called loudly and for the benefit of any neighbor who might have been watching. "Come on, I'm waitin' out here!"
He closed the door, pulled out his gun and quickly attached the silencer. He began a quick room-to-room check of the house.
It was empty. He began a second and slower sweep, looking around to try to determine if Cassie Black had been to the house in the time since she had escaped from him up on the hill. The home, though sparely furnished, seemed to be in neat order. He became convinced that she had not been there yet. He sat down on the couch in the living room and thought about what this could mean. Did she already have the money or did she not have the money? Had it been at Leo Renfro's and he had somehow missed it during his all-night search? Worse yet was another possibility that poked through: that Renfro had been telling the truth when he claimed to have already given the money to his Chicago contacts.
Karch felt something lumpy beneath the spot where he was sitting. He moved down the couch and then pulled up the cushion. He picked up a clothes hanger with seven padlocks attached to it. It served to remind him of how formidable Cassidy Black had turned out to be. He decided in that moment that if he found out she had the money and was gone, he would chase her to the ends of the earth. Not for Grimaldi and definitely not for the faceless group that pulled strings from Miami. He would do it for himself.
He left the hanger on the coffee table and got up to start his third sweep of the house. This one would take the longest.
The bedroom was the logical place to start. Karch knew people liked to sleep with the things dear to them close by. The white-walled room was furnished with the basics, a four-poster bed, two bed tables, a bureau and a mirror. A framed poster of a beach scene from Tahiti was taped to a wall. He studied it for a moment and quickly realized it was a duplicate of the poster he had seen in Cassidy Black's office when he had stepped in while looking for her in the showroom. He had been looking at the poster when the manager had stuck his head in and asked if he could help.
Karch stepped over to the wall and studied the poster, wondering if it had any significance for his mission. The woman on the beach did not look like Cassidy Black. He finally decided he would have to worry about it later and turned to the nearby bed table and opened the top drawer.
The drawer contained a stack of Popular Mechanics magazines that looked as though they had been bought at a yard sale. They were all in poor condition and were several years old. Still, he flew the pages on every one of them in case there was a note or maybe a hidden address. He found nothing and dropped the last magazine back in the drawer and kicked it closed.
The bottom drawer of the table was empty except for a little net bundle containing cedarwood shavings and dried rosemary. He slammed that drawer closed and came around the bed to the other night table.
Before he opened the drawer he had a feeling he would have good luck here. This table had a lamp on it and the pillow on this side of the bed had an indentation from someone sleeping on it. He knew this was her side of the bed.
Karch sat down on the bed and put his gun down next to his thigh. With both hands he picked up the pillow and brought it to his face. He could smell her. Her hair. He wasn't good at identifying fragrances but he thought he could smell tea leaves, like when you first open a box of tea bags. He wasn't sure about it and put the pillow back down.
He opened the top drawer of the bed table and hit pay dirt. The drawer was crammed with personal items. There were books and hair bands and photograph albums. There was a still camera with a long lens and a video camera as well. Placed on top of everything was a small framed photograph. Karch picked it up and studied it. It showed Cassidy Black sitting on the lap of a man wearing a Hawaiian shirt. She was holding