Rupert’s second party could be heard all the way down the hill.
Lola drove Priscilla up the last stretch with the headlights off and stopped under the trees beside the garden wall, where an old taxi parked in the dark wouldn’t catch anyone’s eye.
It was Rhea’s first night off from the hotel.
She had known the date of the party for a week, since Coco had been posting about it every day.
So tonight, she had come for the safe in Vidal’s cellar.
At the sale, Rupert had bragged about finding Coco’s comb in it, along with what he called some old jewelry.
That comb was one of the seven pieces she was looking for, so there could well be more of them in that safe.
Rupert had told everyone that none of it was for sale, which gave her hope that the rest was still down there.
Lola cracked a seed and looked up at the lit windows of the house.
“Rupert invited everyone at the sale, didn’t he? You could just walk in the front door.”
“If anything goes missing tonight, I don’t want to be on that guest list.”
“Fair enough.” Lola cracked another seed.
“And if your burglar’s there again?”
“He isn’t my burglar.”
“Your polite burglar, then.”
Lola had liked him ever since Rhea told her he’d apologized in the middle of their fight, so Rhea didn’t bother arguing.
She pulled on her gloves instead.
“If he’s there, I’ll ask him where he heard my mother’s name.”
Lola stopped cracking seeds and didn’t say anything for a while.
“What if he won’t tell you? I mean, he might be just as curious as you are, and I don’t see you telling him much either.”
“I’ll… persuade him. He knew her name, Lola. He has to know something.”
“Okay, then what if it’s something you don’t want to hear? You know what I mean.”
Rhea knew all too well.
Ever since her mother disappeared, she had been weighing the possibility that she was no longer alive, yet she still couldn’t stop hoping.
“Then at least I’ll know.”
Lola studied her face.
“I’ll wait at the bottom of the hill,” she said at last.
“Text me when you’re out. And be careful, babe.”
“I will.”
Rhea went over the wall and crossed the lawn to the rear of the house, keeping out of the light from the windows.
Every room on the ground floor was lit, and from the sound of it, Rupert was playing disco again.
With the house this full and this loud, nobody was going to hear her in the cellar.
Set low in the wall there, just above the grass, was a row of small windows that had to belong to the cellar.
The first one was locked, but the second had an old latch that gave after a little work.
She pulled up her mask and climbed through feet first, letting herself drop quietly to the floor.
She didn’t close the window behind her, in case she needed to get out in a hurry.
It was cold down there, and very dark.
The music thudded through the ceiling, along with the footsteps of everyone dancing upstairs.
She switched on her small flashlight, keeping it pointed at the ground.
Rows of wine racks ran the length of the cellar with narrow aisles between them, while one long rack covered the far wall from floor to ceiling.
Rupert had said he found the safe by pulling out the wrong bottle.
Starting at one end of that rack, she tried the bottles one by one.
It was slow work, and she kept listening for the door at the top of the stairs.
Rupert had come down here for champagne, after all, and any of his guests might do the same.
Most of the bottles slid out easily, and she put each one back in its place.
Near the middle, one wouldn’t come out at all.
When she tugged harder, a whole section of the rack came with it, swinging away from the wall on hidden hinges.
Behind it, a small steel safe was set into the stone.
Its door stood open, and there was nothing inside.
Wonderful, she thought.
In truth, it wasn’t much of a surprise, yet it was still a disappointment, especially so soon after 707.
Rupert must have moved whatever was left, and she had no idea where.
For now, Coco’s comb was the only one of the seven she knew how to find.
She swung the rack closed and made sure every bottle was just as she had found it.
She was about to go back to the window when the door at the top of the stairs opened.
For a moment, the music came down the steps much louder, then faded as the door swung shut.
Rhea turned off her flashlight and slipped between two of the racks.
If whoever it was switched on the cellar lights, she wouldn’t stay hidden for long.
But nobody did.
Instead, a small light came down the stairs, held low, and the steps behind it were so quiet that she could barely hear them over the music.
No guest coming down for a bottle would have been that careful.
The light came along the aisle next to hers.
As it passed, she made out a tall man dressed in black, with his face covered below the eyes.
She immediately knew who he was.
It was the man from Vidal’s study, the one the papers called the Gentleman.
She had told Lola he might be here, yet she hadn’t really expected him to come.
This was her chance to find out why he knew her mother’s name.
If he had known her, perhaps he knew what had happened to her, and Rhea had wanted to ask him ever since that night.
Now that he was actually here, though, she was nervous, since part of her was afraid of what he might say.
He went straight to the far wall and ran his light along the bottles, trying them one at a time, just as she had, until the rack swung open for him too.
He had come for the safe as well.
He stood looking into it without moving, then closed it and turned toward the stairs.
Rhea knew she could stay where she was and let him go.
He would never know she had been there at all, and she would slip out through the window after he had gone.
But she might never get another chance to ask him, so she stepped out from between the racks, into the aisle between him and the stairs.
He must have heard her, because his light went out.
She had meant to ask him straight away, but in the sudden dark, all she could think of was keeping him from leaving.
She reached for where he had been and caught his sleeve.
He twisted his arm free, and she grabbed his coat instead, which brought them both up against the rack.
The aisle was narrow, and she had no intention of moving out of his way.
For a few seconds they struggled as quietly as they could, with the whole party right over their heads.
With no light at all, she had to follow him by sound and by the pull of his coat in her hands.
He was a lot taller than she was, and much harder to move than she had expected.
Every time he tried to slip past her toward the stairs, she blocked his way.
“You again,” he whispered.
“I was here first.”
“Then you’re welcome to it, if you’d just let go of my coat.”
“Not yet.”
“It’s a good coat.”
“Then stop pulling.”
Since they were both whispering, she couldn’t tell much about his voice except that it was low.
She hoped he could tell even less about hers.
At some point one of them hit the rack with a shoulder, and she heard a bottle start to slide out.
They both reached for it at once, catching it together, with his hand closing over hers on the glass.
If it had smashed on the stone floor, someone upstairs would surely have heard it.
Neither of them moved after that.
They were standing close enough to hear each other breathing, while upstairs the music went on and nobody came to the cellar door.
It was then that she realized he hadn’t fought back once.
He had only tried to get past her, though she was sure he could have pushed her away easily if he wanted to.
Then again, she hadn’t come here to fight him either.
As soon as the bottle was back on the rack, he would be free to make for the stairs.
Rhea slid it into its place and, in the same movement, pushed him against the rack with her forearm across his chest.
He didn’t try to stop her.
He stood perfectly still, yet under her arm she felt his heart beating fast.
She leaned close, keeping her voice as low as before.
“The name you said last time… How do you know it?”