Second Honeymoon

Chapter 75

KNOCK, KNOCK. WHO’S THERE?

Nobody.

After a quick sweep of the entire house, there was no Ned to be found. Sarah and I were back in the small ceramic-tiled foyer, where we began.

“You take the upstairs, I’ve got downstairs,” she said.

Now it was all about finding clues, something that would point us in the right direction. A Ned decoder. Where was he heading next?

Had this been a movie, it would’ve been so simple. We’d walk into a room and discover with mouths agape that every inch of every wall was covered with pictures of me, each one with a giant X over my face. Then we’d stumble upon some marked-up road map that gave us the exact location of where Ned was planning to kill again.

But as close as we actually were to Hollywood, this was no movie.

There was no shrine to me, no obvious clue ready and waiting for us. In fact, there wasn’t much of anything. Talk about minimalist. Nora Sinclair, the interior designer with a killer eye, may have bought the place for Ned, but she clearly didn’t decorate it.

No one did.

In the two bedrooms upstairs, the only pieces of furniture were the beds themselves. There were no dressers, no nightstands, not even a lamp.

That left only the closets. Two of them, to be exact. So much for the first one in the guest bedroom, though. It was empty.

Finally, in the closet in the master bedroom, I found the only sign that someone had actually ever lived in the house. Ned’s clothes. At least I assumed they were his.

Hanging very neatly on some wooden hangers, which looked to be purposefully aligned at exactly two inches apart, were some pants, shirts, and a few sport coats. Checking the pockets, though, was a swing and a miss. They were all empty.

I’d normally feel a little weird about going through someone’s personal belongings—Olivia’s diary notwithstanding. But there really wasn’t anything that seemed “personal” here.

Until I turned around and saw it.

There was something tucked underneath the bed. I thought maybe it was a suitcase at first, but dropping to my knees for a better look, I could see that it was a wooden storage chest. An old one at that.

Pulling it out, I lifted the scuffed brass latch, the hinges rusted and squeaky. What have you got for me, Ned?

Disappointment, that’s what.

It was toys. The chest was stuffed to the brim with children’s toys.

I stared at them all, frustrated. Then suddenly I realized something. They were all the same.

Not exactly the same, but a version of the same thing. Big, small, broken, or in perfect condition. Everything in the chest was a toy version of a very specific car. A one-of-a-kind car, actually—a blast from the past.

The DeLorean.

Huh.