missing? Using a pencil, she pried open the other drawers in the room—the ones in the nightstand and in the pressboard dresser. Nothing seemed to out of order.
She went into the bathroom. Again, at first glance, nothing seemed to be amiss. The shampoo and conditioner, the large container of hand lotion—things she hadn’t needed to take along to the hotel—all stood exactly where she had had left them. Turning to leave the room, she caught sight of the dirty-clothes bag hanging on the hook on the back of the bathroom door.
Dragging the bag down from the hook, Joanna shook the contents out on the floor. There should have been three days’ worth of laundry in that scattered heap. Joanna sorted through it, almost the way she would have if she had been doing the laundry—separating things by colors. When she first noticed the missing pair of panties, she thought that maybe they were still caught in the legs of a pair of jeans. But that wasn’t the case. Three sweatshirts, three bras, two sets of jeans, one pair of pantyhose, and two pairs of panties. Only two pairs. The third one had disappeared.
With her pulse pounding in her throat, Joanna turned and fled from the room. Out in the breezeway, she could see Carol Strong and several of her investigators gathered outside the still-open door of the garage.
“Hey,” she shouted, waving. “Over her.”
Carol obviously heard her, because she waved back, but she didn’t understand what Joanna wanted. When Carol made no move in her direction, Joanna loped off across the parking lot. Her PT shinsplints yelped in protest. At one point, she slipped on loose gravel and almost fell. No matter what they show on those television commercials, she said to herself, running in high heels isn’t easy.
“What’s the matter?” Carol asked, as Joanna made it to within hearing distance.
“Do these guys have an alternate light source them?” she asked.
“Sure. Why?”
“Because someone’s been in my room,” Joanna answered
“Is anything missing?”
“Yes. An envelope full of press clippings on the Serena Grijalva case. And a pair of panties from my laundry hag.”
“Panties?” Carol repeated. “You’re sure?”
“Believe me. I’m sure.”
“Bring the ALS and come on,” Carol said over her shoulder to the technicians as she and Joanna started back across the parking lot. “Can you describe the missing pair?” she asked.
Fighting back an overwhelming sense of violation, at first all Joanna could do was nod.
“What’s wrong?” Carol asked, frowning worriedly in the face of Joanna’s obvious distress. “Is there something more that you haven’t told me?”
Joanna swallowed hard. “I can describe the panties exactly,” she said. “They’re apricot-colored nylon with a cotton crotch and with a column of cutout lace flowers appliqued down the right-hand side.”
After saying that, Joanna gave up trying to fight back her tears.
“I’m not sure I could describe any of my own underwear with that much detail,” Carol said, more to fill up the silence and to offer some comfort than because the words made sense.
Joanna nodded, sniffling. “I’m sure I shouldn’t be so upset. They are only panties, after all, but they were a present from Andy last Christmas, the last Christmas present he ever gave me. They’re part of a matching
