No matter the old man’s intentions—I wasn’t here to be used.
“Not much to tell!” Xander declared jollily. “The old man left me a letter congratulating me for getting my hardheaded and much less handsome brothers to the end of their game. He signed the letter as Tobias Hawthorne, no middle initial, but when submerged in water, that signature became ‘Find Tobias Hawthorne the Second.’”
Find Toby. The old man had left his youngest grandson with that charge. And there was a good chance that the only real clue he’d left him… was me. Twelve birds with one stone.
“I guess that answers the question of whether the old man knew Toby was alive,” Jameson murmured.
Tobias Hawthorne knew. My entire body rang with that revelation.
“If we have Toby’s last known location,” Xander mused, “perhaps a sledgehammering is unnecessary. My plan was to search his room and see if any clues turned up, but…”
I shook my head. “I have no idea how to find Toby. I asked Alisa to get money to him, right after I inherited, before I even knew who he was. He was already in the wind.”
Jameson cocked his head to the side. “Interesting.”
“Is Toby’s wing the lead you mentioned earlier?” I asked him.
“Maybe it is,” Jameson said, grinning. “Or maybe it isn’t.”
“Far be it from me to interrupt banter,” Xander interjected. “But this is my lead. And my sledgehammer!” He heaved it over his shoulder.
I stared at the wall and wondered what lay beyond it. “Are you sure about this?” I asked Xander.
He took a deep breath. “As sure as anyone holding a sledgehammer has ever been.”
CHAPTER 8
The wall came down easily enough that I wondered if it had been meant to come down. How long had Tobias Hawthorne waited for someone to hammer their way through the barrier he’d erected? For someone to ask questions?
For someone to find his son.
As I stepped through what remained of the bricks, I tried to imagine what the old man had been thinking. Why didn’t he find Toby himself? Why didn’t he bring him home?
I stared down a long hallway. The floor was made of white marble tiles. The walls were completely lined with mirrors. I felt like I’d stepped into a fun house. On high alert, I made my way slowly down the hall, taking stock. There was a library, a sitting room, a study, and, at the end of the hall, a bedroom every bit as large as mine. Clothes still hung in the closet.
A towel hung on a rack next to an enormous shower.
“How long has this place been bricked up?” I asked, but the boys were in another room—and I didn’t need them to tell me the answer. Twenty years. Those clothes had been hanging in the closet since the summer Toby had “died.”
Emerging from the bathroom, I found Xander’s legs poking out from underneath a king-sized bed. Jameson was running his hands over the top of an armoire. He must have found some kind of latch or lever, because a second later, the top of the armoire popped up like a lid.
“Looks like Uncle Toby was a fan of contraband,” Jameson commented. I climbed up on the dresser to get a better look and saw a long, thin compartment completely lined with travel-sized liquor bottles.
“Found a loose floor panel,” Xander called from under the bed. When he reappeared, he was holding a small plastic bag full of pills—and another one full of powder.
Toby’s wing was brimming with secret compartments: hollowed-out books, trick drawers, a false back to the closet. A secret passage in the study led back past the entryway, revealing that the mirrors that lined the hallway were two-way. From where I stood in the passage, I could see Jameson lying facedown on the marble floor, examining the tiles one by one.
I stared at him for longer than I should have, then retreated back to the library. Xander and I had screened hundreds of books for hidden compartments. Nineteen-year-old Toby’s tastes had been eclectic—everything from comic books and Greek philosophy to pulp horror and law. The only shelf on the built-in bookshelves that wasn’t full of books framed a clock that was about eight inches tall and affixed to the back of the shelf. I studied the clock for a moment. No movement of the second hand. I reached out to test how firmly the clock was attached to the shelf.
It didn’t budge.
I almost left it there, but some instinct wouldn’t let me. Instead, I twisted the clock, and it rotated, loosening. The face of the clock came away from the wall. There were no gears inside, no electronics. Instead, I found a flat, circular object made of cardboard. Closer inspection revealed two concentric cardboard circles attached with a brad in the center. Each one was lined with letters.