“If you sit down really slow, you won’t disturb her,” Seth said quietly.
I hated to disturb the crazy cat, so I sat down slowly on the chair across from Seth. The cat opened one eye and stopped purring. Seth scratched her head and she closed her eye and resumed her little motor noises.
“How did you catch her?” I asked. “It seems like everyone in the hotel has been trying to find her.”
“I just sat out here to listen to my music and watch the snow and she found me.” He smiled at the pile of fur in his lap. She rubbed her head against his hand.
“Maybe there are two cats, because that doesn’t look like the streaking, yowling, scratching cat I’ve seen before.”
Seth grinned. “It’s the same cat.” His smile faded. “She’s really scared.”
I didn’t realize Seth had the same affinity for cats as he did for dogs.
“What’s she afraid of?”
Seth shook his head. “It’s kind of strange—she’s just showing me pictures of things. Yarn, a room with yellow walls and flowers . . . tile with a pool of blood.” Seth looked at me.
“It sounds like the turret room—have you been up there?”
He didn’t answer right away. “No. Is it really bright during the daytime? She’s showing me a big patch of sunlight.”
“The windows face east and there are a lot of them, so it probably is bright.”
“She likes that room, but she’s afraid of it now.”
“Seth, did she see who killed Clarissa?”
Seth’s big brown eyes took on a faraway look. “She might have, but I’m not sure she realizes it. She keeps showing me yarn, balls of yarn in a basket, and a hand putting food down for her.”
He stroked the cat some more.
“I don’t know what it means,” he said.
I didn’t know what it meant, either. Maybe nothing. Maybe Duchess thought about yarn the way Tuffy thought about food—all the time.
Duchess continued to purr with her eyes closed. I continued to not see the key in my mind’s eye.
“Are you hungry?” I asked after a few minutes of listening to the purring.
His eyes lit up. He shifted position. Duchess hopped off his lap and stretched her back legs before jumping onto the windowsill. She sat looking out the window, tail twitching slowly.
“I did find this,” Seth said and held out his hand, palm up.
A small silver key glinted in his hand.
“Where did you find it?” I took it from him and looked for numbers or markings on it. It had to be the key to the lockbox.
“It was taped to the inside of her collar,” he said. “It was bugging her because it kept pulling her hair.”
I glanced at the cat. She kept her gold eyes trained on me while her tail slowly swept back and forth.
I wondered who else knew that she had the key the whole time. And knew what it was for. I tucked it into my pocket.
“Let’s go see if this key works,” I said.
“What about lunch?”
I grinned at him. “Soon.” I slung an arm over his shoulder and we headed upstairs.
37
We entered my room and I was relieved to see that Vi was absent and Seth wasn’t going to have to divert her and drag her down the hall. I hadn’t seen her since our encounter in the turret room and I didn’t want her rummaging in the lockbox. I asked Seth to guard the door and warn me if anyone approached the room.
I took the box down from the shelf by carefully covering it with a T-shirt to protect any fingerprints that might be on it. I doubted it would ever be necessary and recognized that much of our evidence had been tainted at this point. But, just in case.
I set the box on the coffee table, and Seth watched as I inserted the key in the lock. It turned easily and the lid popped up about half an inch. I opened the lid and peered inside. It was filled with cash. Most of it was twenties but there was one thick stack of hundreds. She probably had ten thousand dollars stashed in the box. I took the money out and stacked it next to the box.
“Wow,” Seth said from the doorway. He was alternately watching me and peering through the peephole.
A handwritten list of furnishings, statues, paintings, and art sat underneath the money. In the next column were numbers that I assumed were prices or estimates of value. I recognized some of the items as artwork and furniture from the lounge. I glanced at Seth.
“She was keeping track of how much the antiques were worth,” I said. “I wonder if this money is from previous sales, or the cell phones, or blackmail.”
“Blackmail?” Seth asked.
“She liked to collect secrets,” I said.
“It looks like she liked to collect money,” Seth said.
“I wonder if she was selling off some of the antiques in the castle?”
I flipped the pages to see if there was a list of “sold” items. There wasn’t. Just more numbers and items. I wondered if Jessica and Linda knew that Clarissa had assessed the entire contents of the castle.