A long pause.
“I look forward to hearing your thoughts on this topic over the next few days,” Dr. Quinn finally said. “And maybe we’ll incorporate some Tudor history into your program.”
“Definitely,” Stevie said with a nod. Her lips were dry, and her smile was flat.
“Do you think she actually believed that?” David asked when the call ended.
“I think she’s not sure. Probably not. But I’m not doing anything wrong by sitting around with some history papers, so she can’t say anything.”
Dr. Quinn was gone, and the moment passed. Stevie was just a weirdo sitting in a pile of someone else’s old homework.
“Does this tell you anything?”
Izzy had a hopeful look, like she had expected Stevie to have found her aunt inside one of the boxes.
It didn’t. None of it did. What the hell else was there? Just piles of history, dirty dishes, a hungry cat. What did detectives do now?
The partner. Of course.
“Who else is in her life?” Stevie asked. “Was she seeing anyone?”
“She has an ex-husband. His name is Marvin. He’s fine. He’s a journalist. He lives in Hong Kong. They haven’t seen each other in years—not one of those angry things. They just broke up because he was always traveling the world for the BBC and she was here.”
“Anyone else?”
Izzy shook her head.
“What about your family? Angela is your mom’s sister?”
“Oh.” Izzy compressed her lips together a bit. “Yes, but my mum died when I was a baby. I’ve gotten closer to Angela since I moved to London. My dad wouldn’t know where she was. I’m the only one who would know. I don’t know anyone she works with. It’s just me and her friends.”
Stevie pinched her nose and ran her hand down her face. She smelled of dust and old paper and she was out of ideas.
“I think we can put this stuff back,” she said.
They attempted to restore the box room to the way they’d found it and descended the ladder, then went back downstairs. Stevie wandered in circles for a moment, looking around the living room. What could she learn? What did she see? The bricked-up fireplace with the beautiful art deco tiles. The books. The rich patterns of the wallpaper. The smell of the old food and cat litter.
She had forgotten the most important thing.
“The trash,” Stevie said.
“I suppose we should take it out.”
“No,” Stevie said. “We need the trash.”
They returned to the kitchen and turned on all the lights. There was a silver step can in the corner, as well as two recycling bins. There was a pair of rubber washing gloves resting on the sink. Stevie grabbed these, then looked in the cabinet under the sink. Trash bags. She pulled out the roll and ripped a few off.
“Here,” she said to Izzy and David, “spread these out.”
The kitchen floor was soon covered in slippery plastic trash bags.
She picked up the silver step can. The trash had been festering for several days, so it had developed a pungent hum—a sour stink that made Stevie scrunch her nose involuntarily. She pulled out the bag and dumped the contents onto the floor. She did the same with the recycling, making a separate mound a few feet away.
“Well,” David said, “if she comes home right now, this will be nice for her.”
Stevie put on the kitchen gloves, then got on her knees and started picking through it. Trash was archaeology. Trash always told the truth. The recycling for a start. It was all clean. Everything had been sorted correctly. Angela took lids off and broke down boxes. There were two empty wine bottles. Seven empty sparkling-water bottles. At least a dozen containers from ready-made meals from the grocery store: premade soup, lasagnas and salads in plastic containers. A single person’s diet. Someone busy.
The trash must have been emptied recently because there was very little in the bag. Some plastic shrink-wrap from a package. A chewed-up shoelace. Two receipts from Boots, which was the major drugstore chain. Angela had had a cold recently. She’d purchased a decongestant and throat drops, as well as body wash and a toothbrush. Nothing strange.
Stevie lifted the lid of the compost bin and dumped the food scraps and piles of used tea bags onto an empty corner of plastic.
“She drinks a lot of tea,” Stevie said, nudging around the disgusting pile. “She doesn’t finish most of her meals.”
Doorknob had been interested in these proceedings and chose this moment to make a move. He saw a piece of old chicken, snagged it, and ran off.
“No!” Izzy said. “Doorknob, no. You’ll be sick. . . .”
She hurried off after the cat. David squatted down and looked at Stevie from across the pile of garbage.
“Hey,” David said. “We go on the best dates, huh?”
He said it mirthlessly. Stevie nodded.
“What do you think?” he said in a low voice, craning his head to make sure Izzy was out of earshot. But there was no worry—Izzy could clearly be heard running around the living room calling for Doorknob.
“It looks like . . . she’s gone,” Stevie said, pointing out the obvious. “No sign of forced entry. No sign of a struggle. It seems like we ate dinner with her, and then, she left. You asked me to look and . . . I looked.”
She indicated the pile of trash she was lording over as proof.
“I know,” he said.
What was that tone in his voice? It was dispirited, but what did it mean? She had failed. The great Stevie, the one who busted into places and turned up things—she had nothing. She had not performed the trick. All she’d done was spill a lot of garbage. She wanted to say something, explain herself, but before she could, Izzy called them.
“You should come in here,” she said.
They found Izzy on her hands and knees on the floor. She had pushed back an armchair that was tucked into the corner where the stairway met the wall. The bottom half of her body was sticking out. She crawled backward and looked up at them.
“Doorknob dragged the chicken bone back here. There’s a little opening. Look.”
She pushed back the chair. The paneling under the stairs had been papered in a lush tropical print, and at the corner, the panel had been pushed back a few inches, just enough for an enterprising cat to squeeze through. Izzy felt the panel and found that it was hinged. It was the opening to a very small cabinet.
“I didn’t know this was here,” she said. “So, this is where the Hoover is. And this is where Doorknob has been keeping things.”
Stevie leaned in to look. Sure enough, this was the spot Doorknob collected his little treasures. His toy mouse. Part of what looked like a real mouse. A used tea bag. Two buttons. A crumpled tissue. A dirty cotton swab. A grape stem.
Izzy pulled out the canister vacuum cleaner and stuck her head into the opening. She dragged out a heavy, blocky briefcase.
“Look at this,” she said, pushing it farther into the center of the room so they could see it.
“It’s a fire safe,” Stevie said. “Document storage.”
This model had no key lock. It had a keypad instead.
“No chance you know the code, is there?” Stevie asked.
Izzy shook her head.
“I had no idea she had that. What’s it for?”