Page 66 of A Thin Line

What I thought of shortly after I’d gone to work downstairs was that I would be all alone with the keys…and I could finally do some snooping on the second floor of the east wing. Although I knew the driver and his wife occupied some rooms on the third floor, I had never heard them and I hadn’t seen Greg much—except sometimes in the morning when he’d walk down the hall past the kitchen toward the garage.

And, because it was forbidden to all, I didn’t expect to see anyone there.

Well…I didn’t know for certain that everyone else was forbidden, but that was the vibe I’d gotten. More than once, Edna had said that space was unused—so the cleaning women didn’t go in there, nor did anyone else. And it was in my contract that I would not enter that area. But no one had said why. If someone had indicated that it was in horrible disrepair or that it was infested with rats or some disease, I would have avoided it without question.

But it couldn’t be anything like that. If it were in disrepair, I would have thought it would be dangerous to inhabit any floor of that wing for fear that the second floor could collapse—and there seemed to be no such trepidation. And if it had been some sort of health hazard, surely they would have simply said so, because no person in her right mind would want to get sick simply to satisfy her curiosity.

To find out what secrets they were hiding, though? Sign me up.

The only thing that made the wait until the afternoon bearable was reading the journal. I only spent a couple of hours doing the job I was supposed to and finally returned to devouring the words of Sinclair’s mother. Sometimes, it was hard to read because her handwriting would become small and cramped, but I managed. Sadly enough, it was more of the same—day after day, month after month, she lamented her husband’s continual lack of affection. Sometimes she’d leave a simple one-sentence entry like New lingerie didn’t work, but most of the time, she spent pages upon pages laying out the evidence that she was beginning to believe he had a mistress somewhere in Europe.

One entry in particular struck a chord with me.

* * *

Gus came back late last night from another trip to France. After he’d left for work this morning, I started rifling through his luggage before his valet got a chance to unpack—and there it was: a purple-and-black bustier, sexy and feminine. It was smaller than what I’d wear, so I tried to picture the other woman in my mind…slight, petite maybe, rail thin? For some reason, I imagined her with dark hair and painted red lips, long false eyelashes batting at him to give in.

The valet actually caught me going through his things, looking for more evidence. I told him I was trying to help, and I know he didn’t buy it, but he’s smart enough to know not to contradict me. Instead, he insisted upon doing his job and I stepped aside.

Later on, Gus gave me a present, something he hadn’t done in years when it wasn’t Christmas, my birthday, or our anniversary—and, lo and behold, there was that stupid bustier. I know the valet had tipped him off and he’d done what he had to do. But Gus seemed so sincere and was more loving and doting than he’d been in years. For him, I tried to put it on but it was too small, and he promised to get me something that would fit.

But I smelled the perfume on it—whatever that nasty whore had been wearing when he fucked her.

So why did I let him make love to me?

I guess it was to assuage some of the loneliness.

* * *

Ugh. I hated this man even more—it just added to what I already felt about him for the destructive mining he’d done in Winchester that my father had eventually been able to stop.

As I kept reading, that hatred festered. Sinclair’s mother had gotten pregnant that night, and I thought maybe she had conceived her third son—but she wound up having a miscarriage a few months later. She hadn’t even told her husband about the pregnancy by that point because she’d had a miscarriage the last time. She was hoping that a new baby would keep his heart at home instead of across the Atlantic Ocean…but it wasn’t meant to be.

An hour after lunch, Edna hollered down the stairs. “Lise, I’m leaving. Did you think of anything else you’ll need?”

“Nope. Thanks, Edna.”

“All right. I’ll be back in an hour or so. Text if you think of something.”

I wasn’t even going to wait. I tiptoed up the stairs to the door, already shut again, listening to the sound of Edna’s shoes as she walked down the main hallway before turning down the east rear hallway toward the other garage. I’d already learned that her personal car was parked in the big open space on the west side, a concrete area that could hold six vehicles, but Edna drove one of Sinclair’s cars when she did the household shopping. She’d already told me she loved driving the black Honda Accord, especially because it was only a year old. There were two other cars she said she was allowed to use and Greg was the one who maintained them and kept them fueled. “If Mr. Whittier ever lets you drive, it’ll be one of those cars,” she’d said, trying to convince me I’d like the Mazda.

I would have considered taking it earlier if I’d known where the keys were.

When I was certain I thought the mansion had grown silent, I waited another minute for good measure. Then I peeked my head out, scanning the main hallway and what I could of the rear west hall.

I couldn’t hear anything other than the usual mansion sounds—which was almost nothing. The place was designed to be silent.

Fortunately, my sneakers on the hallway floor kept my steps quiet as well as I headed east. As I continued walking, I kept looking everywhere—because I couldn’t be certain no one was around. At the junction of the antechamber with the main hallway, I looked not just toward the door but also upward at the second and third floors—and there wasn’t a soul to be seen.

So I went straight to the staircase and walked up. Even here on the landing around the antechamber, I could claim I was walking around to the west side. It wasn’t until I actually turned to walk down the east wing that I knew I was in violation of the contract.

But if no one knew, it wouldn’t matter.

This hallway looked almost identical to the one my bedroom was on, only going in the other direction. There were lots of locked doors and artwork on the walls—but I wasn’t going to turn on a light to see. At the end of the hall, there was a door, unlike the opposite wing that had a window.

It simply emphasized just how dark and cold that wing was.

I walked the length of the hall first, just to verify that there were the same amount of doors as on the other side—but there weren’t. There were fewer doors on this side, and I wondered why. Because I hadn’t been in the other rooms on the west wing, snooping over here wouldn’t answer my question, either. But I might figure it out later. I decided to enter one of the doors at the end of the hallway—and, as I tried to turn the knob, learned it was locked. So I tried another door and another…and another.

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