The Other Widow (27 page)

“Right.” He looks pleased. “Our response time is excellent.”

“Do you want a cup of coffee, Officer?” Karen feels nearly at home with this whole situation. Brennan. Officer Rush.

“Been drinking it all day.” He waves his large hand in the air between them. “One more cup and you'll be peeling me off the ceiling. Thanks, though.” He takes a step or two toward the kitchen. “I'll have a look around. See where they got in. Let me know if something comes up missing.”

“Right,” Karen says on her way to the back of the house. “I didn't see anything when I came in, but, like I said, I didn't really—” She opens the door to Joe's old office carefully. She's stuck Antoine inside the room so he won't go crazy with Officer Rush in the house since he seems seriously traumatized as it is. She looks around. Joe's laptop. Where is it? She looks everywhere—she starts with where she knows she left the thing, and works her way around the room from there. Gone.

And so is her iPad.

“Got it!” Officer Rush has clearly discovered something.

“What?” She hurries down the hall toward his voice. “Where are you?”

“Here,” he says. “In this little room back here. Off the kitchen here. I found where they got in.”

Karen joins him in the tiny storage room. Broken glass covers the floor.

“You'll need to get that boarded up till you get the window replaced.” He jerks his head toward the broken window.

“I know what he took!”

“Yeah?” He turns around. “What's that?”

“My husband's laptop,” Karen says. “He just died. My husband. He's just passed away.”

“I'm sorry,” Officer Rush says, scrolling around on his cell.

“Yes.” She nods. “It was totally—” She stops, takes a breath. “And my iPad. My iPad's gone, too.”

“Is that it?” He sticks the phone in his jacket pocket and jots something down. Karen can almost see him stopping at the nearest McDonald's for a coffee, running it through his mind now where the closest one is. Checking it on his phone. Not close at all, actually.
Recalculating
. He snaps the little notebook shut and starts to stick it in his pocket.
Well. That's a wrap. Now for that Double Mac
.

“That's all I noticed. So far,” Karen says. “It's an Apple, though, and I have an iPhone, so you can track it.”

“ ‘Find' feature enabled?”

“Yep,” she says. “Putting in my password now.”

“Oh.” Out comes the little pad again. “And the laptop?”

“No,” Karen says. Damn. She hands her phone to Officer Rush. Both the laptop and her tablet are relatively new. Her iPad was barely out of the box, Joe's laptop only about a year old. Small enough to sneak out under a jacket, get through a window, out of the neighborhood without a moving van or a vehicle at all, actually. Perfect for a quick afternoon heist.

“Got the track,” the officer says. “You're lucky he didn't turn off the ‘find' feature first thing. Happens a lot.”

“Whew,” she says. “Great. Where is it?” It can't be far. Most likely someone wanting drugs, a quick buck to trot over to a dealer. Some kid. She's got to start turning on the alarm when she goes out.

“In town,” he says, surprising her. “I'll call it in to the Boston PD with the location. I can't see what kind of place it is, but, hopefully, it's still with your intruder there and we can grab the laptop at the same time.”

“Great!”

“Unless they've already sold it,” Officer Rush says, and he heads out the front door.

Karen walks back to Joe's old office and bends down to pat Antoine, who is strangely quiet in the corner. He shivers, even though she's dried him with the hair dryer, and Karen wonders if he's going into shock. “Antoine,” she says, “come on, boy!” She trudges up the hall to the kitchen and rattles the bag of dry dog food, but he is stubborn in his misery. She scoops him up. Without all the yipping and snapping, he seems suddenly very small. She carries him into the bedroom and sets him on the bed, covers him with a quilt, and Antoine brightens. Barely. She brings the dog food from the kitchen and hand-feeds him, coaxing him at first. After a few tiny nibbles, Antoine feels up to helping himself, sticking his wet nose inside the bag and even managing a small snarl. Back to normal. Almost.

She would gladly have bought a laptop for the thief, one without all the company finances on it. Better yet, just handed him the money. She sorts through Joe's papers. This time she'll go through everything, every file, every cabinet. He must have hard copies somewhere. Or are they at the office? In his car? Joe was careful. Cautious when it came to technology. Almost old-school. “If it fails, nine times out of ten, people are totally lost,” he used to say, “unless they backed everything up or have a hard copy.”

The phone rings, and Karen looks behind her, trying to remember where she's left it. The bedroom, she thinks, with Antoine. She jumps up to head for the hallway and her heel catches in the plaid doggie bed. She falls forward, grabs at a table to steady herself, knocking a stack of papers to the floor. She glances down. She'll get it later. And then she sees the spreadsheets. Sheets of them. September–December, one of them says, and then May–August. She stops, bends down. January–April. All of it's here! Right here! Thank, God! She feels like letting out a little yip of joy herself. “We're okay, Antoine!” she calls out toward the bedroom. “It's all here!”

“Officer Rush,” a very masculine-sounding voice informs her, when she grabs the phone on the last ring. “They got your iPad. It's at a restaurant down on Commonwealth. Owner says a waitress turned it in after she found it on a table in back. Weird. Kids,” he says, and Karen pictures Officer Rush throwing up his hands. “Anyhow, they're taking it down to the station now for prints. Should be good to go by morning.”

“Great,” she says. “Thank you, so much! How about the laptop?”

“No laptop. Sorry. Get that back window boarded up and turn on your alarm. Probably a random break-in, but now they know the window's broken and they've got a way in, so be careful, Mrs. Lindsay.”

“Right,” she says. For a minute she thinks about calling Tomas, about asking him to come by after work and stay the night. She even scrolls to his work number at the hospital. She hesitates. He won't be off for hours. And even if she talked him into ditching work and coming over now, it would only make things more uncomfortable between them. She'd be leading him on. Worse, she'd be using him. And he'd be coming here to her house, which he has never done before. She's feeling guilty enough without adding to it, beating herself up later for having Tomas sleep in her late husband's bed. And he would. At this point, she can hardly ask him to spend the night on the couch.

No. She hurries out to the garage and finds a piece of plywood from some abandoned project—a birdhouse, was it? A backboard for a high-school science project? And then she calls Robbie, tells him what's happened. She can hear his car door beeping open before she's even finished.

“Did they dust for prints?” Robbie stands in the small violated room, and Karen says she doesn't know, actually. She assumes so.

“Not they,” she says. “It was just the one guy. Officer Rush.”

Robbie nails the plywood over the broken window and checks the yard three times before he leaves. Reluctantly leaves. He offers to spend the night.
Insists on it. Think about what Dad would want
, he says in desperation, but Karen tells him no. She's fine. She's not alone; she has Antoine, but thanks him for his concern. She practically pushes her son out the front door and then she sets the alarm, curls up on the couch with several quilts and the now dry and fluffy Antoine. Robbie calls her back from the highway into town. “So,” he says. “You're saying someone went to all that trouble—breaking into a house in a suburban neighborhood, a house with a barking yippy dog—and then just happened to
forget
the iPad in a coffee shop in Boston?”

“I know.” Karen yawns. It's been one hell of a long day. “And it's strange they didn't take more.”

XXXIII

DORRIE

D
orrie leaves work early and takes a cab to the hospital, even though there's nothing much to be done for Jeananne at this point. Still, she can talk to her. She can sit with her, or, really, stand—ICU is not the place for lengthy visiting. Jeananne's still in there somewhere, just unable to answer at the moment, or open her eyes, apparently. Music from the iPod streams from a metal table beside the hospital bed, playing Jeananne's favorite songs.

Dorrie sits in the lobby on a plastic chair. Sometimes she isn't allowed to see Jeananne at all. Sometimes she sits for an hour or so and leaves without even a glimpse into the room in ICU. It depends on who's on duty. Jeananne has no family nearby, or, as far as Dorrie knows, anywhere at all. She was an only child, father long gone, and her mother died three years ago. A cousin somewhere, but Dorrie has no idea where. It was only the husband—ex-husband now, so most of the nurses let her go in. They've been easing off on the sedation for the past couple of days, and Jeananne is breathing on her own. She has, the nurse called to tell Dorrie earlier this afternoon, even come around for brief periods. She's confused, but that happens. “All the drugs,” the nurse explained. They've operated on Jeananne's ankle, her broken wrist, and she's apparently come through like a trouper. Dorrie's not to be too optimistic, she's been cautioned, but she is. She knows Jeananne. “Can't keep a good woman down,” she always says, and the nurse smiles, gives Dorrie's arm a depressing little pat. “We'll hope for the best.”

Dorrie reaches for her bag. She'll phone home, leave a message for Samuel and Lily. She hadn't known about Jeananne before she left the house this morning. She rummages through her purse. No phone. Damn. With all that's happened, she doesn't like to be without it, not even for a minute. She feels herself start to panic, even though she's sitting in the lobby of the ICU, surrounded by medical personnel and concerned, nail-biting family members. She thinks about taking a cab to the office to grab her cell phone off her desk. It's only a short ride. She could still make it back in time to see Jeananne.

“Dorrie?” The nice nurse stands in the doorway. “Your friend seems to be coming around,” she says. “You might want to walk back, see if you can help. She's more likely to respond if you're there.”

Jeananne is tiny and pale. She doesn't look any different today than she did the last time Dorrie saw her. She looks like a doll. A shell. Dorrie hesitates.

“Come in.” The nurse moves over slightly in the cramped space. “Just talk to her,” she says. “Try to connect with her. She's still a little disoriented.”

“Jeananne?” Dorrie is suddenly self-conscious in this room of beeps and blinking lights, the huffing pumps and monitors. “Jeananne?” she says. “It's Dorrie. Can you hear me?” There is a tiny movement, the flicker of blond eyelashes. “Jeananne?” Dorrie leans over the bed. Her face hovers in the air above Jeananne's. Her breath is fast. Her heart pounds. “Jeananne,” she says. “It's Dorrie. Can you open your eyes?”

And she does.

“Nurse!” Dorrie turns around. The nurse stands in the hall, writing on a chart. “Nurse!” Dorrie calls again, but the nurse is already crossing the threshold, already grabbing Jeananne's wrist, fragile as a bird's wing.

“Hey,” she says in a soft voice. Bridget, her name tag says. “Welcome back.”

Jeananne's lips twitch. In the bright and greenish light, her white face is opaque, like milk glass.

“Do you know who this is?” Bridget gestures toward Dorrie. “Do you recognize your friend?”

Jeananne nods a teensy little nod.

“Can you tell me her name?”

Jeananne's voice is a whisper, a small, light wisp, catching in the cacophony of hospital sounds, but it's still her voice, even though she doesn't actually answer Bridget's question.

“Where am I?” Jeananne squints around the room.

“You're in the hospital. Mass General.” Dorrie moves in beside Bridget and the two of them crowd against the metal rails, gazing down at Jeananne as if she is a newborn in a crib, as if they've never seen anything more beautiful. She stirs. Dorrie can see her veins through the skin along her forehead and the white skin of her arms. Darkness pools beneath her lids. She closes her eyes.

“I am so sorry,” Dorrie says. “I feel like this is all my fault. If you had just come with me to Mug Me—if I hadn't been in such a hurry . . .”

Jeananne's eyes open again; her forehead creases. “Silly.” Jeananne shrugs, a tiny movement underneath the sheet. “Accident.”

“I know.” Dorrie takes her hand. “I'm so glad you're awake,” she says. “So glad you're going to be all right.” Would she? Dorrie looks around, but Bridget's gone. “I should let you rest,” she says.

Jeananne's lips twitch. Not quite a smile.

Dorrie bends to give her a small hug. “I know. Enough with the resting, but you need to get your strength back. We really miss you at work. Especially Edward. And me, of course.”

Jeananne's forehead crinkles again and it occurs to Dorrie that Jeananne might not exactly know at this point who Edward is. The theory that they were passionately involved now seems absurd.

She catches a cab back to work to pick up her car and her cell phone that she's sure she's left somewhere in her office—she probably set it down on her desk after the call from the hospital, when she'd run out to the hall to tell everyone the good news, only to find the place was virtually empty. Only the new temp who barely knew who Jeananne was looked up when Dorrie announced the good news in the hallway. “That's really awesome,” she'd said, chewing on an aqua fingernail. The cab turns onto Charles and Dorrie stares out the window at the sidewalks lit by streetlights, and tries to shake off an edgy feeling. In the back of her mind, her mother whispers something Dorrie can't quite hear. She doesn't want to. It's enough that Jeananne's better.