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She nodded, but seemed distracted. After a moment, she shook her head slowly. “I thought it was nothing.”
“You thought what was nothing?”
“The last few days. I’ve had this…creepy feeling, like someone was watching me, following me.”
“Really?”
She nodded again, her brows furrowed. “It was nothing I could see, nothing tangible, but I sensed it. It was like he, they, whatever, were waiting for something. For me to do something.” She turned her gaze on him. “Since Mom died, I go down to the clinic in the morning and come back up here at night. I don’t much go anywhere else. And what I think, although I could be wrong, is that they were waiting for me to leave so they could do this. Does that sound nuts?”
“Not in the least.”
“And tonight there was a break in the pattern. I went out to dinner with you.” A look of sudden realization came over her face. “The men! Remember the two men, the ones who were in such a hurry right before we got here? They must have seen us coming and ran out before they could finish whatever they were here for. Oh!”
She stood abruptly, rushed to the smaller of the two bedrooms. Will followed. “Don’t touch anything before the cops get here.”
She knelt in front of the bed, lifted the spread and reached under. “I have to get Anthony.”
“Anthony?”
“My baby.” After a moment, she pulled out a highly protesting small black kitten with white paws, shivering and emitting tiny, pitiful little mews. Instead of rising again, Lou sat on the floor, leaned back against the bed and, cradling the terrified animal in her arms, murmured comforting words in a low, soothing voice.
Gazing down on the picture the two made, Will was oddly moved. The woman was something else; her place had been invaded, but she had put that aside to take care of a small, helpless animal.
The sound of heavy footsteps on the outside stairs was followed by a loud rapping on the door. “It’s Kevin Miller!”
“Kevin?” Will asked as he helped Lou to her feet and they made their way toward the front of the house.
“He’s our police chief.”
Will opened the door and sure enough, one of his buddies from high school stood there, wearing chinos and a dark blue sweatshirt with the legend Police Do It In Handcuffs scrawled across his ample chest. “Will?” he said, surprise on his round face. “Hey.”
The two men shook hands. “Kev.”
Kevin’s short hair was beginning to gray and his gut was somewhat more pronounced than it had been back in their school jock days, but he hadn’t changed much. He was still placid-looking and good-natured. He stepped inside, followed by a youthful uniformed cop. The rookie officer was introduced as Jack Kingman.
“How you doing, Dr. Lou?” Kevin asked.
She shrugged. “Not great.”
He perused the room, nodded. “So I see.” He turned to the kid. “Check the place out.”
“I already did,” Will offered. “No one’s here.”
“Not too smart.”
He shrugged. “I needed to make sure Lou was safe.”
“Check anyway,” Kevin told Kingman. “You know the drill, don’t touch anything.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And please,” Lou added, “the clinic downstairs? I need to know everything’s okay there.”
Kevin looked at the rookie. “Got that?”
“Yes, sir.”
After the young man took off, Kevin tugged a notebook and pen from his back pocket, and told Lou to sit on the part of the couch that was still cushioned. Kevin then pulled up a wooden chair from the dining room table and sat in front of her.
As Will perched on the arm of the couch, Kevin asked Lou, “Can you talk to me now?” When she nodded, he said, “Tell me what you know, from the beginning.”
She did so—the feeling of being followed the past few days, the men rushing down the street as she and Will came up, opening her door to discover the place had been thoroughly trashed.
“Anything taken?” Kevin asked, jotting down notes.
“I haven’t really had time to look around, but not as far as I can tell.”
“Any idea why they’d pick you or your place?”
“Not a one.”
“You got any valuables here?”
“Not a thing. Kevin, I swear I can’t think of any reason for this, none at all.”
The rookie cop returned. “All clear up here, sir.”
“Check the clinic now.”
“Yes, sir.”
He left by the front door and Kevin returned his attention to Lou. “So, you think you’ve been under some kind of scrutiny and that the two men who nearly knocked you guys down are connected to that. Do you know that, or just think it?” He framed the question neutrally, but Will could see the skepticism behind it.
“I think it.”
“Okay, then. Any enemies?”
“Me?” She shook her head again. “Honestly, I have nothing of value and no enemies.”
“Old boyfriends?”
“No one of any consequence. An ex-husband who I haven’t seen in years—he’s remarried and happily, so I hear. He lives out west in Oregon.”
Will mused aloud. “They were looking for something, don’t you think, Kev?”
He nodded. “Money, probably, or something they could pawn.”
“If they were,” Lou said, “they were clean out of luck. I mean, what with student loans, the mortgage, then setting up the clinic, Mom and I only recently got out of the red. All the furniture you see here is from thrift shops, with Mom working her magic on them. The only thing I can think of is some silver. You know, a few old place settings that we happened to pick up at a swap meet.” Still cradling the kitten, she rose from the couch and walked over to the sideboard where she peered into one of the drawers that was hanging open. “Nope. They’re still here.” She turned around, shrugged. “There’s nothing, Kevin, trust me.”
“Could be a random thing,” Kevin said. “But I don’t think it was.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Because it was too thoroughly gone through,” Will said, then addressed the chief. “You mind, Kev?” An amused smile on his face, the other man shook his head. Will angled his body toward Lou, still standing behind him by the sideboard. “I used to be a beat reporter covering the D.C. cops and went to a lot of crime scenes. This is the kind of damage you see when someone is looking for one specific thing of value, something that might be hidden. You know, a first edition, a valuable painting, family heirlooms. Maybe important papers, like financial records in a divorce or some kind of evidence to be used in a lawsuit.”
She shook her head. “There’s nothing that complicated in my life, trust me.”
He believed her, as far as that went. But there could be something she had no knowledge of. The timing of the break-in was bothering him. Had his conversation with Lincoln earlier in the week set something sinister in motion? Lou said she’d had the feeling of having been watched for a few days. It was just three days ago that he’d talked to Linc and Lou’s mother had been mentioned.
Was there a connection? Was this reporter’s intuition or reporter’s overactive imagination at work?
He couldn’t be certain. In his profession, a prime credo was that all threads had to be followed to their source. “How about your mother?” he offered.
“How about my mother what?”
Kingman, the young officer, came pounding up the stairs and reported that everything downstairs was fine. The whole place was locked up tighter than a drum.
Lou seemed to relax just a bit at the news. After she thanked him, Kevin told him to wait at the foot of the stairs and to keep an eye out for anything suspicious.
“Yes, sir,” the young man said and went pounding down the stairs again. So much energy, Will thought with a smile.
Kevin said to Lou, “Your mother? Maybe she had something valuable here, something you didn’t know about.”
Shaking her head, she returned to the couch and sat down again. “I guess it’s possible.”
“Did you go through all her effects?” Will persisted.
“Her effects?” She snorted. “Her clothes and a couple of boxes in the attic, that’s all. Baby pictures, my school report cards, stuff like that.”
“Did she have a safe-deposit box?” Kevin asked.
“One at our bank. It contained her will, leaving everything to me. A small insurance policy.” She rubbed her eyes with the heels of her hands.
“You holding up okay?” Will asked Lou.
“I’m tired, but I’m fine,” she said. “And now that the initial shock is over, you’re right, I’m starting to get pissed off.”
Kevin nodded. “Good. Can either of you describe the two men who rushed by you?”
Lou shook her head, but Will closed his eyes, pictured the scene. “Both wore black. One had longish brown hair tied at his neck. The other wore a baseball cap, black also, didn’t notice a logo. Their heads were lowered as they ran so I couldn’t see their faces, but I got the impression they were mid to late twenties.”
Kevin jotted down some notes, returned the pad and pen to his back pocket and stood up. “Well, it’s a start. I’ll check and see if there’s any kind of recent pattern in the area, two men breaking in when the owner isn’t home.” He headed for the front door. “Meantime, let’s close up the place. I’ll put a man on outside all night. My fingerprint guy will be back from vacation tomorrow. I’ll get him up here then. He’s good. Although they probably wore gloves.”
“Close up the place?” Lou said.
“You can’t stay here,” Will told her.
“But—”
He cut her off. “Absolutely not.”
“Hey, Dr. Lou,” Kevin explained, “if they were interrupted before they finished, they may come back.”
Her face went white again. “Oh.”
“Come with me to Nancy’s place,” Will said. “She’ll put you up.”
“No, that’s too much for her, with the wedding and all. I’ll go to a hotel.”
“You will not. You shouldn’t be alone. You’ve had a shock.”
“I’m fine now, Will,” she insisted stubbornly.
“Bull. You’re running on empty and you need to collapse someplace safe.”
With that, he took out his cell phone, contacted his sister, briefly explained what had happened and then handed the phone to Lou. Adjusting the kitten in the crook of her elbow, she put the phone to her ear. Whatever his sister said to her made her smile, then nod. “Okay, okay, you’ve convinced me.”
As she gave him back his phone, she said, “If I don’t come over, she’ll never speak to me again. I gave her enough grief refusing to be a bridesmaid, so I’m treading on thin ice as it is.”
Nancy Jamison was tall and bony, not beautiful, but the kind of woman who would grow more attractive with age. She had the Jamison dark hair and pronounced bone structure, but her eyes were light blue instead of green like Will’s. When she threw open the door and opened her arms, Lou went right into them, and, just like that, she was on the verge of tears again. She really had thought she was okay, had thought Will was fussing needlessly, but it turned out he was right.
He stood behind her, carrying everything—her overnight case, the cat carrier, litter box and litter. He wouldn’t hear of her lifting anything.
“You poor thing,” Nancy said, patting her on the back.
Lou withdrew from the hug. “I didn’t want to bother you so close to the wedding.”
“Stop it,” she said sternly, ushering her into the same house Lou had considered a second home for twenty years. As far as the eye could see, there were white boxes of all sizes opened, half-opened, still sealed. Wrapping paper was strewn all over the floors. Wedding gifts were taking over the place.
Will came in, closing the door behind them.
“You’re my friend. Of course you can stay,” Nancy said. “As long as you want. The place will be empty after the wedding while we’re on our honeymoon and my brother goes back to Washington.”
“Just tonight, thanks.”
“We’ll see about that.”
Oscar, obviously just awakened from a snooze, wandered into the foyer from the kitchen. The minute the pug saw and smelled the kitty box, he began to bark.
“Hush,” Nancy said.
“Oscar, behave,” Lou said sternly, and the sniffling, snorting dog stopped barking and backed off, his head lowered as though his feelings had been deeply hurt.
“What’s all the ruckus?”
Nancy’s fiancé Bob wandered from down the hall, dressed in an old robe, his glasses perched at an odd angle on his nose and his hair mussed. “Oh, hi, Lou,” he said with one of his sweet smiles.
“Bob, I’m so sorry I woke you up.”
