Chapter 9 - The Empty Guesthouse

By the time we reached the estate, Rosa's apartment was empty. Her coat hung by the door. Her glasses lay beside an unfinished crossword. Her phone rang on the kitchen counter when I dialed it.

"This isn't like her," I said.

Daniel inspected the entrance. No broken glass. No signs of a fight. The garden camera had gone dark for eleven minutes.

Nathan arrived from downtown and looked genuinely alarmed. "Where's Rosa?"

Rosa's absence made the entire guesthouse seem altered. The kettle was cool. Her reading glasses lay folded beside a crossword clue she had not finished: ANOTHER WORD FOR FAITH. Five letters. TRUST. I hated that coincidence. I had taken Rosa's quiet reliability for granted for years, assuming there would always be tea on the stove and someone ready to scold me for skipping lunch. Waiting for her call, I promised myself I would stop treating dependable love as invisible. Daniel sat by the kitchen window until nightfall, watching the garden path without making a show of it.

"I hoped you'd tell me."

"Claire, I would never hurt her."

"You also said you weren't sleeping with Vanessa."

That landed. He stopped arguing and helped Daniel search the grounds. Emma called the police to report Rosa missing, explaining her routine and the suspicious outage.

At dusk a house phone rang. I answered before anyone else.

"Mrs. Whitmore?" Rosa whispered. "Please don't say my name."

"Where are you?"

"At my cousin's. A man came to the guesthouse and asked for the brass key. I told him I didn't know what he meant. He said he'd return with a reason to make me remember. I left through the back gate."

Relief nearly knocked my legs out from under me. "Stay there. We'll come get you."

"One more thing," she said. "Before I left, I saw Mr. Bell in the upstairs hall. He had your grandmother's writing box."

I hung up and faced Nathan. "Your lawyer was here."

"I never gave him permission to enter upstairs."

"Then call him. Put it on speaker."

Nathan dialed. Martin answered with easy politeness, right until Nathan asked about the box.

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"I told you," Martin snapped, forgetting I was listening, "that woman should have been removed from the house before she found the second will."