I stepped out of the bathroom to find her rattling the armoire’s doors vigorously, as if she hoped to shake them open.
“Don’t get too excited,” I said. “The key’s sitting right there on the dresser.”
I found only the usual Bible and stationery in the bedside drawer, so I went over to see what Caroline had found in the armoire. A modest TV with two drawers underneath filled the right side while the left offered more hanging space to make up for the small size of the closet. Denton hadn’t needed the overflow. He’d stashed his socks and underwear in the top drawer. The second one contained a laptop and a small collection of papers.
“Bingo!” Caroline said. “You boot up the laptop; I’ll start photographing these.”
She set the papers on top of the desk and pulled out a small digital camera. I brought the laptop over and set it beside the papers.
“Here,” I said, as I hit the laptop’s power switch. “You watch this while it boots. I can take the photos for a while. I’m tall enough to get a better angle anyway.” I also knew, from seeing the fuzzy, crooked pictures she took of the animals at the Willner Wildlife Sanctuary that Caroline was a singularly inept digital photographer, and while my shots of the boys might not be award winners, they were at least in focus more often than not.
“Thank you, dearie,” Caroline said.
I concentrated on getting good, sharp shots of Denton’s papers, but I scanned them as I worked, and I wasn’t spotting any earth-shattering new information. I found three weekly progress reports, addressed to Mr. Leonard Fisher of First Progressive Financial, the last one dated three days ago. Not exactly page turners—mostly they were long lists of the people he’d interviewed and the tiny scraps of information he gained from them.
“Not making much progress, is he?” Caroline said, when I’d finished photographing the last of the reports.
“Don’t gloat,” I said. “Neither are we.”
“At least he does appear to be doing what he said he was doing,” she said. “Trying to find out how Mr. Throckmorton has been getting his supplies.”
“I don’t like how much energy he spends asking about secret passages,” I said. “And looking for them.”
“Looking inside the courthouse,” Caroline said. “He won’t find anything like that inside the parts of the courthouse he can reach. Speaking of not finding things—your PI fellow has a password on his laptop. We’re not going to find out much information from it unless you can guess what it is.”
“Then we won’t find out much from it,” I said. “Because I haven’t a clue what he’d use as a password. Get Rob to find you a hacker with a password cracking program.”
“Okay,” she said. “If you won’t even bother to try, I’ll turn it off and see if I can fit it in my purse. Then—”
“We are not taking that laptop with us,” I said. “You snuck in once with me, you can sneak in again with Rob’s hacker, once he finds you one.”
I could tell she was about to argue with me, but just then someone knocked on the door.
“Denton!” a male voice said. “Are you in there?”
Caroline and I froze. Then she scrambled toward the armoire.
“Lock me in,” she whispered. “And then you can get out through the window.”
“They probably won’t come in,” I whispered back. “And if they do, then they’re burgling the place, just like us, and the armoire is the first place they’ll look. We’ll both just have to go out the window.”
“What about the laptop? And the papers? We—”
“Leave them!” I whispered. “Let’s move!”
“Denton?” The man outside knocked again. And he was using the same discreetly low voice and firm but soft knock I’d used.
“There’s no one there,” another voice said. “Shut up and hurry up.”
“Quick!” the first voice said. “Someone’s coming.”
The door didn’t pop open immediately, which probably meant that this new set of burglars was hiding from someone passing by, just as Caroline and I had.
Thank goodness for passersby. Meanwhile, we’d reached the window. I looked down. We were only on the second floor, but the ground sloped down behind the hotel, and it was at least a two-story jump to the concrete loading dock below.
I pulled the sliding glass door open and grabbed the left curtain to pull it closed.
“Grab the other side,” I whispered. I was moving the potted petunias so they were in front of the window, leaving the less visible ends of the ledge for us. “Pull it closed. And then take the other end of the ledge.”