Page 21 of The Better Sister

She also handed me a slip of paper torn from a spiral notebook. It was a list of credit cards written in big bubble letters—the style of print I associated with young girls—plus a notation of “$253.”

She asked me if all our cards were there. They were the ones found inside his wallet. I did a mental count and confirmed nothing was missing.

“If it was a robbery, why didn’t they take this stuff?” I asked, circling my husband’s ring with my index finger through the plastic.

“The wallet and watch were on a nightstand in the bedroom.” She was leading the way to the open master bedroom door. It felt odd to follow someone else in my own house. “This is how we found the room. Does anything look out of place?”

My side of the bed was still made, covered in part by the blanket that had been tossed from Adam’s side.

I shook my head. “Other than the covers. It looks like he was in the bed and then got up.”

“That’s what we’re assuming, too. The intruder—or intruders—may have thought the house was empty. They hadn’t reached your room yet. He heard the noise while he was sleeping, went to the living room. After the... confrontation, they panicked. They leave.”

“I’m sorry. I know you’re trying to share information,” I said, “but it’s a lot to process. Like you’re asking us to look at things from the perspective of whoever did this. This isn’t a project for us, a puzzle to be solved. Do you understand that?”

Ethan had one hand masking his eyes, the way he did when I made him uncomfortable. He wasn’t groaning, which was a sign he knew I was right, but I supposed it wasn’t easy to have parents who always spoke their mind, no matter the circumstances.

“You’re right,” Guidry said, because, of course, I was. “I have no idea what you’re going through right now. But I know you want me to do my job well. So I’ll stop trying to sugarcoat it for you, and ask you to do the work I can’t do on my own. We need a list of anything that’s missing, as well as your thoughts about anything else you might notice as you do your walk-through. Fair enough?”

I nodded, and Ethan and I began the work of conducting an inventory of a house we hadn’t been to for weeks when we were still trying to process the reality of what had happened here only the previous night. Because the master bedroom was untouched, we started in the bedroom next to ours—the guest room where they’d gained access by smashing the window, and then unlocking it and sliding it open. The nightstand and dresser drawers were open, but they’d all been empty to begin with. There was nothing to steal there.

Given Ethan’s slumped shoulders when he opened his bedroom door, I inferred that the intruder—or intruders, as Guidry had noted—had gone there as well, but, truth be told, I couldn’t tell the ransacked version from its usual state. Guidry and I left him there while we continued the tour.

When we were finally finished, I told her that the only thing I noticed missing was the portable Bluetooth speaker that lived on the kitchen windowsill. “We take it outside sometimes to listen by the pool. It’s possible it’s somewhere else, but, honestly, I don’t think anything else is gone. Except maybe Adam’s laptop? We both carry ours back and forth. And he should have had his briefcase, too.”

Guidry was already nodding. “We have both. We’re hanging on to those for now.”

“This seems like a lot of searching for a random burglary,” I said, thinking aloud.

“We’re aware of the threats that have been made against you online, Chloe. We’re already working on a subpoena to try to identify the users who posted the most inflammatory comments.”

“You should also try to find out where my husband was the last couple of days. He told me he was meeting with a client called the Gentry Group at a hotel near JFK. He was supposed to be there all day Thursday and Friday, but when I asked him for the details, he seemed a little evasive.”

Guidry lowered the pad of paper she had been jotting notes in to make eye contact with me. “Do you have a theory about where he might have been other than with this client?”

I told her it was nothing that specific, just a gut instinct. “Usually when he ran late, he’d tell me more about the specifics of the work. I feel like it’s something you should check. Just to be a hundred percent certain.”

“Like verifying that your sister was in Cleveland?” Guidry asked. She said it like we were friendly enough for her to mock me, which we weren’t. But she was right. It had been a silly request, and I knew it.

“No,” I said with a sigh. “That, I admit I was being paranoid about. But I have to think it’s relevant to nail down where a homicide victim spent the last two days, and I’m telling you that it was unusual for him to spend all that time at some business commuter hotel with a client without giving me any other details—like bad fish sticks for lunch, or moldy carpet, or a colorful hooker at the bar. Adam and I shared those kinds of dumb observations with each other.”

She gave me a sympathetic smile and placed a gentle hand on my forearm. “Okay, I understand now. And, yes, we’ll make sure we have his movements locked down. And I did check your sister’s whereabouts, by the way. You can rest assured that her cell phone was pinging in Cleveland, right where she belonged.”

“You still haven’t called her, right?” I asked. Guidry had assured me she’d give me until “the end of the day,” but that could mean anything.

“I’m just about to. Do you want to do it together? She’ll probably want to talk to you right away.”

“She knows my number.” I heard the iciness in my own voice. It was unavoidable when the subject of Nicky arose.

Guidry stiffened as she looked over my shoulder, and I turned to see Ethan coming out of his room.

“They took my Beats and my Rayguns.”

I rolled my eyes. The headphones had been his main Christmas present last year. Adam and I didn’t understand why he needed the thousand-dollar iridescent version instead of the regular Beats. And the fight he and his father had had over those fucking ridiculous shoes. Of course they were gone.

“Beats meaning headphones?” Guidry asked. Ethan nodded. “And Rayguns?”

“They’re tennis shoes,” I explained. “Red and yellow and black, with a little cartoon guy on the side holding a ray gun.”

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