Once we arrived back at Hawthorne House, I asked Oren to show me the elusive Hawthorne vault. He took me, and only me, to see it. We zigged and zagged through hallways until we reached an elevator. When the elevator door opened, I went to step on, but Oren stopped me. He pressed the call button a second time, holding his index finger flat against it.
“Fingerprint scan,” he told me. After a moment, the back wall of the elevator began to slide, revealing a small walkway.
“What happens if someone pries the doors open while the elevator is on a different floor?” I asked.
“Nothing.” Oren’s lips parted in a very subtle smile. “The passage only opens if the elevator is present.”
“Whose fingerprints can open it?” I asked.
“Currently?” Oren returned. “Mine and Nan’s.”
Not Zara’s. Not Skye’s. And not mine. In Tobias Hawthorne’s will, he’d left all of his wife’s jewelry to her mother. At the time of the will’s reading, that had seemed trivial, but as we walked toward an honest-to-God vault door—the kind you’d expect to see on a bank vault—it didn’t seem so trivial now.
“If everything in the Hawthorne vault belongs to Nan…,” I started to say.
“Not everything,” Oren cut in. “Nan owns the late Mrs. Hawthorne’s jewelry, but Mr. Hawthorne also had an impressive collection of watches and rings, as well as pieces he purchased for artistic and sentimental reasons. Mrs. Hawthorne’s jewelry passed to Nan, but many of the museum-quality pieces are yours.”
“Museum-quality?” I swallowed. “Am I getting ready to see the crown jewels?” I was only partially joking.
“Of what country?” Oren replied—and he wasn’t joking at all.
“Anything valued over two million dollars is kept off the premises, in a more secure location.”
The vault’s lock disengaged. Oren spun the handle on the door and opened it. Holding my breath, I stepped into a steel room lined, ceiling to floor, with metallic drawers. I reached for one at random. When I pulled it out, displays popped up: three of them, each containing a set of tear-drop earrings: diamonds, bigger than any engagement ring I’d ever seen. I opened three or four more drawers and blinked. Repeatedly.
My brain refused to compute.
“Is there something in particular you were looking for?” Oren asked me.
I tore my eyes away from a ruby half the size of my fist. “Wedding ring,” I managed. “Tobias Hawthorne’s.” Oren stared at me for a second or two, then walked over to the far wall. He pulled one drawer, then another, and I found myself staring at a dozen Rolex watches and a pair of varnished silver cuff links.
“Is the ring hidden?” I asked, my fingers wandering toward one of the watches.
“If the ring isn’t in that drawer, it isn’t here,” Oren said. “My guess would be that Mr. Hawthorne had it placed in the envelope that was given to Zara at the reading of the will.”
In other words: I was surrounded by a fortune in jewels, but the one thing I needed wasn’t here.
