Robin had an instruction book in his hand, and he referred to it to start the recording.
Among the multiplicity of small machines surrounding our television—DVR, sound system, cable transmitter—the new black box was hardly noticeable.
I was surprised at how excited I was. This was almost like being at the movies, but with an elevated element of suspense.
After a minute of fiddling, Robin sat beside me. “It’s motion-activated,” he explained. “And it’s in color.”
Of course it was. I didn’t even want to know how much it had cost.
I was disappointed, at first. All the actions caught by the camera were innocuous, not to say boring. I walked in and out once or twice, visibly dragging, holding my arm over my mouth and nose when I coughed or sneezed. You could see me deteriorate into a staggering wraith in a nightgown with a mask over her face. But interspersed with these glimpses, there were moments of Virginia. The first afternoon, she looked around the room, opening and shutting drawers and closets, reacquainting herself with the arrangements for changing Sophie and the location of her clothes and so on.
We saw Virginia carry Sophie to the changing table. She never turned away from Sophie. I nodded silently. Virginia put on the fresh diaper quickly and efficiently before she picked the baby up and turned Sophie to her shoulder while she patted Sophie’s back. Wisely, Virginia had thrown a burp cloth over her shoulder. Sophie spit up copiously on it.
“Aw, girl!” Virginia said. I could read her lips. I could tell when Sophie produced one of her prodigious burps, because Virginia laughed. She lowered Sophie into the crib while she disposed of the used diaper and tossed the wet cloth into the clothes hamper. Virginia checked her shoulder, evidently found it was dry, and looked relieved. She checked on Sophie, saw Sophie had fallen asleep, and left the room.
Then light was coming through the shades on Sophie’s window when we next saw movement. Phillip came in and took care of Sophie, talking to her and blowing on her stomach, before carrying her out of the picture. I appeared once, looking like death. Then we watched Emily and Angel come in and out, and I reminded myself to write them thank-you notes.
We had seen nothing out of the ordinary. Up to this point.
We reached last night’s footage. Virginia entered the room alone, her cell phone held to her ear. It was like watching a pantomime. It was clear Virginia was agitated. Her whole posture was tense, and her movements were emphatic, exaggerated. She might as well have had I AM UPSET in a balloon over her head. She paced back and forth as she spoke. After a short and angry conversation (going by the expression on Virginia’s face), she stabbed a finger on the “end call” icon on her phone. (Though we couldn’t see the face of the phone, her actions were clear to read.)
After disconnecting, Virginia stood rooted to the spot. Though her face was turned away from the camera, the hunch of her shoulders read as “despairing.” Or maybe “resigned.”
Robin and I glanced at each other. “Wish I could have heard that conversation,” he said. I nodded, and we turned back to the screen. What happened next was another surprise, though a slight one.
Phillip came into the room, clearly to ask Virginia a question. She waved a hand, as if to sweep away his words. Phillip looked at her narrowly, but after a moment, when she said nothing else, he left the room with a shake of his head. If you don’t want to talk, I’m outta here.
When she was alone, Virginia’s shoulders slumped. She turned to face the camera, and we saw she was crying. After a minute or two, she seemed to pull herself together. She left the room.
Since the camera was motion-activated, the sequences jumped forward in a disconcerting way. Virginia, her face shuttered but calm, popped in and out carrying Sophie. If she put Sophie in the crib to sleep, in the next segment we saw Virginia hurry in when Sophie’s arms were waving.
In what was one of the last bits of the recording, Phillip and Sarah tiptoed in. Sarah bent over the crib, smiling, to admire Sophie. She glanced up at Phillip, and he beamed back at her. Then they tiptoed out.
There was one of the jerks that indicated a time lapse.
Then a strange woman appeared. She glanced around the room.
“Oh my God,” I whispered. I glanced sideways at Robin. He was as appalled as I was.
“That’s the dead woman,” I said. “She was in Sophie’s room. In our house.”
“You know her,” he said, sounding tired and sad.
Now that I could watch the woman alive and moving, a sense of familiarity tickled at me. I shook my head, trying to fix a name to the woman. As we watched, the dead woman crossed the room to the crib. She looked down at Sophie for a long moment. Though I knew perfectly well Sophie was okay, I was terrified.
There was a loud knock on the front door, and I gave a little shriek.
“Sorry, honey,” I told Robin, my heart thudding. “I’ll let her in?”
He nodded wordlessly. He looked very grim, an expression that did not sit on Robin’s face with any ease.
Cathy Trumble looked every day of her age, and maybe a few more. She’d clearly been up for hours, maybe hadn’t ever gone to bed. “Seriously, a nanny cam?” Cathy said. “You didn’t know about this last night, Roe?”
“I would have told you.”
“Robin, you’re home very quickly,” Cathy said, with no inflection. “Hard to get in touch with you last night.”
“I had my phone on vibrate for the banquet duration. I didn’t even think about checking my messages,” Robin said. “I called Roe to tell her I’d won, and then I called my mother. I went around the bar to have my pats on the back.” He smiled. “Jeff and I started talking again about collaborating. We wanted to get into the nuts and bolts of how it would work, so we went to Jeff’s room where we could hear each other. So I missed your call to my room. And finally, I saw Phillip’s text.”
“You sure have it all worked out.” Cathy looked sour.
“I had the plane ride to think about it,” Robin said.
“You went straight to the airport? Your friend Jeff give you a lift?”
“I took a cab to the airport. A Yellow Cab. I checked flights from the hotel, and I found an empty seat on a Delta flight, leaving in around an hour.”
“Use a credit card?”
“Sure.”
It was clear to me that Cathy distrusted Robin, which was startling as saying you distrusted ice cream. I opened my mouth to say a few things (sharp and pointed things) to Cathy, but Robin held up his hand.
“Roe, she’ll find out I’m telling the truth. Let’s skip the argument. It’s more important for her to see this.” Robin took a deep breath. “Cathy, we just watched the footage.”
She didn’t seem surprised. “And?”
“The woman on it … if she’s the woman who was killed, I know her.”