Chapter 2 - What the House Heard
Emily heard the name.
I knew because she stopped talking in the middle of a sentence.
The officer noticed.
“Caroline who?” he asked.
“Webb,” I said.
Emily recovered first.
“A former employee.
We had problems with her.”
“What kind of problems?”
“She stole jewelry.”
The officer opened his notebook.
“Did you report it?”
Emily looked at me.
“We decided to handle it privately.”
No, I thought.
You decided.
At the time, I had been traveling.
Emily called me in Denver and said Caroline had emptied a drawer, packed her things, and vanished.
I had believed her.
A second officer knelt beside the open panel.
Beyond it was an old service passage, leftover space from a renovation we’d never finished.
“Was this blanket yours?” he asked Lucy.
“Mommy brought it.”
“When?”
“Last night.”
Emily’s mouth tightened.
The officer lifted the blanket carefully.
A small black device was attached beneath a wooden support.
He stopped.
“Don’t touch anything in here.”
“What is it?” I asked.
He angled his flashlight.
A microphone.
Another sat farther up, beside a cable disappearing through a drilled hole.
The officer followed the wire with his light.
“There’s more.”
Emily folded her arms.
“We have a security system.”
“I installed the security system,” I said.
“It doesn’t have microphones in the walls.”
She looked at me as though I’d embarrassed her at dinner.
“Then ask the contractor.”
The officers separated us.
For the first time since I opened that panel, Lucy began to cry.
Not loudly.
She simply bent over her rabbit while tears dropped onto its flattened head.
A woman from the responding team sat with her.
“You’re not in trouble,” she said.
Lucy shook her head.
“Mommy said stay quiet until he came.”
“Until Daniel came?”
A nod.
“Did someone take your mommy?”
Lucy looked toward the back of the house.
“The man with the clicking keys.”
My stomach tightened.
Our security contractor, Paul Danner, carried a heavy ring of keys clipped to his belt.
Every time he walked through the kitchen, they struck his flashlight.
Click.
Click.
Click.
I turned toward the window.
His gray truck was parked at the curb.
The driver’s seat was empty.
“Officer,” I said.
Then the lights went out.
Every room went black at once.
In the darkness, Emily whispered my name.
May you like
But Lucy said something else.
“He’s here.”
