Grace led them down the short hall to Lily’s bedroom.
She stepped inside and said instantly, “The window’s been opened.”
“How do you know?” Clint asked.
“Every night I make sure the blackout curtain is tight against the window frame all the way around. Lily hates light coming in through it for some reason having to do with bad fairies riding moonbeams. At any rate the curtain is hanging loose below the window frame. I always fold up the bottom few inches and lay them on the windowsill.”
Wheeler crossed the room and looked at the window. He looked at it for a long time without touching it. Then he stepped back, he took out his phone, and snapped photographs of the window and stuffed orange cat lying on the bed below Lily’s pillow. He opened the blackout curtains and took more pictures of the windowsill.
Grace said in a strangled voice, “Lily always puts her stuffies on the pillow. She’s fastidious about it. Cinnabun . . . that’s the stuffed orange cat in question . . . is on the mattress below the pillow.”
Reno said evenly, “It’s possible Lily moved the cat this morning.”
“I watched her get out of bed. She picked up one of her stuffed seals and didn’t touch any of the other animals.”
“Was she alone in her room at any time after she got up this morning?” Reno followed up.
“No. She went to the bathroom and came straight to the kitchen for breakfast. I didn’t let her go back to her room after she asked me who moved her toy. I had a load of clean clothes in the dryer and got some of those for her to wear today. Neither of us have been in here since she got out of bed.”
Reno moved to stand beside her, not touching her, but right beside her, shoulder to shoulder. And honestly, his being there was the difference between her remaining upright or crumpling to the floor.
“Let’s check outside,” Wheeler said calmly.
They went outside.
The sheriff crouched under Lily's window, flashing a bright light on the ground. He took a couple more pictures, then he stood up and said, quietly, "Print of a boot. Size eleven or twelve. Fresh in the dirt under the window. Almost certainly the same boot print we found Saturday night behind your bakery." He added, “Did you see anything missing from your daughter’s room just now?”
“No.” Grace heard her own voice from somewhere outside her own head. "He was in my daughter's room?"
"I don’t think he went in. The disturbed dust on the sill says he reached in. Probably just far enough to pick up the cat off the floor and set it on the bed."
"Why?" she blurted.
"To tell you he could."
Grace put her hand on the wall because it had become, in the past five minutes, the only thing in the world sufficiently real to hold her up.
Reno said grimly, "Clint, tell me what happens next."
"Grace goes back to my office to make an official statement. You stay here until a deputy gets here because somebody is going to be on this house until we catch this guy.” Wheeler looked at her. "Have you thought about who might be out to harass you like this?"
"I found something this morning. Probably means nothing. It's a piece of paper with a few words and dates on it in Liam’s handwriting. I got a . . . feeling . . . about it. That it’s about something secret he was working on before he died."
“What kind of secret,” Wheeler asked quickly.
“Something to do with his military career.”
Wheeler glanced over at Reno. “Her husband was a navy SEAL.”
Reno’s eyes lit with comprehension.
To her Wheeler said, "Bring the note. We'll talk about it back at the office."
She nodded.
Reno held the back door open for her on the way out of the house. She passed close enough to him that the sleeve of her cardigan brushed the front of his shirt, and she registered, in the very small part of her brain that was still functioning, that he smelled like soap and coffee and the faintest hint of motor oil, which was odd for him. She filed it away and continued outside to Wheeler's truck.
Velma did not say anything when they walked back in. She did, however, set a fresh pot of coffee on a tray in Wheeler's office with three mugs upside down beside it. Grace didn’t have any more since she’d reached the point where caffeine was going to make her teeth chatter. She set the cookbook on the edge of Wheeler’s desk and carefully took the paper out.
