Page 81 of Tessa's Trust

“I’m fine. Just hold on.” I forced myself to my feet. I looked around, and the place seemed undisturbed. It looked exactly like it had last time, only with maybe a little more dust.

Wincing at my aching body, I stumbled to the front door and unlocked it, pulling it open. The three ladies instantly barreled inside.

Nonna flipped on the lights, and this time, they actually illuminated. “See, it was the storm last time,” she said, smugly.

“You were right.” Man, my arm ached.

Gerty clapped her covered hands together. “Okay. So, let’s each take a spot.”

I paused. “Gerty, what do you know?”

She shuffled her feet. “Well, I don’t know that much, except Sadie once told me if you ever wanted to hide something, you should put it where nobody will find it.”

My mouth gaped. “Well, yeah. Do you know anything more than that?”

“Sure. Sadie said people never look in the kitchen. Let’s go through her entire kitchen.”

“All right,” Georgiana said, her voice low with authority. “Here’s the deal. I will go through the kitchen. Tessa, investigate in the bedroom. Gerty, you search the living room. And Elda, you pick carefully through the bathroom. Be very thorough. People hide items in the backs of toilets, and there are often false doors.”

I rolled my eyes. There was no way the small cabin had a false door. But I did as I was told and headed to the bedroom. We searched for a good hour, and then another, not finding a darn thing.

I still couldn’t tell if Sadie had meant to leave or not. There were no suitcases, but most of her clothes were still in place. We did not find a ledger, and we sure as heck didn’t find any sticky notes.

Dejected, we all sat in the living room, still wearing the bright blue gloves.

Gerty shook her head sadly. “I can’t believe we didn’t find anything.”

“It’s all right,” I murmured. “At least we tried.”

She sighed. “Yes, but you don’t understand. Sadie loved a good hiding place. She talked about where she hid some of her money after good gambling parties. It was always somewhere interesting. I can’t believe we just couldn’t find anything here at her home.”

Nonna looked at me. “What about at Silver Sadie’s?”

I shook my head. “She cleared everything out, except for a bunch of junk that I went through.”

“Yes, but did you look in possible hiding places?” Nonna asked.

“There weren’t any,” I said, although my mind started to spin. It wasn’t like I’d tapped on all the walls or anything.

A truck echoed outside, and we all stiffened. What in the world? Then a police siren chirped twice.

“Oh, crap,” Georgiana cried out, jumping to her feet. “Everybody run.” She bustled for the sliding back door and opened it. “Come on. We have to get out of here.”

“But my car’s out front.” Panic lashed through me.

“It doesn’t matter. Just because your car’s here doesn’t mean you are,” Gerty pointed out wisely. “We’ll say it was stolen.”

The woman had a point. The seniors scrambled off the sofa. My tall nonna, bulky Georgiana, and petite little Gerty all made a mad dash out to the back deck. I followed them, looking around to make sure we hadn’t left a mess.

“Everybody run,” Gerty bellowed.

And then things happened too fast to track. Nonna slipped on the deck, Georgiana tried to catch her, and they both smashed into me. I tried to wrap my arms around them and landed hard on my back, the wind blowing from my lungs. Pain rippled down my spine.

“Come on,” Gerty said, frantically trying to lift Georgiana off me. Georgiana rolled and groaned, and then just kept rolling across the snow.

“Stop her!” Nonna yelled.

Gerty tried to put her small body in the path but got flattened, and then they both fell off the deck onto the snowy ground toward the lake, sinking instantly.

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