“Wonder if he had a shed.” I moved out of the bedroom and headed toward the kitchen. I didn’t bother checking the living area, as I knew from the last time I was here there were no cabinets in there and the only paperwork was old newspapers and magazines.

“I’ll go look.” Jackson pressed a hand against my hip, lightly pushing me to one side so he could get past. As he went out into the rear yard, I started searching the kitchen drawers and cabinets. The bottom drawer near the end of the counter turned out to be filled to the brim with all sorts of bills and other bits. Though I doubted anything useful would be found, I nevertheless pulled the drawer out, dumped it on top of the counter, and began sifting through the papers.

Jackson came back just as I’d finished. “Anything?” I asked.

He shook his head. “There’re a small shed and several drawers containing tax and super paperwork, but nothing even remotely interesting.”

I frowned and shoved the drawer back home. “There’s got to be something here. That money can’t have been a bribe to keep Hamberly away from his son—Rosen was well aware the relationship was ongoing when we asked him about it. There has to be another reason behind Rosen giving Hamberly that sort of money.”

“Something like hiding important information, perhaps?”

“Maybe.” I shrugged. “Hamberly’s certainly the last person anyone would have thought to ask about hidden research information. Senior didn’t exactly hide his thoughts about his son’s relationship with the man, did he?”

“No.” Jackson leaned a hip against the counter. “Maybe Hamberly has storage facilities elsewhere.”

“I didn’t find any indication of it in the pile of bills, and there surely would have been.” I drummed my fingers on the counter, my gaze scanning the scorch marks up the wall and across the ceiling . . . My thoughts stalled.

Old places like this were very popular with renovators because the steep roofline meant it was very easy to build a loft into them. Hamberly’s place didn’t appear to have one, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t using the space or storing stuff up there. I pushed away from the bench and headed into the laundry. The access hole was an unusually large one; I jumped up, grabbed the hanging cord, and pulled it down. A set of metal steps similar to the ones Jackson had installed in our office folded down from the roof.

“It appears unusually bright up there,” Jackson noted.

I climbed to the top of the sturdy ladder and looked around. “There are a couple of skylights in the rear portion of the roofline.”