“You left the patio door unlocked,” I said.
“I left it unlocked.” She hung her head. “And I’d run out the front door to my car to grab my phone charger, and Ford pulled up just then, so I stood outside talking to him.”
“Oh, Virginia,” her mother whispered, shaking her head.
Virginia shot Marcy a furious look.
“Let’s set that aside for the moment, shall we?” I said, making myself sound reasonable by a huge effort of will. “Please finish your story.”
“I got the charger out of my car, and I came back to the doorstep. So the monitor would pick up any sound Sophie made.” See? I was responsible.
That made me feel so much better. I bit the inside of my mouth so I wouldn’t snarl at her.
“Ford was really upset about something that had just happened at a party. Maybe we were on the doorstep a little longer than I thought. That woman must have come in through the patio door then,” Virginia went on.
Don’t tell me again you had the damn monitor, I thought. “And?” I was clean out of patience.
“After Ford left, I went back inside. I saw this woman coming into the living room from your husband’s office. She was wearing Robin’s old sweater. For a minute, I thought it was you. I said, ‘Aurora? What are you doing out of bed?’ She kind of yelped, like I’d scared her, and she ran at me.” Virginia shuddered. “She knocked me down onto the carpet and then she ran out the back door.”
I could see from her face how frightened she’d been. “Wait,” I said, what she’d told us just registering. “She was wearing Robin’s sweater?”
Virginia nodded.
A minor puzzle had been solved. Now I knew where the sweater had gone. But Tracy had not been wearing it when we’d found her. One puzzle had been replaced by another. I made a go-ahead gesture.
“I guess it took me a little bit to get up, kind of check myself out, make sure I was okay. I hightailed it to Sophie’s room. Really quiet, because I didn’t know who else might be in the house. For all I knew, there was someone else. After I found out Sophie was okay, I prayed for a second.” Virginia said this quite unself-consciously. “Then I went in your room, and I could hear you breathing. You sounded awful, but normal-awful, you know? I could feel the heat coming from you, and I knew you had fever. I sat down on that chair in the corner of your room and I tried to get myself together. I didn’t know what to do.”
How could she possibly have not known what to do? My hands were clenched in front of me. I was holding myself down.
“I was about to call the police. But of a sudden I thought, Oh shit, what if she comes back in? Because the patio door and the front door were still unlocked. So I sort of crept out to the living room window. And I saw her on the ground. At least, I thought it was her.” Virginia gulped. “So I went out there. I used the flashlight on my phone. I didn’t go close. Even from a ways, I could see she’d been bleeding from the head. And she wasn’t moving. I’d never seen a dead person who wasn’t fixed up and in a coffin.” Virginia began to cry, and her mother put an arm around her.
“So I called Ford,” Virginia sobbed.
Sure. That was the first thing that had leapt to my mind, too. Call Ford. “When you went to look at the body, did you notice whether or not she was still wearing the sweater?”
Virginia looked startled. “No, I never thought about it. Wasn’t she?”
I said, “Not important. Then what happened?”
“I told Ford I was going to call the police, but he begged me not to. Someone might have seen him. He said they’d think he’d done it, because he had a record. He didn’t want anyone to know he’d been in Lawrenceton, because … well, because. Also, whoever had done it, that person might still be around. Ford wanted me to get out of there. He hadn’t gotten to his apartment, he was turning around to come back. He said to turn off the front light and wait outside. I put the monitor by your head so you’d wake up if Sophie cried. And I dropped my phone into my purse. Then I thought, I can’t leave the doors unlocked, so I grabbed Robin’s keys from the bowl to lock you in.”
That actually made sense. The patio door could be locked from the inside, but the front door, once exited, required a key.
“Ford told me I should leave my car. That would show I didn’t have anything to do with what happened. He wanted to see the body, see if he knew her. So I told him to go through the gate. He came back around and told me we needed to get out of there. But I was so flustered, and I was in such a hurry to get away…” Virginia came to a full stop.
Aubrey said, “What am I missing, here?”
“She took her purse but her phone wasn’t in it,” I said. “She’d dropped her phone in my purse.”
“I didn’t find out until I got to Ford’s. He was really upset.”
“Because the calls to him were on your phone,” I said.
Virginia looked as though she would have liked to protest, but she really couldn’t. “I guess so,” she said.
“So tell me,” I said. “Is Ford tall and thin?”
“Yes,” she said, looking at me oddly.
“And he came through the gate very late at night?”
“Yes.”
“Our neighbor told the police he’d seen Robin coming in the gate.”
Marcy said, “I’m so sorry.”
I gave her a look I thought might very well be steely. Her words were simply inadequate.
“But she’s told you what happened, and she didn’t have anything to do with that girl. You’re going to tell the police?” Marcy said anxiously.
Even Aubrey looked astonished that she’d think anything else.
“Yes, I am,” I said. “As quick as I can.”
And a tall, thin man stepped in from the kitchen and said, “I can’t let you do that.”
The two women gasped. They seemed genuinely shocked by his appearance.
“I know you,” I said. “You’re Arnie’s assistant.” A lot of things dropped into place. “So you took our keys out of Virginia’s purse and went into our house. Looking for the phone. Because you didn’t know the police already had it.”
Even Virginia’s jaw dropped. I believed, in that moment, that she hadn’t known about her boyfriend’s latest actions.
“Ford, you didn’t tell me you were going to…” She faltered to a stop.
“And I’m betting you’re the guy who stole my diaper bag from the ICU room,” I said remorselessly.
Marcy gave a muted shriek. “Ford! Why?”
“I had to get that phone back,” he said. “I had to. I can’t go back to jail again.”
“Why would you?” Aubrey asked, the voice of reason. “At the most, when Virginia told you she’d found the body, all you did was help her out in a bad situation. You might get charged with not reporting a death. I can’t think of anything else.”
Ford looked sullen, as if we were taking his drama away from him. “I’ve been in jail,” he said.
“You stole some tools,” I said. “You think that’s the big time in the criminal world?”