Page 65 of What Happens at Nightfall

“Not that,” said Jess impatiently. “The picture.”

It was a photograph of a photograph, which meant that it had lost something in the translation. But the face on the winged urn was undoubtedly the same face as the one on the fragment of marble that had nearly conked Jess on the head.

“Hang on.” Adam pulled out his own phone, plugging a number in. “Calvin, it’s Adam. Did you ever find that finial from the top of the McAlpin monument? No?”

Tucking the phone under his ear, he stuck Jess’s phone into his charger. Making mm-hmm noises, he pulled open the fridge, took out the big orange bottle of caramel macchiato creamer, and passed it to Jess.

“Yes, I think I may have found it—but, look, I have some bad news. It’s broken. Mm-hmm. Yep. I found the pieces on my front walk. Mm-hmm. I’ll bag up what I can for you. I’m not sure there’s enough left to put together again. It really shattered. A hammer? I don’t think so. Yeah, I don’t know why people do what they do. Okay. I’ll leave it for you. Cheers.”

Jess cocked a brow at him. “You found the pieces on your front walk?”

Adam looked like a kid caught with his finger in a Nutella jar. “It’s true as far as it goes. We did find the pieces.”

“Yes, after it fell off the roof.”

“Details, details. Do you need a spoon for that?”

“It’s fine.” Jess gave her cup a swirl to mix it. She’d decided she was over her scruples about drinking his creamer. Bitterness was overrated. “So how did the urn we found on the ground that night get onto your roof? Other than my abstracting it when you weren’t looking, scaling the side of your house, and planting it there, of course.”

Adam had the grace to look abashed. “It might not be the same urn. It might have been up there for decades and just got dislodged by—something.”

Like a demon disguised as a cloud of hornets or a really annoyed Gilded Age ghost.

Jess pulled her phone back toward her, enlarging the photo and holding it up next to the fragment on the counter. “You want to bet on that?”

Even allowing for the wear and tear of having recently survived a large fall and some attractive green accents of sap, the image in the picture and the carving in front of them were identical.

“Oh, hey!” Kimmy pushed back her chair. “I meant to ask—is this yours?”

There was a key in her palm. Not a giant baronial brass key, like the one to the tomb, all shaft and teeth, but a little silver key, scarcely the size of Kimmy’s thumb.

“I spotted it on the ground where you’d been sitting, Jess. I wasn’t sure if it fell out of one of your pockets.”

“It’s not mine,” said Adam.

The key. I gave you the key. Use the key.

Jess looked sharply at Adam. “Could the key have been in the urn?”

“Theoretically, yes. I suppose someone could have stuck it in there when the monument was first erected—Calvin would know. Maybe it was a symbolic thing.”

“Or maybe someone hid it there,” said Jess. The taste of caramel macchiato curdled on her tongue. She knew it was true. She knew without knowing how she knew. Someone had hidden that key in the urn. And Cornelia Vanderwilt had thrown it at her.

“I wonder what it unlocks.” Kimmy’s eyes were bright with the thrill of the hunt. “It’s not the key to the Vanderwilt tomb, is it?”

Adam shook his head. “No, there’s no reason for anyone to hide that. There are at least three copies in circulation that I know of.”

There was only one person Jess could think of who might know what that key was or why it was in the urn. “Ingrid had a lot of pictures of that urn.”

Adam looked askance at her. “Do you think Ingrid hid it there?”

Jess knew she hadn’t. But she couldn’t say that, not without sounding completely nuts. He already thought she was some sort of con person. “Do you still have her number?”

Adam ducked his head. “I burned it.”

“You what?”

“It seemed like a good idea at the time.” Adam looked embarrassed. “I’m not sure why. Maybe I thought that if I destroyed it, I’d destroy the threat to Melinda? I don’t know. I just know I did.”