We opened it just far enough to squeeze through and found ourselves in the basement of the hotel. It didn’t look like it was a well-used area. Cast-off furniture and household items lined the narrow hall. There was a gap in the junk just ahead of us.

Another wooden door greeted us. Seth and I repeated our earlier exercise and almost fell on top of each other when the door swung easily.

“Wicked,” Seth said when he saw what was inside.

The room was about ten by ten feet. It contained a table and one chair, and at least ten boxes of cell phones. They seemed to be organized by type. Several boxes of iPhones sat next to Android versions. There was even a small box of BlackBerries. VERTEX WHOLESALE was stamped in large block letters on the side of each box.

“Whoa!” said Seth. “Are these all stolen?”

“I think so,” I whispered.

It had been all over the news just before Christmas. Vertex Wholesale had been busted for purchasing stolen cell phones. According to reports, the storefront was known in the Detroit neighborhood as a place to get cash for phones, no questions asked. Police had raided the store and there were rumors that there was a connection to Kalamazoo. Seth and I had just stumbled onto the connection.

Seth stepped forward with his hand out toward a box. I grabbed him by the hood of his sweatshirt and stopped him.

“Don’t touch anything,” I said.

I shrugged off Vi’s sweater and used it to pick up one of the phones. I chose a BlackBerry since it had buttons and carefully turned on one of the phones. It had been wiped clean of data.

Seth pointed to a printed stack of papers on the table. They listed cell phone brands, number of units, and prices. There was another column listing possible destinations. “Looks like your murder mystery just got a lot more complicated,” he said.

I nodded absently, trying to fit this piece of the puzzle into everything else we knew. The dollar amounts were big enough to be a motive for all sorts of crimes.

“I’ve heard it’s a big deal,” he continued. “They sell for way more overseas than here. The gangs steal them from Americans and ship them to Japan or Europe, where they can get hundreds of dollars for each one.”

I turned to him. “How do you know about all this?”

He lifted one shoulder. “I grew up in New York City. I’ve seen black-market dealers—usually the stuff is fake, though. Plus, I looked it up online after that police bust in December.”

“We better get out of here, Seth,” I said, and placed the phone back in the box.

Just as we turned to head out of the room, the door slowly swung inward and clicked shut. Seth and I ran to the door and pounded on it.

“Hey, let us out!” Seth shouted.

I wasn’t sure our pounding could even be heard on the other side of the heavy door, much less Seth’s pleas for release.

“Now what?” Seth said as he gave up on his hammering of the door.

“For one thing, I think I’ll listen to Baxter a bit more,” I said. “He really didn’t want us to come down here.”

Seth’s face was white and his brows were scrunched together.

I put an arm over his shoulder. “Someone will find us.”

I just hoped it was a friend and not the person who had put these phones here.

27

The room had been quite cold when we walked in and an hour later, it felt like the temperature had dropped even further. We’d shut off Seth’s headlamp to conserve batteries and because every time he swung his head the wild dance of light on the walls made me dizzy. About an hour into our stay, my flashlight died. Seth quickly clicked his on and I made my fiftieth trip around the room to check for a way out. I had it in my head that with all the secret passages and stairways, maybe there was another way out of this secret room. Unfortunately, it had been designed to hide things. There were no windows, no heating vents, not even an electrical outlet or a pipe to bang on in the hopes that someone would hear us.

Neila’s prediction about my mother attending a child’s funeral flashed unbidden into my mind. Panic wouldn’t help anyone. I knew that Mac would search until he found us and with our canine guards outside the room, it couldn’t be much longer now.

Seth sat on the floor and shivered.

“I’m hungry,” he said.

“We haven’t been here that long. We just had lunch.”

He shrugged and chewed on his thumb.

I held my watch in the beam of Seth’s headlamp.

“Someone will notice we’re missing and they’ll find us. Baxter will be sure to show people the trapdoor.”

“Yeah, but when? How long is the workshop today? What if they go straight in to dinner and we miss it?”

“I’m so glad you have your priorities straight,” I said.

“I wish Vi was better at understanding the animals. Baxter would tell her right away where we went.”

“They’ll find us, don’t worry,” I said as much to Seth as to myself.

The headlamp flickered and went out.

Seth’s disembodied voice said, “Great.”

I took a step in the direction I thought the iPhones were boxed up.

With my hand covered by my sweater, I reached in and grabbed a phone. It took me four tries to find one that still had some power, but I was able to at least find Seth on the floor and sit next to him using the dim light of the iPhone screen.

“I thought we weren’t supposed to touch those,” Seth said.

“I’m only using the one so we can keep checking the time and avoid losing our minds.”

I clicked the phone off and sighed.

Yet again, I had stumbled into trouble and dragged Seth along with me. If his mother had even an inkling of my guardianship track record, she’d have him home immediately. I had had plenty of time to think while we sat in this room. It seemed the more we discovered, the more complicated the mystery became. Clarissa had alienated her family and most of the staff. Several of the knitters had a grudge against her. And now we had a room full of stolen cell phones. Was that connected to Clarissa, or had we stumbled onto a whole different crime? There were too many possibilities and it seemed almost everyone we interviewed had kept something from us.

But, I knew Seth and Vi were right. I did love to solve puzzles. And my work with Neila Whittle had improved my ability to interpret the messages I received. I’d always been good at finding lost items. Maybe Vi’s idea would work. But could I work with Vi?

Seth sighed. Every sound was amplified in the close, dark space.

Seth’s breathing, my stomach, and then, as faint as possible but still audible, I heard what might have been footsteps outside the door.

I clicked the phone back on and looked at Seth. He had heard it, too. We stood up and started pounding on the door again.

We continued to pound even after the door began to swing open.

“I knew it!” said Vi.

She rushed forward to hug Seth, while Mac took me roughly into his arms as if he wasn’t sure whether he was mad or glad to see me. I held on to him tightly and felt the scratchy wool of his snowman sweater against my cheek. At that moment, nothing could have been better.

“How did you get in here?” Mac’s voice was low and gravelly against my hair.

“Did you figure out the murder?” Vi tapped me on the shoulder.

“Did we miss dinner?” Seth said.

I reluctantly pushed away from Mac and we all laughed in relief. I brushed past Mac and Vi to get out of the room and into the no-less-spooky passageway.

Mac stepped farther into the room and shone his light into the boxes of cell phones. He whistled low and long.

“Somebody’s been busy,” he said.

Mac took about twenty pictures with his phone before he would let us leave.