Friday, two days after the flowers, I was just getting into the shower when I noticed I’d missed a call from Aunt Ruby. I smiled, excited to hear about her trip, but I decided to call her back when I was on my way into work. It wasn’t until I was in the shower that I realized she’d called really early in the morning—which was strange. I hoped nothing was wrong and hurried to get ready so I could find out.
Keisha was asleep when I left for work—she’d worked until six a.m.—and John had left for a job. I put in my earpiece for my phone and called my voice mail to listen to Aunt Ruby’s message.
“Hi, Shannon. I’m back from Greece. It was a wonderful trip; I’ll have to tell you all about it soon. I’m actually calling because I can’t find my laptop. I left it at the house, but it’s not where I put it. I thought maybe you borrowed it or something. Give me a call when you can. Thanks.”
Borrowed her laptop? Why would I borrow her laptop? Besides, it was a PC and I was a Mac girl myself. Once you Mac-ed, you never went back. I erased her voice mail and called her number.
“Hi, Aunt Ruby,” I said when she answered. “I just got your message. Are you sure your laptop isn’t there somewhere?”
“I stored it in one of the kitchen cabinets when I left. I know I did because I had to put my mixer on the counter to make room, but I thought a mixer was safer in plain sight than a computer, you know? It’s not there. The whole shelf is empty. You didn’t borrow it?”
“No,” I said with a smile. Storing a computer in a cupboard was silly—a laptop wasn’t like a cup of sugar you borrowed on a whim. “And I never saw it during the times I came to check on things. I always locked the house up when I left, I swear.”
“The security system recorded each time you disarmed it, and I know the alarm was reset correctly each time too, which is just so strange. How would anyone have gotten in without tripping the alarm? Do you think someone could have bypassed it?”
“I didn’t get any notifications.” Because of the security measures at the pharmacy, I knew a lot about security systems. They weren’t impossible to disable, but most of them were set up with all kinds of internal safeguards to protect against tampering, and most attempts couldn’t circumvent the system without leaving telltale evidence behind or an automatic call going to the dispatch center. At the pharmacy, the police were called if the code was punched incorrectly just two times, or outside of specific hours, and every employee had their own code so that we always knew who set or disarmed it. But of course, Aunt Ruby’s house didn’t have such a sophisticated system.
“Is anything else missing?” I still thought the laptop was in her house somewhere.
“Um, I haven’t really checked, since I thought you’d just borrowed it. I’ll go look right now. I don’t leave valuables out, you know, especially when I’m going to be gone.” I could hear her walking as she talked. “I locked up my jewelry box in the safe, along with some of my more expensive souvenirs I’ve collected over the years. Everything looks fine . . . oh, wait . . . someone’s been in the master closet—that’s where I keep the safe. My shoes are mixed up.”
Maybe the laptop had been stolen. “Did they get into the safe?” I asked, sick to my stomach not only that something like this had happened to Ruby, but also that it had happened on my watch.
“No,” Aunt Ruby said. I let out a breath. “But it looks like they tried to pry it open.”
A missing laptop, mixed-up shoes, and a safe that had been tampered with, and yet there wasn’t any evidence of a break-in at her house? I opened my mouth to ask if anyone else had the alarm code and then nearly choked on the words. I had the alarm code stuck to the fridge with an Oreo magnet. Heat crawled up my neck. No, I told myself. Don’t go there.
“You said you looked at the history,” I said a moment later, “and could see that I reset the alarm each time I came over. How many times does it show I came?”
Three, three, three.
“Four,” Ruby said. She listed off the dates—the second and third stood out to me because they were the only two days right next to one another. There was no reason for me to go to Ruby’s two days in a row. I’d only gone every three or four days—the last time had been Monday, the day before the meltdown with Keisha. I closed my eyes, refusing to picture Keisha in my mind looking at the fridge while sipping a soda a few days into Aunt Ruby’s trip. I’d thought she was looking at the newsletter from Landon’s school.
“I’m going to call the alarm company right now,” Aunt Ruby said. “Maybe they’ll have a more complete report for me by now.”
Sympathy for Aunt Ruby made my chest ache, but I couldn’t share my thoughts. That wouldn’t be fair to anyone, least of all to Aunt Ruby if I were wrong—and I had to be wrong. “Do you want me to come over and stay with you? Do you feel safe there alone?”
“I’ll be fine, dear. Thanks for asking. And thank you for watching the place.”
It was like a knife in my chest to have her thank me when I knew what had happened. Wait—I didn’t know. But I suspected it all the same. And that made me feel horrible too. Did I really think Keisha was a thief? She loved Ruby. She would never rob her—would she? And Keisha had been so sincerely upset earlier this week before I agreed to pay off Tagg. If she’d stolen Ruby’s laptop, she wouldn’t need money from me, right? I had to be wrong. Of course I was wrong.
“It seems I didn’t do a very good job of looking after the house,” I said, feeling terrible for everything—both what had happened and thinking Keisha might have been involved.
“Nonsense,” Aunt Ruby said. “This is obviously the work of a professional. I suppose no security system is completely foolproof. I’d better go though. I’ve got more phone calls to make.”
“I’m so sorry, Aunt Ruby. If you need anything, I can be there right away.”
“I’ll call if I think of anything, but I’m sure I’ll get to the bottom of it.”
We said our good-byes and ended the call. I was at a red light and picked up my phone from the middle console before scrolling to Keisha’s number. My thumb hovered over the call button. I should just call her and ask her straight out. But what would I say? “Did you break into my aunt’s house and steal her laptop after she’s been so sweet to you?” Was there any way to ask it that didn’t sound accusatory? I had no evidence it was Keisha, just circumstance and history. And was that fair? Gosh, I was as bad as John!
But was it fair to Aunt Ruby not to explore it?
I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. The light turned green, I replaced the phone in the console, and I moved forward with my fellow commuters.