Returning to the subject that had brought her to the office, the housekeeper said, "I'll keep an eye on Ellie, Ms. Boyd. You don't have to worry about that."
"Fine." Stephanie wasn't about to remind Mrs. Kincaid that watching the girl was her own idea.
Apparently satisfied, the housekeeper left the office, closing the door softly behind her.
Stephanie sighed, then drained her coffee and got to her feet, deciding to return to the stables and see if the search of the tack room had turned up anything.
She had a feeling it had.
A very bad feeling.
Nate flatly refused to allow anyone to go down that ladder until the backup he called for arrived.
"There's no way in hell," he told Quentin, "that you're going down there without me. Which means neither of us is going down there until I get someone here to watch our backs."
Diana was reasonably sure that Quentin wasn't happy about the delay, even though he agreed readily. She was very sure of her own emotions on the subject.
She did not want to go down there.
Not that either of the two cops had said or implied that she would, but she knew. She knew that she was meant to see whatever was down there, just as Quentin was. That she had to go down that ladder and into the darkness.
Shivering, she dug her hands deeper into the pockets of her jacket. Why was she still cold?
Nate checked his watch, then said, "Look, it'll take a good half hour or more to get some of my people out here and get set up. You two go get some breakfast. I'll wait here."
"You haven't eaten either," Quentin said.
"Yeah, well. Send somebody down with a gallon of coffee and an egg sandwich, and I'll be fine."
From the tack room door, Stephanie Boyd said, "I can take care of that." Her gaze was on the uncovered and open trap door, and she added incredulously, "You found something?"
Quentin took Diana's arm and guided her past the other woman as Stephanie stepped into the tack room. "We found something, all right. Nate, if you even think of going down that ladder without me—"
"I won't, I won't. Go eat breakfast."
"There's a ladder?" Stephanie was even more incredulous.
Diana couldn't help smiling wryly as she and Quentin moved out of the tack room and out of earshot. "Why do I think she's going to want to go down that ladder too?"
Quentin must have heard something in her voice, because his question was immediate. "Don't you?"
"Not really."
"Why not? Something you sense?"
Diana took a breath and let it out slowly, shifting just a bit as they walked to remove her arm from his light grasp. "It's a black hole in the ground, Quentin. Doesn't seem very inviting. My usual five senses are telling me that much."
He didn't bother to remind her that she was responsible for the fact that they even knew about that black hole. Instead, he said, "You don't have to tell me you'd have been far happier if we hadn't found anything at all in there."
That surprised her, and she shot him a quick look.
"So you could tell yourself once again that you were just imagining things," he explained.
Diana couldn't think of anything to say in defense of her defensiveness, so she changed the subject. "What can an old hole in the ground possibly have to do with murdered children?"
"I have no idea," he admitted.
"If you've been investigating this place for years, how did you miss it?"
"I haven't been investigating this place — unfortunately," Quentin said. "At least, not on site, and not farther back than the last twenty-five years. I have a feeling what we found is a hell of a lot older than that."
"The trap door? Or the hole itself?"
"Both, I'd say. That barn's been there a hundred years, or close to it; it was one of the original structures here. I know that much from the postcards they sell in the gift shop, the ones showing this place around 1902, just after it was first built."
"You think the hole must have been... excavated... before the barn was built?"
"Probably. It would have been hell to dig the thing from inside that tack room. You saw the ground; unless that was a natural opening, somebody had to bore or blast through solid granite at least partway down. It could have been an old well at one time; the size is about right. Maybe it went dry, or the water was bad and it couldn't be used anymore."
"What about the ladder?"
"I've never seen one in a well, even an old one. Looks to me like that hole's been used in some other way."
"Which means we'll find more than water at the bottom."
"More than possible."
Diana shook her head. "The hinges didn't squeak. Did you notice that?"
"Yeah. Old iron hinges with no rust and no squeaks. Which means that somebody's taken care of that trap door."
"It was hidden."
"But in such a way that the saddle racks could be moved aside with very little effort."
"Why?" Diana demanded, hearing the strain increasing in her voice.
"We can't even guess about that, not until we see what's down there."
"And none of you — as kids — found the trap?" She glanced at him in time to see a quick frown.
"Not that I remember," he said.
Diana was silent for a few moments as they continued up the path from the stables to the main building of The Lodge. It was still very early, but the usual dawn risers were up and stirring: gardeners and maintenance people, somebody splashing in the pool, someone practicing their serve on the tennis courts. A morning jogger passed them with an absent nod, his eyes already fixed on the looming mountains whose winding trails challenged hikers and joggers.
For most of the guests, it was just another morning, punctuated as usual with habit and ritual.
Diana wondered what it felt like, that normalcy.
When they stepped up onto the veranda, they pretty much had their pick of tables for breakfast. Only two were occupied, one by a young couple and the other by the little girl Diana recognized from — was it only yesterday morning?
It felt like weeks since she had stood with Quentin in the observation tower and looked down on the little girl and her dog on the lawn below.
Now, the dog was lying across the little girl's lap, and she sent Diana a shy, fleeting smile before continuing to gently stroke her sleeping pet.
"She's up early," Diana murmured.
"Again," Quentin agreed. He indicated a table near the one they had occupied the day before, and as they sat down added, "So far, I've only seen her and one other kid, a little boy. A few teenagers coming and going. As I said, this place doesn't really cater to families."
A waitress approached them with a bright "Good morning" and the coffeepot, effectively ending the discussion for the time being. They accepted coffee and ordered breakfast, neither needing to see a menu.
Diana wrapped her hands around the hot cup, again conscious of a chill she found difficult to understand. The sun was warm on the veranda, on their table. The air was warm and smelled fragrantly of flowers mixed with the sharper scent of bacon cooking.
It had been more than two hours since she'd come out of the gray time. So why was she still cold?
"Diana?"
She met his gaze reluctantly.
"What's bothering you?"
She heard a little laugh escape her.
Quentin smiled. "Okay, dumb question."
Before he could ask a more reasonable variation of it, Diana changed the subject. "You said that you didn't remember if any of you found the trap door that summer."
"That's right."
"I guess... I assumed your memories of the summer would be vivid. That you would have remembered everything because of how traumatic Missy's murder was."
Quentin looked down at his coffee, that slight frown returning. "An understandable assumption. And I don't know why it isn't so. Some things stand out, of course, as clear as snapshots in my mind. Other things..." He shook his head. "There are gaps I can't really explain. A fuzziness to some of my memories."