The Breath of Dawn Read online

  “What?”

  “I’ve been going through the stuff, not exploring the house.”

  “Might be stuff down there.”

  She shuddered. “That’s creeping me out.”

  Since he hadn’t seen a door elsewhere, access was probably in the kitchen. The room had very little floor or wall space with all the tables, hutches, cabinets, and a rolling dishwasher. The linoleum popped and crackled like little firecrackers under their feet.

  She enclosed herself in her arms. “You know, I’m not—”

  “Can’t back out now,” he said. “We need a nose like none before or since.”

  “All right. I thought I saw something . . .” She leaned around a massive mahogany hutch. “Is that a door?”

  He leaned too and saw it. “Now see, you’re living up to your name.”

  Head tipped, she slid him a look. His mouth twitched.

  Together they angled the hutch away from the wall, and with a yank, the door opened to stairs much older than the house. “Cool,” he said as a musty draft drifted up. He tried the old wall switch to no effect. “Hmm.”

  “No doubt there’s something in here to use.” Quinn pulled open drawer after drawer until she found a flashlight, banged it a few times to get the lamp on, then flashed the dim beam.

  “That should work.” Taking it, he stepped onto the stairs, pushing a stringy spider web aside. “They seem sturdy, but tread carefully.”

  He could feel her close behind him, her creaks immediately following his. Thick dust without footprints coated the stairs. The iron railing wobbled but held. Nearing the bottom, he shot the light wide. “Whoa.”

  She gripped the back of his shirt. “Are you kidding me?”

  The space was filled with iron beds, carts, commodes, rubber tubing, and unidentifiable paraphernalia.

  She tightened her grip. “Are those chains?”

  He focused the beam on a bed rail. “I think you’d say shackles.”

  “I’m beyond freaked.”

  He took the final step down.

  “Wait, wait, wait. We’re not going in.”

  “Don’t chicken out now.” He trailed the light slowly across the darkness, pausing on a glass-faced cabinet near the wall. “Check that out.” He felt her straighten, interest kindling as the light ran over dusty bottles on the inner shelves. “Tinctures of newt and eye of bat?”

  She shifted her grip to his arm, excitement trumping concern. “Can we get to it?”

  “I thought we weren’t going in.” Swinging the lantern beam to illuminate her face, he eyed her, all pent-up energy and impatience.

  “Do you think we’ll die?”

  “No, but squeeze any harder and I might lose that arm.”

  “Oh!” She looked down and let go.

  He swept aside a dust-coated cobweb and moved between two beds stacked sideways on his right and three to his left.

  “Who would build a house on top of all this?” Her voice sounded thin.

  “Someone who didn’t want to dig and pour a new foundation.”

  “With all these things inside?”

  “Know what it’ll take to clean it out?”

  “No. But I guess I’ll find out.”

  He half turned.

  “I bought the contents of the house, so it’s my problem.”

  He pushed through several carts, the wheels of one wailing like a ghost. “You could contact a museum.”

  “Like anyone would want this junk.” But when he illuminated the drug cabinet, she moved past him and wiped the glass with her sleeve. Didn’t make much difference as far as he could tell. The glass itself looked milky.

  She pulled the metal knob. “It’s locked. Think we can carry it up to the light?”

  She seemed serious. The cabinet was his height though narrow, hardwood and beveled glass. “You’d be risking the contents.”

  “Not if we keep it tipped just right.”

  He shrugged. “High or low on the stairs?”

  She looked over her shoulder. “I guess realistically I better take top.”

  “Good call.” It put her backward for the climb, but he’d bear the weight. “Just a sec.” He stuck the flashlight into his waistband in back, sending an insipid light to the ceiling that prevented total darkness as they dislodged the cabinet. They pushed it through the path he’d made, then hoisted it up each riser, the bottles jangling against each other.

  At the top, they brought the cabinet into the scant remaining floor space and slowly righted it. Even so the bottles tinkled and tumbled. “I guess a locksmith could get it open.”

  She fingered the knob and keyhole. “I have a whole box of skeleton keys someone collected for about two hundred years.”

  “Long-lived.”

  “I mean the keys date back—” She caught the joke and said, “One of those might work.”

  He dragged his thumb through the dust along a crease. “Or you could leave it sealed. Let it keep its secrets.”

  She turned. “Why?”

  “It’s been in the dark a long time.”

  “Don’t you want to know what’s in the bottles?”

  Turning pensive he asked, “What’ll you sell this for?”

  “I have no idea. I don’t usually handle furniture.”

  “I’ll give you a thousand dollars—as is.”

  “What?”

  “I want to keep it here in the kitchen.”

  “It’s not your kitchen.”

  “It will be. I’m making RaeAnne a cash offer.”

  She crossed her arms in clear frustration. “We brought it up to see inside.”

  “One thousand five hundred, intact with the bottles.”

  “Are you insane?”

  A smile twitched. “Think I belong down there? In the shackles, maybe?”

  Her expression left no doubt. “I want to open it.”

  “Then refuse my offer.”

  She squirmed in the trap. With almost no context, he couldn’t guess which way she’d go. But he could nudge. He took out his checkbook, wrote one thousand five hundred dollars to Quinn Reilly, and tore it off. “That’s the deal, take it or leave it.”

  She snatched the check. “I’m not showing you anything else before I see it myself.”

  “Fair enough,” he said. With the exercise ended, the ache inside returned like a guard who’d looked away for a second, then resumed scrutiny.

  Watching him leave the kitchen, Quinn had the same sensation she’d experienced outside the patisserie—desolation. One moment those indigo eyes probed and teased, the next they caved in like bad ice, leaving fathomless black water.

  She moved down the hall and jumped when he came out of the bedroom behind a heaping pile of clothes. “What are you doing?”

  “I told you I’d haul these out.”

  “I didn’t think you meant it.”

  “I wouldn’t say it otherwise.” His lackluster tone had a razor-thin edge.

  She watched him carry armful after armful of clothes to his Range Rover until at last he came back inside, rubbing his hands from the chill.

  “That’s all I can fit. Where do you want them taken?”

  “There’s a church in town that sends them to a mission.”

  He nodded. “I’ll drop them with Pastor Tom.”

  “You know him?”

  Now the edge found his eyes, but in truth, Morgan didn’t seem like a man who’d know the pastor by name.

  “Right.” She broke the stare. “Thanks for your help and . . . purchase.” She’d been too flabbergasted to haggle.

  “You’re welcome. Hope you find what you’re looking for.”

  She hadn’t admitted to searching, but he’d obviously analyzed and drawn conclusions. If she was smart she’d do the same. Maybe he didn’t have fifteen hundred dollars and his check would bounce. That suspicion seeped in with an acidic burn.

  She still had possession of the cabinet, so it wouldn’t matter except in principle. Still, she couldn’t
stand dishonesty, hated it almost as much as cruelty. Being the victim of lies as a little child had first baffled, then demoralized her. Now it infuriated her to encounter even senseless, supposedly harmless deceit.

  Bundling into her coat, she hurried to her truck and drove home, parking not at her little house but the big metal storehouse barn on the side of the property. Chafing her chilly hands, she fired up her laptop and searched Morgan Spencer.

  Moments later, her jaw fell slack. “Oh. My.”

  Videos, images, articles, and blogs. Awards, events, international corporate news. She read one business article about his second New York Times bestseller. Elusive corporate specialist Morgan Spencer avoids the public eye as his fame and success crescendo. . . .

  Quinn gaped. She’d clung to a world-famous mogul. Huffing a laugh, she shook her head. She should have charged five thousand.

  With his head to the steering wheel, Morgan sat alone in the night, clutching his baby’s monitor to his chest, the engine unturned in the Maserati that would fly if he let it. Outside in the car was as far as he could go, and that only because the lights of the monitor would show what he might not hear over the pure-pitched speakers throbbing words he knew by heart from countless repetitions.

  A life leaving nothing behind. No dream to echo in time.

  Hours ago, he’d typed the final word of his third book and sent the file without once looking back to revisit what he’d written. He’d laid out the core of his philosophy, everything that made his zenith shine. Whoever could reproduce it, let them. Let others save the world.

  Visions and dreams dismembered. Nothing remembered. Everything lost in this night.

  Once, he’d fed on the cool certainty, the razor-sharp focus and adrenaline of the contest, recognizing potential and turning disasters around, seeing problems and finding solutions no one else saw. Now it was all ashes in his mouth, shades laughing softly in the night wind.

  A few strides might get him the sympathy of his brother and even Rick’s wife, but no matter how close they were, in the end, it was his own effort to put one foot in front of the other, step by step by step.

  All his successes, yet he hadn’t seen it coming. Almost two years, and still the stealth and shock of death rocked him. The lyrics had ended, and in their place came the caring platitudes.

  “What could you do? You weren’t even there.”

  He’d been useless to his wife and worse than useless to Kelsey, his vigorous bone marrow damaging one organ after another when she had nothing to fight back with.

  “You did all you could. It was out of your hands.”

  The hope had been a slim one, but he’d believed. He was golden. He’d save her, and then he and Jill could know her. Only he hadn’t. Morgan Spencer wasn’t God. If he were, Kelsey would be here, Jill would be here.

  Instead . . .

  The piercing-clear moon showed his face in the rearview mirror. The kings of the earth rise up and the one enthroned in heaven laughs.

  CHAPTER

  3

  Vera’s second bedroom smelled of ancient sachets and floral body powder, a whisper of spring on an autumn day. No guessing what color the room was painted or if it had a window. Quinn pressed between folded piles of textiles, including bolts of fabric and batting for apparently unfinished projects. It made her think of Grandma Pearl’s quilts, none fashioned from store fabric but from dresses and shirts no longer worn. Maybe she got her penchant for salvaging and recycling from the woman she’d loved only second to Pops.

  Without the pocket doors on the closet, she’d have never gotten to the clothes inside. She pushed them into their slots and dug her fingers between hangers packed so tightly the polyester had nearly fused. Better insulation than a prairie soddy, but she had to wonder, what made the woman fortify her home this way?

  Gripping a wooden hanger, she used her weight to pull a woolen blazer free. The first in a battalion of forgotten clothes, it yielded only a grocery receipt. On the receipt she read a penciled reminder to call Ray. RaeAnne, she assumed—Vera’s bright ray of sunshine.

  With that first chink in the wall, the next hangers offered less resistance. In the chartreuse dinner jacket she felt a lump in the cuff of one sleeve. Turning it up, she found the lining held closed by a safety pin. She removed the pin, and a pearl earring fell into her hand.

  Though RaeAnne had relinquished everything but the locket, originally she said to leave all jewelry, so this find needed clarification. Quinn took out her phone and called. “Sorry to bother you at work.”

  “Please, bother me.” RaeAnne’s throaty twang brought a smile. “Did you—”

  “I haven’t found it.”

  RaeAnne made a long, heartfelt sigh.

  “But that ring you found in a sock isn’t the whole story. I just found an earring pinned inside a sleeve.” As she spoke, she felt the other cuff, but didn’t find the match. “It’s a good-sized pearl, but I don’t know whether it’s real.”

  “I doubt it. She only ever bought costume.”

  “You went through the jewelry she had accessible.” Quinn fingered the earring, thinking. “But this was hidden, and I’m wondering why.”

  “You can’t ask why with Vera. She just did things.”

  “You said she had all her faculties.”

  “No old-age issues. But she wasn’t what anyone would call typical.”

  “Maybe someone gave it to her, someone important.”

  That gave RaeAnne pause. “There’s only one?”

  “So far.”

  “Maybe you could hold onto the things she’s done something stranger than usual with.”

  “Okay.” She laid the jacket on the pile. “I’ll keep those objects together, and you can make a decision when I’m done.” She didn’t want RaeAnne to come out of the situation with regrets from choices made in haste. Or grief. Or the anger and disillusionment of unresolved issues.

  Getting back to work, Quinn realized as the clothes went down in size they increased in style and elegance. At size twelve, there were vintage designer gowns she would definitely sell through her online store. Easier to believe the pearl real when paired with a gold lamé gown. Vera would have looked quite the dame in that.

  The pockets of the polyester pantsuits with slinky Qiana blouses and wide ’70s lapels yielded nothing more interesting than handkerchiefs, emery boards, and ticket stubs, but the hem of a shoulder cape had been loop stitched over a Venetian-glass necklace. Holding it to her chest, Quinn pictured Vera in a gondola with the opera-style cape over her shoulders and the beads glittering in moonlight. She imagined the man in the locket perched beside her on the cushioned seat.

  “Do you like the necklace, my dear?” she asked the empty room.

  “I adore it.”

  Laughing, she placed the necklace with the earring. Everything had a history, even if no one knew it. Confident she’d find the locket secreted like the necklace and earring, she resumed her search. Piece after piece of clothing moved through her fingers, but no locket. Not pinned into any cuffs, not sewn into any hems. It was not in the lingerie drawers of the dresser, not in the trunks that produced every conceivable linen from embroidered pillowcases to Christmas stockings to latch-hook rugs.

  The matching vanity yielded lipsticks and sticky brown, mostly evaporated perfumes. The bottles might have value to product-line collectors, so she carefully packed them into a container and loaded it into her truck with the usable clothing and fabric goods. The brilliant sunshine had produced a vibrant October day she took a moment to enjoy, breathing deeply of the piney scent before going back in. She was getting a sense of Vera that should be helping the quest but so far hadn’t.

  Size-ten shoe boxes bricked the wall floor to ceiling, double deep. All held shoes, except those filled with clothing tags and tags with tiny bags of spare buttons and beads and tags with receipts stapled on. Tags and receipts she dumped, but she could probably match the novelty items to things from the closet, which would add value. />
  From the toe of one pink leather pump, she drew a butterfly pin studded with blue stones of differing hues. Lifting the butterfly on her palm, she watched the light glitter through the stones like sunlight on an aqua sea. “Butterflies shouldn’t be locked in boxes,” she told it. Nor should things that matter be hidden behind heaps of camouflage, like a heart sealed by ever-thickening walls.

  She moved into the kitchen, shook and sifted open containers of oatmeal and cornstarch and baking soda while she sorted and boxed the canned and dry goods for a charitable donation. She checked and emptied the containers in the fridge and freezer, something RaeAnne would surely have done if she hadn’t been absorbed in finding the locket.

  With her arm pressed to her forehead, she glanced at the asylum cabinet, brooding in the center of the floor. She could almost hear it calling, “Open me.” What if the locket was in there? Vera knew about the cellar, might have known about the cabinet. She couldn’t imagine her down there at eighty-two with hips wider than RaeAnne’s, but perhaps when she was younger.

  Quinn pushed her hair back and looked once more at the milky glass panes obscuring the contents. It belonged to Morgan—as is. But she might search everywhere else and find it was in the cabinet all along. Shouldn’t she rule it out? Her fingers itched.

  She’d brought the skeleton keys with her—in case Morgan changed his mind, but how would she know? Since he’d seen what he needed of the house, he wasn’t likely to return before she finished. The locket might be inside one of the bottles, and there was no way she could check without leaving signs of tampering. She groaned. Why had she taken the check? Immediately her sense returned. Fifteen hundred dollars was why.

  She’d spent the previous evening photographing and listing items that didn’t require research. Everything from the cellar would. How much for shackles? She shuddered, casting a glance at the door. She’d have to go through it sometime, but she’d felt a creepiness down there, and going alone into dark, confined spaces violated her safety code.

  With Livie holding his finger, Morgan entered Rudy’s general store, a dark-stained wood-plank exterior with green roof that reminded him of Lincoln Logs. Inside was a magical place for a little person who loved fishing flies as much as toys. As always, she ran to the case that held them arrayed like jewels, pressed her little hands to the glass, and stared in. Moving from one end of the long counter to the glassed end, Rudy bent and peered at her through the display. A superb judge of character, Livie didn’t jump back but studied him in kind.