Lena noticed this, too. “He probably took the computer to Jill June’s. That’s his girlfriend.”
“Did you see a laptop in the garage?”
She shook her head. “Could Tommy even use one?”
“He probably ran the machines at the bowling alley. That’s all computer controlled.” Will shrugged because he didn’t know for certain. “Gordon disconnected the landline. I doubt he was springing for Internet service.”
“Probably.” Lena opened the last drawer in the desk. She held up a sheet of paper that looked like a bill. “Fifty-two dollars. This place must be better insulated than it looks.”
Will guessed she had found a power or gas bill. “Or Allison kept the heat turned down. She grew up poor. She was willing to live in the garage. She probably wasn’t big on wasting money.”
“Gordon’s pretty cheap himself. This place is a dump.” She dropped the bill on the desk. “Moldy food on the shelf. Dirty clothes on the floor. I wouldn’t walk through this carpet with my shoes off.”
Will silently agreed. “The bedrooms are probably upstairs.”
The design of the house was a typical split-level, with the stairs running off the back of the family room. The railing was coming loose from the wall. The carpet was worn to the backing. At the top of the stairs, he saw a narrow hallway. Two open doors were on one side. A closed door was on the other. At the mouth of the hall was a bathroom with pink tile.
Will glanced into the first room, which was empty but for some papers and other debris stuck into the orange shag carpet. The next room was sparsely furnished, slightly larger than the first. A basket of folded clothes was on the bare mattress. Lena pointed to the empty closet, the opened drawers in the chest. “Someone moved out.”
“Gordon Braham,” Will supplied. He looked at the basket of neatly folded clothes. For some reason it made him sad that Allison had done the man’s laundry before she died.
Lena slipped on a latex glove before trying the last room. Her hand went up to her gun again as she pushed open the door. Again, there were no surprises. “This must be Allison’s.”
The room was cleaner than the rest of the house, which wasn’t saying much. Allison Spooner hadn’t been the neatest woman on the planet, but at least she managed to keep her clothes off the floor. And there were a lot of them. Shirts, blouses, pants, and dresses were packed so tightly into the closet that the rod bowed in the middle. Clothes hangers were hooked on the curtain rod and the trim over the closet door. More clothes were draped over an old rocking chair.
“I guess she liked clothes,” Will said.
Lena picked up a pair of jeans in a pile by the door. “Seven brand. These aren’t cheap. I wonder where she got the money.”
Will could hazard a guess. The clothes he’d worn as a kid generally came from a communal pile. There was no guarantee you’d find a good fit, let alone a style you liked. “She probably had hand-me-downs all her life. First time away from home, making her own money. Maybe it was important to her to have nice things.”
“Or maybe she was shoplifting.” Lena tossed the jeans back onto the pile. She continued the search, lifting the mattress, sliding her hand between clothes, picking up shoes and putting them back in place. Will stood in the doorway, watching Lena move around the room. She seemed more sure of herself. He wanted to know what had changed. Confession was good for the soul, but her newfound attitude couldn’t be solely traced back to her revelation about Tommy. The Lena he’d left this morning was ready to burst into tears at any moment. The one thing she was sure about was Tommy’s guilt. Something else had been weighing her down, but now it was gone.
Her certainty was making him suspicious.
“What about that?” Will pointed to the bedside table. The drawer was cracked open. Lena used her gloved hand to open it the rest of the way. There was a pad of paper, a pencil, and a flashlight inside.
“You ever read Nancy Drew?” he asked, but she was ahead of him. Lena used the pencil to shade the paper on the pad.
She showed it to Will. “No secret note.”
“It was worth a try.”
“We can toss this place, but nothing’s jumping out at me.”
“No pink book bag.”
She stared at him. “Someone told you Allison had a pink book bag?”
“Someone told me she had a car, too.”
“A rusted red Dodge Daytona?” she guessed. She must have heard about the BOLO Faith put on the car this morning.
“Let’s try the bathroom,” he suggested.
He followed her up the hallway. Again, Will let her conduct the search. Lena opened the medicine cabinet. There was the usual array of lady things: feminine aids, a bottle of perfume, some Tylenol and other pain relievers as well as a brush. Lena opened the packet of birth control pills. Less than a third of the pills remained. “She was current.”
He looked at the prescription label on the birth control. The logo at the top was unfamiliar. “Is this a local pharmacy?”
“School dispensary.”
“How about the prescribing doctor?”
She checked the name and shook her head. “No idea. Probably from her hometown.” Lena opened the cabinet under the sink. “Toilet paper. Tampons. Pads.” She checked inside the boxes. “Nothing that shouldn’t be here.”
Will stared at the open medicine cabinet. Something was off. There were two shelves and space at the bottom of the cabinet that served as a third. The middle shelf seemed devoted to medication. The birth control packet had been wedged in between the Motrin and Advil bottles, which were shoved to the far end of the shelf close to the hinge. The Tylenol was on the opposite side, also shoved to the end. He studied the gap, wondering if there was another bottle that was missing.
“What is it?” Lena asked.
“You should get your hand looked at.”
She flexed her fingers. The Band-Aids were looking ragged. “I’m fine.”
“It looks infected. You don’t want it getting into your bloodstream.”
She stood up from the cabinet. “The only doctor in town rents space at the children’s clinic. Hare Earnshaw.”
“Sara’s cousin.”
“He wouldn’t exactly welcome me as a patient.”
“Who do you normally see?”
“That’s not really any of your business.” She pulled back the cheap mini-blind on the window. “There’s a car parked in Mrs. Barnes’s driveway.”
“Wait for me outside.”
“Why do you-” She stopped herself. “All right.”
Will walked behind her down the hall. When he stopped outside Allison’s room, Lena turned. She didn’t say anything, but continued down the stairs. Will didn’t think there was anything of note in the girl’s room. Lena had done a thorough search. What struck Will the most was what was missing: There was no laptop. No schoolbooks. No notebooks. No pink backpack. No sign that a college student was living here except for the enormous amount of clothing. Had someone taken Allison’s school things? More than likely, they were in her Dodge Daytona, whereabouts unknown.
Will heard the front door open and close. He looked out the window and saw Lena heading down the driveway toward the cruiser. She was on her cell phone. He knew she wasn’t calling Frank. Maybe she was looking for a lawyer.
He had more pressing things to think about right now. Will went to the bathroom and used the camera on his cell phone to take a picture of the medicine cabinet. Next, he went downstairs to Tommy Braham’s bathroom. Will stepped over the towels and underwear to get to the medicine cabinet. He opened the mirrored door. An orange plastic pill bottle was the only thing inside. Will leaned in. The words on the label were small. The light was bad. And he was dyslexic.