pocketed the key. The sudden silence was jarring.
It was ridiculous to think they were engaged and he didn’t have a key to her house, nor did he know the code to her security system. He’d asked Sheila a few times over the past year, but she’d always joked that she didn’t want him walking in on her with her other boyfriend.
In the end, it hadn’t really been a joke, had it? She’d always been a private person, and now he knew why.
He stepped farther into the house. Immediately, something didn’t feel right. And it wasn’t because she’d covered the holes he’d made in her wall with an old mirror she’d been meaning to donate to Goodwill.
The throw pillows on the living room sofa were in disarray. A minor thing, but it wasn’t like her-she hated to leave the house messy if she was going to be away for an extended period. Once, before a weekend trip to Las Vegas, she’d made him wait an hour while she straightened and vacuumed the entire house.
In the kitchen, the sink was filled with dirty dishes. One even had a chunk of dried chicken still stuck to it. Sheila would never have left those dishes to sit overnight, let alone for eight weeks while she was in rehab.
Something was very wrong here.
He crossed through the kitchen into her study. The desk lamp was bright and the computer was still on. The screen saver was flickering, and when Morris hit the ENTER key, he was prompted to enter a password. She had locked her computer-no surprise there.
His eyes gravitated to the little fishbowl that always sat on her desk. His heart sank.
The water in the bowl was cloudy. Mercury, the goldfish he’d won for her on their first date, was floating belly up, his bright orange color faded to a dull yellow.
Sheila would have never let that little fish die.
He pulled out his cell phone and dialed 911.
CHAPTER 23
T here was no immediate danger, the desk sergeant on the phone informed Morris, so it would be forty-five minutes to an hour before somebody from Seattle PD would be at the house to take his statement. Or he was welcome to come in and file a missing-person report. Neither choice sat well with Morris, but he opted to stay at Sheila’s house and wait for an officer to arrive.
He rifled through her desk drawers while he waited. Everything was meticulously organized, and he found nothing unusual amid the pens and Post-it pads.
A small stack of invoices lay beside the computer, waiting to be paid. Electricity bill, gas bill, mortgage statement; all were unpaid for the month. He noticed her gas bill payment was due five days ago. He wasn’t intimately familiar with Sheila’s bill-paying habits, but it seemed odd that she wouldn’t have taken care of these things before she left. In the stack he’d grabbed from her mailbox there were more bills-why hadn’t she forwarded these to the rehab facility? Or arranged to make the payments some other way?
He took one last look at the lifeless little goldfish, then headed down the hallway and up the long, straight staircase.
Two bedrooms and a bathroom were on the second level. One bedroom was done up as a guest room, and the other was bare except for a treadmill and an old TV. He checked both rooms and the bathroom, even looked inside the closets, but nothing of note was in any of them.
Turning down the hallway, he took the final set of stairs up to the third floor, which was entirely Sheila’s bedroom. By the time he reached the top, his knees were aching from carrying his big body up so many steps.
Her bedside reading lamp was still on. The bed, though made, was slightly rumpled, as if she’d just been lying on top of it. A novel was lying open and facedown next to the indent left by her body. Her reading glasses were beside the book.
It was all so peculiar-it didn’t even look as if Sheila had left in a hurry. It was as if she’d left knowing she’d be back right away. He was certain the police officers, if they ever arrived, would agree.
He felt every inch the intruder as he sat on the edge of her queen-size bed. He was invading the wall of privacy she’d so carefully constructed, and it made him uncomfortable. He had been in her bedroom only half a dozen times, if that. They weren’t having sex and she had no television here, so there’d never been much reason for him to come upstairs. Now he was alone in her room, trying desperately to get inside her head. He picked up the novel she was reading. The latest thriller from Jeffery Deaver. Morris had never heard of the guy.
He opened the top drawer of her nightstand and pawed through it. Hand lotion, another book by another author he’d never heard of, a few pens, receipts from various clothing stores. No recent purchases. He opened the second drawer.
And stared into it, his jaw dropping open.
It was a box of condoms. Jumbo pack. Trojans. And ribbed… for her pleasure.
The box was open. Morris looked inside, knowing damn well what he was going to find but needing to see it anyway.
A jumbo pack came with twenty-four condoms. In this box, only six remained.
The doorbell chimed three floors down and he jumped.
Morris gave his statement to the Seattle PD officers, trying hard to maintain a sense of professionalism. But in between every sentence was the nearly empty box of condoms, glowing like a fluorescent beacon in his head.
It didn’t help to know that she had at least practiced safe sex. No, sir, not one bit.
“So you don’t live here?” The younger detective was a petite woman named Kim Kellogg. Dressed smartly in a tailored pantsuit, she’d been making notes the entire time using a small black leather notepad she kept clipped to her belt. Her partner, Detective Mike Torrance, was wearing a shirt that needed ironing and a tie that looked outdated. He had been listening to most of the exchange without comment, his hawk eyes missing nothing.
“No,” Morris said. “But I am-was-her fiance. I haven’t seen or heard from her since she left a message calling off our wedding.”
“When were you supposed to get married?”
“This Saturday.”
“And she called you from where?”
“I don’t know. She didn’t say.”
“She called you on your cell phone?”
“No, the home phone.”
“Did you check the call display?”
“I can’t remember. I was upset when I got home.”
“Can you check it when you get home and give me the number she called from?”
“Certainly.”
Torrance cleared his throat, interrupting them. He had a jawline full of razor bumps, and his short black hair stuck straight up from his scalp like he’d been electrocuted. “So, Mr. Gardener, if you don’t live here, you must have a key to get in.”
Morris suddenly wondered if he was going to be arrested for trespassing. “I do,” he lied. “We were engaged, after all.”
Detective Torrance’s face was expressionless. “And why is it you think something’s happened to your fiancee?”
Morris hesitated. “Truth be told, I don’t know what to think.”
Torrance stared at him. “Then why are we here, Mr. Gardener? Either you’re reporting her missing or you’re not.”
Kellogg was jotting everything down furiously, her pencil making loud scratching noises against the paper. Torrance frowned at her as if he wanted her to stop.
Morris rubbed his head. “It feels like something’s not right. Her house is messy. She wouldn’t leave it like this if she knew she was going away for a while. It would have bothered her. And her fish is dead.”
“Fish?”
