10
DANIELA
The printer.
Time to look closely.
The note was printed from here.The officers said they’d pull the print log.Maybe they did.Maybe they didn’t look at the paper tray.I slide it out an inch.Half a ream.The top sheet is clean.I angle it to the light.No faint impression from the page above, no pressure ghost of letters.
“Hey.”
I look up.Raven hovers in the doorway, one arm crossed over her belly.“Find anything?”
“Just a handwritten list.”I point to it.“It was lodged in the track of a desk drawer.Strange really.Written in block letters.It could have been there for a while.Who had this room before Belinda?”
“I don’t know.We’d have to ask Vinnie.And he may not know as he was in Europe for seventeen years.If I had to guess, I’d say it was Savannah’s.”She gestures toward the note.“I don’t have gloves.”
I nod.
Raven points to the printer.“The note,” she says, like it tastes wrong in her mouth.
I nod.Belinda’s laptop sits closed on the desk, a sheet of piano scales tucked under it.I lift the lid with the edge of my fingernail.The login screen blooms—her name, that goofy Mozart sunflower icon she chose, a password field blinking.
“I’m surprised the officers didn’t look more closely at this,” Raven says.
“Because they aren’t taking this seriously,” I say dryly.
She hovers over me as I slide my gloved fingers over the keyboard.
“Anything?”
We both look up at Vinnie standing in the doorway.
“Just a note lodged in one of the desk drawers.”I point.“Who had this room—more specifically, this furniture—before Belinda?”
“Hell if I know.I wasn’t here.”
I nod again.“I’m going to try to get into her computer.”
“The cops should be the ones doing that,” he says.
“Yeah, they should, but they didn’t even try.”I glance at the password window.Then, carefully, because these damned gloves make it difficult.I type in Mozart.
“Too obvious,” Vinnie says.
“Maybe.”I try Debussy.No dice.Chopin.Nope.I add her birth year to each.The laptop rejects each one.
I glance at the wallpaper photo—a snapshot of her with me.She’s holding out her orange fingertips from cheeseballs.“She’d pick something she loves.Or someone.”
“Try ‘Bach,’” Raven says.“She’s been on a cello suites kick.”
“Belinda thinks Bach is a ‘sad genius grandpa.’”But I try it anyway.
Nothing.
I type cheeseballson impulse.
Wrong.
