been-that she didn’t share with you.”
“I don’t believe that.”
Kip put her hands on her hips and studied me. “This is a pretty thorough search. In all the years I’ve been with the police, I’ve seen very few places torn apart like this. I’ve never even seen cops tear apart a place like this. This took a while. Looks like they weren’t too worried about you walking in the door unexpectedly. Looks like they knew they had time.”
Our eyes met.
“Who knew you were going to Seattle?” she asked.
Whom had I told? Who knew? Kate. My boss, Laura Cantrell. My colleague in the showroom, Andy Hertz. Susanne, of course, and no doubt Bob and Evan. And anyone else any of these people might have told.
I was missing the obvious, of course.
Yolanda Mills, whoever she was, knew I was off to Seattle. She’d practically invited me there.
“Maybe I was set up,” I said.
“Come again?” Jennings asked.
“I was set up. The woman who called me, who said she’d seen my daughter. She knew I wasn’t going to be home.”
“Refresh my memory.”
I told her about Yolanda Mills, how I couldn’t find her in Seattle, how the cops out there believed she’d called me from a disposable cell phone.
“Seattle’s about as far away as someone could send you and still be in the country,” Jennings said. “Once you were on your way to the airport, they knew they had at least a couple of days to go through your house.”
“But she had a picture of her,” I said. “She sent it to me. It was a picture of Syd. I’m as sure of that as I can be.”
“Can I see it?”
“Computer,” I said.
I led us into the study, stepping over tossed books and dumped shoe boxes spilling out receipts. While the computer tower and monitor had been shoved about, they were reasonably intact. I fired it up, opened the email program, and found the message and attached photo from Yolanda Mills. I opened it for Detective Jennings to see.
“It’s not the greatest picture in the world,” she said. “The way her hair is falling, you can’t see much of her face.”
“You see this?” I said, pointing to the coral, fringed scarf that Syd had tied about her neck. “I know that scarf. Syd has one just like it. You put that scarf with that hair, and that bit of nose you can see there, and that’s her. I’d bet my life on it.”
Jennings leaned in close to the screen and studied the scarf. “I’ll be back in a minute,” she said.
I sat there at the computer, checked to see whether anyone else had been in touch in the last two days. There had been hardly any hits on the website for Syd, and my emails were all junk.
Jennings appeared in the doorway, something bright and colorful wadded up in her hand. She held up a scarf.
“The color caught my eye when I was looking in your daughter’s room earlier,” she said. “It was dumped out onto the floor with everything else.”
I stood, reached for the scarf, and held it as though it might dissolve in my fingers.
“Is that the scarf?” she asked.
I nodded very slowly. “That’s the scarf.”
“So if your daughter was supposedly wearing this scarf in Seattle a few days ago, what’s it doing here in your house?”
That was a really good question.
I didn’t have much time to ponder it. A minute later, one of the uniformed cops poked his head into the study and said to Jennings, “I think we found what they were looking for.”
FIFTEEN
“WHAT?” I SAID.
The cop said nothing. He led Jennings to my bedroom and I followed. One of the pillows had been stripped of its case and was slit open. A clear plastic freezer bag that was filled with a white powdery substance lay on the bedspread.
“I noticed a funny bump under the pillowcase,” he said.
Detective Jennings pinched the corner of the bag between thumb and forefinger, lifted it up for an inspection.
“Lordy, Lordy, what do we have here?” she said.
“Is that what I think it is?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” Detective Jennings said, eyeing me, the cop in uniform studying me as well. “What do you think it is?”
“I think it might be cocaine.”
“If that turns out to be right, what do you think it’s doing in your pillow?” she asked.
“I have no idea,” I said.
“Want to hazard a guess?”
Slowly, I shook my head. “No.” I thought a moment. “Yes.”
“Go ahead,” she said.
“Someone put it there,” I said.
The cop made a small snorting noise.
“I’d have to agree with you there,” Jennings said.
“I slept on that bed two nights ago. There was nothing in that pillow then. Someone put it there while I was away.”
“So what are you saying?” Jennings said. “That there were two different break-ins while you were away? That someone came in here and hid this what-may-prove-to-be cocaine in your pillow, and then someone else broke in trying to find it?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “To be honest, as strange as this is, I’m a little more concerned about how my daughter’s scarf can be here if she had her picture taken wearing it in Seattle.”
“One thing at a time,” Jennings said. She set the clear bag on the bed. “Let’s say, for the sake of argument, that someone snuck in while you were away and hid this in your pillow. Wouldn’t that be pretty stupid? First time you get into bed, you put your head on the pillow, you notice it’s there.”
“I agree, that’d be pretty dumb,” I said. “About as dumb as my inviting you into my home to find it. And if this house really was broken into twice, once to hide those drugs, and then a second time by somebody else trying to find them, then how the hell did they overlook them? It took your officer here ten minutes to stumble onto them. I mean, look around. This house has been turned fucking upside down. And that pillow’s just sitting there full of drugs. Does that make any sense at all?”
Jennings said nothing. She was standing there, one hand held thoughtfully over her mouth and chin. She was trying to work it out.
“Unless whoever put those drugs there did it after the house was torn apart,” she said. “A place that’s already been searched is a great place to hide something.”
“Even if that’s what happened,” I said, “my pillow is still a stupid place to hide anything. I’d find it.”
