The Replacement Child - By Christine Barber Page 0,84

a few too many reps—and too little previous gym time. She knew that her mother would say it was from stress: Lucy, you always hold your anger in your shoulders.

Sitting up stiffly, she looked at the clock—six thirty A.M. She groaned. It was her freaking day off, and she was awake and in pain before the sun was up. She tried to turn her neck from side to side to stretch it, but her shoulders wouldn’t give. She now had aspirin but no heating pad or ice packs.

She tried to swing out of bed without hurting herself. She pulled on a button-up shirt without putting on a bra, afraid that trying to hook the contraption might strain something. She tried to put on a pair of jeans but couldn’t bend over. She decided to wear the sweatpants—aka pajamas—that she had on. She then slipped on her tennis shoes without tying them.

She drove to Walgreens, the only twenty-four-hour store in Santa Fe, and cruised the aisles looking for pain-relief stuff. She was loading up with ice packs and Epsom salts when she noticed a toothbrush sitting in the vitamin rack.

She sighed and walked past the toothbrush, her aching back giving her an excuse to ignore her obsession for a day. But a second later she was back, picking up the toothbrush and detouring to the soap, shaving cream, and toothpaste aisle. The toothbrush deserved to go home. She walked up and down the aisle, staring at the shelves. Why weren’t the toothbrushes in this aisle? She walked the aisle again. Toothbrushes had to be in this aisle—it defied all shelf-stocking logic that they weren’t. Toothbrushes go next to toothpaste. Everyone knows that.

She looked for ten minutes more before finally giving up. She was too sore to keep up the search. She decided to buy the toothbrush—she couldn’t bring herself to throw it on any old shelf, and it was about time she got a new one anyway.

She was in the checkout line when she glanced over at a rack next to the register. Next to the batteries, in the impulse-buy area, was a display of toothbrushes.

When had the purchase of a toothbrush become an impulse buy? Who says as they stand in line with Pepsi and Doritos, “Gee, it’s been months since I brushed my teeth. Maybe I should get one.” Lucy slipped the toothbrush onto the rack, making sure that no one was looking. But there was no one else in the store.

She was back at home, toweling off from an Epsom salts bath, when the phone rang. It was Major Garcia.

“When we interviewed Mrs. Schoen the other day, she said that Mrs. Burke used to keep a log of the scanner calls she heard,” Garcia began. “The original inventory from the house didn’t show any log, so we searched it again, but no luck.” He was chewing on something and getting harder to understand. He swallowed and said, “I don’t suppose you saw a log near the scanner when you were first there? It was just an ordinary notebook.”

Lucy thought. She had been intent on Mrs. Burke’s body. She had no idea if there’d been a notebook nearby. She said so to Garcia.

“All right. The son is sending up a videotape of his daughter’s birthday. Mrs. Burke’s voice is on there. We should have that today or tomorrow at the latest. I’ll call you when I get it so you can ID her voice. And another thing—at this point I’m going to involve the police investigating Melissa Baca’s murder, just to let them know that our two investigations might be connected. It seems suspicious that the only thing stolen was a notebook.”

He hung up before Lucy could say anything more. She stood naked in her bathroom. In a quick few sentences, Garcia had given her what she had been desperate for. Validation. With a capital V. Another human being actually believed she wasn’t crazy. But Garcia’s words didn’t affect her as she had expected. She’d thought she would feel happy. But instead, there was only cool determination.

Gil rubbed his eyes as he sat at his desk. He’d had only a few hours’ sleep since leaving Mrs. Baca’s last night. He had watched her house until he was hunched over from lack of sleep and then had driven home.

He had called his mother an hour ago but there had been no answer. She must still be at church, he thought.

Now, he was checking old reports to see if Melissa Baca