"No. We both knew where our wills were. My sister knows, too. He must have put something else there for me. Something I don't know about." Barb leapt to her feet, full of new purpose. "Come on!"
Nat rose, and Barb was already in motion, leaving the kitchen.
"I have to warn you," she said, over her shoulder. "There's a video we made there, too. Nothing hardcore, just dumb stuff, for us. We put it there so the kids wouldn't find it." She giggled, then her smile faded. They hustled through the living room to a door. "That can't be what he meant, can it? Why would anybody want to find that?"
Nat lingered at the threshold while Barb opened the door, flicked on a panel of fluorescent lights, and hurried to a corner of the garage and rolled aside a green Rubbermaid trash can on wheels. She bent over and moved a box of old rags aside to reveal a large door in the floor, which had apparently been installed when the concrete had been poured.
Nat held her breath as Barb moved the heavy lid aside.
Chapter 23
The two women stood over a square hole almost as big as a safe. The hole stood empty, and its contents sat stacked on the concrete floor-a videotape labeled, Barb and Ron's Excellent Adventure, two life insurance policies, a joint last will and testament in a blue backer, and four old copies of Playboy.
It's under the floor? Nat couldn't explain it.
Barb looked over at her in confusion. "There's nothing under the floor. What's going on?"
"I have no idea."
"Maybe there's something in the magazines?" Nat picked up the magazines and thumbed through them, like a flip book of flesh tones. Subscription cards blew out and fluttered to the floor. She picked them up, examined them for good measure, then stuck them back in one of the magazines. "Nothing."
Barb moaned, covering her face with her hands. "Ron, what do you mean?"
Nat went over and touched her back, spiny in the thin knit. Is there another floor hiding place?"
"Not that I know of."
"I'm so sorry. I don't know what he meant."
"Neither do I." Barb lifted her face, now tinged with red. "That's a great message, lemme tell you."
"I'm so sorry. Maybe I misunderstood." Nat flashed on Saunders dying. "What else could he have said? 'It's under the door?' Do you have a door we could look under?"
"No."
"Core? Shore? Boor? Sore? Tour? Fore? More? Lore? Any of that make sense to you?"
"No. Thanks a whole helluva lot, Ron!" Barb said, her mood darkening. She gritted her teeth. "Great message, hon! Nor that you love me! Not that you love our kids!" She picked up a Playboy and threw it at the wall, knocking into one of the levels hanging there. "Just look under the floor. For your friggin' porn!"
"Maybe it's here but we're just not seeing it."
"Like where?" Barb whirled around on her sneakers.
"Anywhere." Nat surveyed the room, looking for a clue. It was a garage used for a workshop and storage area. Hammers and saws hung neatly on a brown pegboard on one wall, next to a tall metal toolbox on wheels, stacks of tiny plastic drawers, and a Craftsman workbench. Kids' toys and bikes, balls and Wiffle bats, and a plastic Little Tykes three-wheeler sat stowed in boxes toward the front of the room, against the metal garage door, the kind that slid up. The rain thundered outside, the room uninsulated from noise and cold.
Barb eyed the place, her hands resting on her hips. "I suppose I could look some more. He was so handy. He could have hidden something here. Or even in the house."
"I'll help you. We could search pretty thoroughly, together. Let's start here, then if we don't find anything, we'll look in the house, under some rugs, okay?"
"Okay." Barb sighed, pushing up the knit sleeves of her sweater. "We've got three hours before the boys get home."
"Then let's get busy."
It wasn't until ten o'clock that Nat hit the road, driving home through the dark countryside in a continuous downpour. Hard rain pounded the car's roof, and the wipers worked frantically to clear the windshield. There were only a few other cars on the road, but she drove cautiously in the storm, too nervous to call Angus or Hank. She wanted to be alone with her thoughts anyway, which tumbled over themselves in confusion.
She and Barb had searched everywhere, but they hadn't found anything under the floor, much less money from drug sales or otherwise. Maybe the burglars had taken whatever they were looking for, or whatever it was was never there in the first place. Maybe Nat had misunderstood Saunders, or he had been delirious, in extremis. Either way, she felt terrible for delivering a message that made no sense, and for linking the message to a burglary that may have been just a burglary. She had been playing sleuth and failing miserably. She was a lousy Nancy Drew.
Rain fell so hard that the wipers couldn't keep up. The headlights fought the mist rising from the melting snow and were losing the battle. Ice and slush pooled along the side of the winding road, spraying from the Volvos tires. She accelerated only gently and passed a homemade orange sign that read, caution-horse and wife crossing. Somehow it made her think of Angus.
Natalie, listen.
Suddenly light flooded the Volvo, from headlights blasting behind her, and she felt a reflexive tremor from the accident last night. She'd been too preoccupied to check for black pickups. She looked in the rearview. It wasn't a pickup behind" her, but a state police cruiser. Flashing lights on its roof flickered red, white, and blue in the storm. She checked her speedometer. Forty-five miles an hour. What had the last sign said? Thirty-five?
Damn. She'd been speeding. The cruiser flashed its headlights, illuminating the interior of the Volvo, and she pulled over, cut the ignition, and braked. She went into her purse and retrieved her wallet while the familiar wide-brimmed silhouette appeared at her door. She wondered if it would be Milroy or another trooper she knew. She lowered the window, blinking against the rain spraying inside, but she didn't recognize him. She couldn't see much of his features, only his profile, visible in the headlights from the cruiser. Droplets dotted his steel-rimmed glasses, and a plastic cover, like a shower cap, protected his hat.
"You're going too fast for these conditions, Miss," the trooper said, his voice almost drowned out by the rain. "License and registration, please."
"Sorry," Nat said, hoping for a warning. She handed her ID and registration through the open part of the window, and the trooper stuck them on his little clipboard, where they could get soaked.
"Please wait here." The trooper went back to the cruiser, and Nat slid the window up, fighting a free-floating anxiety. What if he wasn't a real trooper? She'd seen reports like that in the news. She hadn't asked him for ID. She twisted around in the seat, shielding her eyes from the high beams. The multicolored lights on his roof were still flashing. It was a real state police car.
Stay outta Chester County.
Nat felt a tingle of paranoia. No one knew she was here. She rooted in her bag for her cell phone to call Hank. She pressed his speed dial, but he didn't pick up, and she didn't leave a message. She went to Plan B, holding the phone up to the light to see the numbers for information, then asked for the hospital's phone number. The call connected after a minute, and the hospital operator picked up.
"Angus Holt, please," Nat said, just as the trooper reappeared at her window, with his clipboard and a long white ticket book. She flipped the phone closed and put it back in her purse, then lowered the window.
"Please step outside the car, Ms. Greco."
"In the rain?"
"Step outside, please."
Nat felt oddly nervous. She reached for her purse and fumbled for her cell phone, but it must have slipped to the bottom of her purse. She groped for it but couldn't find it in the dark.
"Ms. Greco? Now."
Calm down. Nat opened the door and got out in the storm, and the trooper stepped aside and faced her. She still had her coat on but cold rain poured onto her head. She tensed her shoulders so it wouldn't run down her neck and covered her head with her hands.