Lydia had assumed as much, but having it confirmed didn’t make it any easier. Even with Julia, who had been gone so long that it wasn’t possible she was still alive, Lydia always held out a tiny sliver of hope. “Have they found her body?”
“They found blood in her car. Mayhew said the volume was too much, that she couldn’t live without it.”
“But the news didn’t say that.” Lydia knew she was grasping at straws. “Her family’s still making pleas for her safe return.”
“How many years did Mom and Dad do the same thing?”
They were both quiet, both probably thinking their own thoughts about Julia. Lydia could still remember Sheriff Huckabee telling her parents that if Julia hadn’t walked away on her own, she was most likely dead. Helen had slapped him across the face. Sam had threatened to sue the sheriff’s department into oblivion if they even thought about suspending the investigation.
Lydia felt a lump in her throat. She struggled to clear it. There was more that Claire wasn’t telling her. She was either trying to protect Lydia or trying to protect herself. “I want you to start from the beginning and tell me everything that’s happened.”
“Are you sure?”
Lydia waited.
Claire leaned against the workbench. “I guess it started when we got back from the funeral.”
Claire ran it down for her, from finding the movies on Paul’s computer, to Nolan’s intrusive questions, to her decision to hand everything over to the police. Lydia asked her to repeat herself when she described Mayhew’s less-than-casual curiosity about whether or not Claire had made copies of the movies. And then she got to the part about Adam Quinn leaving the threatening note on her car, and Lydia couldn’t keep silent anymore.
She asked, “What files is he talking about?”
“I’m not sure. Work files? Paul’s secret files? Something to do with the money Paul stole?” She shook her head. “I still can’t understand that. Nolan was right about us being flush. Why steal something you don’t need?”
Lydia held back her response—why try to rape someone when you had a beautiful, willing girlfriend back home? Instead, she asked, “Did you check Paul’s laptop for a ‘Work in Progress folder’?”
Claire’s blank expression answered the question. “I was just worried about finding more movies.” She leaned over the MacBook and started searching the drive. The Work in Progress folder came up immediately. They both scanned the file names.
Claire said, “These extensions are for an architectural software. You can tell by the dates that Paul was working on them the day that he was murdered.”
“What’s an extension?”
“It’s the letters that come after the period in a file name. They tell you what the file format is, like .jpeg is for photographs and .pdf is for printed documents.” She clicked open each of the files. There was a drawing of a staircase, some windows, elevations. “Conceptual drawings. They’re all for work.”
Lydia considered their options. “Make copies of the files for Adam Quinn. If he leaves you alone, then you know he’s not involved.”
Claire seemed astonished by the simple solution. She opened the door to the Tesla and grabbed a set of keys that had been tossed onto the dashboard. “I bought Paul this keychain when Auburn went to the BCS bowl. There’s a USB drive inside.”
Lydia wondered if her sister knew how light her voice sounded when she talked about her life with Paul. It was almost like Claire was two different people—the woman who loved and believed in her husband and the woman who knew he was a monster.
Lydia told her, “I don’t want you seeing Adam alone. Text him that you’ll leave it in the mailbox.”
“That’s a good idea.” Claire was trying to pry open the split metal keyring with her thumbnail. “I have a burner phone in the house.”
Lydia didn’t ask her why she had a burner phone. Instead, she went to the laptop and clicked all of the architectural files closed. She stared at the paused movie on the computer screen. The girl’s eyes were wide with fear. Her lips were parted as if she was about to start screaming. Part of Lydia was tempted to play the movie out, to see just how bad it would get.
Lydia closed the movie.
The Gladiator drive showed in the finder. She studied the file names, which were numbers, just as Claire had said. “There has to be a pattern to these.”
“I couldn’t figure it out. Fuck.” Claire had split her fingernail on the metal ring.
“Aren’t there a million tools in here?”
Claire scrounged around until she found a screwdriver. She sat cross-legged on the floor while she jammed apart the keyring with a metal file.
Lydia studied the file names again. There had to be a code that would explain the numbers. Instead of offering a solution, she said, “Agent Nolan made a point tonight about watching movies. If he meant Paul’s movies, how would he know about them?”
Claire looked up. “Maybe he’s into them, too?”
“He seems like the type,” Lydia said, though she was only guessing. “Why was he here for a house robbery?”
“That’s the big question. No one wanted him here. Mayhew clearly can’t stand him. So what was Nolan looking for?”
“If Mayhew is involved—”
“Then why put pressure on me?” Claire sounded exasperated. “I don’t know anything. Why Paul watched the movies. Who else watched them. What Mayhew knows. What Nolan knows. Or doesn’t know. I feel like I’m running around in circles.”
Lydia felt the same way, and she’d only been doing this for a few hours.
Claire said, “Nolan flirts with me, right? The way he looked at me tonight, like he was checking me out. You picked up on that?”
“Yes.”
“He’s creepy, right?”
He was beyond creepy, but Lydia just said, “I guess.”
“Ha.” Claire stood, holding up the separated keytag in triumph. The plastic medallion was imprinted with the orange and blue logo of Auburn University. Claire pulled it apart, then shoved the USB connector into the laptop. She clicked open the drive. Lydia saw that it was empty save for the software folder.
She breathed a sigh of relief. “Thank God.”
“No kidding.” Claire copied the Work in Progress folder onto the drive. “I hope these are the files Adam was talking about. I don’t think I can take it if they’re not.”
Lydia noticed a striking similarity between the way she talked about Paul and the way she talked about Adam Quinn. And then she remembered something Nolan had intimated as they all stood at the front door. “You were sleeping with Adam Quinn.”
Claire shrugged with feigned innocence. “My court-appointed therapist would say I was trying to fill a hole.”
“Is that what you call your vagina?”
Claire chuckled under her breath.
“Unbelievable,” Lydia muttered, though history told her it was completely believable.
When Rick had asked Lydia to tell him about Claire, she had left out the part about her sister being sexually liberated. Not that Claire was sloppy about it. She was remarkably adept at compartmentalizing everyone in her life. Her townie friends never met her college friends. Her cheerleading friends never mixed with her track club friends and hardly anyone knew she was on the tennis team. None of them would’ve ever guessed she was sleeping around. Especially whichever man she was dating at the time.