“What’s that?”
“Grandma took me around to a couple of the schools I could go to. But I only got to see them from the outside because it was the weekend.”
“I’m not mad.”
“If I did go to school there, would you come and live with me at Grandma and Marcus’s? My room there is really big. They could put another bed in there. But you wouldn’t be allowed to snore.”
“You won’t be going to school in Darien,” I said. “I’m going to see if there’s another school here in town, if you still want to switch.”
Kelly thought about that a moment. Then she said, “So, Emily’s dad came over here yesterday?”
“That’s right.”
“Did he come by to give us an invitation to the funeral?”
“No. And that’s not exactly how it works. People don’t go around inviting-let’s not worry about that now.”
“So why did he come over?”
“He wanted to be sure you were okay, you being Emily’s best friend and all.”
She digested that, but she still looked worried. “There was nothing else?”
“Like what?” I asked.
“He didn’t want anything back?”
I focused in on her. “Like what?”
Kelly was suddenly looking very anxious. “I don’t know.”
“Kelly, what would he want back?” I asked.
“I already got in trouble for being in their bedroom. I don’t want to get into any more trouble.”
“You’re not in trouble.”
“But I’m gonna be,” she said, starting to tear up.
“Kelly, did you take something from the Slocums’ bedroom?”
“I didn’t mean to,” she said.
“How could you not mean to take something?”
“When I was in the closet, there was a purse bumping up against my foot, so I reached down to move it, and there was something clinking inside it, so I took it out, but it was too dark to see what it was, so I put it in my pocket.”
“Kelly, for God’s sake.”
“I just wanted to see what it was, and when Emily found me and I could see, I’d look at what it was. But then Emily didn’t come in, her mom did, so I just left it in my pocket. It kind of made my pocket stick out, so I sort of held my hand over it when Mrs. Slocum made me stand in the middle of the room.”
Wearily, I closed my eyes. “What was it? Jewelry? A watch?” She shook her head. “Do you still have it? Is it here?”
“I hid it in my shoe bag.” Her eyes were large and moist.
“Go get it.”
She ran to her bedroom and was back in under a minute, carrying by its drawstring a blue gingham bag with a sailboat on the side.
She handed it to me. Whatever was inside was heavier than I expected. I felt the item through the fabric before opening the bag, and my guess was that Kelly had left the Slocum house with a pair of bracelets.
I reached into the bag and took out the item. Heavy, bright and shiny, with a nickel finish.
“It’s handcuffs,” Kelly informed me.
“Yeah,” I said. “So they are.”
NINETEEN
“You think Mr. Slocum came over because he wanted these back?” Kelly asked. “You’re sure he didn’t ask for them?”
“He definitely did not.” I was examining the cuffs, which had a tiny key stuck to them with a piece of clear tape. I returned Kelly’s empty shoe bag to her. “If these were in his wife’s purse, he might not even know about them.”
“She’s not a police lady.”
“I know.”
“But maybe sometimes she helped Mr. Slocum when he was being a policeman.”
“I suppose that’s possible.”
“Are you going to give them back?” she asked. She sounded frightened.
I took a long breath. “No,” I said. “I think we’ll just forget about this.”
“But I did the wrong thing,” Kelly said. “I kind of stole them. But not really. I just didn’t want Emily’s mom to know I’d taken them from her purse.”
“Why didn’t you put them back when Mrs. Slocum left you in the room?”
“I was scared. She made me stand in the middle of the room, and if I was in the closet when she came back I thought I’d get in even more trouble.”
I gave Kelly a hug. “It’s okay.”
“What if we put them in a box and mailed them to Mr. Slocum but you didn’t write on the box who it was from?”
I shook my head. “Sometimes people just lose things. If he even knows about these, he probably won’t be looking for them for a very long time.”
“But what if a bad guy breaks in to their house at night and Mr. Slocum goes to get the handcuffs from the purse to keep him there until other police come?”
It was a relief I didn’t have to explain what, exactly, I thought they might have been used for. “I’m sure that won’t happen,” I told my daughter. “And we’re not going to talk about this again.”
I shooed Kelly off and put the cuffs in the drawer of my bedside table. Maybe, when it was trash day, I’d drop these into a garbage bag and send them off on their way. My guess was, if these cuffs were in Ann Slocum’s purse, not only did her husband not have a clue about them, they weren’t being used in the Slocum house at all. No wonder she didn’t want Kelly telling her husband about the call.
I wondered whose wrists had been of such concern to her.
I drove Kelly to school in the morning. “And I’ll be picking you up, too,” I said.
“Okay.” That had been our routine for the last week, ever since Kelly had gone back to school since Sheila’s death. “How long are you going to do this for?”
“For a while,” I said.
“I think I can start riding my bike again soon.”
“Probably. But we’ll do this for a little longer, if that’s okay with you.”
“Okay,” she said, with some dejection in her voice.
“And if Mr. Slocum shows up at the school, wanting to see you, you’re not to talk to him. Go find a teacher if he does.”
“Why would he do that? Because of the handcuffs?”
“Look, I’m not expecting him to do anything, but just in case. And we’re not talking about the handcuffs anymore, and you’re not to tell any of your friends about them.”
“Not even Emily?”
“Especially not Emily. No one, you understand?”
“Okay. But I can talk to Emily about other things, right?”
“She won’t be at school today. She’ll go back in a few days, I’d guess.”
“But I still talk to her online.”
Of course. I was thinking like someone from another century.
Kelly asked, “Are we going to the visitation?” A word she didn’t even know a month ago. “Emily said there’s a
