open, cushions from the sofa and armchairs upended, contents from drawers flung every which way. And there was an eerie black coating of fingerprint dust over many areas.
In an instant, Kit felt her despondency morph into outrage. Damn them, she thought.
“I know it’s tough, but try to take a close look,” O’Callaghan said. “You’ll need to make an inventory of what’s gone.”
Nodding, she grabbed a pad and pen from her purse and began taking stock.
She started with the kitchen area. Her iPhone speakers were gone, she realized. And so was the jar she kept spare change in. It did look like a burglary, she thought. Maybe a junkie desperate for drug money.
She turned and surveyed the living/dining area.
“It’s so hard to tell in all this disarray,” she told O’Callaghan, “but it looks like they stole a set of silver picture frames.” They’d been a gift from a client, the kind of splurge she wouldn’t have indulged in for herself.
To her surprise, her small flat-screen TV was still in position.
“Why wouldn’t they have taken that?” she asked, pointing.
“Best guess? We’re probably talking one guy here, and besides the fact that he’d want to enter and exit in in a hurry, there was only so much he could carry. What about jewelry?”
Kit nodded gloomily toward the bedroom. Steeling herself, she led the way, with O’Callaghan behind her.
The chaos was even worse in there. Clothes and bedding were strewn on the floor and the drawers of her dresser were hanging down like slack tongues. She could see that the tray she kept costume jewelry on had been overturned, and though a few odd earrings were scattered on the floor, it appeared that most of the pieces had been taken.
She strode over to her bookcase. She had only a few pieces of really nice jewelry, including a bracelet and earrings from Jeremy, and they were stored in a hollowed-out book on her shelf, a trick she’d learned from Baby. To her relief, she saw that the book was still there. She tugged it from the shelf, flipped open the top, and found the pieces safely tucked inside, along with her passport.
She sighed gratefully. “Everything’s here.”
“Fortunately most of the guys who pull this crap aren’t book readers,” O’Callaghan commented.
“Can I check my office now?” Kit asked, her dread building again. She was sure her laptop would be gone.
And it was. After threading her way back through the mess with O’Callaghan, she saw that it was missing from the top of her desk. That’s a thousand bucks, she thought woefully. At least she’d shut it down before leaving, requiring a password to reopen it.
She glanced around the room. Just as the patrol cop had said, the thief, or thieves, hadn’t really bothered much with the office. The desktop computer on Dara’s desk was still in place, and the printer remained on a side table. File drawers, locked by Dara for the weekend, were closed and all the piles of fabric samples and drawings looked untouched. Besides her laptop, nothing appeared to be missing.
She knew she should consider herself fortunate. It had scared her to think of her workspace disrupted. What she could afford even less than the loss of her belongings was any downtime in her business.
“Anything other than the laptop?” O’Callaghan asked.
“Not that I can tell.”
She returned to her apartment with O’Callaghan, just as the second detective, a Lieutenant Lopez, walked through the main doorway. He reported that he’d managed to speak to a half-dozen residents, rousing some of them from bed, and unfortunately no one had seen or heard anything suspicious. And no one else had been burglarized.
Why target me? Kit thought despondently. She was starting to feel the full impact of the evening. Her limbs ached and her head was throbbing.
“Now that Detective Lopez is back,” said O’Callaghan, sliding onto a stool at the kitchen island, “take us through this Miami situation.” He withdrew a pad from his suit jacket pocket. “This way he’s in the loop, too, and I can get it all down.”
Kit ran through everything again. O’Callaghan pursed his lips, clearly trying to digest it all. What could she expect? The story sounded crazy even to her as she recounted the details.
“We’ll certainly take all that into consideration,” said O’Callaghan. “But to be honest, this looks like a straightforward burglary to me.”
He slid a card from his wallet and handed it to her, saying he would be in touch if there was anything to report and she should do the