it around the door casing. Either that revealed something or she believed the security system notice on the door, because she backed away. She also ignored an unlighted window that probably opened into the kitchen. Instead, she moved along the house in the other direction, crouching to pass below the office window.
Her target had to be a small horizontal window high up near the eaves, the only other one on this side of the house. Experience had taught Cole that because of the height and size, homeowners with such windows could be careless about locking them. She must know that, too. The problem was reaching the window.
Irah bent her knees, then leaped upward in a spring equal to an NBA player going for a slam dunk. The fingers of one hand hooked on the sill. The slope and narrowness of the sill made it look impossible to grip, but Irah hung on. Cole remembered the photo of her rock climbing. With toes braced against the side of the house, she even raised up enough to push at the window with her other hand. Playing the odds worked. The window pivoted inward. She reached over the sill to clamp that hand on the inside, followed it with the other, and worked both sideways until they were hard against the vertical jamb. Spider-like, she walked her feet sideways up the house until she slid a leg over the sill. The other leg quickly followed and she eeled her way backward through the window.
Cole ducked under her through the wall and watched her drop soundlessly into the tiled shower stall. From jump to landing, breaking in had taken less than a minute. He wondered whether she took up rock climbing to train for burglary or just discovered other applications for those skills.
The bathroom door stood open. A click of computer keys came up the hallway. After pausing to peer out before leaving the bathroom, she padded silently toward the livingroom. The sound of the computer stopped. Just short of the door, Irah crouched with her head nearly to the carpet. Fishing a dental mirror from the fanny pack, she extended it past the door jamb. Inside the room, Lamper sat staring thoughtfully at the ceiling.
How did she plan to pass the door? No matter how deep in thought, motion in his peripheral vision was going to attract Lamper’s attention.
Irah made no attempt to pass, however…just continued crouching, watching the mirror. When, eventually, Lamper turned his back to the door for a moment, she exploded into action. In a second she had rolled past the opening. Using momentum to carry her onto her feet again, she slipped on to the livingroom. Behind her, typing resumed.
The mirror went back in the fanny pack as she glanced around. Cole guessed that the light coming in through the front window from the porch and up the hall from the study, faint as it was, let her see well enough. The etagere caught her attention immediately. She headed straight for it. A mini light came out of the fanny pack and its pinpoint beam moved from one trophy inscription to another.
All right…time to spoil all Irah’s stealth. Now he was happy for her ghost blindness. He pulled in room heat and coughed loudly.
The click of computer keys stopped. Irah’s heart rate jumped and she held her breath. But she also kept reading trophy inscriptions. Computer keys resumed clicking…stopped again…resumed once more. Irah let out her breath, though her heart rate remained high. Cole trotted to the study door to see if there were any indication Lamper had heard him.
Lamper had. He stared at the door. He tapped a few keys, then broke off and sat with his head tilted, listening…tapped a few more keys…listened again.
Cole stepped over to him and leaned down to his ear. “Did I hear something? I ought to get up and take a look.”
If Lamper heard, he disregarded the “thought.” He resumed typing.
Cole returned to the livingroom. He found Irah taking trophies off the shelf and setting them on the floor. Moving quickly. She had the trophy shelf almost cleared. What did they have here, one of Old Spice’s signature displays? Proof she
He coughed again…as loud as he could this time. Then he raced to the study to see Lamper’s reaction, and prod him some more if necessary.
The door slammed in Cole’s face. Passing through it, he also found himself passing through Lamper, who stood inside pressing the lock on the doorknob with one hand while punching 911 on the phone in his other hand…so tense he did not even react to the walk-through.
Cole snarled at him. “No, damn it! Don’t call the police! I want a confrontation between you and Irah.”
Lamper said into the phone, “There’s someone in my house. I hear him in my livingroom.”
This might still work if he acted fast. Cole dived back through the door and willed his voice into Irah’s. “Don’t have a cow, Earl,” he called. “I’m just making a little social call.”
The door jerked open. As it did, however, Cole saw that Irah had disappeared from the livingroom. Damn. He ran up the hall, reaching the bathroom in time to see her feet disappear out the window. Ducking through the wall, he found her somersaulting, catlike, in mid-air, and landing on her feet. She sprinted for back fence. In seconds she was through the adjoining yard and between houses, back on the street where she parked.
There, between one stride and the next, she pulled off the watch cap and went from a dead run to strolling. Irah sauntered to the Mustang, started it, and drove away at a decorous speed.
Cole raced back to the house. Lamper had the livingroom lights on now and stood staring at the trophies on the carpet. He still held the phone. “No, it won’t be necessary to send an officer. Whoever it was is gone.”
Lamper began returning the trophies to their shelf. As he did, Cole saw that one had lost the chess piece topping it. Only bare threads remained, where the figure screwed on. Lamper saw, too. Dropping to his knees, he peered under the etagere and nearby furniture.
Cole leaned down to him. “It isn’t here. Irah took it.”
Lamper sat up on his knees. He reached for the vandalized trophy, frowning. “Damn her,” he muttered.
For future reference, Cole wanted to see exactly what Irah took, and where she put it. He left Lamper fingering the bare threads and called up the image of Irah’s place, feeling its relationship to Spreckles Lake. Lamper’s front room morphed into Irah’s bedroom.
Now he had to wait for her, hoping she came straight home. He used the time to double check the evidence in the armoire and makeup table, then look over the contents of the curio cabinet again. Where he still found nothing on the shelves identifiable as his or Sara’s.
He drummed his fingers on the glass. “Come on, Irah. Get home.”
Finally he heard a garage door rumble up, then down. An interior door opened. A minute later near- soundless footsteps raced up the stairs and Irah whirled into the room, flushed, eyes glittering. She saluted the shrine wall. “I wish you could have been there, lover. Whooo!” She grinned. “What a squeaker…out by the skin of my teeth!”
Cole bared his teeth. “What a rush, right?”
She unclipped the fanny pack and toed off her shoes. “But I didn’t leave empty-handed. I found an interesting fact for Donald to chew over in the morning and of course…” She dug in the fanny pack and held up the metal figure of a rook. “…a new keepsake.”
Hefting it in her hand, she crossed to her desk and rolled open the top. From a drawer at the back, she took a key and unlocked the curio cabinet. Humming, she stood at the open door rolling the rook back and forth in her hand while she contemplated the shelves. Presently she leaned down to a lower shelf and set the rook next to the jumping horse figure.
After giving the rook a pat on its crenellated top, she straightened, skipping her fingers up the shelves as she did so…and pausing occasionally to fondle an object. Her hum gave way to a dreamy smile.
Anger flared in Cole. “Remembering the fun we had collecting those, are we?” Each of those objects represented people left feeling violated…never able to feel safe at home again.
With his anger, though, came a spark of hope. Killing Sara and him had to rank tops on her “fun” scale. Would she go to the objects that let her relive the experience?
She took a small carved red lacquered box from the top shelf and stood turning it over in her hands, her fingers tracing the carving. Could it be Sara’s?
Probably not, he decided as he realized she was pressing on parts of the carving. It was a puzzle box and must be hers if she knew how to open it. Puzzle boxes, he reflected, made good hiding places. Certainly for items she might prefer not to leave in plain sight. Hope jumping in him, Cole watched her hands intently, memorizing the movements.
