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19
157
52
210
I had no idea what they meant. A combination to a safe? My room safe required a six-digit code.
Maybe there was a hotel safe with a traditional combination? I still didn’t think the numbers went into the hundreds. Lottery numbers didn’t go that high, either.
She could have mixed up numbers to hide their meaning, but there were too many digits for a Social Security number or a telephone number. Unless there was an international code, which was usually two or three digits. So twelve digits would fit for some countries.
Possible, but why write it out in five lines? The number 11 could be Canada or the United States, but then there would be an extra number.
The last impression was a happy face. Two lines for eyes, a curve for the mouth, and a circle surrounding them. It was the deepest impression on the page, next to the numbers.
The numbers also didn’t match with any of the other written numbers in the book, such as the 77 or 522.
I put my notebook aside. Whatever the numbers meant, they were the last thing Diana Harden had written in this book.
The party was starting, but I didn’t want to be the first one to arrive, so I took a glass of water to my patio along with my laptop. After the late night and then hiking this afternoon, I was drained. I could fall asleep out here listening to the ocean. Maybe I wouldn’t go to the luau at all.
I opened my laptop, and my finger itched to log in to the office just to make sure that everything was running smoothly. I was responsible for other people’s money, and while I trusted Braden and I had left clear instructions for managing each client, I had this nagging feeling that I needed to double-check every account.
Or, rather, triple-check, because I’d double-checked the day before I left, when I was supposed to be packing.
“Stop,” I told myself. Instead of hitting my employer website, I opened the search engine and typedSherry Morrison.
Bad idea. There were a lot of Sherry Morrisons out there.
I typed:Sherry Morrison Andrew Locke
Bam. First link was a sports gossip magazine that had a photo of Sherry and Andrew at a football game last November.
The caption read:Former pitcher for the Dodgers and Braves, Andrew Locke, rooting for the Colts where his best friend and former college roommate Richie Dunn is the interim offensive line coach. Locke seen here with his girlfriend, Sherilyn Morrison, an interior decorator.
Within ten minutes, I’d compiled a long list of articles that Sherry was featured in—or, rather, herboyfriendof any given moment was featured in, where she was also mentioned. She had been attached toninedifferent professional sports players over the last ten years. Four, including Andrew, were retired.
I dug around a little more, curious as to why none of these relationships had lasted. That’s when I foundthreeseparateengagement announcements. The first resulted in her first marriage at twenty-one, which had ended in divorce three years later. Her second engagement had been called off quite publiclywhen her fiancé—a professional football player—cheated on her. Her third engagement ended in her second marriage... and his death. They’d been married two years and two days when he’d died after a heart attack while they were on a romantic couples cruise for their anniversary.
Sherry had fought his adult children and ex-wife during probate, but his will was airtight, and she received only a small portion of his estate—the house and a million dollars. Not that a million was anything to sniff at, but considering the man had been a retired football player and was worth over one hundred million, her portion was a tiny fraction of his total estate.
One gossip rag had the dead husband’s daughter ranting about Sherry being responsible for her dad’s death.
“It wasn’t an accident. It was murder.”
But there had been no formal investigation. One article indicated cause of death was sudden cardiac arrest. The autopsy found signs of heart disease.
Every article mentioned that Sherry was an interior decorator, and she had an LLC under Prestige Design Group, but her webpage was bare-bones and hadn’t been updated in years.
One divorce and one dead husband in ten years. The first marriage lasted three years, the second two years. Was Andrew Locke to be the third?
I didn’t want to tell Brie about this, but at the same time, wouldn’t Andrew already know that his girlfriend was divorcedandwidowed? It seemed like a topic that would come up in conversation, since it was all public. I wouldn’t necessarily want to know about my boyfriend’s ex-girlfriends, but I definitely would want to know if he’d been married before. That seemed important.
Maybe Brie knew. Maybe it didn’t bother her dad. It just bugged me that Diana had written about Sherry in the book, and not in a flattering way. She wrote as if she knew specific dirt on Sherry.
Money or love? Money, of course—he’s worth a small fortune. Does he know all the dirt on his new girlfriend?