Angelina Bonaparte Mysteries Box Set Nanci Rathbun (i love reading books txt) 📖

sat a glass votive candleholder and matches. It called to mind Aunt Terry’s prayer space, with its kneeler, crucifix, rosary and Thomas Merton’s Book of Hours. I resisted the urge to cross myself.

Back in the hallway, I heard a clunk and crouched, gun at the ready, scanning with my eyes. Then I felt the heat and heard the sough of air. The furnace had kicked in. I took a breath and waited for my heart to slow back down, before walking through all the rooms again to reassure myself that I was, indeed, still alone.

The hallway ended at a landing, with steps leading down to the basement and up to the attic. I decided to start downstairs. The basement held a washer and dryer, a wooden drying rack, furnace and water heater, and a worktable, on which sat a few hand tools. There were plastic containers in one corner, neatly labeled. Christmas ornaments, Christmas tree, Adriana—grade school, Adriana—high school. I went through the contents. They contained what the labels stated. Time to go up.

The attic was nicely warmed by the sun on its two dormer windows, one facing east and the other, west. The floor was solid, not just floorboards and insulation. I set the gun down and opened an old trunk. It held a mid-century wedding dress carefully folded in linen sheets and smelling of lavender. Did Yvonne save it for Adriana? I wondered. A wheeled clothes rack with a heavy plastic protective cover stood next to the trunk. Inside were two men’s military uniforms, one camouflage fatigues with combat boots and the other, a dress uniform and shoes. With my phone, I took pictures of each and zipped the cover back up.

I used my height to estimate the size of a heavy-duty storage container that stood beside the rack. It was about five feet high by four feet wide and three feet deep, with a sturdy lock securing the front-opening doors. None of Adriana’s keys worked. Perhaps it was on one of her parents’ key rings, now in a police evidence locker. But maybe not.

Where would they hide a key to an attic storage unit? Given human nature, they would probably keep it close by. I scoured the attic again, this time lifting the wedding gown from the trunk and shaking it, then examining the trunk itself for a false bottom. I patted down the uniforms. Lastly, I turned the footwear upside down and shook. A smooth river rock, as large as my hand, fell out of one of the boots.

I’d seen such “rocks” in catalogs, touted as outdoor hiding places for a key. I found the seam and twisted the rock apart. Once the face was off, a digital lock guarded the hiding space inside. When I entered the alarm code, the mechanism opened—a reminder that using the same password or passcode is a bad habit. A key lay within the inner compartment. Rising from my squatting position, I tried the key in the storage unit lock. Yes! It opened.

Inside the unit were three homemade shelves on a homemade frame, each holding a flat box, and a stash of supplies on the bottom—boxes, paper, plastic sheet protectors, pens, tape and even cotton gloves, labeled “Archival, pH Neutral, Acid Free.” I donned a pair of the cotton gloves and eased the box on the top shelf open.

Gold winked at me from a bed of cotton batting, upon which lay bracelets, necklaces and circlets with dangling coins. The style was heavy and ornate, with many curlicues and small drops of gold. Definitely not modern or Western. More Middle Eastern than anything else I was familiar with. I snapped some photos with my phone, replaced the cover and set the box on the floor.

The box on the second shelf held books, none in English. They seemed quite old. I gently opened the largest and gasped at the beautiful frontispiece, a hand-colored page of stylized patterns with what might have been Arabic or Hebrew letters. I took another photo.

The bottom box contained fabric within layers of paper. I took the top item out and let it shimmer open. It was a lovely deep red silk dress, floor length and embroidered in gold thread. I draped it over the garment rack so that I could get a good picture. There were five similar pieces in the box, with little matching pillbox-style hats and soft shoes.

I replaced everything, stripped off the gloves and put them in my pants pocket, and closed and carefully locked the storage unit. The key went on my personal key ring. As Poe demonstrated in The Purloined Letter, it’s best sometimes to hide things in plain sight.

Downstairs, I replaced my gun, flashlight and cell phone in my briefcase. Then I put on my hat and coat, shoved the latex gloves into my coat pocket, reactivated the alarm and stepped outside, where I locked up and dropped Adriana’s key ring into my briefcase.

My watch told me that it was eleven-ten. I was in the house for a little under two hours. Standing on the walkway that led to the street, I now saw signs of activity in the neighborhood—a boy riding a bicycle with training wheels, a man raking leaves. But the front house was still dark and lifeless. I made a mental note to find out who owned the properties and who lived in the front house, as I fired up the Miata and drove to Mickey D’s for coffee.

While I waited in the drive-thru line, I called Bart. “I need to show you some pictures. From our client’s house.”

“I can meet you at my office in thirty minutes,” he said.

“I’m at McDonalds. Can I bring you a coffee?”

“Sure. Large, with three creams and six sugars.”

I shuddered, but it did no more good to talk to Bart about his weight than about his smoking.

It took about an hour to brief Bart on what I learned at the house. When I showed him the pictures of the uniforms and the