Page 7 of If She Sensed

Kate looked at the timestamps carefully.Sloane leaned in beside her, doing the same.The footage was straightforward and unedited as far as Kate could tell.Coming directly from the app itself, she was quite sure it couldn’t be manipulated, anyway.

"We may need to request that footage formally," Kate said.

"Take it," Garrett said."I'll send you whatever you need right now if you tell me how."He was not performing cooperation.He was a man with nothing to hide who had just been told that a woman he’d genuinely liked was dead.Kate thought he was doing an admirable job of trying to fill both of those roles at the same time.

They went back to the living room and sat again.Kate asked for specifics of their conversation at dinner in detail.She asked if Carol had mentioned anyone she was concerned about, whether she had seemed distressed or preoccupied at any point in the evening.

"Not at all.In fact, she seemed very happy," he said.It came out quietly as it was becoming clear that he was now trying to understand how something like this could have happened."She seemedreallyhappy.She talked about her job, about a reading program she runs for kids at the library.And she was funny… even when she briefly mentioned the divorce.Just briefly, not in a heavy way.She said she'd been on her own for a while and that this was the first time in a long time that she'd actually been looking forward to something."

Kate let that sit for a moment before she continued."Did she mention anyone from her personal life?Family, friends, anyone she was having difficulty with?"

"She talked about her neighbor.Deb.She said Deb was one of her closest friends.She mentioned her daughter too.but not much."He shook his head."Nothing that sounded like a problem.It was a good evening.It was a normal,goodevening."

They stayed another ten minutes, covering the timeline once more from a different angle, asking whether he had noticed anyone else in the restaurant parking lot when they left, and if Carol had seemed to notice anything or anyone at dinner or in the parking lot.They got negative responses in both cases.Before they left, Garrett sent the doorbell footage from both cameras to Sloane's Bureau email directly from the app.

On the porch, Garrett held the door and looked at Kate with the expression of a man who wanted to ask something and wasn't sure he had the right."Did she suffer?"he asked.

"I can't speak to that," Kate said."I'm sorry."

He nodded once and sadly watched them as they made their way back to the car.

They walked back without hurrying.The street was quiet, being mid-morning on a Tuesday.The only sound worth noting was a dog barking somewhere behind a fence on the other side of the street.

"That camera footage looks solid," Sloane said once they were inside the car with the doors closed.

"It does."

"So does he, generally."She pulled up the footage on her phone again, scrolling through the timestamps with her thumb."But I'm not ready to close it out on him yet."

"Neither am I," Kate said."He was almost certainly the last person to see her alive.That matters regardless of how clean the alibi looks."She thought about the parking lot outside Clementine's, the two of them standing there around 9:30, saying goodnight while Carol still had an hour or so of her life remaining."We need to pull the restaurant's exterior camera.See if the lot looks the way he described it."

Sloane was already typing a note into her phone."I'll get someone on that."She set the phone down and looked up through the windshield."He seemed genuinely shaken."

"He was," Kate said."But that doesn't tell us much either way."

Sloane started the car."So, we've got a victim with no apparent enemies, a neighbor who discovered the body and has no useful information about the night itself, and a date with a doorbell camera and what appears to be a clean alibi."She pulled away from the curb, lost deep in thought."The back door is still the most interesting thing we have."

Kate agreed, but she was also thinking about something else.She was thinking about the way Carol Paige's house had looked when they walked through it that morning.The tidiness of it, the wine glass, the lamp left on.Someone had come through that back door with the specific knowledge that it would be unlocked, and Carol had likely just been expecting her friend to come through it.

That detail had been bothering Kate since the moment, she'd stood in that living room, and it was bothering her still.And it got her to thinking: who else knew she left that door unlocked?

CHAPTER SIX

The neighboring house between Carol Paige and Deb Leander was the Coffey residence.Ruthanne Coffey answered the door.She was seventy-one years old and answered the door wearing a cardigan and orthopedic shoes.She invited them in warmly before Kate had finished introducing herself.Her living room was warm and smelled like cinnamon, and she gestured toward the couch with the automatic hospitality of someone who had been raised to offer a seat before anything else.

“Can I get you anything?”Ruthanne asked.“I have coffee on.”

"We're fine, thank you," Kate said."We just have a few questions about your neighbor, Carol Paige."

Ruthanne's face shifted, but she also nodded knowingly."I heard the police were over there this morning.I've been sitting here not knowing what to think."She lowered herself into the armchair across from them."Is she all right?"

"I'm sorry to tell you that Carol passed away last night," Sloane said."We're investigating the circumstances."

Ruthanne went very still.She looked back and forth between the agents as if expecting more information.When it was clear she wasn't going to get any more, she said: "Passed away," in the careful tone of someone making sure they had understood correctly.

"Yes.I'm sorry."

She was quiet for a moment, her hands folded tightly in her lap."That poor woman.She was such a lovely person."She shook her head slowly."What happened?"