The Traitor's Diary: A Lost Treasure Mystery by Sterling Kirkland

Author:Sterling Kirkland [Kirkland, Sterling]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2023-10-09T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 23

The home looked just as she remembered. Passing through the gate, she wondered if any of the neighbors suspected it housed one of the greatest collections of antiques the world had ever known. Given that no one had ever broken into it, she suspected they hadn’t. Taking a deep breath, she inserted the key into the lock.

You can do this.

When the door swung open, she felt her heart skip a beat. Everything on the inside was different. Instead of seeing the small, cozy living room she had known all of her life, she was greeted by an open space looking straight into the kitchen.

“Whoa,” Jayden said, squeezing past her. “This is different.”

Camrie didn’t know how to reply. If someone had suggested her father had remodeled the house after her mother had died, she would have laughed in their face. Kevin Calitta didn’t do such things. He was a creature of habit. A lover of all things old. Yet, everything standing in front of her said otherwise.

Moving into the kitchen, she ran a finger along the marble countertop, wondering how the contractor had managed to get it inside the home. Then she spotted the answer. At the back of the room stood the largest sliding glass door she had ever seen in her life.

“Cam, you’ve got to see this.”

Turning to her left, Camrie followed her friend’s voice until she came to the spot which had once housed the home’s three bedrooms and lone bathroom. For reasons she didn’t understand, her father had knocked down all the walls and the ceiling in order to turn that side of the house into his own personal library. Climbing up the library’s ladder, she passed by the bookshelves, wondering what other changes lay in store for her.

Like the first floor, her father had removed most of the walls, in order to open up the space. The house looked more like a regional library than someplace someone would call home. Unable to believe what she was seeing, Camrie raced to the end of the room, hoping to find something that would explain why her father had chosen to do such a thing.

In the back corner, overlooking the pool, she found a small room with a single bed and nightstand inside. It seemed so out of place, she wondered why her father had bothered adding it.

As she stepped inside, the answer hit her. With her mother gone, the man had no reason to maintain the property as a home.

Pulling the door closed, she found herself wondering if things would be different had she tried to rekindle their relationship. She doubted it. Even if they had become best friends, there was no way she would have considered moving back home. Her life was in the city now.

“Find anything?” Jayden asked.

“Just his bedroom,” Camrie replied, walking away. She needed to know if he had kept the antiques.

Not finding any on the second floor, she went back downstairs, where she found them shoved into what had once been the family room.

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