“Okay, just one more step,” Sybil said, urging her to put one foot in front of the other.
They were outside Mrs. Fairborn’s back door again and had been there for the last ten minutes. It stood wide open, just waiting to swallow them whole.
“I can do this.”
“Yes, you can,” Sybil agreed.
It was crazy that Sybil was the one encouraging her to break the law.
She gave up. Her feet just wouldn’t move any farther. “Maybe we should try again tomorrow.”
Cruz tilted his head. “And you know about a crime tonight that she will be confessing to tomorrow?”
She bit her bottom lip. Before she could come up with another stall tactic—and her stall tactics were legendary according to her mother—Cruz hopped off the back porch, stalked forward, and threw her over his shoulder.
She squeaked as he carried her inside.
“We’re in,” he said, setting her on her feet, then closing the door.
A warmth spread over her when she realized he’d put his hand on her butt when he set her down.
He stood back but kept his hands on her shoulders until she’d steadied herself. “You good?”
She cleared her throat and nodded. “Yes. I’m good. Thanks.”
He nodded and looked around. “I say we each take a room.”
Mrs. Fairborn’s house hadn’t changed much since the old boardinghouse days. Auri had read all about it. It had seven rooms upstairs and three down, along with a living room, drawing room, whatever that was, dining room, and kitchen back when kitchens were hardly the focal point they were today.
“This is going to take forever,” Sybil said, turning full circle.
Auri walked to a small bedroom off the kitchen. The housekeeper’s quarters, according to the old floor plans she found. The door was locked. She turned to Cruz. “Maybe not.”
He grinned and knelt to pick the lock. “You’ll have to show me how to do that someday.”
“And give up my position on the team? My lockpicking abilities are the only reason you brought me along, so not likely.”
He opened the door and offered a regal bow, gesturing for her to go first.
Auri walked across the threshold and sucked in a soft breath. Entering that room was like stepping back in time. Newspaper clippings, the same ones Auri had been reading, papered one wall. A dresser sat weighted down with old perfume bottles, powder tins, shaving kits, and scented lotions. Dark wood furniture. Baby blue chenille bedspread. Lace doilies. A painted tin pitcher and water bowl. It was all so amazing. So reminiscent of a different era.
Yet everything had been cleaned recently. Not a speck of dust on anything.
“It’s like an antique store in here,” Auri said, her tone full of awe.
“But unless there are some kind of identifying marks on these items,” Cruz said, “we can’t connect them to any of the missing persons.”
Sybil stood in awe, too. “Whatever you do, don’t move a thing. If you pick something up, put it back the way you found it. This stuff is well cared for. Mrs. Fairborn will know if someone’s been in here.”
“Agreed.”
They slowly started picking up items, one-by-one, to see if anything had a name etched into it. After twenty minutes, they found nothing but a fascination of all things old.
“This stuff is incredible.”
“They really liked lavender,” Sybil said, crinkling her nose. “And talcum powder.”
Auri looked over. Cruz was going through the books on a nightstand. Naturally. He was a poet himself and wrote some of the most beautiful poems Auri had ever read.
He opened a book and waved her over. “There’s a name, but I don’t recognize it from the list of missing persons.”
Auri took out her phone and snapped a shot of the name Virginia Bagwell. “I don’t recognize it, either.”
“It may be nothing,” he said, closing the book and repositioning it.
“I’ll look into the victims’ relatives. You never know.”
“I have a question, though,” Sybil said, sniffing yet another bottle of perfume. “Where do you think she buried them?”
Simultaneously, as though the move were choreographed, they all dropped their gazes to the wooden floor beneath their feet.
Panic took hold of Sybil. She looked back at them a microsecond before she tore out of the house. A high-pitched shriek followed in her wake.
“Sybil wait,” Auri said, trying to put a tobacco tin back where she found it.
Cruz took off after her. Finally satisfied, Auri followed, but just as she got to the door of the room, something shiny captured her attention. She skidded to a halt and looked at a handful of necklaces dangling from a hook by a chest of drawers. One necklace in particular, actually. She’d seen a picture of it. An antique cameo made from real ivory set in a heavy brass oval.
She remembered the article about the missing girl who’d worn it because in the interview, the girl was a poor relation of the family searching for her, the one that seemed more worried about the necklace than the girl. It broke Auri’s heart.
She pulled her phone out of her pocket and snapped a shot of the necklace before racing out the back door straight into the welcoming arms of Deputy Poetry Rojas.
15
Man arrested for practicing karate on swans.
The swans won.
—DEL SOL POLICE BLOTTER
Anita texted as they headed out to Tinsley’s Crossing. Other than a couple of reported sightings that never led anywhere, Santa Fe PD had no movement on the Elliot Kent case. Sun wondered if anyone even looked into the sightings. They certainly never told her about them since she’d become sheriff, and she had been lead detective.
She also got a text from her blind date from hell, which she ignored. Because that would make the problem go away. And a text from her former partner-in-crime and the queen of bad decision making, Nancy Danforth, asking her if she would be in town soon and suggesting they get a drink. Getting a drink with Nancy was never a good idea, yet Sun fairly drooled at the thought. She missed her. Simple as that.
Though no one could take Quincy’s place in Sun’s heart, Nancy came in at a close second. She’d been her only true girlfriend in the city and fun didn’t begin to cover Nancy’s list of admirable traits. Sadly, moderation was not one of them.
She texted her back. Let’s make a date, but you have to promise you won’t lose your underwear again. Or hire male strippers.
Her phone dinged almost instantly. LMAO. Deal.
Since the cab of Levi’s truck was filled with a dark and impenetrable silence—he was sulking—Sun decided to stop glancing at his magnificent profile every few seconds and do some research on their stabbing victim. She didn’t know how long she’d have enough of a signal to get internet.
There wasn’t much on the elusive Mr. Seabright. Levi had been right. The guy was a ghost. Other than the fact that there were apparently a dozen Keith Seabrights in the state, after sifting through those, she managed to find a few mentions on various military enthusiast sites.
The only two pictures she found of him were grainy and could have been shots of her great-aunt Sally for all Sun knew. Then a post popped up on Facebook. A pregnant woman in El Paso, Texas, claimed an assailant in a ski mask had hijacked her car with her two-year-old son inside. He held a gun on her and had ordered her to drive out of the city.