“Not that I know of.”
“Maybe he’s still inside,” Mac suggested, “hiding in some crevice somewhere.”
“Maybe. We could wait out here all night, but I think whoever was in the house is long gone.”
I’d been so sure we would catch him this time, I was feeling extra bummed. Eric’s SUV arrived and he parked in front of my house.
“Uh-oh,” I whispered.
“Let’s go meet him.”
We jogged back to my place just as Eric made it to the sidewalk.
“We didn’t go inside,” I said immediately.
“Nobody came in or out,” Mac added.
“Then he’s probably still inside. You two wait out here.”
“Yes, sir,” I murmured.
He flashed me a sardonic look, as if he didn’t believe my cooperative, good-citizen act.
Mac and I waited until he came back outside.
“Nothing,” Eric said. “I’ll bring a team by tomorrow to see if we can find any evidence. But he’s long gone tonight.”
*
Early Sunday morning, the police were already at Jesse’s, trying to find anything that would lead to the capture of this wily intruder. But there was nothing, Eric reported. Not a fingerprint or a footprint anywhere.
The three of us regrouped in my kitchen around the coffee machine. Robbie was beyond thrilled to have two great big men paying attention to him, so he showed them all his tricks: sat politely for a treat, rolled over, played dead. Tiger was more subtle, winding herself in and around their legs until Mac stooped down and picked her up. Now she was in heaven.
“So how did he get inside again?” Mac asked.
“The locks haven’t been jimmied,” Eric said, “so he must’ve used the new key.”
“This guy just won’t give up,” I said.
“I’ll beef up the drive-by surveillance for the next few days,” Eric said.
“Okay, thanks.” I didn’t know what else to do. “Do you want another cup of coffee?”
“Thanks for the offer,” Eric said, “but I’ve got to get back to the station.”
“I’ll take one,” Mac said, and helped himself.
We sat at the kitchen table in silence for a moment. Robbie rested at his feet and Tiger was curled up in his lap. “I like your animals.”
“They’re pretty great, aren’t they?” I said, reaching over and scratching Tiger’s soft neck. “If you were writing a book and plotting out Jesse’s death and its aftermath, would you have things happening so haphazardly like this?”
“Actually I would,” Mac said.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, human nature is pretty straightforward,” he said. “In real life, events and situations are often self-explanatory and relatively simple, even murder. But for a mystery novel to be intriguing, an author needs to write as complex and elaborate a plot as possible to keep readers guessing. Because believe me, mystery readers are so damn smart, they always figure it out.”
I sighed. “This situation is ridiculously convoluted.”
“Yeah.” He scratched his head. “I should be taking notes.”
I got up and found the little bag of shortbread cookies I’d coaxed out of Jane’s chef and put a few on a plate. “I so want to catch this person. Chances are he killed my neighbor and now he’s trying to steal something. And to do it, he’s destroying Jesse’s house. Or he was, until Jane changed the locks and Eric started having someone drive by a few times a night. But it’s still so frustrating because he keeps coming back and we never catch him.”
“Why doesn’t Jane just hire a security guard or two?”
I winced. “I talked her out of it.”
“You what?”
“It made sense at the time,” I insisted. “We weren’t going to catch Jesse’s killer if the intruder was scared off by a guard.”
He sighed heavily. “Okay, that makes sense in a perverse way.”
I fiddled with my coffee spoon. “I thought so.”
“What can they be looking for?” Mac wondered out loud.
I pressed my lips together, trying to decide how much to tell him.
His eyes narrowed. “You know something.”
What did I say? How did this guy read my mind like that?
“Look, Shannon. Whatever it is, we need to find the damn thing before anyone else gets hurt. Something tells me you know more about it than you’re saying. So spill.”
He was right. Besides, all of our girlfriends knew and so did Eric. And my father. Mac had a right to know after spending all these nights chasing down the intruder with me.
“Jesse found a necklace when he went scuba diving with Bob and Ned.”
“I heard that was an old wives’ tale.”
“Yeah, well, it’s not. I found it.”
“You . . . you found it.” He stared at me in disbelief and I could swear the temperature dropped ten degrees. “The necklace. And you didn’t tell anyone about it?”