Page 98 of Courting Gossip (Courting)
Chapter Fifteen
They stayed in Rehoboth Beach for a few more days, but eventually real life poked its head back in. The reporter that Brody had contacted had bitten, and so had the Marines who’d been injured. They wanted their story to be told, and neither Genieve nor Brody could stand being away from the action. They wanted to be in DC when the story broke, but another crisis brought them back sooner than they planned.
The teenage daughter of a US Congresswoman had run away, and the woman had contacted Brody for help. The girl had been found within hours at a friend’s house, but, with her mother’s high-profile job, the story was going viral. Usually the children of politicians were off-limits, but the press was eating up the teenage angst. Family strife at such a level was new fodder, and Genieve practically threw Brody at the family to help them. Family matters should be private, no matter what the parents did for a living.
‘Go,’ she said when he hesitated. ‘Manage the chaos. I need to go home anyway. I haven’t been there for ever, and I need to see the place.’
To be precise, she hadn’t seen her rowhouse since the break-in had been discovered. The repairs had been completed, and her cleaning service assured her that everything had been tidied up. Still, she needed to go home. She needed to put that whole fiasco behind her.
‘Are you sure you don’t want me with you when you go in there?’ he asked.
‘I’ll be OK.’ It was time to put things back on an even keel, and she wanted privacy to think about a few things. ‘I need fresh undies,’ she teased.
The corner of his mouth looked like it didn’t know what to do, go up or down.
‘All right.’ The frown won, but there wasn’t time to argue about it. He shoved his hand into his pocket and surprised her by pulling out a key. ‘If anything goes wrong or it doesn’t feel right, go back to my house. Just let me know where you end up.’
She smiled softly. ‘Are you giving me the keys to your place, Brody?’
‘Or you could go to my office. It’s closer.’
He pulled out his keychain and began to remove another key, but she stopped him. She went up on tiptoe to kiss his cheek. ‘I’ll make keys for you, too, but for tonight I’ll be fine.’
The muscle in his temple ticked. ‘Text me to let me know how things are going.’
‘I will. You too.’ She pushed him gently on his way. ‘Go, do your thing. Fix things for that poor woman.’
* * *
The house looked normal when Genieve finally made it home. Dusk was heavy as she drove down her street. Everything looked so ordinary, yet so eerily quiet. Some of her neighbours were still out and about, but no reporters waited to snap pictures of her. The yellow police tape was gone, and the only police car she’d seen was a cruiser on patrol a few blocks back. She smiled in surprise at the flowers blooming in the window planters. They looked to have thrived without her.
She turned at the corner and then again at the alley. Coming from this direction made her more uneasy. This was how Maggie had approached. She’d come up from behind and had broken in the back door. Genieve tried to shake off the heebie-jeebies as she took her spot under the covered parking. She hurried to collect her things.
Her back door looked different as she approached it. The colour matched the old one, but instead of a door with a window it was a solid panel of steel. Oh, it was moulded with fake panes and a bold trim to look pretty, but the thing was impenetrable.
She hurriedly dug her keys out of her purse. The landscaping stone had been replaced. It looked identical to the one that had been used to break her old window, but this one didn’t have the weathering of the adjacent stones. She wondered where the old one was…down at police headquarters as evidence?
The little differences looked big to her, and she worried about what she’d find inside. She pulled her roller bag over the threshold, and the wheels clattered. She hit the light switch and quickly locked the door behind her.
Inside the kitchen, nothing was out of place. That almost disturbed her more. Her cleaning service had gone overboard. They’d left the place spotless, yet for her they’d done too good a job. She walked further into the room, almost afraid to touch anything. She remembered peering around that young cop and seeing lab techs swarming everywhere.
She nearly jumped out of her shoes when her phone binged. She pressed a hand to her heart as she dug the phone out of her purse.
‘Did you make it there? Are you OK?’
She smiled softly. She’d barely made it inside the door. ‘Everything is good. You?’
‘Crazy here. It’s going to be a while.’
‘I’ll wait up.’
She put the phone away and straightened her shoulders. ‘Get it over with already,’ she told herself.
She headed to the living room, turning on lights as she went. The room had been left untouched in the break-in, but there wasn’t so much as a speck of dust on the furniture. Dreading what she would or wouldn’t find, she headed up the stairs to her bedroom. By the time she made it to the last step, her fear had dissipated and her anger had returned.
This was her home. Margaret Harris had had no right to come in here and do what she’d done. Genieve would be damned if she let the woman destroy her sense of safety in her own home.
She strode into her bedroom as if she owned it – because she did. It had been cleaned and polished, too, but her gaze settled on the empty space on the wall where the oil painting had hung. The break-in had happened, but it was time to get over it.
