Catherine Daley turned out to be a bleached blonde in her mid-fifties dressed in a cream-colored business suit. Annja’s cargo pants, T-shirt and hiking shoes were a sharp contrast and the look on Catherine’s face as Annja got out of the car told her all she needed to know about the woman’s prejudices.

She didn’t have to endure the Realtor’s withering stare for long, however, because Garin stepped out of the passenger side at that point and the Realtor’s gaze focused on him like a heat-seeking missile. Annja could have been dancing naked in the street with bells and whistles on and the other woman wouldn’t have noticed.

“Mr. Boucher, I presume?” Catherine said in a thick Southern accent as she walked over on her three-inch heels and held out her hand.

Garin smiled and, without batting an eye, replied with a long stream of perfect French.

Catherine paused and said, “Oh.”

Annja wanted to hit her already and they’d only been there two minutes. It was going to be a long appointment.

“Do you speak any English?” Catherine asked.

“Does you mother dress as badly as you?” he replied, again in French.

Thanks to his tone, it came out sounding mildly lascivious, making the Realtor flush. “Oh, my,” she said.

Annja had had enough.

She stepped forward and extended her hand to the woman, saying, “Hi! I’m Annja. I emailed you.”

“Um…yes, oh, yes, right. Miss Creed, correct?” Catherine’s smile did its best not to falter.

“That’s right. I’m Mr. Boucher’s agent. I’d be happy to translate as you show us the property.”

Catherine’s smile grew tighter. “Of course. Shall we start with the ground floor, then?”

All Annja wanted to see was the wine cellar, but she knew that if she simply asked for them to be taken there directly it wouldn’t look right. She wasn’t worried so much about what Catherine might think, but she didn’t want to give those coming after them any clues to where they had gone or what they had found. Best to just deal with the tour and the woman’s prattling until they could conveniently ask to see the cellar.

Catherine led them through the house one room at a time, pointing out highlights and doing the usual schmoozing you’d expect from someone trying to sell an expensive estate.

The main level consisted of a formal parlor, a formal dining room, a music room, a guest wing with bedroom and bath, a keeping room, a butler’s pantry, a detached country kitchen with Aga stove and a sitting porch overlooking raised garden beds. If you were into whitewashed walls and country antiques, it was quite beautiful.

Annja, however, was not. Neither was Garin; she could see him trying not to sneer at what he could only be thinking was clutter. Clean lines and modern minimalist styling were more to his taste. He hid it well, using the fact that the Realtor couldn’t understand him to vent his distaste and frustration with the process in enthusiastic exclamations to Annja, all delivered in pleasant-sounding French.

The second floor contained four large bedrooms, each with its own fireplace, and two baths, one on either end of the central hall.

“Enough of this nonsense,” Garin said to Annja in French, after sticking his nose into the final bathroom and pretending to examine it. “It’s time we found that key.”

Annja agreed. Turning to Catherine, she said, “Mr. Boucher wonders if it would be possible to see the wine cellar? He has an extensive collection and wants to understand what he’ll need to do to bring the cellar up to his standards.”

“Of course. This way, please.”

The Realtor led them down to the first floor, out the back and around to the side of the house. A pair of doors were set into the side of the house, much like a storm cellar, and Catherine hauled them open, revealing a wooden staircase leading down into the ground.

“Please follow me, and watch your head. The ceiling on the steps is pretty low.”

Annja pretended to translate for Garin.

Catherine led them down the steps into a large room hewn out of the bare earth. Wooden racks filled the center of the room and shelving lined the walls. Only one rack was being used and Annja could see a few dozen bottles of wine were stored on it.

“The room is naturally maintained at a temperature between sixty and sixty-five degrees Fahrenheit thanks to the thick Georgia clay in which it is dug. Even in the heat of the summer, it doesn’t rise more than a degree or two down here. With some modern shelving and a decent lock on the door, Mr. Boucher’s collection should be fine.”

Garin was muttering something about how he’d never store a two-hundred-year-old bottle of wine in a dirty hole in the ground, but Annja ignored him and focused on the Realtor.

“Mr. Boucher is quite taken with the place. We’d like to spend a few minutes speaking privately, if we may.”

Dollar signs dancing before her eyes, Catherine happily obliged. “Of course. I’ll wait outside. Take as long as you need.”

They waited until they couldn’t hear her steps on the wooden stairs leading back outside and then moved to the center of the room where they could talk without being overheard. They continued speaking in French, just in case the Realtor returned unexpectedly.

“Remember, we’re looking for a key without a lock,” Annja said as she turned and surveyed the room.

“Right,” Garin replied. He headed for the far side of the room to begin his search, leaving Annja to deal with the area closest to the door.

She’d given some thought to the riddle while on the drive but she still wasn’t certain exactly what it was they were looking for. A key without a lock was pretty vague, as clues went. And the next one, the place where the two mouths meet, gave no hints to the meaning of the first. If it had mentioned a door or a lock or a container of some kind, Annja would know they were searching for an actual, physical key. Trouble was, it didn’t.

And that left an awful lot of ground to cover.

She began scanning the wine racks and the bottles they held, looking for anything that might resemble a key. She knew the answer wouldn’t be blatantly obvious; it wouldn’t be an actual physical key. It might, however, be an image of a key, say on the label of a wine bottle, or maybe carved into the surface of one of the shelves before her. Parker would have had no way of knowing how long it would have taken Sykes to receive his message and then follow the clues to retrieve the treasure, so it made sense that he’d use something semipermanent for his clues. Something that was likely to have remained in the same place for a few weeks, maybe even a month or two.

I bet he never imagined it might take one hundred and forty years, Annja thought.

Between the two of them, the search didn’t take very long.

They came up empty, however.

“Maybe we’re taking it too literally,” Garin suggested. “Maybe he wasn’t referring to an actual key, but perhaps something with the word keyin it? Could that be why it’s a key without a lock? Because it’s not really a key?”

He began rattling off every word he could think of that also had the word keyin it.

“Key, keys, keyboard, key deer, key grip, keyhole, Key Largo, key lime, keynote, keystroke, Key West, keyword, keystone…”

Annja mentally dismissed each one as she heard it, until Garin came to the last.

Keystone, she thought, turning it over in her mind. Keystone.

She knew the word usually referred to the wedge-shaped stone that formed the top of an arch, so she began looking around the cellar, examining the doorways leading into the adjacent rooms.

There was no arch.

Garin was still rattling off suggestions but stopped when he saw her expression.

“What is it?” he asked, recognizing that particular look.

“Not sure yet…”

Annja walked over to the entrance to the wine cellar and called up the stairs.