Page 29 of Merciless Heir

I rifle through work things and letters on the desk. Through files and photos and notes.

“You think the jewels were kept here?”

I pause, hand on the desk drawer. “I don’t know. Stands to reason he had them somewhere.”

“With Jenson. In a bank vault. The usual suspects.”

“Your father thought about them at some point. So, when my digging led me here, I figured it was a good place to start.”

Kingston has a portrait, large, gilt-framed, in his hands. It hung over a faux fireplace that’s filled with all the pieces made for keeping hearths clean, for stoking the embers. But it’s clearly not meant for use.

I know the portrait of Kingston and his brothers as kids hung there because I spotted it when I came in, and there’s a wall safe.

“Or he decided to fuck with us from the great beyond.”

“Other than holding a séance or finding a signed confession—” I pull open the drawer “—we won’t know.”

Just neat odds and ends in here. I go through the other drawers but find nothing that’s going to help.

“Why not one of his other places? His Manhattan home? The one in the Catskills?”

“Too obvious?” I cross to him as he sets the portrait down. And my gaze goes to the young Kingston. A boy, already with steel in his eyes, and something else, like he’s trying to prove something.

I don’t need to know about his daddy issues. I have enough of those to last a lifetime.

“I find it interesting he had this place. And he used it.”

“If Misty’s here, he used it because they spent time here.”

I nod and go up to the safe, careful not to touch him. He’s a little too disturbing. “Yes, but I get the feeling he used it after they broke up. And he’d come here alone.”

“And you get this feeling how?”

I turn a smile on him. “Research. Any chance you know the combination?”

“Aren’t you a master thief?” He crosses his arms.

“Don’t believe what they tell you in movies. Most safes are broken into by basically blowing them open or cutting them open.”

He sighs. And starts trying various combinations.

In the third drawer I opened was a picture. It had marks on it like it had been touched often. Looked at. “Try your mother’s birth date.”

“Okay, but I don’t know wh—” He stops talking as the safe clicks and he meets my gaze.

Electricity shoots high through me.

He opens the door.

“Photos. Some jewelry, documents.”

“Give me the photos.”

He pulls them out and I take them before he can say a word. Bingo, as they say.

Photo after photo of the jewels. “Are there any evaluation papers?”

Things rustle as I keep studying the pictures. “No.”