A Curious Incident, page 11
Moriarty looked at me. I looked at him. I lifted my right hand. He lifted his right paw. We gave each other a mental high five.
“Now, where were we?” I said. “Right—going to Lauren’s and then home for supper. I’m starving. Come along, Jayne. Don’t dawdle.”
Chapter Eleven
As we walked, I asked Lauren if her mother ever went away for a few days, maybe for some “me” time.
“Nope.”
“Does she have a favorite place on the Cape?”
Lauren thought. “She likes Hyannis Port. Last year, she wanted to move there, but Dad said we couldn’t afford it.”
“Any place in particular in Hyannis Port?”
“Nope. We went there for lunch once after shopping. It was super nice. I don’t remember the name of the restaurant, though. Near the harbor.”
“Your mum’s on the board of the West London Garden Club. Does she belong to any other groups or organizations?”
“Nope.”
“She used to be a high school teacher. Does she keep in touch with the people she worked with there?”
“No. She hated that school. Says it was the worst five years of her life.”
Okay then.
“What school do you go to?” Jayne asked.
“West London Prep.”
Jayne and I exchanged glances over Lauren’s head. A private school. Very snooty, I’d heard, not to mention expensive.
“Do you like it?” Jayne asked.
“It’s okay.”
“You said your mum doesn’t have any close friends,” I said, “but she was active in the garden club. She must have had people around to talk about gardening or organizing the tour. Stuff like that.”
“Sometimes,” Lauren said. “She liked talking to people about gardening. Mostly ’cause they’d tell her that her garden was the best.”
More glances between Jayne and me. Lauren was not presenting her mother in a particularly good light.
“Other than that, she didn’t like the people at the club much. She was really mad over the winter when someone suggested having the annual meeting at the Beach Front Hotel ’cause it’s cheaper than the Harbor Inn. Mom said she wouldn’t step foot in the Beach Front.” Lauren sighed. “Mom likes nice things. I hope she’s someplace nice now.”
“She’ll be home soon.” Jayne rested her hand lightly on Lauren’s shoulder.
I wasn’t so sure.
“I have tennis on Saturday. It’s the tournament and it’s really important I go ’cause it’s a doubles game. I hope Mom—or Dad—is back in time to take me.”
“They will be,” Jayne said.
“If not, Irene or I will see that you make it,” I said.
Lauren had a key and she let us into the house. Snowball ran to greet us the minute she heard the door opening, and Lauren bent down and scooped the kitten up. She peered at me over the ball of squirming white fur and pink ears. “I can bring Snowball, right, Gemma? She’s never been alone overnight except when she was locked in that shed. She’ll be extra super good, won’t you, Snowball?”
The cat meowed in agreement.
What could I say? The only cat Violet had ever met was Moriarty. That meeting had not gone well, and I feared Violet had been traumatized for life. Even now, years later, she cowered against my legs, shivering with terror if a cat crossed our path on our walks.
“Do you have a carrying basket?” I asked.
“Yes.” Lauren ran for the stairs. “I’ll be right back.”
“No hurry. Bring enough clothes for several days. Don’t forget your toothbrush.” I strolled down the hall and peeked into rooms.
“What are you doing?” Jayne asked.
“As I have been invited in, I intend to see what I can see.”
“You mean you’re searching for clues?”
“If you want to put it like that. The den’s the best place to find papers and such.”
“What did Ryan say when you called him?”
“I left a message, but he hasn’t returned it. I would have thought he’d want to talk to Lauren to find out if her mother gave any indication of where she might have gone. Although I can tell him that she didn’t.”
“Did you call Lauren’s dad?”
“No. I should, but I don’t want to bother. By bother, I mean bother me, not him. I’d happily bother him. The fool.”
“She’s such a nice girl.”
“She is,” I said.
Whereas Anna had put all her time and energy into her garden, neglecting the interior of her house, Sheila’s home was recently updated and well furnished. The couch and love seat in the living room were light-green leather, the coffee table made of wood and glass, the paintings bright and cheerful. A stack of gardening magazines sat on a side table next to a brown leather chair. Another side table held pictures in silver frames. No overlit school portraits of Lauren, no dated wedding pictures, no blurry photos of family gatherings. They all showed Sheila in her garden, shaking hands with town dignitaries—I recognized the mayor—or accepting some sort of award.
Self-obsessed was definitely the word of the day.
We went into the den, and I could immediately tell that this was David’s room. Faded and worn furniture, big desk piled high with papers, many of which were covered in coffee stains, a half-empty mug. Framed photos of a smiling David shaking hands with variations of middle-aged men with expensive haircuts dressed in suits or golf shirts filled the walls. The computer was new and high end, and the office chair behind the desk probably cost in the several-thousand-dollar range. I switched the computer on, and while it booted up, I flicked through the papers on the desk. Spreadsheets and budget plans, mostly. I didn’t have time to examine the pages in detail, but I cast my eyes over them. Plenty of brackets, meaning negative numbers. I found an envelope with the return address of a law firm, but it was empty.
Conveniently, the computer was not password protected. I pulled up the expensive chair and took a seat. My body just about melted into the leather comfort. “I might get a chair like this for my own office. I assume it would be tax deductible.”
“What are you doing?” Jayne asked. “You can’t search their computer.”
“I can, and I intend to. Any expectation of privacy the Tierneys might have had disappeared when they abandoned their daughter into my care. Besides, if David wanted to secure his information, he should have password-protected it.”
“Would that have kept you out?”
“For a minute or two. Go upstairs and check how Lauren’s getting on, please. If you can stay in her room with her, that would be good. I want to have a look around the house.”
I opened computer files at random and scanned them quickly. They confirmed what I’d learned earlier in my search of the internet. David Tierney’s company sold software he’d developed himself that took online orders for fast-food restaurants. The program then used the orders to somehow assist with using social media to generate more sales. I wasn’t entirely sure how that would work; if I put my customers’ data on the internet, I’d hear about it soon enough, but that didn’t matter now. David had two full-time permanent employees, and he used contractors and other consultants as required. His computer files were neat and well organized, which made it easy to snoop. His office was in the nearby town of Chatham, but it appeared as though he did a lot of work on this computer. It didn’t take me long to realize David was in financial trouble—severe financial trouble. Going back month by month, I could see the negative numbers on his balance sheets growing steadily. Six months ago, he got a big influx of cash—perhaps a bank loan?—but that almost immediately disappeared into the sea of red ink.
I flipped to the folder labeled “Personal” and discovered that he’d taken out a second mortgage on this house six months ago, which would explain the fresh cash.
It was unlikely David’s financial situation had anything to do with the death of Anna Wentworth—although I wouldn’t rule anything out—but it would explain the tension between David and Sheila, which Lauren had commented on, and the fact that Sheila, who “liked nice things,” couldn’t buy new clothes when she’d put on weight.
I opened his email program. There was far too much for me to read in a short time, so I searched for a few keywords. “Garden” brought up an email from Sheila sent last week, reminding him (more like ordering him) to be out of the house all day Sunday. Interesting, I thought, that they communicate by email. “Anna Wentworth” and “Mike Nixon” produced no results. One email subject line was “Final warning.” I opened and read it. The letter was from an independent contractor David had hired to do a job, telling David—in very blunt, very nonlegal terms—that if he didn’t pay monies owned by the end of the month, the matter would be handed over to the lawyers.
Last of all, I found an email folder organized by month. It was a record of airline, train, and hotel bookings, and there were a lot of them. David appeared to travel to all parts of the United States and took trips several times a month. A year ago, he’d flown business class and stayed at luxury hotels. That had changed over the last few months to economy seats on red-eye flights and chain budget hotels.
How angry might he be at his reduced circumstances? Had he asked Sheila to economize and she’d refused to do more than not buy a new pair of shorts? Maintaining gardens of garden-tour quality wasn’t cheap.
Might he have taken his anger out on his wife’s garden?
The police would have asked David if he knew anything about the destruction to the garden. I had to assume he’d denied doing it. If he’d confessed, they wouldn’t still be looking into it.
I leaned back in the comfortable, ergonomically correct chair and thought. I crossed my legs, and my foot hit something. I peered under the desk.
A trash can. Full of papers.
I lifted it up and put it on my lap.
Conveniently, David hadn’t emptied his trash for a few days. I found the letter that went with the lawyer’s envelope. He was being sued by a former employee for back wages. Another letter had been sent by Lauren’s school, reminding him that fees were long overdue and had to be paid in full if her place was to be kept for next term.
I wondered if Sheila knew just how much financial trouble they were in.
Only one way to find out. By searching her computer.
I put the trash can back under the desk and switched off David’s computer. I wiped down the keyboard and the computer’s power switch with the hem of my shirt, but otherwise didn’t worry about leaving my fingerprints. I had every reason to be in this house: I’d been invited in by a resident.
Soft voices drifted down the wide staircase, and I followed them. At the top of the stairs, I peeked into the first room on the right. Jayne and Lauren were sitting on Lauren’s bed, their legs folded beneath them, with Snowball curled up on the girl’s lap.
Jayne’s short and petite, and Lauren’s tall for her age. They looked like two teenagers having a sleepover.
“This is a smashing room,” I said.
“Does that mean it’s nice?”
I laughed. “More than nice. Brilliant.”
Lauren smiled at me. “Thanks.”
And it was. The double bed was covered with a rose-pink duvet and piles of gray, white, and pink pillows. The walls were a soft gray, and a fluffy white rug covered the floor. The dresser and desk were painted white, and the gray drapes were an exact match to the color in the pillows. “Live your best life!” was painted in sparkly gold paint above the bed.
It was a genuine young girl’s room, lived in and loved. The laptop computer in the center of the desk was surrounded by papers and books, and pictures of a smiling, laughing Lauren posing with girls of a similar age, filled the side tables and were pinned to the corkboard over her desk. Irene Talbot was in one, the picture showing her and Lauren in swimming costumes with the beach in the background. A photo of Lauren with her parents sat on her desk.
I was delighted to see a bookcase so crowded that the books spilled onto the floor, and that the night table was stacked high. Her tastes ran to modern teen adventure and science fiction.
“Did you check to see if any of your mum’s things are gone?” I asked.
“Gosh, no. We should do that, right? In case—” Her face froze as a thought crossed her mind. “In case someone took her.”
“Gemma didn’t mean that,” Jayne said quickly.
But I had. It bothered me that I still hadn’t heard from Ryan. I would have thought he’d want to talk to the girl.
Lauren led the way down the hall. The guest bedroom looked so unused, I didn’t even suggest we go in.
The master bedroom was large, with an en-suite bathroom. The bedcovers and decorative pillows were scattered on the floor, the sheets rumpled. A towel was draped over a chair.
Lauren walked into the closet, and I said, “Give me a minute.”
I stroked my right cheek as I studied the room, trying to get an impression. A framed picture sat on the nightstand to the right of the bed. This was the first picture I’d seen in this house of Lauren with her parents, and it had been taken recently. The book on the table was a biography of Franklin Roosevelt. David’s side.
Sheila’s night table had a book on formal gardens of Great Britain, as well as a catalog from a travel company. I flicked through the glossy catalog, seeing castles and beautiful houses and gardens and luxury hotel rooms. One page was dog-eared: a garden tour of the stately homes of England.
“Was your mother planning a vacation?” I asked.
“She wanted to go to England,” Lauren said, “but Dad said we can’t afford it.”
“What did she say to that?”
“That she’d go without him. Do you think …?”
“Maybe.”
I opened the drawers of the night table.
“Gemma!” Jayne said.
I ignored her. Gardening magazines, more travel brochures, a jumble of costume jewelry. I’d seen the good jewelry on the dressing table under the window. I closed the drawers.
“One of the suitcases is gone,” Lauren said.
“Are you sure?”
“Pretty sure. It’s a small one. Red. Like those ones, but smaller.”
One side of the walk-in closet had men’s clothes, the other women’s; far more of the latter than the former. Two matching hard-sided red suitcases sat against the wall underneath the winter coats. “Do you notice anything else missing?” I asked.
Lauren put her right hand to her cheek and studied the closet, not saying anything. I stood quietly and let her think.
Jayne remained in the hall, clearly uncomfortable prying into people’s things.
I’m never uncomfortable prying into people’s things. If they don’t want me to pry, they shouldn’t get involved in murders. And they shouldn’t abandon their only child to my care.
“Maybe,” Lauren said at last. “It’s hard to tell, she has so much, but I don’t see her pink and white dress or the red linen jacket. Or the white sandals or the red Keds.”
“How about the number of items?” I asked. “Is this the normal amount of clothes to be hanging here?”
Lauren thought. “I don’t come in here much, but I don’t think so. There’s a space there.”
“So there is.” Five hangers were empty.
“I’m pretty sure her jeans are gone. She only has one pair. Plus her blue sweater. And the white capris with gold stitching on the hem and pocket.”
“Well done,” I said. “You’ve a good eye for detail.”
She beamed at me.
“Let’s check the bathroom,” I said.
The master bath was all shades of gray and cream with gold accents. A giant round tub filled the center of the room, a glass-enclosed shower stall was against one wall, and his-and-hers sinks lined the other. The soap dishes were of heavy gray stone, and the towels and the rugs were thick and fluffy.
Lauren pulled open a drawer next to the sink. “Oh yeah. A lot of her makeup’s gone. And her traveling toiletry bag isn’t here either.”
Not proof positive that Sheila had left under her own free will, but combined with the early morning text to Irene, the missing suitcase, and empty hangers in the closet, close enough.
“Do you know where she keeps her passport?” I hadn’t seen it among the detritus of her night table.
Lauren shook her head.
“Have you packed your overnight bag?”
“Yes.”
“Get Snowball into her carrier then, and we can go.”
She ran off, and I began opening drawers in the bathroom. Candles and matches, bottles of bubble bath, jars of skin lotion, fancy scented soaps, an assortment of different-sized fluffy gold towels. Cold medicine, cough syrup, a half-empty bottle of headache tablets. I wouldn’t know if they actually were headache tablets without having them tested, but for once I decided to take something at face value and put the cap back on the bottle.
“What are you looking for now?” Jayne asked.
“I won’t know until I find it. And I’m not finding anything. I don’t see shaving equipment or men’s deodorant in here. David must use another loo. Why do you suppose they make different deodorants for men and women anyway?”
“So that a married couple will buy two bottles, not one?”
Two more doors led off the hallway, and I headed for them. The first was another bathroom, obviously used by the man of the house. A quick search turned up nothing out of the ordinary.
Lauren screamed. Snowball screeched. Something fell to the floor.
Jayne whirled around. “Lauren! Are you okay?”
“She doesn’t want to go into her carrying case,” Lauren cried. “Ouch, that hurt!”
More screeching.
More screaming.
“Perhaps you should try to help, Jayne,” I said. I never take Moriarty to the vet myself; that’s strictly Uncle Arthur’s job. He comes back covered in scratches, but he always tells me all has gone well.
“Perhaps I should.” Jayne ran off.
The second door led to, as I’d hoped, a study. Two paintings hung on the walls, both watercolors of lush gardens at sunrise. The wall behind the desk was filled with framed photos of Sheila admiring plants. Every book on the shelves had to do with gardening. I read the spines quickly and noticed that two of the books were by Anna Wentworth. A dust-rimmed empty space took up the center of the big desk, almost certainly where the computer had sat before being confiscated by the police. A chair matching the one in David’s office had been shoved up against the wall. I rounded the desk to have a look at the picture in the silver frame beside where the computer had been.
