Page 49 of One Last Secret

I check the desk again just in case I missed something. It’s still empty. I move on to the drawers, digging through the clothing Lisa left behind. I feel odd digging through these very personal belongings to look for evidence, but I must uncover the answers to this mystery, and I’m running out of time. Celeste is running out of time.

Celeste! I’ve completely forgotten that she might come home and find the house empty! What will she do if she returns to find herself alone?

That thought stills me for a minute, but I shake it off. I’m already here. I’ll be back soon enough, and I really do need to see if there’s anything helpful here. Still, I am left with a great deal of anxiety as I continue to search Lisa’s apartment. I can only hope that my time will yield something worthwhile.

When I finish in the bedroom, I head to the kitchen next. For some reason, people tend to keep important paperwork in a kitchen drawer when they don’t keep it filed somewhere in their bedroom. I hope Lisa is one of those people.

I find the famous paperwork drawer, and my heart leaps when I see papers left there. The first few papers are receipts for household goods: a hair dryer, a laptop, groceries from the previous summer. How strange the bits of detritus that collect in people’s lives.

I dig deeper and find a sheaf of bills and advertisements. Many of the bills have bright red PAST DUE notices stamped to them. I can well understand the stress Lisa must experience.

The final item is a brochure for real estate in Costa Rica. Or perhaps a resort vacation? It’s written in Spanish, and I don’t read the language, so I can’t tell. Something in the back of my mind makes me feel that this is important, though, so I pull it out of the drawer for a closer look.

When I turn it over, I see handwritten notes on the back. One readsStop by dealer first. Meet in a public place.The others are six-digit numbers that don’t make sense to me. Each number ends with the same two digits, though. I read them again, and I gasp when I realize that the two final digits represent the year. This year. From there, it’s easy to see that the other numbers are the day and month. There are four dates in total, and they all occur between a month ago and tomorrow.

Lisa was planning something. But what? Who is the dealer? Marcus? And why does she want to meet him in a public place?

Could she have feared for her safety? Maybe Marcus is more dangerous than he seems. He could employ people who might have harmed Lisa and Victor. Maybe Lisa was trying to find a way to pay him off before he came for both of them. Maybe Marcus decided it would be more lucrative to just get both of them out of the way.

And what? What else could he be planning? Or am I completely mistaken?

I hear a noise and freeze. It’s people talking. Have I been found out?

I quickly put the paperwork back in the drawer and look for a place to hide. The voices are growing louder. One male and one female. I overhear the male ask, “Do you have the key?” and the female reply, “Of course I have the key, dipshit.”

I recognize the voices. The man is Marcus, and the woman is Lisa. I rush from the kitchen and into the bathroom, then close and lock the door. I can't think of anywhere else to hide.

A moment later, I hear the front door open. Marcus and Lisa continue to argue.

“We should have just waited for him to turn the paintings over to you,” Marcus says. “His new series wasn’t bad. He’d find buyers for them.”

“His new series was crap, and I didn’t want to wait ten months struggling to find the right medium-sized business who needed some post-modern schlock to decorate their leased offices.”

“And you think Pacific landscapes are going to sell better?”

“I think they’ll sell faster. That’s more important right now.”

“Not if we can’t pay Rizzo.”

I stifle a gasp. So Lisaistrying to pay a loan shark. She must have ransacked her own apartment after all, and she is almost certainly behind Victor’s disappearance.

She confirms that a moment later when she says, “Wewillpay Rizzo. We’ll meet Jesus in San Diego, unload the paintings, then wire Rizzo some money right before we board the train to Mexico. We’ll keep the rest of the money and use that to buy a plot in Costa Rica where we can live like royalty for the rest of our lives.”

I hear them rifling through the kitchen, possibly looking for the same brochure I was looking at a moment ago.

Marcos laughs. “Royalty? We’ll be lucky to buy a hut and a couple of fishing poles.”

“You want to go there or prison?” she asks drily. “Or maybe Skid Row.”

“I’m just saying. I think we should manage our expectations for once.”

“Good idea. Keep that in mind when you get stupid enough to try to make a pass at me again.”

He scoffed. “A pass? At you? Look, I’m a depressed slob, but I have some self-respect.”

“Go to hell. All right, here’s the brochure.”

“Why do you need that anyway?”

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