Seth shook his head. “It’s kind of strange—she’s just showing me pictures of things. Yarn, a room with yellow walls and flowers . . . tile with a pool of blood.” Seth looked at me.

“It sounds like the turret room—have you been up there?”

He didn’t answer right away. “No. Is it really bright during the daytime? She’s showing me a big patch of sunlight.”

“The windows face east and there are a lot of them, so it probably is bright.”

“She likes that room, but she’s afraid of it now.”

“Seth, did she see who killed Clarissa?”

Seth’s big brown eyes took on a faraway look. “She might have, but I’m not sure she realizes it. She keeps showing me yarn, balls of yarn in a basket, and a hand putting food down for her.”

He stroked the cat some more.

“I don’t know what it means,” he said.

I didn’t know what it meant, either. Maybe nothing. Maybe Duchess thought about yarn the way Tuffy thought about food—all the time.

Duchess continued to purr with her eyes closed. I continued to not see the key in my mind’s eye.

“Are you hungry?” I asked after a few minutes of listening to the purring.

His eyes lit up. He shifted position. Duchess hopped off his lap and stretched her back legs before jumping onto the windowsill. She sat looking out the window, tail twitching slowly.

“I did find this,” Seth said and held out his hand, palm up.

A small silver key glinted in his hand.

“Where did you find it?” I took it from him and looked for numbers or markings on it. It had to be the key to the lockbox.

“It was taped to the inside of her collar,” he said. “It was bugging her because it kept pulling her hair.”

I glanced at the cat. She kept her gold eyes trained on me while her tail slowly swept back and forth.

I wondered who else knew that she had the key the whole time. And knew what it was for. I tucked it into my pocket.

“Let’s go see if this key works,” I said.

“What about lunch?”

I grinned at him. “Soon.” I slung an arm over his shoulder and we headed upstairs.

37

We entered my room and I was relieved to see that Vi was absent and Seth wasn’t going to have to divert her and drag her down the hall. I hadn’t seen her since our encounter in the turret room and I didn’t want her rummaging in the lockbox. I asked Seth to guard the door and warn me if anyone approached the room.

I took the box down from the shelf by carefully covering it with a T-shirt to protect any fingerprints that might be on it. I doubted it would ever be necessary and recognized that much of our evidence had been tainted at this point. But, just in case.

I set the box on the coffee table, and Seth watched as I inserted the key in the lock. It turned easily and the lid popped up about half an inch. I opened the lid and peered inside. It was filled with cash. Most of it was twenties but there was one thick stack of hundreds. She probably had ten thousand dollars stashed in the box. I took the money out and stacked it next to the box.

“Wow,” Seth said from the doorway. He was alternately watching me and peering through the peephole.

A handwritten list of furnishings, statues, paintings, and art sat underneath the money. In the next column were numbers that I assumed were prices or estimates of value. I recognized some of the items as artwork and furniture from the lounge. I glanced at Seth.

“She was keeping track of how much the antiques were worth,” I said. “I wonder if this money is from previous sales, or the cell phones, or blackmail.”

“Blackmail?” Seth asked.

“She liked to collect secrets,” I said.

“It looks like she liked to collect money,” Seth said.

“I wonder if she was selling off some of the antiques in the castle?”

I flipped the pages to see if there was a list of “sold” items. There wasn’t. Just more numbers and items. I wondered if Jessica and Linda knew that Clarissa had assessed the entire contents of the castle.

“Someone’s coming,” Seth whispered.

I quickly repacked the box and I set it up on the shelf. I went to the door and listened with Seth. Mavis was talking to someone—probably Selma—and she stopped at her room and unlocked the door.

I went to the closet and pushed the box to the back where it had been.

Something was bothering me about the list and the money but I couldn’t quite pin it down. The back of my neck prickled and I struggled to make the connection.

“I think people are going down to lunch,” Seth said. He stood with his ear to the door.

“Yeah, let’s go,” I said. I pushed the key down into my jeans pocket and followed Seth into the hallway and downstairs.

The dining room was in disarray when we arrived. René’s hat was askew and he had a wild look in his eyes. He and Wally hastily set the warming pans on the buffet table. They had put out sandwich makings again, a crock of soup, and a large bowl of salad.

Wally brought pitchers of water, and had set up cans of soda on the drinks table.

“What’s up with the chef?” Seth muttered to me.

I shrugged and watched as they continued to set up. I glanced at my watch—it was a little after noon. Maybe René got thrown by being a few minutes late? I would be surprised if a couple of minutes made him so anxious. Especially with this group.

I approached him and put a hand on his shoulder.

“Can I help with anything?”

He spun to look at me and I stepped back. He shook his head no.

“I think we have it under control now,” he said. “I was meeting with Jessica about the plan for next week if we can’t get our deliveries. I thought Emmett would set up the buffet, but he’s disappeared.” René held his hands out.

“What do you mean disappeared?” Mac said from behind me.

“He’s not in the kitchen, or downstairs, or anywhere else he should be,” René said. “I haven’t seen him since breakfast cleanup.”

“Oh, no,” Mac said. He grabbed my arm and pulled me out into the hall. “I heard a snowmobile a few minutes ago. I thought it was Kirk and his snowblower, but now I’m worried Emmett may have run away.”

I started to ask why Emmett would run away, but Mac held up his hand.

“Kirk told me about his investigation.” Mac leaned forward and dropped his voice. “He thinks Emmett is our cell phone smuggler. I need to go find Kirk and we might have to go after Emmett.”

“I’ll keep working on the other situation here.” I didn’t have time to tell him about finding the key and the money in the box before he strode off into the back hall.

As I walked back to the dining room, I wondered again where Vi had gone. If she’d been here, she probably would have tried to tag along on the snowmobiles to keep an eye on her number-one suspect, Kirk. I could hardly wait to tell her she’d been tracking an undercover cop.

Seth was chatting with Lucille and already halfway through his lunch when I entered the dining room. Mom and Dad sat with them. I saw that Wally now manned the buffet table and René had left the dining room. I served up a small bowl of soup and sat with my group.

Lucille complimented Mom on her tarot reading. Mom blushed and waved her comments away.

“Has anyone seen Vi?” I asked.

They shook their heads. “Not recently,” Mom said. “She was in the lounge when I started the tarot readings, but she left toward the beginning and I haven’t seen her since. Is something wrong?”

“No, I just . . . wondered.”

“It’s not like her to miss lunch,” Lucille said. “I hope she isn’t feeling unwell.”

“She’s not in her room—we were just up there,” Seth said.

“Oh?” Mom said, and turned toward me.

I squeezed Mom’s hand. “I’ll look for her after lunch.”