Leda worked to keep herself from looking too smug.
Grady jotted more notes. “I’ll grab the crime scene folks when they’re finished with the office. We can look for footprints, take fingerprints, and see if the creep got careless and left anything behind. Thank you, Ms. Foley,” he said, with a note that told her he hoped he’d heard the last from her until they could debrief later, in the car.
She gave him a look back, and she hoped that it adequately conveyed her commitment to doing what she was told, at least for the next few minutes.
But then Richard said something that gave her pause.
“I’m just glad the damage wasn’t any worse. There’s nothing too precious in my office—just old files. If the intruder took anything, I couldn’t tell you what it is. We’ve already checked the jewelry, the safe, and… and what else is there that’s worth any money in the house?” He looked to his wife. “Maybe the baby grand piano? But it seems to be unscathed. We got off easy. Of course, the burglar might do the same, and get off scot-free himself. I realize that these crimes aren’t always solved quickly, or at all.”
Leda jumped like she’d been shocked. “I’m sorry, a piano?” Then she mumbled, “Scot-free.”
Grady froze. This wasn’t the way it usually went, and he was clearly concerned—for the case, for the victims, and maybe even for Leda. “Ms. Foley, are you all right?”
“Scot-free,” she said again. “And the piano.”
“Those are… two different sets of words, Ms. Foley,” he said carefully. “Do they have something in common?”
“I’m sorry, excuse me.” She left the couch and went outside to the porch. She sat down in the swing and wished for a paper bag to breathe into—but lacking one, she timed each breath slowly, to the push of her foot and to the sway of the swing, until she could get her head right again.
Grady emerged a few minutes later. He sat beside her and asked quietly, “Are you okay? Seriously.”
“Seriously, yes. There’s something, though. A connection I’m not seeing. My…” She stopped herself from saying “psychic powers” just in time to keep a couple of firefighters from hearing. “My Spider-Sense is tingling like a mofo. It feels like I’m forgetting something, but that’s not what it is. I’m missing something.”
“I believe you. And I trust you, mostly. But let’s get out from underfoot here. I’ve talked to the crime scene lead, and she’s going to check the side of the house for prints.”
“He was wearing gloves,” she told him.
“He? Definitely a he?”
She hesitated. “No, not definitely a he. But my gut says it’s a he. I’m going to keep calling him a he,” she said with finality. “He’s the killer, Grady. I’ve never been so sure of anything else, not in my whole life. He came here to… to… destroy evidence.”
“Of what?” Grady asked.
She saw columns of numbers, tables of information, manila folders being opened and discarded. “Businessy stuff. I don’t know for sure, but he was going through the filing cabinets, drawers, everything, looking for anything that would point back to him.” Another flash, weaker this time. “He wasn’t even sure he would find anything. Something happened recently, something that made him worry that there might be something left, something to point a finger at him… for… for murdering everybody.”
“Everybody?”
“The Gilmans,” she said. “Christopher the dick, and Kevin the beloved. And Amanda Crombie. And…” She took a deep breath. “Tod.”
21.
Three days later, Leda’s phone went off at an ungodly hour.
The first text message read: Leda, get up. She didn’t hear the buzz that announced it. She heard the second one, though. That time the text read: Leda, NOW. It came from Grady. Grady was texting her. In the middle of the night. He’d called her, but the volume was turned down on her ringer. It wasn’t really a ringing tone, anyway. It was still the chorus of chipmunks singing “Chandelier,” and who the hell could sleep through that but not a couple of text messages?
It was 4:51 in the morning. Still dark outside. Not even a hint of pink on the horizon.
She sat up in bed, wiped her eyes, and jumped when a third text landed. I’m coming to get you. Be dressed.
“Dressed in what? Get me for what?” she asked the phone.
The phone didn’t answer. She unlocked it and composed a new text. All she could manage was: What?
Twenty minutes. Have pants on.
And that was the full extent of the information she was working with.
Bleary-eyed, she rolled out of bed.
Five minutes later she was wearing jeans, socks, and a unicorn sweater that read MAJESTIC AF. Or should she choose something more professional? Was this a professional call? For professional business?
“It sure as hell isn’t a personal visit. Not at this hour,” she grumbled to herself. She went to the bathroom to slap her contacts into her eyes. She brushed her teeth and hair, wondering all the way what was going on.
By 5:00 a.m. Leda had thrown her hair into a ponytail, swabbed some cherry ChapStick onto her lips, and was about as presentable as she was going to get. She wasn’t as awake as she would like to be, but she was out of coffee and she couldn’t think of any place where she might get some at that hour.
Grady’s car pulled up to the little bungalow just as Leda was washing down a granola bar with a swig of milk directly from the carton. His headlights were bright through the front window, and she could hear the car idling on the street. He tapped the horn twice.
Leda cringed. Most of her neighbors weren’t up at that hour, except for that one weirdo who was probably jogging already.
“I’m coming, I’m coming,” she said, as if he could hear her. He honked again, right as she was finding her purse and checking it for her keys.
The keys weren’t there.
Where were her keys?
On the coffee table, in a bowl. Got ’em.
She threw her feet into the boots she’d left beside the door the night before, and—still hopping to get her right foot settled—she left the house and locked the door.
Grady was parked with his right two wheels on the sidewalk, in accordance with local custom. He’d almost hit a fire hydrant.
Leda opened the passenger door and threw her purse inside. She followed it, grousing all the way. “Somebody ought to give you a ticket for that.”
“For what?”
“For the… you’re real close to… there’s a…” She couldn’t rally the words she needed, so she flapped her hand toward the hydrant, even though he probably couldn’t see it from where he was sitting behind the wheel.
He said flatly, “Janette Gilman is dead.”
“Oh my God,” she blurted. Her seat belt wasn’t even buckled when he threw the car back into gear. It jumped off the curb and pulled back into the street, narrowly avoiding a tree, a mailbox, and one of those rent-a-bikes that people routinely left all over the damn place.
A squealing, scraping noise suggested that maybe he hadn’t missed the bike after all, but whatever was snagged in the bumper, Grady shook it. “She was working late,” he continued. “The building was locked, but somebody climbed a fire escape and broke a window to get in.”