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“Anything else?”
“I don’t know.”
“We’ll look in your room.”
She crossed the hall, took a long breath.
“I’m not messy. Somebody went through my things. I had, oh God, I had small diamond studs and an antique gold locket that was my great-grandmother’s. Everything else was just costume. I had five twenties rolled in those socks on the floor.”
She closed her eyes, felt herself want to sway. Stiffened against it.
“My laptop, back in my office. The room where—the other room. It was on the floor. It was on the floor and broken and there was blood. It didn’t really register before. They hit her with it. It was broken and bloody on the floor. They hit her and they killed her. And I wasn’t home to help her.”
She swiped at tears that wouldn’t stop falling. “The key fob wasn’t in the bowl by the front door. They saw it, and just drove away in my car after they did this to her.”
She drew another breath. “License number 5GFK82.”
“That’s very helpful.”
“You have to find who did this. She’d have given them anything they wanted. They didn’t have to do this. She works at Let It Bloom Garden Center. Somebody would have brought her home because her car’s in the shop. So somebody knows when she got home. Her mama—”
That broke her, so she dropped down to the floor and let all the tears come.
They wanted to give her a mild sedative, but she wouldn’t take it. Feeling was all she had, and she wouldn’t let go of it. They urged her to stay somewhere else while they did whatever they had to do.
She wouldn’t.
She sat outside, alone. Forced herself to call the bar, which set off more tears, and more offers to stay elsewhere.
Bill showed up—she supposed her night boss called her day boss. He said nothing, just sat beside her, put his arms around her.
“You’re going to come home with me now,” he said after she’d stopped the last bout of weeping.
“I can’t. I can’t. I feel like I’d never be able to come back if I left now. I feel like I couldn’t ever live here if I left tonight. It’s my home. I need my home.”
“I’m going to fix that broken glass and put a dead bolt on the door. I’m not leaving until they say I can do that. And I’m going to have Ava bring over my car. You’re going to borrow my car. I got the truck. I’m not leaving you here without a car. That’s firm.”
“Okay. Thank you. They have to find my car so they can find who did this. Then they have to go to prison forever.”
“You bet your ass, sweetheart. Don’t you come into work tomorrow. Don’t you come in until you feel you can. You understand?”
“I want to—need to—go to Nina’s family tomorrow. I don’t want to intrude tonight. I just feel I shouldn’t be there tonight. And Sam… The police said they’d talk to him, didn’t want me to tell him yet. I’m not stupid, they want to make sure he wasn’t here. He’d never have hurt her, but they need to talk to him. I need to talk to him tomorrow.”
“If you need anything, there are plenty of people who’d jump to help. You matter around here, Morgan.” He gave her a pat on the knee.
“I’m going to see about fixing that door.”
When, long after midnight, she was finally alone—it seemed like days rather than hours—she looked at the card one of the cops had given her. For a crime scene cleanup.
The crime scene they said they’d cleared, like a table of dirty dishes.
The crime scene where Nina had died.
But she wouldn’t call them. It was Nina, and she’d do it herself. The last thing she could really do for someone she’d loved like a sister.
So, late into the night in a house that echoed with silence, she got the bucket, the scrub brush.
They’d taken the laptop—evidence. They’d taken photos and videos and dusted for prints. The detectives had talked to her—questions, questions, over and over. But they’d left the blood behind on the floor, the doorjamb, the wall just inside her office.
