As I was walking back into the house, my eye caught something shiny next to the step, down in the garden beds.
I knelt down and brushed away the dirt. It was a cell phone. Black, slender, and off. I opened it, blew away dirt from around the keypad. Who’d lost a cell phone? It could have been any number of people, including all the cops who’d been in and out of the house the last couple of days. I tucked it into my pocket, figured I could check later.
“Whatcha got there?” said someone from behind me.
It was Kip Jennings.
NINETEEN
“EXCUSE ME?” I SAID. Jennings had caught me off guard. I hadn’t noticed her drive up the street.
“In your pocket? What was that?”
I pulled out the cell phone. “I found it in the dirt, by the door there,” I said.
“It’s not your phone?”
“No. I just said, I found it on the ground.”
“Can I have a look at that?”
I handed it over to her.
“Looks pretty clean,” she said.
“I just brushed the dirt off,” I told her. She looked up from the phone at me, then back at the phone. She hit a button to power it up and we both waited a few seconds for the little jingle to indicate it was up to speed.
“Maybe it belongs to one of your officers,” I said.
She started playing around with the menu. “Just checking to see what this cell’s number is… here we go.” She rattled off a number with an area code that was, up until recently, unfamiliar to me. “You know that number?”
“I think so,” I said, and felt something like a chill run up my back.
“Let me check something else here… missed calls. Someone made a number of calls to this phone that went unanswered. All from the same number.” And she told me what it was. “That one ring a bell?”
“Yes,” I said. “That’s my cell number.”
“This phone,” Jennings said, holding it up as though it were an artifact, “is the one that belonged to—what was her name?”
“Yolanda Mills,” I said. “That’s the number she gave me to call her.”
“Isn’t that something?” Kip Jennings said.
“So it has a Seattle area code and everything?”
“It sure does,” Jennings said.
I was trying to sort this new discovery. “So there really was someone from Seattle, and whoever it was came back here, broke into my house?”
“I suppose someone could have a phone bought for them out there, then have it FedExed out east,” Jennings speculated. “For all I know, you can program phones right here in Milford with area codes from anyplace in the country. It’d be something to check out.”
“So, if there was any doubt before, there isn’t now,” I said. “The woman who lured me to Seattle was hooked up with whoever broke into my house.”
Detective Jennings was still looking up different data on the phone’s screen. “It looks like all this phone was ever used for was to call you and take calls from you.” She dropped the phone into her purse and then asked, “Mind if I hang on to this?”
“Of course not,” I said.
“Were you planning to tell me about this phone?” she asked.
“What?”
“Were you going to tell me about it?”
“I only just found it. Once I’d figured out what phone it was, yeah, I would have called.”
She nodded slowly. This all had a bad feel to it.
I said, “Has something happened? You were just here a little while ago. Why are you back?”
“You know someone named Ian Shaw?” she asked.
I swallowed. “I think so,” I said.
“You think so?”
“He works at Shaw Flowers,” I said. “For his aunt.”
“So you do know him,” Jennings said.
“Yes,” I said. “I know who he is.”
“When his aunt came to work this morning—by the way, Ian lives in an apartment behind the shop. Did you know that?”
I nodded. “I get the feeling you already know the answers to these questions.”
The corner of her mouth curled up. “His aunt called the police today. Ian’s got quite the shiner on his cheek. Someone punched him good.”
I said nothing.
“Now, Ian didn’t really want to talk about it, but his aunt kind of put the fear of God into him, and he finally coughed up your name. And Mrs. Shaw remembered you coming by a couple of times asking about Sydney. And she didn’t much like the idea of you beating up her nephew.”
“There was a misunderstanding,” I said.
Jennings offered up a fake smile. “Damned if that isn’t what Ian said. Just a silly misunderstanding. He says he’s not interested in pressing charges. But his aunt insisted I come by and have a word with you just the same. She told me to tell you to never show your face around there again.”
“No problem,” I said.
“You want to tell me about this misunderstanding?”
“If Ian’s not pressing charges, I can’t see that there’d be much point,” I said.
Inside the house, the phone rang. “Excuse me,” I said, then ran inside and grabbed the kitchen extension. “Yeah?”
Susanne said, “If you thought Bob was pissed before, you should see him now.”
“About what?”