Never Tell (Detective D.D. Warren #10) - Lisa Gardner Page 0,49

business involved state secrets. Followed shortly by … curiosity.

A locked door is a puzzle. And no self-respecting mathematician can walk away from a puzzle.

It became a game for me. Every time the door was closed, to wander by, test it. Conrad watching TV downstairs at night. Door unlocked. Gone for an afternoon meeting. Locked. Business trips, definitely locked. Two A.M. when I got up just because I had to know, locked again.

I never said a word, of course. That would imply that I didn’t trust him—wouldn’t it?

Anyway, I grew up with a mom who regularly manipulated reality to best suit her needs. I didn’t want to be told an answer. I wanted to learn it for myself.

So I did what any dysfunctional adult who is accustomed to chronic lies would do: I waited till my husband’s next business trip; then I picked the lock to his private office.

My hand shook when I first cracked open the door. My heart was pounding. I felt like Bluebeard’s wife, stepping into the very room she’d been warned about. The next thing I would see would be the hanging corpses of past wives.

I discovered file cabinets. Stacks of window catalogues. A printer/scanner. And a cleared spot on the desk where Conrad’s laptop usually lived. I went through the files. Once you’ve committed B and E you can’t just walk away. I found project files, various blueprints for homes up and down the East Coast. I found vendor files, handwritten notes on upcoming product changes, and new and improved color options.

In the end, I got on my hands and knees. I searched for documents taped under the desk, files slipped behind the cabinets, maybe even a computer code stamped to the bottom of the executive leather chair. I felt crazed. A woman having an out-of-body experience. It struck me that this was exactly what my mother would do. My poor husband was simply in the habit of locking up, and here I was, turning it into sordid drama.

Why couldn’t I simply trust him? Or was it me I didn’t trust? Did I figure that anyone who loved me the way he loved me had to have something wrong with him?

I crawled around the office on my hands and knees. I went through every single scrap of paper. If Conrad hadn’t been out of town, if he’d returned home early, there’s no way I would’ve been able to justify my behavior, the total gutting of his neat and almost hyperorganized professional space.

Except I’m a mathematician, raised by one of the world’s best intellects. And part of brilliance isn’t just solving a problem; it’s seeing a problem no one else realizes is a problem yet.

A locked room, in the privacy of a man’s own home, containing only files and not even a computer … Why? Why lock it at all?

A puzzle. I needed the solution.

Then I saw the lone piece of semivaluable equipment. The printer/scanner. With a memory cache.

I fell in love with Conrad for his loud laugh, his smile, his personality. And, no, I didn’t find any bodies of murdered wives that day. But in the end, I did find a bread crumb. An image of a scanned document, a record of a bank account that I never knew existed.

Not a crime. Not even anything I could mention without having to reveal how I discovered it. But a piece of a puzzle.

Which of course I churned and worried and worked. Until I waited for him to go on trips, just so I could once more rip apart his space. Except then he started regarding me through narrowed eyes upon his return, probably because I didn’t put everything back perfectly, so he knew something was off even if he didn’t quite know what.

I started taking pictures. Of exactly how the office looked upon entry, so I could carefully replace each item. Then, when he still seemed unsettled, I started checking the doorway for tricks I read about online—a piece of hair positioned across the doorway, which would be broken upon entry. Easy enough to replace with one of my own upon exiting. Or lint positioned just so on top of a slightly skewed open drawer. Which I photographed and returned to its exact location.

A duel of sorts. Months, years. A period of strain followed by a period of shame when I swore to myself I’d stop this madness. Conrad was a good guy. Conrad loved me. If he had financials that were his own, frankly, so did