things. He’d often wondered if possibly he could do more with his secret abilities but, … so far, nothing yet.
He followed the energy. And, when that little pin dropped, he could hear, see, or feel when it went. By the time he turned the dial back the other way, he found the next one, and then the last. In less than two minutes. He smiled, stepped back, and pulled it open. Inside was money, as in megabundles of cash. He whistled, pulled them out, took a look at how much was here, and realized hundreds of thousands of dollars were in her safe.
He turned to look at the place and then at the safe. “Did you really make that kind of money?” He needed to double-check her income tax and see just what the hell she was claiming.
Underneath the money was an envelope. He pulled that out to see the label, Last Will and Testament, affixed to the envelope, not sealed. He pulled out the document and quickly glanced through it and froze.
Half of the entire estate went to Cayce. He stared at that damning motive for murder and shook his head. “Wow.”
He quickly put everything back, checked that nothing else was here, and locked up the safe. When the phone rang, he picked it up and said to Andy, “Well, that took you a while.”
“Hey, I know you cracked a different safe that we had to get into before.”
“Yeah, and I just did it again,” Richard said. “But I’m not allowed to, as you well know.”
“I do know that,” Andy said, “but we are allowed to try. And, having done that, I already contacted the lawyer. He has no idea about a safe.”
“Of course not,” he said, “but what’s in here is hundreds of thousands of dollars, in cash, and a will.”
“Could you get into the will?”
“Absolutely. Half of it goes to Cayce.”
“The artist?”
“Yeah, the artist.”
“That’s easily half a million dollars. That’s motive,” Andy said. “Who gets the other half?”
“Five other people,” he said. “I don’t know who they are yet, but I took a photo of the will. And I’d say it’s way more than one point five million dollars in Elena’s estate.”
“Well, we’ve got clearance from the lawyer to open it because he needs to deal with the estate. He’s pulling up his copy of the will and needs that one to compare to, in case she changed it.”
“Good enough. You can tell him that we’ll get this to him as soon as possible. I think I’ll photograph everything as it is.”
“How is it you always see that stuff before anybody else does?”
“Just lucky, I guess,” he said in a noncommittal voice.
Andy snorted and hung up.
Richard went back to the safe, using the same
