Lay the plans out in chronological order, I thought.
Only a handful of blueprints were marked with years, but each set showed how the proposed addition would be integrated with the House or surrounding property. I needed to find the earliest plan—the one in which the House was the smallest, the simplest—and work forward from there.
I went through page after page until I found it: the original Hawthorne House. Slowly, painstakingly, I put the rest of the blueprints in order. By dawn, I’d made it halfway through, but that was enough. Based on the few sets that had dates on them, I could calculate years for the rest.
I’d been focused on the wrong question in Toby’s wing. Not where Tobias Hawthorne would have hidden a body—but when? I knew the year that Toby had been born, but not the month. That let me narrow it down to two sets of plans.
The year before Toby’s birth, Tobias Hawthorne had erected the greenhouse.
The year of Toby’s birth had been the chapel.
I thought about Jameson saying that his grandfather had built the chapel for Nan to yell at God—and then I thought about Nan’s response. The old coot threatened to build me a mausoleum instead.
What if that hadn’t been a threat? What if Tobias Hawthorne had just decided it was too obvious?
Where would a man like Tobias Hawthorne hide a body?
CHAPTER 66
Stepping through the stone arches of the chapel, I scanned the room: the delicately carved pews, the elaborate stained-glass windows, an altar made of pure white marble. This early in the day, light streamed in from the east, bathing the room in color from the stained glass. I studied each panel, looking for something.
A clue.
Nothing. I went through the pews. There were only six of them. The woodwork was captivating, but if it held any secrets—hidden compartments, a button, instructions—I couldn’t find them.
That left me with the altar. It came up to my chest and was a little over six feet long and maybe three feet deep. On the top of the altar, there was a candelabra; a gleaming, golden Bible; and a silver cross. I carefully examined each one, and then I knelt to look at the script carved into the front of the altar.
A quote. I ran my fingers over the inscription and read it out loud. “So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.”
That sounded biblical. It was too early to call Max, so I typed the quote into the phone and it gave me a Bible verse: 2 Corinthians 4:18.
I thought about Blake using a different Bible verse as a combination on a lock. How many of his games had a young Tobias Hawthorne played?
“Fix our eyes not on what is seen,” I said out loud, “but on what is unseen.” I stared at the altar. What is unseen?
Kneeling in front of the altar, I ran my fingers along it: up and down, left and right, top to bottom. I made my way around to the back, where I found a slight gap between the marble and the floor. I bent to look, but I couldn’t see anything, so I slid my fingers into the gap.
Almost immediately, I felt a series of raised circles. My first instinct was
to push one, but I didn’t want to be rash, so I kept exploring until I had a full count. There were three rows of raised circles, with six in each row.
Eighteen, total. 2 Corinthians 4:18, I thought. Did that mean that I needed to press four of the eighteen raised circles? And if so, which four?
Frustrated, I stood. With Tobias Hawthorne, nothing was ever easy. I walked around the altar again, taking in its size. The billionaire had wanted to build a mausoleum, but he hadn’t. He’d built this chapel, and I couldn’t help but notice that if this giant slab of marble was hollow, there would be room for a body inside.
I can do this. I stared at the verse inscribed on what I suspected was Will Blake’s tomb. “So we fix our eyes not on what is seen,” I read out loud again, “but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal. ”