Chapter 6 - The Woman With the Keys
The photograph had been taken through Poppy's bedroom doorway. Her stuffed otter lay upside down beside her pillow, exactly where Adrian had left it the night before. Behind the bed, the closet mirror reflected a sliver of the photographer's sleeve: dark green satin.
Simone had worn a green satin robe at his house that morning.
He showed Marisol the reflection. "Someone wants Elise to know they can reach Poppy."
"Or wants you to think they can," Marisol said. "Either way, that photograph is evidence."
The hotel's head housekeeper, Ruth Finch, entered the sixth-floor hall with a ring of keys clipped to her belt. When Marisol asked about room 614, Ruth went pale.
"I cleaned it at seven," she said. "A woman came up afterward. She was limping, and she asked if I could let her hide there. I told her to call the police. She said she'd tried."
"Did she say her name?" Adrian asked.
"Elise. Elise Ward."
Adrian gripped the doorframe.
"She was wearing a blue coat with one cuff torn loose," Ruth continued. "She put a photograph on the table. She told me the girl in it was her daughter. Then a man in a gray suit walked by, and she ducked into the bathroom."
"What happened next?"
"I went for help. When I came back, she was gone."
Ruth reached into her pocket and gave Marisol a brass key attached to a chipped yellow tag. It was stamped OLD RECORDS.
"She pressed this into my hand. Said the truth was where the hotel kept things nobody wanted to remember."
Walter studied the tag. "That's not for a guest room. It's for the basement archive. They kept paper leases down there before everything went digital."
Marisol left an officer with Ruth. Adrian called Beth. Poppy was still safe in the lounge, humming as she drew a blue paper flower.
Ruth touched his sleeve. "Mr. Ward? One other thing. Your ex-wife told me, 'He'll think I chose to leave. Please tell him I fought to come home.'"
Adrian tried to speak, but his throat closed.
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When Marisol opened the basement archive, they found filing cabinets, an unplugged copy machine, and a metal safe bolted to the floor. Someone had scratched three words into its paint:
LOOK UNDER MORROW.
