Thirteen

Five Days Left

Quiet and quick," Bea said, glancing around as she gestured Vivian through the door.

The afternoon wind was still for once, and the air almost felt like spring—a promise or a taunt. The sharp, biting cold would return, but for the moment, there was no draft to give the open door away. As Vivian dashed from her hiding place behind the stone garage—it had probably once held a carriage, but now housed a gleaming black Rolls—and ducked into the Buchanans' Fifth Avenue mansion, she wanted to believe that was a sign. But she was too practical for that. It was good luck, and it probably wouldn't last.

That didn't stop her from following Bea up the back stairs, both of them nearly silent on feet that were used to the fast pace of a quickstep or the light breath of a waltz. The tradesmen's entrance, where she had come in before, opened into the main downstairs corridor, near the kitchen. This one had clearly once been meant to sequester the smell of horses and their handlers from the rest of the house. The passage from it was long, and it went straight to the narrowest set of stairs Vivian had ever seen.

"How'd you manage to get hired so quickly?" Vivian whispered as they crept up. "You don't know any more about being a maid than I do."

The quiet sound Bea made might have been a snort of laughter if it had been louder. "Seems like their applicants disappeared once girls put two and two together and realized someone here had just been murdered. And then another maid up and quit yesterday. Mrs. Buchanan was desperate. Now stop talking. Coast should be clear, but I'm not taking more chances than I need to."

Vivian held her breath as they went around each corner, but their good luck stayed with them—or maybe it was just that Bea had, in her usual practical way, planned everything with fierce caution. They didn't see anyone else, and soon they were upstairs.

Bea peered out into the hall, then beckoned for Vivian to follow. The hall itself—carved and gilded and tiled in crisp squares of black and white marble—was open on one side, overlooking the grand entryway below. Vivian hesitated, not wanting to risk being seen. But she followed Bea, and soon they were around the corner and out of sight.

The room Bea led her to was cramped with furniture and knickknacks, many things still in boxes or crammed into crates. Against one wall, half a dozen large paintings were stacked carelessly one against the other. In another corner, leather-bound books were piled in a tower that looked like it was about to topple over at any second. Glancing around, Vivian pushed them toward the wall, nervous that someone might come to investigate the sound if they fell over.

"A storage room?" she asked, confused. Half of her wanted to tell Bea she'd changed her mind, that she wanted to leave. But she couldn't do that. She was just as likely to get spotted leaving as she was to be caught eavesdropping. Better to learn something first, if there was anything to learn, than risk getting caught for nothing. "Why—"

"No one's bothering with unpacking today, given everything that's happened," Bea whispered, glancing around. "There's a staircase behind that door. I figure you can—"

"Oh dear."

The quiet, faintly amused voice made them both jump, and Vivian grabbed Bea's arm as she spun toward the door.

The woman waiting there smiled at them. "Call it a hunch, but something tells me you girls aren't supposed to be here." She made a tsking sound with her tongue. "Now, what shall we do about that?"