He looked around the apartment. He had to cover the living room, the bedroom, the bathroom, and the kitchen. He’d never searched a room before. He didn’t know how to look. And he didn’t know how resourceful Charlotte was. He hadn’t brought tools or even a flashlight, but he couldn’t see Charlotte lifting furniture or unscrewing a ventilator shaft in order to hide her findings. Not because of her personality, but because of her disability. That might be the best way for him to narrow down the places to look. Charlotte couldn’t go too high or work too hard. Whatever she’d found was hidden somewhere in the middle, if someone else hadn’t gotten to it first.
He was looking through a drawer of bills when he jumped. His phone was vibrating again. It was Mel. She whispered once he picked up.
“Are you there?”
“I’m inside. I haven’t found anything yet.”
“Her daughter and son in law are looking around the community right now. They hadn’t visited. Typical. But I can only make them sign so much paperwork before I go and show them her residence.”
“How much time do I have?”
“Not much.”
“Can you warn me?”
“I’ll try.”
“How should we do it?”
Right after he asked her, he heard the phone click off. They must have come back inside the office. He was on his own for now, and he didn’t know how long he had. The sweat stain on his t-shirt had dried, but now it was turning dark again. He had more rooms to search.
He hurried into the bedroom and turned on the light. Purple covers and purple curtains-the woman liked to match. He found an electric blanket under the bed and a TV on the dresser, nothing else. Then he spotted the drawers and stopped for a moment. When she’d come up to him that first day on the path, had she known that he’d be doing this? Searching through her life? Trying to collect a solution through the things she used to own? He started to feel a little sick. He was thirsty after a long run, without anything to drink.
He opened the first drawer and it slipped off the rollers and fell to the floor. Blouses and folded dresses poured out. He ran through them quickly and felt the different textures rub against his hands, the soft scratch of denim and the cool splash of silk. He only went through enough to make sure that there weren’t any documents hidden inside, then he refolded them and picked the drawer up off the floor. He might be going through her possessions, but he still wanted to maintain the woman’s dignity. And make sure he wasn’t caught.
The second drawer was filled with cotton shirts, the third stacked with pants. The fourth had everything else. He sighed and shuffled through the nightgowns and underwear. Then he found something. An envelope. It was thick and labeled “Private” on the front in neat cursive loops. This could be it. He turned away from the drawer and looked inside.
“Good God!” he shouted out loud.
Abram hadn’t been lying about the tasteful nudes. Charlotte didn’t always need her walker. And Abram never took off his red-brimmed hat.
He left the room and slammed the door. There had been nothing inside, but if there was more, he didn’t want to see it. He said “Good God” another time. Once wasn’t enough. He did a quick look through the bathroom. Just toiletries and her medication. He wanted to write the medication down but he didn’t have his notebook-or time. He did see everything she used to track her doses. All the timers and holders made it clear that she didn’t make mistakes. Mistakes had been made for her.
He had to get through the living room, but he didn’t have a lot of time to do it. He shoved his hands underneath couch cushions but didn’t even find coins. He looked through all the other drawers and behind all the cabinets. Nothing. Where would Charlotte Ward have put the information? He thought for a second. Why didn’t Abram know where she had put it?
He looked to the side wall and saw a series of photographs. Pictures of Charlotte’s husband and family. The one thing that she and Abram probably hadn’t talked about-the one secret. He pulled one down off the wall and looked at the back. Nothing taped there. He looked at the front quickly. He’d been a tall man. Thin. An open smile on his face. Not the way that Jake thought of Abram. Maybe she’d wanted a change. He looked at the man’s face again and hung the picture back on its nail.
He went through them all from right to left. It started with the wedding photos, both people impossible to recognize. Nothing on the back. No documents. Then he went on to the honeymoon photograph. A woman with sun shining on her face, her identity only recognizable in the distance between her eyes, or the way they turned down at the corners. She seemed to be laughing while their picture was being taken; her husband seemed to be practicing putting his hand on her bare shoulder. There was nothing on the back.
They had lived somewhere colder. The next picture showed a child celebrating her first Christmas, with Charlotte’s hands covering her ears. The back was blank. He ran his hand over her face while she was laughing, somewhere in her thirties, holding a sign that he couldn’t read. Her husband was in the background holding another. He could make out the word “election” on the bottom, but the word on top was out of focus. He turned it over. Nothing.
Then he went forward. The daughter graduating from something. High school or college. Then less pictures with her, except for the one of her wedding. She looked like her mother when she wore white. Then the husband getting older. He didn’t bother taking the picture down again. There was one last one of Charlotte, behind the sign for Sunset Cove. She was smiling again, leaning over the sign or her walker, looking just to the right of the camera. He took it down. Nothing.
He’d gone through her life, but he hadn’t gotten what he needed. He needed to know what she’d found, not how she’d lived. He didn’t have time for anything else. Where could he look where Abram hadn’t been? What could he find that Abram hadn’t seen?
Then he heard it. His time was already up. He heard footsteps coming down the hall and people talking. Mel’s voice was the loudest and her voice carried through the thin doors and walls.
“So we’ll just go right inside the apartment. We’re going inside now.”
She was warning him. Did it matter? Maybe there wasn’t anything anyway. Charlotte Ward was just a woman who thought she’d found something. Maybe her work was nothing more than a desperate guess. Whatever it was, it didn’t matter now. He heard a key jiggle in the lock. Now he had to hide. He hadn’t found Charlotte’s information, but that didn’t mean they wouldn’t find him.
CHAPTER 37
“Did you hear that? I heard something.”
A woman’s voice, sounding panicked.
“Did I hear what?” Mel asked.
“A door shutting. I could have sworn I heard a slamming sound. Didn’t you?”
Jake was breathing heavily inside the small coat closet. He kept his hand on the door knob and felt the metal warm underneath his palm. The daughter had a nasal voice. She was either sophisticated or congested. Then he heard the husband’s voice, muffled by the door.
“I didn’t hear anything, Claire.” Thank God. “You imagine things sometimes.”
Jake leaned against a full row of coats. Why had Charlotte brought coats to Florida? It didn’t matter now. All he knew was that it was hot. Some of the coats were wool. He started to feel a tingling in his throat. He covered his mouth and listened.
“It’s really very nice,” the daughter, Claire, said.
“It is.”
“It’s one of our better units,” Mel told her. “And Charlotte, obviously, kept it in very good condition.”
Jake wiped his forehead. He was starting to feel itchy. He breathed in but couldn’t inhale as deeply as he wanted. All the wool. Who knew how much dust there was in an unused coat closet? He scratched his throat with his thumb and a single finger.