As was typical, there were a number of hits from young women at the chapters she’d just visited, with even more coming from those who were on the schedule. With or without the “detective’s gene” from her mother, it was easy to see who’d been coming to check on her. She saw the ISP of a girl who’d asked her lawyer father to defend her in a grievance over her having sex with a frat boy under the grand piano at her chapter. Her dad’s law offices were also logged. Another who left an electronic bread crumb was Tristan Wyler, her last serious boyfriend. She liked Tristan, but with law school next year, she didn’t really want to get deeply involved.
He, apparently, was still interested.
An anomaly got her attention, too. She noticed a flurry of hits coming from Southern California. The ISP for one was coming from Garden Grove; the provider was a local phone company. The other came from a company called Human Solutions, Inc., in nearby Anaheim.
Interesting, she thought, powering down as her flight was called. One of my chapter sisters must be living down there.
After dinner, Chris and Emily cleared the dishes from the old dining table and scooted aside the candles that were all about ambience, but offered no real illumination. At least not of the kind needed to review the photos she’d brought home from the office. She turned the dimmer switch on the chandelier to full power.
“Good shots,” Chris said, “if you’re making a brochure for your house. Maybe I should use your photography for my condo brochure.”
“Smart ass,” she said, fanning the images over the glossy tabletop. “Take a look.”
Emily could almost smell the bleach as she looked over the photos of the pristine environs of the Crawford home. Chris was right, of course. Everything was in perfect order. At once, the place with its twin oversize couches studded with artfully, but casually arranged throw pillows, reminded her, too, of one of those “staged” homes on TV real estate shows. Those were the shows in which the host intoned that sellers couldn’t live as they really did when trying to unload a house. Everything had to be ridiculously perfect.
“The Crawfords, apparently, lived every day like they were expecting company,” she said.
“Or maybe after Mitch killed Mandy he did a cleanup that would have made the cover of Better Housekeeping,” Chris said.
“Good Housekeeping or Better Homes and Garden, but you’re right. If he killed her. If he killed her there.”
No appliances littered the kitchen’s gleaming, expansive stone countertops. The towels in the master bath were rolled into cream and sage pinwheels of terry cloth, casually arranged in an antique breadbasket.
She flipped the photos to a scene that depicted the master bedroom. Gleaming. Immaculate. A duvet billowed without a wrinkle over top sheets that appeared to have been pressed by a steam iron: crisp and white. Everything was perfect. Not a thing out of place. On the highboy. On the dresser. All perfect.
The photograph of the largest of the other four bedrooms, a guest room, she figured, was in stark contrast. The bed was made, but hastily so. The nightstand had an empty dish that might have held a midnight snack. The dresser’s top had barely a patch of mahogany visible through all the clutter—an uncoiled belt, a paperback novel, a jewelry box.
Mitch had told Emily that he and Mandy had not had any guests. There’d been no one to their home in the past month—a cue that the only fingerprints the techs might find would be theirs and theirs alone.
Emily thought of the bleach once more. She remembered how incredibly ordered things had been in Mitch Crawford’s office at the dealership. Not a slip of paper was askew. Even the paperclips had been lined up in order—reds next to reds, blacks next to blacks. No jumble of unsorted paperclips for Mitch Crawford.
“He’s a neat freak,” Darla Montague had said. “That’s just the way it is around here.”
And, at home, too.
“So if Mitch was such a neat freak at home, how was it that the guest bedroom was such a lived-in mess?” Chris asked.
Emily mulled it over as she worked the tight muscles in her neck by rolling her head backward, then side to side. Then it came to her. She looked over at Chris.
“The guest in the guest bedroom had to be Mandy,” she said.
Chris swallowed the last of his wine. “Maybe she’d banished herself to the guest room because she wanted to get away from him?”
She looked at the photo again. “That’s right. She left the master bedroom on her own. Most women would send their husband to the sofa and keep the bedroom for themselves. I know I did that to David a time or two.”
She was sorry that she mentioned David’s name. But Chris didn’t seem to mind.
“Angry at him? Annoyed by him? Sickened by his touch?” he asked. “Seems strange.”
“I don’t know,” Emily said. “It is curious, I’ll give you that. Why would a woman leave her husband’s bed, and camp out in the bedroom down the hall? Why didn’t she just leave him? Go to her mother’s in Spokane, for example?”
“You know women better than I do,” Chris said.
“She was waiting for something. She didn’t think she had to leave. And learning more about Mitch Crawford, I can bet he didn’t want her to leave. He didn’t want to look like a loser.”
“Waiting for what?” Chris asked.
Emily tilted her head slightly as she thought it through. She stared deeply into the photograph, like some miniscule text would give her the answer. “I don’t know. But I intend to find out.”
It was late and there was only one thing more that had to be addressed, and it wasn’t the saga of the missing mother to be.
Chris got up and put his arm on her shoulders and held her. He’d practiced what he’d say, his final plea, on the way over to Cherrystone. He’d make the dinner, help her with her case, then ask her.
He pulled a small black box from his pocket.
“Oh, Chris,” she said. “I don’t know.”
“I haven’t even asked you. But seeing you’re a detective you’ve figured me out. I love you, Emily. I always have.”
Emily could feel tears threaten to spill from her eyes. “I love you, too.”
He opened the box. It was a platinum band with a row of emeralds, Emily’s favorite stone.
“Will you be my wife?” He took the ring from the box and held it out to her.
She pushed back a little. She was surprised that she hadn’t seen it coming. Not then. Not that night. “I think so, but not now. Let’s wait until this case is over.”
Chris looked a little hurt. He’d given it his best shot. She didn’t give the answer he imagined, but she hadn’t said no yet, either.
“All right,” he said, “but I can’t wait forever.”
There were times when Emily suspected that she was the biggest fool in Cherrystone, maybe even on the planet. She studied her reflection in the mirror as she undressed for bed. It was as if by looking into her own eyes she could have some kind of a silent conversation with herself. She loved Chris.
Why can’t I just give in to what I know is right? She thought.
Her answer came as she brushed out her thick, wavy hair. She and Jenna had been alone for years, forging a life together in the town where she’d grown up. She’d dated a few locals. She’d wanted—desired—the kind of solid relationship that her own parents had enjoyed. David had been the man of her dreams when she was young. She foolishly thought that they were a team, destined for great things together.