Nowhere to Hide by Nancy Bush

“The door will lock automatically behind you. Please make sure it’s pulled tight when you go.” She headed across the parking area to her older-model Toyota.
    “Sure,” September said to no one in particular as she entered the house. The front door possessed a mortise lock and it shut behind her with a satisfying click. September didn’t have a key and didn’t want one, most of the time.
    It was six o’clock and the shadows were growing long. Surprisingly, now that she was in the house, she felt beaten down and weary and really didn’t much want to start her search. Entering the living room, she saw Rosamund’s picture again, the pregnancy very evident. At July’s birthday party, Rosamund hadn’t really been showing, though she’d only popped in for a minute or two, claiming another engagement. At the time September had scarcely noticed her; she’d been too absorbed in navigating small talk with the rest of the Raffertys, none of whom she really wanted to see except July. Auggie, of course, had been a no show, but then he’d been working undercover at the time, and September had used that excuse to explain why he was absent when they all knew it was because he didn’t want to see his father and he didn’t really give a shit in the first place.
    Exhaling heavily, she walked down the hall, opened the door to the stairs to the attic and trudged up the steep flight. At the top, she looked around. The attic was large, with a number of rooms created by dips in the roofline over several wings of the house.
    There was a lot of junk in piles, everything from forgotten furniture to boxes and boxes of financial papers and old tax returns, to out-of-date electronics that should have been thrown away years before. September rooted around in the boxes of papers, unstacking them, restacking them, sneezing from the swirling dust she created, sweating from the heat that had built up. She went through twenty boxes before she gave up, swiping her inner elbow against the perspiration forming on her forehead and running down her temples.
    Finally she sank down into an old toile-covered chair with worn arms and tufts of stuffing sticking through the seams. There were more boxes than she’d counted on, and it looked like it might be a fruitless task anyway. She thought about going down to the basement, but couldn’t get up the energy. Besides, she hadn’t even made a dent in any of the attic stuff.
    What was she looking for? More artwork? What would that prove anyway? She knew the killer had the one piece. If she found more in the attic did that mean hers had been discovered by someone in her family? Maybe . . . but so far she hadn’t found any of hers or her siblings’ childhood memorabilia. Had it been moved somewhere?
    There was a whole pile of stuff in the furthest room from the stairs but it was barricaded by more forgotten furniture: chairs, tables, mattresses. . . . She glanced over it but it would take more effort than she was willing to put in to figure it out.
    The basement . . .
    Leaning her head back against the chair, she gazed up at the cobwebbed rafters and thought she could use a drink of water, or lemonade, or an ice-cold vodka martini. She would check out the basement in a minute, but she just wanted to sit a moment and think. What a day. She almost wished she’d gone with Sandler to interview Emmy Decatur’s parents again. She might have learned something more rather than just come here and get disheartened.
    And that meeting with Jake Westerly. She searched her feelings and shook her head. She didn’t want him involved in this.
    Pulling out her cell, she put in a call to her partner. Gretchen picked up quickly and said she was busy but to meet her at The Barn Door later. “Okay,” September agreed, then hung up, feeling a little left out. The only good thing was she didn’t have to explain about her interview with Jake, something she wasn’t ready to go into with Gretchen just yet.
    She thought back