Homeport

sentimental streak.
    He left the two women sleeping and moved down the hallway to Richard Hawthorne’s room. He too was fast asleep.
    It took Ryan ten minutes to find the receipt for a storage facility in Florence—which he pocketed.
    It took him thirteen to find the .38. That, he left alone.
    In twenty, he’d located the small notebook hidden inside a black dress sock. Scanning the cramped handwriting with his light, Ryan read quickly and at random. His lips tightened on a grim smile.
    He tucked the notebook in his pocket and let Richard sleep. He was, Ryan thought as he slipped out, in for a rude awakening.
     
    “Excuse me, did you just say you broke into my mother’s bedroom last night?”
    “Nothing was broken,” Ryan assured her. He felt as though he’d been chasing after Miranda for hours, trying to steal a half hour alone with her.
    “Her bedroom?”
    “I went in through the parlor, if it makes you feel any better. There was hardly any point in getting them all here, in one spot, if I wasn’t going to do something once they were. I got a safe-deposit key out of her purse. I found it odd she’d have one with her on a trip like this. But it’s an American bank. A Maine bank—with a branch in Jones Point.”
    Miranda sat behind her desk, the first time she’d been off her feet since six that morning. It was now noon, and Ryan had finally buttonholed her during her meeting with the florist and given her the choice of walking to her office or being carried there.
    “I don’t understand, Ryan. Why would a key to a bank box be important?”
    “People generally keep things there that are important or valuable to them—and that they don’t want other people to get their hands on. In any case, I’ll check it out.”
    He waited until Miranda opened her mouth, shut it again without saying a word. “I didn’t find anything in Elise’s room except for her laptop. Seemed strange to cart it all this way for a four-day trip when she’d be spending most of her time here. If I have time I’ll go back in and see if I can open it up while she’s out of the room.”
    “Oh, that would be best,” she said with a breezy wave of her hand.
    “Exactly. I found enough jewelry to break the back of an elephant in the Morelli suite. That woman has a serious glitter addiction—and if I can access Vincente’s bank account, we’ll see just how deep in debt he’s gone to pay for it. Now your father—”
    “My father? He didn’t even get in until after midnight.”
    “You’re telling me. I nearly bumped into him in the hall on my way out of your mother’s suite. Handy of the hotel to put everyone on the same floor.”
    “We had the rooms blocked that way,” she murmured.
    “In any case, doing the other rooms first gave him time to settle in. He was out like a light. Did you know your father’s been to the Cayman Islands three times in the last year?”
    “The Caymans?” She wondered her head didn’t simply tumble off onto the floor, by the way it was reeling.
    “Popular spot the Caymans. Good for scuba, sunshine, and money laundering. Now all that is idle speculation. But I hit gold in Hawthorne’s room.”
    “You had a very full night while I was asleep.”
    “You needed your rest. I found this.” He took the storage receipt out of his pocket, unfolded it. “He rented this space the day after the bronze was brought to Standjo. The day before your mother called and sent for you. What did Andrew say about coincidences? There aren’t any.”
    “People rent space for all sorts of reasons.”
    “They don’t generally rent a small garage just outside of the city when they don’t own a car. I checked, and he doesn’t. Then there was the gun.”
    “Gun?”
    “The handgun—don’t ask me the make and model. I try to avoid guns, but it looked very efficient to me.”
    Idly, he took her coffeepot off the burner, sniffed, and was pleased to find what was left was still fresh. “I think there’s a law about transporting weapons on airplanes,” he added as he poured a cup. “I doubt he went through the proper channels to get it here. And why would a nice, quiet researcher need a gun to attend an exhibit?”
    “I don’t know. Richard and a gun. It doesn’t make sense.”
    “I think it might, once you read this.” He took the notebook out of his pocket. “You’ll want to read it, but I’ll give you the highlights. It describes a bronze, ninety point four centimeters, twenty-four point