“That’s the tricky part. Unfortunately, even if they were susceptible to… persuasion, we wouldn’t be able to get in.”
“Why?” Wes asked.
“Only the account holder or the direct heir can access it. There is no override function.”
“Damn!” Cara swore.
“What are the security measures? Digital or physical?” Wes leaned forward.
“Normally, it’s biometrics and a 4-digit pin code.”
Cara groaned.
“But when an owner dies, they can bypass the biometrics, provided the heir has the death certificate, the will, proof of ID, and the pin number. Apparently, Courtney knows where he was, too. According to my source, she tried to access it yesterday afternoon with a man but didn’t have the pin code.”
“That’s not great,” Wes said. “If it were purely digital, I could—”
“No!” Cara smacked his arm. “I appreciate you want to help, but I’m not risking your freedom.”
“No,” Declan agreed. “We need to find another way.”
“We don’t even know if there is anything of value in there,” Wes pointed out.
“It has to be something very important to my father,” Cara insisted. “Why else make the trip when he was so ill?And, go to the lengths he did to hide where he had gone? Courtney didn’t know until I told her. Which in hindsight, was a really dumb thing to do.”
“Another will?” Declan guessed.
“At least, she can’t get in either.” Wes took a long swallow of his drink.
“What does the snow globe have to do with it?” Cara shook her head trying to make sense of what clues they had. “What did the note say? It was something like ‘things are clear now, and I’m giving the answers to you.’ And then he referenced the snow globe. There must be a clue to the pin number in it. It’s the only piece of information none of us has. Does Courtney know what’s in the vault? Maybe she’s worried it will prove she poisoned our father.”
“If he had proof she was poisoning him, he would have told someone,” Wes reasoned.
They sat back in frustration.
“Tell me everything you remember about the snow globe,” Declan demanded.
Cara shrugged. “It was a Dublin cityscape. We went over it carefully and didn’t see anything.”
“If we had it, we could break it apart. Chris must believe the answer is there.” Declan’s voice was bitter, and Cara saw the hurt he tried to hide.
“We don’t know for sure he was the one.”
His mouth twisted. “Don’t we? He won’t return my calls. He knows I know, and now he’s hiding like the coward he is. They must think the clue to the pin number is in the globe, too. Why else take it? It’s the only thing she’s missing to access the vault.” Declan drained his glass and rose to refill it.
The three of them sat lost in their own thoughts. “What about the music?” Wes asked suddenly. “Music and math are intrinsically entwined. And I’m assuming the pin number is a numeric value? What if it wasn’t something visual, but a musical cryptogram?”
Declan and Cara looked at him blankly. “A musical cryptogram, it’s like a secret code. You use a series of musical notes to refer to something else, like initials, or a name. People have used these types of codes for hundreds of years. It could be as simple as replacing the notes on the scale with notes on the alphabet. Even Bach had his own system.”
“My father wouldn’t have known about that.” Cara looked dubious.
Declan rubbed a finger across his lip. “What was the song? The alphabet?”
Cara made a face at him. “Why would someone put the alphabet song in a snow globe?”
Wes stared off into space for a minute humming, and then smiled. “It’s the same song.”
“What?”
