“Right there. Look.”
Maggie shone her light up with Candy’s. “Ooh, yes, that’s it! A trap door. How clever! I bet the police didn’t see that! Who’s going up first?”
“I don’t suppose you want to volunteer?”
Maggie gave her a look. “Just be careful. I’ll watch your back.”
“Thanks. That makes me feel
Candy passed her flashlight and the tote bag to Maggie, then grabbed on to one of the ladder’s rungs. She put a foot on a lower rug, testing it carefully to make sure it would hold her weight, then hoisted herself up slowly, a rung at a time, until she was high enough to reach the trap door in the ceiling. Holding onto the ladder with one hand, she pushed up on the trap door with the other. It gave way easily, opening a few inches with a low creak.
“I’m going up,” she called back down in a loud whisper. “Pass the flashlight to me when I get up there.”
“Roger that,” Maggie called efficiently.
Candy pushed the trap door all the way open and saw a faint glow of light filtering down into the closet. Grabbing the wood frame of the opening, she pulled herself up and into the room above.
TWENTY-THREE
She sat for a moment on the edge with her legs dangling down and looked around warily. But it was just as she expected-a cozy attic hideaway that had been Sapphire’s secret retreat.
Because of the size of the trap door, it must have been difficult to get big pieces of furniture up here, so what Candy saw was a makeshift arrangement. A narrow folding table, pushed into one corner, made for a desk. The room also contained a trio of fold-up-style director’s chairs, a small wicker chair, several cinder-block-and-board shelves lined with books, a portable TV set on top of a green plastic crate, a CD player/radio on the floor beside it, a few tall boxes that had been turned upside down to serve as end tables, and-strangely enough-a thin twin-sized mattress laid on the floor along one wall, with a pillow and blankets scattered across it.
“Let me see, let me see!” Maggie exclaimed excitedly as she came up the ladder behind Candy, handing up the tote bag and flashlight. “What have you found?”
“It’s Sapphire’s secret lair.”
“The center of the spider’s nest. This just keeps getting better and better.”
Candy swung her legs up underneath her, rose-and immediately bumped her head on the sloped ceiling. They were at the very top of the house, and though the ceiling was high enough in the center of the room that she could stand, it sloped down sharply at the sides.
There was a small window that looked out over the backyard, dark now except for a small patch faintly illuminated far below. An antique floor lamp with a low-wattage bulb had been left on; that had been the light they had seen from the yard.
Candy crossed to the folding table that served as a desk. It was a primitive setup, but everything Sapphire had needed appeared to be here. On the table was a fairly new notebook computer. Candy spotted a phone line that ran down through a crude hole cut in a corner of the floor, probably used for an Internet connection, though she saw it was now unplugged; Sapphire had apparently upgraded to wireless. The desktop had been kept nice and neat, as expected of Sapphire. Papers, files, and magazines were carefully organized in a variety of plastic desktop trays and sorters. Sharpened pencils and pastel-colored pens were stored in old coffee cups that served as pencil holders. Another address book-this one with a glossy pink cover decorated with stickers of ice cream cones and flowers-sat to one side of the computer. A Rolodex nearby looked as though it had been frequently used and regularly updated. The handset of a wireless phone sat beside the address book.
No one could ever say Sapphire had been a slouch when it came to organization.
A two-drawer cardboard file cabinet-one of those cheapie jobs you could buy at an office supply store-sat to one side of the desk. Slipping off her Polartec gloves and setting them down on the floor with the tote bag and flashlight, Candy dropped into the chair behind Sapphire’s desk and gingerly pulled open the file cabinet’s top drawer. It was heavy and stuffed full, just as she suspected. She started fingering her way back through the files.
“Would you look at this?” Maggie asked from the other side of the room. She had wasted no time in exploring the surroundings.
Candy turned and looked up. Maggie held a photo album open in her hands. She was paging through it. “There are pictures of her in here going back to when she was a baby. And look at this.” She closed the album and held it out so Candy could see it.
Along the bottom right corner of the album cover, in gold block letters, was the inscription
Candy’s brows knit together. “Who’s Susan Jane Vincent?”
“Don’t you get it?” Maggie’s eyes were huge. “It’s Sapphire! That must be her real name! She must have changed it somewhere along the line.”
“Well I’ll be damned.”
“You didn’t think Sapphire Vine was her real name, did you? I always suspected she must have changed it at some point, maybe to hide a sordid past. And here’s the proof.”
“Susan Jane Vincent, huh? So she’s just an ordinary plain Jane after all.”
“I wonder if the police know about this,” Maggie said absently to herself as she paged through the album.
Candy looked around the room with fresh eyes. “They might have discovered her real name by now, but my guess is they haven’t found this place yet. They must have missed it when they searched the house.”
Maggie set the album aside and looked over at Candy. “Are we going to tell them?”
Candy shrugged. “I don’t know yet. Keep looking. See what else you can find.”
“Right, Chief!” Almost immediately Maggie chimed up again. “Here’s something.” She reached toward a book on a narrow shelf, pulling it out and holding it up, just as she had with the album.
“I can’t see it from here,” Candy said, squinting from her spot across the room, so Maggie walked over and placed it in her hands.
Candy realized after a moment that she had seen the book before-or one just like it. She turned it sideways and read the gold-lettered title on the spine. “The Bell of Chaos.”
“By none other than that great peacock himself, Sebastian J. Quinn.”
Candy tilted her head thoughtfully as she flipped through the pages. “Why would Sapphire have this?”
“Maybe she’s a lover of bad poetry.”
“Or maybe she was doing research on the judges.” As Candy flipped through it, the book’s pages fell open to a section in back, revealing a yellowed newspaper clipping tucked inside. “What’s this?” Curiously she pulled it out and unfolded it.
Maggie crowded in next to her, reading over her shoulder. After a moment she said, “It looks like an obituary.”
“It is.” Candy scanned down through the clipping. “Somebody named David Squires. Looks like he died in a car accident. Almost twenty years ago, according to the date.”
“A friend of Sapphire’s?”
Candy shrugged, and started folding the clipping back up, then stopped. Suddenly curious, she unfolded it again, this time studying it more closely. She pointed with her pinky at the faded photo of David Squires that accompanied the article. “Does he look familiar to you?” He was a handsome, curly haired young man wearing a coat and tie; the photo had obviously been taken for his high school yearbook, when he had been a senior.
Maggie leaned in closer, scrutinizing the photo. After a few moments her face lit up. “He’s the same kid we saw in the photo downstairs with Sapphire!”
Candy nodded. “I think you’re right.”
“So now we know what happened to him,” Maggie said softly.
“That we do.” Candy finally folded up the newspaper clipping, placed it inside the book, and laid it on the desktop. “So that’s one mystery solved-sort of. But there are plenty more that need figuring out. Let’s keep
