Confidence Girl: The Letty Dobesh Chronicles

10

The bedroom door opened smoothly, without a sound. She moved in bare feet down the corridor. All of the doors she passed were cracked. The rooms dark. Where the hallway opened into the main living area, she stopped. The spiral staircase was straight ahead, but hushed voices crept around a blind corner. It sounded like they were coming from the kitchen. For a moment, she stood listening. Two men. They were eating, probably picking through the leftovers.

Letty went quietly up the staircase, taking the steps two at a time.

Near the top, she caught a view down into the kitchen. It was James and some other black-suited man with long hair who she hadn’t seen before. They stood at the counter, dipping crackers into the foie gras.

She came to the second floor. A long hallway, empty and dark, branched off from either side of the spiral staircase. The blueprints indicated that this level housed four bedrooms, two bathrooms, and a study. Letty kept climbing, using the iron railing as a guide. The noise of the men in the kitchen fell farther and farther away. By the time she reached the final step, she couldn’t even hear them.

Letty stepped into the cupola of the house.

Because three of the walls consisted entirely of windows, the moon poured inside like a floodlight.

Letty ripped off the wig. She ran her hands carefully through her hair until her fingers found the razor blade.

Padding over to the desk, she turned on a lamp.

Her watch read a quarter ‘til eight.

She stared up at the wall above the desk.

What the hell?

She’d been expecting to see the Van Gogh—a skeleton smoking a cigarette. What hung on the wall instead was an acrylic of a horse. Maudlin colors. Proportions all wrong. She was no art critic, but she felt certain this painting was very badly done.

Leaning in close, she read the artist’s signature in the bottom, right-hand corner of the canvas.

Margaret Fitch

Letty sat down in the leather chair behind the desk. Her head dizzy and untethered. Had Javier told her the wrong place to look? Had she somehow misunderstood him? No, this was Fitch’s office. In fact, there should be a plastic tube taped beneath the desktop. She reached under, groping in the darkness. All she felt was the underside of the middle drawer.

Assumptions.

Somewhere, she’d made a false one.

The blueprints had identified the cupola as an office, but maybe Fitch’s was actually down on the second floor.

That had to be it.

She spun the swivel chair around and started to rise.

Took in a hard, fast breath instead.

A shadow stood at the top of the spiral staircase, watching her.