all of your houses like this?”
“We only have one house.”
“‘Only.’” Nolan laughed.
Claire had reached her limit. “My husband is dead and now my house has been broken into. Is there something you find funny about this situation?”
“Whoa.” Nolan held up his hands like she’d tried to scratch out his eyes. “No offense, lady.”
Mayhew’s mustache twitched again. “Hard to offend someone if you keep your fucking mouth shut.”
Claire gave Nolan a look before turning away from him. She knew how to shut down a man. He didn’t leave, but he took a few steps back to let her know the message had been received.
She watched the monitors as Mayhew followed Paul’s checklist. The views were split so that each screen showed four different aspects from sixteen different cameras. Every entrance, every bank of windows, the pool area, and several sections of the driveway were monitored. Claire could see that the caterers were in the motorcourt turning around their truck. Helen’s silver Ford was parked on the other side of the garage. She was talking to one of the detectives outside the mudroom door. Her hands were on her hips. Claire was glad there was no sound.
Mayhew flipped through the pages of his notebook. “Okay. We’ve got a basic time frame for the break-in based on when the caterers called 911.” He pecked at some keys and Helen disappeared from the monitor. The catering van went from making a sharp turn to pulling into the motorcourt. Mayhew skipped back the footage until he found what he wanted. Three individuals at the bottom of the driveway. They were far enough away to be indistinct, just dark, menacing blurs making their way toward the house.
Claire felt every hair on the back of her neck rise up. This was actually something that had taken place at her home.
She noted the time on the video. While the burglars were passing the parking pad in front of the house, Claire had been standing by the small, non-denominational chapel in the cemetery wondering why she hadn’t died in that alley with her husband.
“Here we go,” Mayhew said.
Claire felt a sharp pain in her chest as the blurs turned into men. Seeing it made it real, something she had to deal with. It was just as she had been told: three African American males in ski masks and gloves jogged up the driveway. They were all dressed in black. Their heads scanned left and right in a coordinated pattern. One of them held a crowbar in his hand. Another had a gun.
Nolan said, “Looks pretty professional to me.”
Mayhew agreed. “This ain’t their first rodeo.”
Claire studied the men walking so confidently toward her mudroom door. Paul had ordered all the doors and windows from Belgium. They were solid mahogany with four-point locks that were easily bypassed when a crowbar smashed the leaded glass and one of the burglars stuck his arm through the window and turned the thumb latch.
Her mouth went dry. She felt tears come into her eyes. This was her mudroom. This was her door, the same door she used countless times every day. The same door Paul came through when he got home from work.
Used to come through.
She said, “I’ll be upstairs if you need me.”
Claire walked up the stairs. She wiped her eyes. Her mouth opened. She forced herself to draw in breath, to let it go, to fight the hysteria living in the pit of her stomach.
Paul’s stairs. Paul’s workbench. Paul’s cars.
She went through the garage. She kept going to the stairs in the back and climbed them as quickly as her heels would allow. She didn’t realize where she was going until she found herself standing in the middle of Paul’s office.
There was the couch he napped on. There was the chair he sat in to read or watch TV. There was the painting she’d given him for their third wedding anniversary. There was his drafting table. There was his desk, which he’d designed so that no cords were hanging down. The blotter was pristine. The outbox held neatly stacked papers with Paul’s angular handwriting. There was his computer. There was his pencil set. There was a framed photograph of Claire from more years ago than she could count. Paul had taken it with a Nikon that had belonged to his mother.
Claire picked up the picture. They were at a football game. Paul’s jacket was wrapped around her shoulders. She could recall thinking how warm it felt, how reassuring. The camera had captured her