Page 170 of Homeport

He saw no lights under any of the three doors of the suite, heard no murmur of voices or television from inside.

He was inside the parlor himself in just under two minutes. He stood still, in the dark, listening, judging, letting his eyes adjust. As a precaution, he unlocked the terrace doors, giving himself an alternate route of escape should it become necessary.

Then he got to work. He searched the parlor first, though he doubted either woman would have left anything vital or incriminating in that area.

In the first bedroom he was forced to use the penlight, keeping it away from the bed, where he could hear the soft, steady sound of a woman breathing. He took a briefcase and a purse back into the parlor with him to search.

It was Elizabeth in the bed, he noted as he flipped through the wallet. He took everything out, going through every receipt, every scrap of paper, reading the notations in her datebook. He found a key just where her daughter kept hers—inside zipper pocket. A safe-deposit box key, he noted, and pocketed it.

He checked her passport, noting the stamps coincided with the dates his cousin had given him. It was Elizabeth’s first trip back to the States in more than a year, but she’d taken two quick trips into France in the last six months.

He put everything but the key back where he’d found it, repeated the same process on her luggage; then while she slept he searched her closet, the dresser, the cosmetic case in the bathroom.

It took him an hour before he was satisfied and moved on to the second bedroom.

He knew Andrew’s ex-wife very well by the time he was done. She liked silk underwear and Opium perfume. Though her clothes were on the conservative side, she favored the top designers. Expensive taste required money to indulge it. He made a note to check her income.

She’d brought work with her if the laptop on her desk was any indication. Which made her, in his mind, either dedicated or obsessive. The contents of her purse and briefcase were orderly, with no stray wrappers or scraps of papers. The small leather jewelry case he found contained a few good pieces of Italian gold, some well-chosen colored stones, and an antique silver locket containing a picture of a man facing a picture of a woman. They were faded black-and-white, and from the style he judged them to have been taken around World War II.

Her grandparents, he imagined, and decided Elise had a quietly sentimental streak.

He left the two women sleeping and moved down the hallway to Richard Hawthorne’s room. He too was fast asleep.

It took Ryan ten minutes to find the receipt for a storage facility in Florence—which he pocketed.

It took him thirteen to find the .38. That, he left alone.

In twenty, he’d located the small notebook hidden inside a black dress sock. Scanning the cramped handwriting with his light, Ryan read quickly and at random. His lips tightened on a grim smile.

He tucked the notebook in his pocket and let Richard sleep. He was, Ryan thought as he slipped out, in for a rude awakening.

“Excuse me, did you just say you broke into my mother’s bedroom last night?”

“Nothing was broken,” Ryan assured her. He felt as though he’d been chasing after Miranda for hours, trying to steal a half hour alone with her.

“Her bedroom?”

“I went in through the parlor, if it makes you feel any better. There was hardly any point in getting them all here, in one spot, if I wasn’t going to do something once they were. I got a safe-deposit key out of her purse. I found it odd she’d have one with her on a trip like this. But it’s an American bank. A Maine bank—with a branch in Jones Point.”

Miranda sat behind her desk, the first time she’d been off her feet since six that morning. It was now noon, and Ryan had finally buttonholed her during her meeting with the florist and given her the choice of walking to her office or being carried there.

“I don’t understand, Ryan. Why would a key to a bank box be important?”

“People generally keep things there that are important or valuable to them—and that they don’t want other people to get their hands on. In any case, I’ll check it out.”

He waited until Miranda opened her mouth, shut it again without saying a word. “I didn’t find anything in Elise’s room except for her laptop. Seemed strange to cart it all this way for a four-day trip when she’d be spending most of her time here. If I have time I’ll go back in and see if I can open it up while she’s out of the room.”

“Oh, that would be best,” she said with a breezy wave of her hand.

“Exactly. I found enough jewelry to break the back of an elephant in the Morelli suite. That woman has a serious glitter addiction—and if I can access Vincente’s bank account, we’ll see just how deep in debt he’s gone to pay for it. Now your father—”

“My father? He didn’t even get in until after midnight.”

“You’re telling me. I nearly bumped into him in the hall on my way out of your mother’s suite. Handy of the hotel to put everyone on the same floor.”

“We had the rooms blocked that way,” she murmured.

“In any case, doing the other rooms first gave him time to settle in. He was out like a light. Did you know your father’s been to the Cayman Islands three times in the last year?”

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