“Where do you think she bought it?” Maggie asked quietly, coming up behind Candy.
“What?”
“Where do you think Sapphire was when she was-you know-killed?”
“Oh.” Candy took a few tentative steps forward and peered into the living room. She pointed to a spot on the living room floor marked in an X with masking tape, which seemed to glow in the beam of her flashlight. “There.”
Maggie made a face. “Yuck. Let’s go this way.” She angled off to her left, into the kitchen, but Candy hesitated in the back hall. “Do you suppose we should wipe our shoes or something?” she asked.
“Why would we want to do that?” came Maggie’s harshly whispered response.
“Well, mine are kinda muddy from the woods. The police can’t match shoe prints, can they?”
Maggie’s face appeared back around the door frame. “I never thought of that.”
“Can they?”
“Yeah, I think so.”
Candy thought a moment. “Guess we’d better take off our shoes then. We can leave them here by the back door.”
“Good idea.”
Their shoes off and carefully set on the back-door mat, the two of them began to explore the house in their stocking feet. They started in the kitchen. As carefully and quietly as possible, Candy checked all the cupboards and opened all the drawers. While Maggie cooed with pleasure over the Betty Boop cookie jar and Sapphire’s collection of whimsical salt and pepper shakers, Candy searched through a small stack of unpaid bills on the breakfast table. She even poked into the trash can but found nothing.
Moving quietly and methodically, they next checked a small laundry room attached to the kitchen, the downstairs bathroom, and the dining room. Then, respectfully, they walked into the living room, careful to stay to the outer edges, avoiding the center of the room, where Sapphire Vine had died a violent death after stopping the business end of a hammer with her head.
Maggie looked around with a mixture of fascination and repugnance. “I love the fact that we’re here,” she whispered, unable to take her eyes off the masking-tape X on the floor, “but you have to admit this is kind of creepy. I didn’t think it would be so tomblike. It’s like a dead person lives here.”
“A dead person
“You sure about that?”
“Well, no, not really.”
Maggie tilted her head pleasantly. “Okay, that’s good enough for me. Let’s get back to business.”
Tiptoeing about cautiously, they shined their flashlights into various nooks and crannies, checking the room. It was actually tastefully decorated, they were surprised to discover, with a fairly new rust-colored furniture set, Mission-style coffee and end tables, a well-stuffed bookshelf, a comfortable-looking rocking chair, a large TV, and an upright piano. There were only small touches that indicated Sapphire Vine had once lived here-a collection of cat and angel porcelain figurines arranged lovingly on a bookshelf, an embroidered pillow on the sofa that read, “The World’s Gutsiest Gal.”
Candy and Maggie examined these items curiously, then moved on to the piano. A dozen or so old family photos in antique silver frames were lined up along its top. “I wonder why Sapphire never told us anything about her family,” Maggie said softly.
“Maybe because we never asked.”
“Good point. Look, here’s a photo of her when she was younger-about twenty years old or so, I’d say. Handsome guy with her.”
Candy studied it, focusing in on the innocent young couple, who in the photo appeared to be extremely happy. Sapphire’s hair was longer, her face more cherubic, and she looked heavier than she had in more recent days. The young man she stood next to was tall and lean with dark curly hair. He had an easy smile and wore an old gray sweatshirt with the letters
Maggie shook her head. “She probably chased him away with her sharp wit.”
“Yeah, sure.”
When they found nothing else of interest on the first floor, they moved to the second. There they found another bathroom and three bedrooms, two of which were furnished and one empty except for some boxes, an ancient weight-lifting set, some old pieces of furniture, and assorted piles of clothes and books stacked in haphazard piles.
Candy pointed to the furnished bedrooms. “You take the one on the right, I’ll take the other. Check everything.”
Maggie did as instructed. She searched through dresser drawers, the nightstand drawer, an oak hope chest, even the storage boxes under the bed.
“Nothing!” she called out.
Candy walked back out of the other bedroom. “Nothing in there either. She must keep her papers around here somewhere. There’s got to be a workspace or something-someplace where she writes and keeps her files.”
“Maybe in the basement,” Maggie suggested.
“Maybe.” Candy shined her light around. She turned a complete circle, then walked back in and checked all the bedrooms. She seemed to be searching for something.
“What’s wrong?” Maggie hissed.
Candy shook her head. “Where are the stairs to the top floor?”
“The what?”
“The top floor. Remember that light we saw in the window? Well, there’s no light on here. There must be another floor above this one. Look around for a set of stairs.”
“It’s probably right here,” Maggie said, motioning to a door that led to the space over the lower staircase. But when she opened the door, she found that it was only a closet, stuffed with blankets, a vacuum cleaner, old shoes, and more boxes. “Nope, that’s not it.”
“Hmm. There must be a way to get to the top level-maybe in a closet or behind a closed door. Let’s look.”
So they drifted off, walking the floor, exploring the bedrooms again, searching everywhere. But they found nothing.
“That’s so weird,” Candy said as they met back in the hallway. “I know I saw a light in that top window, but how do we get up there?”
“Maybe there’s a secret door,” Maggie guessed.
“Hmm. Could be. This place must be a hundred years old, at least. It’s possible they could have put a secret door or panel someplace. Let’s look again, more carefully this time.”
“Okay. You take that side of the hallway, and I’ll look over here.”
The minutes passed as they each searched a room, which wasn’t easy, since they had only their flashlights to see by. Candy desperately wanted to flick on an overhead light but knew that was taboo. She rapped on the walls with her knuckles, listening for any hollow sound. But then she realized that it all sounded the same to her. Even if she found a secret door, she didn’t know what it would sound like.
She decided to check the closet more carefully. She guessed that she was in the spare bedroom, since it was sparsely decorated, and Sapphire’s winter clothes were hanging from the bar in the closet. The shelf above was filled with boxes.
Then she looked again, shining the light around. The shelf was only half-full, she saw now. And the far end of the shelf was missing.
Curious, Candy walked to that end of the closet and shined her light up along the wall. That’s when she noticed a narrow wooden ladder leaned up against the back wall of the closet. Her eyes followed the ladder up to the ceiling.
Then she saw it-a trap door.
“Found it!” she called out as loudly as she dared.
She heard footsteps approaching at a run. “What? Let me see!”
