I crept through the darkened lower rooms toward the stairs. Furniture loomed out of the shadows—a large formal dining set, a hutch, or was that a credenza? I could never remember the difference. In the dim light I saw marks in the carpet where other furniture had sat not long ago. Probably a sideboard, given the room I was in. Was Hallings moving his furniture out one piece at a time? Was a sideboard the same as a credenza? Okay, I didn’t have time to stop and contemplate why the place felt half emptied or the difference between various forms of dining room furniture. I filed those questions away for later and continued making my way through the house.
The stairs creaked, as stairs do, making my heart jump, even though I knew we were the only people home.
“Chava!” I hissed into the darkness with no response except dead air. “Where are you?” I hissed again after reaching the top of the stairs.
“In here,” her muffled voice came back to me. “You’ve got to see this.”
Now upstairs, I walked down the hall toward the sound of her voice and pushed a door open at the end. It had to be the master bedroom. A king-size bed took up the wall to my right, while picture windows dominated the wall in front of me, overlooking the lake. On the wall to my left were two doors. One stood half open, and warm light spilled onto the off-white carpet.
I always thought people with off-white carpet were very brave. Mine would be white for about ten minutes before it would start an inevitable slide toward muddy brown.
“Come in here,” Chava said from behind the closet door, explaining the muted quality of her voice.
I stepped into what turned out to be a walk-in closet roughly the size of my office. Rows of suits, dresses, skirts, coats, and shelves of shoes—more clothes than two people could possibly wear in a year—filled the space.
“So this is how the other half lives.”
“There are some very interesting things to be learned in this closet,” Chava said, looking pleased with herself. “Tell me what you see, Ms. Detective.”
“What I see is you breaking and entering. Tell me what you found and make it fast. We’ve got to get out of here.”
“You sure know how to take the fun out of things.” Chava said, but at least she got down to business. “First, didn’t you say Kendra told you she wore fake furs, because her husband is so cheap?”
At my nod, Chava turned around and pulled out a floor-length fur coat.
“This is a Marc Kaufman. Genuine mink.”
“What’s it worth?”
“Around 6K new.”
“What about that one?” I pointed at the stole Kendra wore to my office the day when she told me she couldn’t pay.
Chava rubbed her hands across it and said, “Fox. Blue.”
“You can’t tell that by feel. It could be fake,” I said, exasperated that she was playing games, when for all I knew Mr. Hallings was on his way home from the dealership.
She yanked the stole off its hanger, found the tag, and pushed it toward me so I could read the words.
“Saga Furs. Not Saga Fake.”
“How’d you know that?” I said, my surprise at her accuracy momentarily making me forget my haste to get us out of there.
“I have more talents than just cards,” she said.
“Okay, so Kendra lied to me. She wouldn’t be the first client to be dishonest about something. Can we get out of here now, please?”
“Not so fast. There’s a few other things you should see.”
I waited, mentally tapping my foot, while Chava did a Vanna White imitation, gesturing toward luggage stacked above us on a shelf that ran the length of the closet over the area where the furs hung.
“What do you see here?”
“I see ugly brown luggage.”
“No. What you see is an expensive Louis Vuitton luggage set.”
“How expensive are we talking?”
“A couple thousand,” Chava said, getting another grimace out of me. Kendra could have pawned one of the damn things and paid my bill. “Each,” she continued after seeing my reaction.
“Okay. I get it. She conned me. Can we leave now?”
“Not quite. See anything else about the luggage?”
I looked back at the bags, neatly placed next to each other, stair-stepping down in size until the last piece, which I think was called a cosmetics case. At least I was more confident about that than I was the whole credenza, hutch, sideboard thing.
“Look closely,” Chava intoned, waving her hands around like a bad magician’s assistant.
“There’s one missing, isn’t there?” I said, finally noticing that the stairs of luggage appeared to skip a step.
“Yep.”
“Isn’t it possible she never had that size? Or lost it?”
“I doubt it. This woman is way too organized. Look at this.” Chava pulled out a drawer, showing tidy lines of underwear, rolled into the shape of tubes. The rainbow of colors was laid out from darkest to lightest.
“That’s weird,” I said. “Who keeps their drawers that neat?”
“It gets weirder,” Chava said as she pulled out the next drawer. It was also for underwear—this time black and white, and most important, half empty.
“She packed.” I said. “She left on her own.”
“Maybe she killed Deirdre Fox,” Chava said, “and now she’s on the run.”
“Or paid someone to do it. Maybe the missing housekeeper was in on it, and now she’s on the run too,” I finished the thought. “But wouldn’t her husband notice her suitcase gone? Her clothes? She must have taken her toiletries out of the bathroom. Why would he lie about it and say nothing was missing? Why would he call the police and report her gone?”
“Did he really?”
“Did he really what?”
“Call the police.”
I thought back over our conversation and something twigged at the corner of my mind. “He said something—”
“What?” Chava asked. “He said something what?”
“That didn’t ring true. What was it?”
“Relate the conversation to me,” she said, excitement building in her voice. Apparently this was more fun for her than a hot streak at the poker table or beating the odds at Blackjack.
I went back over the conversation and got to the part where Hallings said the police wouldn’t file a report for another twenty-four hours.
“I can’t believe I missed that!” I said after explaining the comment to Chava and actually smacking myself in the forehead. “What a dope I am.”
“What? What does that tell you?” she asked. “Isn’t that what they would say if there’s no sign of foul play?”
“No. People think that from watching too much television. You can file a report any time you want; there’s no waiting period, even on an adult. There’s just no guarantee the police will act on it for a period of time.”
“So did she rabbit? Or is he setting up an alibi?”
“And why is the house slowly being emptied of valuables?”
“And what was that sound?” Chava said, anxiety in her voice for the first time since I’d joined her in the house.
Creeping out of the closet, I clicked off the light and stood near the door to the hall.
“That,” I said, “was the front door. We’ve got company.”