She was still debating what to do when Scotty came into the garage behind her. “Nice work,” she said unnecessarily, indicating the cement. “I thought they weren’t coming until ten.”
“They had a last minute cancellation, so they just came on.” He reached to stroke Kit. “What’s Greenlaw’s cat doing up here?”
“Lucinda and Pedric walk up in this neighborhood. I guess she saw the activity and got curious, she’s a nosy little thing.”
Kit narrowed her eyes at Ryan, and her claws tightened a little against Ryan’s shoulder. Ryan grinned, and stroked her, and looked back at the wet cement wishing she had X-ray vision, wishing she could see through the dirt and gravel and concrete, see what was down there.
“What?” Scotty said. “What’s wrong?”
“The job looks great,” she repeated. She laid a hand on his arm. “This morning before they dumped the gravel, did you look into the pit?”
“I made sure nothing had fallen in, if that’s what you mean. Saw that no lizard or mouse had gotten trapped down there, made sure the drainpipe connections were tight.”
“And the pit looked the same as last night?”
“The same,” he said shortly, frowning at her.
“Footprints?”
“My boot prints,” he said, scratching his beard, perplexed.
She scanned the worktable, then looked above the washer and dryer hookup to the broken window. “When did that happen?”
Scotty did a double take. “What the hell? How could I miss that? When did that happen?” He stepped to the window to look more closely at the jagged shards of glass, as sharp as skinning knives, sticking out from the wooden frame.
She said, “You were busy pouring and finishing, your mind was on the job.”
“That’s no excuse.” Scotty turned to look around the garage.
“Were the footprints in the pit all yours?”
Scotty was silent, visualizing the bottom of the pit. “They were mine.”
She waited, stroking Kit, feeling Kit’s anxious little heart beating hard against the hollow of her shoulder.
Scotty said, “What’s this about? Who the hell was nosing around here?”
She said, “I had a call this morning that someone broke in last night. That they dragged something heavy into the garage through the side door.”
“The door was locked when I got here, I had to unlock it. A call from who?”
“I don’t know, he wouldn’t tell me. Said he watched a man haul a heavy bundle in, that he looked in through the window, watched him wrestle it down the ladder into the pit. A long, thin bundle wrapped in a blanket. Said he’d unloaded it from the back of a car, that he dumped it in the pit, then pulled the car up the hill, in among those cypress trees. That in a little while he walked back down, went in the garage, put on the boots that were in the cor ner and the overalls-your boots and overalls-picked up a shovel, went down the ladder into the pit where he’d left the bundle, and started digging. Caller said he couldn’t see down into the pit.”
“Why didn’t this guy stop him?”
“Maybe he was scared. I don’t know. A stranger digging in the middle of the night…He said that after about twenty minutes the guy came up out of the pit without the bundle, leaned the shovel against the wall, took off the boots, was taking off the muddy coveralls when he glanced up at the window and saw the caller. Said the guy went white, scared to death, grabbed a hammer and threw it, shattering the glass.”
The two were silent, looking at each other. Scotty scratched his red beard, and then put his arm around his niece. “You’ve come up with some good ones, my girl. This one takes the frosting.” He headed out of the garage and around to the side to look for the hammer. Ryan followed him, still carrying Kit.
At the side of the garage they stood looking at the broken window, at the teeth of jagged glass. On the lumber pile and on the ground, smaller shards of glass glittered in the morning sun. A ray of sunlight caught Scotty’s missing hammer.
When he reached to pick it up, Ryan grabbed his arm, pulling him back. “Fingerprints,” she said.
He was silent, looking at her. “Who the hell called you?”
“I don’t know who. But, with the broken window, and the hammer right here, I don’t think we can ignore it.” She hoped Scotty wouldn’t notice the smudged paw prints all among the glass, or that he would think they’d been there before the window was broken. “I think,” she said, “we need to get that cement out before it sets up. And then we need to call Dallas.”
Scotty glanced out at Fernando and Manuel and shook his head. “You want to tell them? Or shall I?”
33
SITTING AT THE big, round table in the ranch kitchen, still in her old plaid robe and with her first cup of coffee, Charlie tried again to reach her absent clients. She didn’t understand why no one was answering their messages. She didn’t care if she woke them, but even that seemed impossible. Did they all turn their phones off at night?
Most likely they did, she thought crossly, at least when they were on vacation. As she listened to yet another recording, looking out across the window seat to the ranch yard, she watched the sky lighten into a clear dawn. She could hear Redwing in the barn pawing at her door, wanting her hay and wanting to be turned out. It wasn’t quite feeding time, but the mare had seen Max leave earlier and had decided she’d been forgotten. Charlie hung up the phone after getting another “not available” no point in leaving another message. She had risen to refill her coffee cup when her phone rang. Turning hastily back to the table, spilling her coffee, she saw that the number on the screen was Ryan’s. She picked up, grabbed a towel, stood with the phone to her ear, mopping up coffee.
“I got Carl Chapman,” Ryan said. “He’d just turned his phone on. When I filled him in, he didn’t sound eager to tell Theresa about the paintings, said she was still asleep. He gave me the number for their insurance agent, asked if you’d call him. He’s hoping you can take the adjuster in the house for a look, give him a tentative list of what’s missing. He asked me to check on several other items in the house, he gave me a list. You have a pencil?”
Dutifully Charlie copied down the list, thinking that this whole thing was more of a pain than she wanted, that she’d be glad when she’d sold the business. At the moment she had only one serious prospect: a woman who, at one time she’d not have trusted to take over the service she’d so lovingly built, a woman she’d thought was dishonest until she’d learned that she was working undercover on the side of the law.
“I’ll keep trying the Beckers,” Ryan said. “Any luck with the others?”
“Not yet. I tried until well after midnight. Knowing Frances Becker, I expect when you get her, with half her antiques missing, she’ll head right home.”
She’d hardly hung up when the phone rang again. She picked up to Earl Longley’s dry voice. “Eleen’s out shopping,” he said. He sounded even more irritable than usual. He spent considerable time cross-examining her about just how many books were missing, and which ones. He didn’t seem nearly as upset over Eleen’s paperweight collection, which, Charlie thought privately, was understandable. The loss of a closet full of pornographic paperweights really didn’t stir her.
She must be on a roll, because the next call was from Ben Waterman. They were in Greece, had flown in that morning. It was cocktail hour, Ben said Rita was just getting out of the pool. When Charlie told him about the break-in, and described the events of the previous night, he startled her with his anger.
“What the hell were you doing? Don’t you lock up your keys? Who had a set, how many of your people? I hate to tell Rita, she’s going to be mad as hell.”