“This stuff has got to be worth a mint,” Orlando said. “Look at this.” She was in front of a vertical stack of posters individually wrapped in plastic sleeves and backed by cardboard. “I think this is an original, first-release Star Wars.”
“I don’t think that’s what we’re looking for,” Quinn said.
“I know, but…what’s going to happen to all this?”
“No idea.”
“Down here!” Abraham called from somewhere outside the room.
They stepped back into the hall.
“Where are you?” Quinn asked.
“Master!”
They found him standing next to one of the nightstands, the drawer open.
“What is it?” Orlando asked.
He held up a stack of letters and then flipped through them so Quinn and Orlando could see that while the envelopes looked similar, each was addressed to someone different.
“One’s for me,” Abraham said.
He pulled out his and set the others on the bed.
A first-class stamp in the right corner, and in the return-address area a single word: BECKER. No number or street or city.
“Open it,” Orlando said.
Abraham turned it over and worked the sealed flap free. He pulled out the folded piece of paper inside and opened it up so they could all three read it.
Abraham,
Your friendship has always meant a lot to me. A man in your position needn’t have given me the time of day and yet you did. Life hasn’t always been easy for me. People are always the hardest for me to understand. I never had that problem with you, though. You made it so that I didn’t have to try to understand you, that our friendship just was. I can’t tell you how much I appreciated that.
My biggest regret is that I was unable to help you find your answers before I died.
Be well, Abraham. I wish I could still be there to answer your calls.
Eli
“I don’t get it,” Quinn said. “Did he know he was going to die?”
“I don’t know,” Abraham said, confused.
“I don’t think so,” Orlando said as she gently took the letter from her mentor and looked it over. She then picked up several of the envelopes and examined them. “I think these have been waiting here for a while. Just in case.”
“Just in case he suddenly died?” Abraham said.
“Look, you’ve as much said it yourself. He was a bit odd. Maybe he thought because of his work, there was always the possibility he might not be around that long.”
Abraham thought for a moment, then said, “Maybe, but who knows?”
“I do,” she said. “Look at these envelopes.” She held out the ones she’d been examining. “The edges are darker than the fronts and backs.” She set them down and grabbed one of the others. “Except for the front of this one. It was the one at the front of the stack. It’s darker, too.” She rubbed her finger across it. “See? Dust. These have been here a while.”
Abraham took the envelope and held it up for a closer look.
“Then there’s this.” She picked up the opened letter again and read, “‘My biggest regret is that I was unable to help you find your answers before I died.’” She lowered it again. “He did find answers. That’s why he wanted to meet you.”
Abraham still looked confused, so Quinn put a hand on his shoulder and said, “Find anything else?”
“Uh, no. Not yet.” Abraham dropped the envelope he was holding on the nightstand. “I don’t even know if there’s anything here that’s going to help us.”
“No sign of a computer?” Orlando asked.
“No,” Abraham said.
That was the top item on their search list. Eli must’ve had one, and if any of the information he intended to give Abraham was on it, Orlando should be able to dig it out.
“We need to keep looking,” Quinn said. “We don’t want to be here when the neighbor gets back.”
While Orlando helped Abraham search through the main part of the bedroom, Quinn checked out the walk-in closet. On one side was a large collection of T-shirts that spoke to Eli’s passion for sci-fi, while on the other were the utilitarian suits and shirts and ties Quinn guessed he wore to his job. The shoes were also subdivided — five pairs of nice leather dress shoes in varying degrees of brown under the suits, and three pairs of broken-in sneakers under the T-shirts. Quinn ran his hands through all the clothes, feeling for anything unusual. He came across a comb and some change but nothing useful. He also checked behind the clothes along the wall for hidden compartments. If something was there, he didn’t find it.
Above the clothes racks, running around the entire room, was a two-foot-wide shelf holding boxes and stacks of sweaters and a few other odds and ends. One by one, Quinn checked through the boxes. Most contained the junk people accumulate over the years — magazines and photographs and Christmas cards and the like.
It wasn’t until he moved a pile of thick sweaters that he came across something unusual. It happened when the bottom sweater caught on something, causing the ones on top of it to tumble onto Quinn.
He gathered the sweaters and placed them on the ground, out of the way. He then tried to free the remaining sweater from whatever it had snagged on. The shelf was too high for him to see over the top, so he moved his hand under the sweater and felt around. The yarn had hooked onto what he thought at first was a small knot of wood. But as he tried to free it, the knot clicked down.
He froze and listened, expecting to hear the sound of a latch releasing or a drawer opening, but there was nothing. Maybe the knot was just a knot. He pulled down one of the boxes stuffed full of papers and used it as a stepping stool so he could see for himself.
While it did look a bit like a knot, it most definitely wasn’t. He pressed it again and the button popped back up. Still no responding sound, though.
“Anything happening out there?” he called toward the door.
Orlando stuck her head inside the closet. “What?”
“I found a button and pushed it a couple times, but nothing’s happened in here. Thought perhaps it controlled something out there.”
“Do it again,” she said, and ducked back into the bedroom.
Quinn depressed the button. “Anything?”
For a few moments there was nothing, then she called, “In the bathroom.”
When he entered, he found her kneeling near the toilet and Abraham standing a few feet behind her. In front of them, two of the large tiles that went up the side of the wall were now sticking out at an angle, creating an open wedge at the top. Visible behind the tiles was a metal door with a keypad and digital read.
Orlando looked at Quinn. “You are a genius.”
“Hey, you can’t say things like that unless I have a recorder on. But yes, I am a genius.”
“You’d be more of a genius if you could get that safe open,” Abraham said.
“That’s my job,” Orlando told him.
She moved the tiles until they were completely out of the way, and then pulled out the same device she’d used on the alarm. After she’d navigated through several menus on the touch screen, she placed the box against the keypad and touched the screen one more time. Suddenly numbers began blinking on an off.
After approximately ten seconds, the number 6 appeared and stayed there. A beat later, the same number showed up on the safe’s digital display. Next up was 1, and then 0, and 2, and finally 7. The display on the safe blinked on and off three times before they heard a loud clunk.
Orlando removed the box, slipped her fingers into the divot that served as the handle for the safe’s door, and pulled.