Chapter 7: The Receipt Beneath the Loose Board
I kept Lily inside the locked east-wing room while Dr. Leon examined the staff quarters. He did not touch the drawings at first. He stood in the doorway with his medical bag in one hand and studied the room as if it were another patient whose symptoms had been arranged carefully.
The narrow bed remained against the wall. The loose drawing hung at an angle, its yellow sun scratched nearly white in the center. Beside it, the second drawing stayed flat against the plaster: a mother, a little girl, and the same windowless house. No doors. No trees. No road leading away.
Allie watched from the east-wing bed when I carried the drawings to the table. Her fingers tightened around the blanket. She tried to sit higher, but the effort left her breathing shallow.
I set the drawings faceup and placed the damp receipt beside them.
The paper had dried along the edges but remained soft in the middle. Allie's name was visible beneath a faded line of ink. The rest had blurred into gray strokes. I could make out a date and the bottom half of a street address, but not enough to identify the place.
Dr. Leon turned the receipt under the lamp. He used tweezers from his bag to lift one corner.
A thin brown fiber clung to the back.
He placed it on a white square of gauze. It looked like thread from a paper envelope or a rough cardboard box. Nothing about it proved who had left the receipt. Nothing about it made the missing key less troubling.
I returned to the staff quarters alone.
The old key had been kept beside the sink, separate from the estate ring. It opened the outside service door and two interior doors used by staff years ago. I checked the service door. Its lock showed no fresh scratches. The corridor beyond smelled of dust and floor polish. A narrow strip of mud marked the threshold, no wider than a finger.
I crouched and touched it.
The mud was damp.
At the bottom of the cabinet, one board sat higher than the others. I slid my pocketknife beneath the edge and lifted it. Beneath the board lay a shallow space filled with lint, a bent hairpin, and a folded scrap of paper.
The scrap was not the receipt. It was a torn portion of the same kind of paper, bearing a partial line of numbers and one clear letter: V.
I carried it to Dr. Leon.
He looked at the scrap, then at Allie. She closed her eyes. Her silence was not confusion. It was refusal.
I did not force her to explain. I placed the paper beneath the receipt and returned both to the inside pocket of my jacket.
The search had not been for medicine or money. Whoever entered had checked the room, the wall, and the places a frightened person might use to hide something small.
In the east-wing room, Lily's rabbit lay on the rug beside her. She had pulled one loose ear through her fist. When I secured the door again, her eyes moved to the key in my hand.
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I kept it there until Dr. Leon finished his examination.
The missing key had given someone access. The torn paper suggested a reason. Neither told me what Victor wanted, and neither told me how close he had come.
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