“She left in a mood,” he said. “I was giving her space.”
Ford stared at him, but he moved past his brother into Meredith’s house.
“I’m going to check for more cameras now,” Clay said.
Inside the house, he closed the curtains to make it as dark as he could, pulled his phone out and put it on the camera mode. The one in the kitchen used infrared light, so his hope was any other would also. He’d see a reflection on his camera if that was the case.
Ford and he were looking around downstairs, but detected nothing else.
They went upstairs and the same. No other cameras.
“Do you know her password for her Wi-Fi?” Ford asked.
“Knowing her, it’s written on the damn router. Just need to find where it is. But someone was here yesterday. There are two coffee cups in the dishwasher. She only uses these ugly floralones that a student gave her. A set of four. Everyone else uses a different one.”
“What?” Ford said. His brother opened the dishwasher and pulled the brown one out with gloves on. Did the same with the floral one. “How do you know that for sure?”
“Because I grabbed one once and she took it out of my hand and put it back. She said only teachers can use them. It was some joke or something.”
Ford opened cabinets looking around. “Did you say there are four of them?”
“Yeah,” he said.
“There are only two in here. The dirty one makes three. So one is missing. Not sure if that means anything.”
“Everything means something,” he snapped.
He stalked to the laundry room, in the cabinet with the detergent was the router, he pulled it out, looked on the bottom, and there was the damn password.
He snapped a picture with his phone and went back to his laptop.
“Does anything seem out of place? There are no signs of a struggle. Her purse is gone you’d said.”
“Her phone was under the chair,” he said. “As if something caused it to fall or be kicked there. I’m telling you something isn’t right.”
“I believe you,” Ford said. “I’m going to get a description and APB out on her.”
“Hang on, there are a bunch of Wi-Fi connections popping up.”
He scanned them: some had names, others had numbers. They were all locked.
“Anything?”
“I have to rule them out. She’s so close to the neighbors. Did you ever look into Karl Green?”
“The nosy guy next door?” Ford asked. “No. He had an alibi the day of the rock. We know it wasn’t him.”
“We know this wasn’t Richie who snuck a camera in here either. The guy could barely bathe, he sure the hell wouldn’t know how to set up a camera to spy on someone. The way Meredith has fallen into it lately, who the hell knows?”
“Could be the ex-boyfriend,” Ford said. “He was in the house before and maybe never got rid of it or set it up then.”
“Where does he work?” Clay asked, pulling his phone out. He’d get some answers out of the guy faster than his brother would.
“No,” Ford said. “You’re not rushing over there. I’ve got his number and I’ll call. You have to play by the rules here.”
“You can play by the rules when it comes to your woman. I don’t play by them for mine,” he snarled.
“Your woman?” Ford asked.
