Page 63 of Colton First Responder (Coltons of Mustang Valley)

“Yes, in the basement. Let’s just go up the back stairway to Zane’s office for now. Maybe we can find what we’re looking for there.”

She thought that was a better idea, especially since past conversations she’d had with Zane were now tiptoeing into her head—where he talked about phone calls he’d had with friends or business associates while he was working here in his office. He’d laughed and said he figured they’d all feel screwed if they knew, because he got them talking about things they would never admit if they thought anyone else had the possibility of hearing them.

In other words, he’d recorded them. But he hadn’t mentioned how, or where he kept the audio files.

Still, when they got up the stairway and Savannah led Grayson to the closed, ornate wooden door into Zane’s home office, she said, “I assume you’re more techie than I am. I’m not sure what to look for, but we can check to see if there’s any kind of recording device.” She hesitated. “Although—well, Zane never seemed to trust anyone.”

She was glad when Grayson preceded her into the office and began looking everywhere, starting around where the phone sat on Zane’s huge but far from ornate wooden desk. Nothing there, nor inside the drawers. Or on any of the shelves behind the desk, or under the comfortable-looking desk chair or any of the other furniture in the room.

Grayson sat at Zane’s desk, pulling some of the drawers out beside him. He extracted files and laid them on top of the desk, going through them and checking out the now empty drawers.

Then Grayson looked toward Savannah. “I gather you’re not sure Zane had any kind of recorder here, though he implied it.” As Savannah nodded, Grayson shrugged and shook his head. “Unfortunately, I don’t see anything here that would do what you hoped for.”

He somehow looked cute in his frustration Cute? Why was she even thinking in that way?

To pull herself out of this situation, out of here? Out of her own frustration at not finding what they needed—something to clear her, right away?

That was ridiculous.

“We should probably look other places, though, just in case,” Grayson continued. “If he was trying to hide something, his office would probably be too obvious, after all. Where else did he spend time?”

“He liked to watch the big-screen TV in the den,” Savannah said after realizing that Grayson was right and pondering an answer to his question. “We were kind of separated for a while inside the house, both emotionally and physically, even before we got divorced. He had his own bedroom then, before I moved into the guesthouse, so that’s another possibility.”

“A potentially good one,” Grayson said. “Let’s start there and check it out, okay?”

“Sure.” Savannah felt a bit embarrassed taking Grayson to her ex-husband’s bedroom, although she hadn’t been there for ages, and the last time she was there was probably well before Zane and she unofficially split up.

But that might make it a perfect place for him to hide something, right? Not that it would have mattered after she moved out. He could even have hidden the recorder in the room she had last used inside this house, the master bedroom.

She showed Grayson where Zane had slept while staying far away from her at night. They went up the wide wooden stairway, turned left at the end of the upstairs hallway and walked along the hall that was covered with imported Persian carpets laid end to end.

It felt so odd to Savannah to be here, seeing some of the things she still loved about this place. Her emotions roiled, but she ignored them. She was here to think, not to feel.

The white wooden door was closed but not locked. Inside, the place looked as Savannah remembered it, with a king-size bed beneath a woven, imported coverlet embroidered in gold and silver threads. Zane had a very tall and wide chest of drawers on one side and an ornate, full-length mirror beside it. He always liked to admire how he looked.

The place still smelled like him—not that “dead” Zane was likely to have visited recently. But he had used an aftershave with a lime citrus scent, and that aroma remained in the air.

The large dresser had two sides, each with separate drawers, with a bottom cabinet area with two separate doors. Savannah began searching through the drawers on the right side. Not that she appreciated thumbing through Zane’s expensive underwear, but she had to find that recorder—unless Grayson did.

Nothing in the first drawer, and as she turned she noticed that Grayson was on his side on the floor, looking under the bed. Then he rose a little and began prodding the area between the mattress and the box spring.

Savannah turned back and closed the top right drawer, opening the next one—and almost gagged. It contained mostly socks of different styles and colors, no big deal there. But it also held a moderate-sized box with a colorful exterior that was labeled with a manufacturer’s name and the word “Condoms” written decoratively in the middle.

She knew full well how much Zane engaged in sex with other women, and this suggested he had continued to have a lot of fun in that way before his “death.” Before their divorce? She’d known he had but never found a good way to prove it.

She started slamming the drawer shut, too—but before she could, Grayson’s arm reached out to stop her, startling Savannah. “Just a sec,” he said.

Why? Did he want to take some of those condoms along with him? Even having him see them in Zane’s drawer embarrassed Savannah. She had wanted out of that horrible relationship, but this could give the impression not only that her ex was a sex fiend, but that Savannah hadn’t satisfied him in that department.

Sure enough, Grayson pulled that box out of the drawer. Feeling mortified, justifiably or not, Savannah started to walk away. But then Grayson opened the box and crowed, “Here we are! I figured that might be a place to hide something without nosy people getting into it—except for us.”

He pulled a black technological gadget out of the box. It was not very large but had a screen in front with buttons below and auxiliary ports. It was maybe an inch thick at the widest spot but tapered toward the bottom. With it were a couple of long wires with plugs at both ends.

“What is it?” Savannah asked in a hushed voice.

“Not my area of expertise, but I’d guess it’s a landline phone call recorder. I just hope the memory card has lots of helpful recordings on it. Now we can continue looking for something else, too, but—”

A loud noise sounded from downstairs. “Police!” yelled a loud voice. “Is anyone here?” Savannah noticed what looked like some bright lights through the door from that direction. It was late morning, but even so maybe the cops were using inside searchlights before barging inside.

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