“I was just faking,” she said. “I got ears like a bat, and your mother whispers like a freight train. I climbed out the window when I heard you come back here. I would’ve gotten here before you started muttering under your breath, but my coat got stuck in the window. Then when I pulled it free I fell in the bushes.”
I looked her over carefully and noticed the twigs in her hair and her coat was starting to look like a taxidermied muskrat with mange. The last time I’d seen her she was wearing her morning turban, but she’d decided on a jet-black bob for today’s hair. I hated to say it, but she looked deranged.
“What am I doing wrong?” I asked. The faster I moved this along, the faster Kate and I could head to Miami.
“Tricks of the trade,” Scarlet said. “You’re looking for the last file that Vince read, right?”
“Right,” I said.
“Look at the dust trail,” she said. “Vince started in the same place you are right now. If he’d found anything there the trail would’ve stopped.”
“Oh,” I said, understanding what she was saying. The disturbance in the dust stopped on the last file cabinet at the top drawer. I opened it carefully.
The drawer was full of manila folders, all stuffed with papers and reports. Everything was written in my dad’s neat block lettering.
“Great,” I said. “I don’t have time to go through all of these.”
“Stand aside, girl,” Scarlet said. “People are always the same, even the trained ones. Human habits are hard to break.”
I raised a brow. I had no idea what she was talking about, but I squished as far as I could into the corner so there was room for Scarlet and her coat.
But I watched as Scarlet ran her fingers over the top of the files, as if she were searching for what she was looking for by touch instead of with her eyes.
“There it is,” she said, and pulled on the file, trying to get it out, but it was squeezed in tight. I moved in to help her, and I yanked hard until it came free. The cabinet rattled and I was left holding a heavy file in my hands.
“How do you know that this is the one?” I asked.
“Because your father, may he rest in peace, was a creature of habit,” she said. “I’ve never met a more anal son of a gun in my life. You forget I knew him since he was a boy, and I loved him like he was family, but Charlie would bore you to tears. He was no fun at all.” She rapped her chest with her fist twice and then kissed her fingers like an Italian mob boss. “Bless his soul.” As if that made up for calling a dead man an anal son of a gun.
“Every file in there is perfectly ordered and alphabetized,” she said. “The folders are the same size and brand, the handwriting is the same, and the way your father placed papers inside the folders is the same. All except for this one. It was sticking up, as if Vince hadn’t quite been able to get it all the way back in, and the papers are just kind of stuck in there.”
“Wow,” I said. I could honestly say that was the first time since Scarlet had been accompanying me during my investigations that she’d actually helped.
“And for a little bonus tip,” she said, “Always feel around at the bottom for things that might fall.” She slipped her tiny wrinkled hand into the empty space where the file had been, and I heard the rattle again.
“What is that?” I asked, leaning over the drawer to see inside since I was about eight inches taller than Scarlet.
“It’s a key,” she said. “And I know what it goes to.” She pulled out a tiny silver key, like one you’d use for a gym locker.
“How do you know what it goes to?” I asked.
“Because I was snooping around in your father’s office while your mother thought I was sleeping,” she said, conspiratorially. “Pretty sneaky, huh?”
“Pretty sneaky,” I said, nodding in agreement. “So what does it go to?”
“I’ll show you mine, if you show me yours,” she said. “What are you planning, Addison Holmes?”
I blew out a breath, knowing unequivocally that all the plans I’d made in my head were about to change. “I found the woman Vince was communicating with in Miami. Kate and I are headed down there this afternoon.”