The cop shook his head. “I don’t envy what they’re dealing with. But tell them to look on the bright side. No personal harm was done. These are just things. They can replace them.”
Scott didn’t reply. He’d been the responding officer on many break-ins during his early years on patrol. He had always thought people made way too much of things being lost, stolen, or broken. They were, after all, just things. But looking at the accumulated contents of his parents’ lives broken into so much landfill turned his stomach, and set rage burning in his belly.
“What about the fact this incident put my dad in the hospital?”
The patrol officer gave him a palms-up shrug. “He had a heart attack when he came home and saw the damage. That’s not a direct connection. The D.A. won’t want the bother, unless we catch the perpetrators. Or do you know something we don’t?”
“Just a hunch.” Scott did a systematic search of the room, eyes doing a thorough sweep, looking for the clue that must be here somewhere.
He moved quickly through to his father’s study. File drawers had been pulled open and the contents tossed. Books had been dumped from their shelves. His father’s computer had been dropped and either smashed with something heavy or repeatedly stomped on.
He turned into the dining room with a heavy heart. The intention had been to inflict pain. They had succeeded. His mother’s good china lay in shards all over the floor. His grandmother’s crystal had been smashed on the shelves of the china cabinet, gleaming wetly like icicles in the light. Even the chandelier had been struck repeatedly. The floor sparkled where bits of broken crystal had fallen.
He doubted this was random, though it had been planned carefully to look that way. Until he had evidence that said otherwise, no one else would believe it. He wouldn’t either, if he didn’t have this big fucking hunch sitting on his shoulder.
*
It was a little past noon when Scott left the hospital a second time. He’d slept, sort of, in the waiting room, giving his mother the recliner in his dad’s room. She wouldn’t leave and he couldn’t encourage her to go home. Fuck it all! He didn’t want either of them to come home to the wreckage he’d left behind last night. That’s why he was stopping at the house, instead of going to the motel where he’d sent Cole after his father’s surgery was over. At least someone was getting some rest.
His eyes felt as if he’d rubbed sand in them. His back had a hitch in it, and his breath must be as rancid as his attitude. Still, he had work to do.
The sight of his mother’s car parked out front, instead of the garage where she kept it, set Scott’s heart into action mode as he pulled up in the driveway. The front door was open. The police tape gone. He reached for his gun, which he’d kept in the glove compartment while he was at the hospital.
Even before he reached the front door he heard music, up-tempo and heavy on the beat. Hip-hop. And a woman’s voice, singing regrettably off-key. He was pretty sure he recognized who was singing.
Suddenly he felt a little foolish and tucked his weapon in his jeans.
He didn’t knock, just walked in. Amazingly a bit of the clutter had been removed from the living room. But the music was coming from the dining room. He walked quickly in that direction.
Cole had laid towels over the surface of the dining room table, which now held pieces of crystal and china that had escaped damage, and some that looked like they could be repaired. She was doing salvage.
She still wore her clothes from the day before, just as he did. The music coming from her cell phone speaker was loud and rude, and slightly familiar. But it was like a desecration in his parents’ home.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
Cole straightened up from where she’d been sweeping glass into a dustpan. She smiled when she saw him. “Hi, Scott. How’s your dad?”
He nodded, feeling too raw to talk about it. Still, he had to say something to her. “What are you doing here? I thought you’d taken a hotel room.”
“Couldn’t sleep.” Cole yawned. “The keys you gave me last night to your mother’s car also included the house key, so I decided to come over and make myself useful.”
“Could you turn that off?” He pointed to the music source.
The resulting silence seemed to vibrate with relief.
“You left Izzy and Hugo in a motel room?”
Cole looked at him as if he’d pulled a rabbit out of his ear. “I put the dogs out back in your parents’ dog run. Your mom told me Kato died last year, which I was so sorry to hear. She was a good dog. They should replace her for safety’s sake. Still, it was nice to have a place for our pair. They were tired of being caged up. I figured they’d probably get along just so they wouldn’t be put back in your truck.”
“Okay. But you don’t need to do”—he waved his hand around—“this.”
She frowned. “You don’t want your parents to come home to it. They’ve suffered enough.”
He tucked in his chin. “I planned to take care of it.”