Rory took a sip of her coffee. She hadn’t gone to bed. She wasn’t about to wake up Sally or Lydia in the middle of the night and ask for a place to sleep, so she’d stayed in the sitting room. She’d been afraid to close her eyes. “I called in a report too. Only Sally and Lydia were spared, probably because the two of you were home last night.”
“What?” Lydia demanded. “This was supposed to be one of the safer apartment buildings. I hope you complain to the owners. And why didn’t the police send someone? They got here fast enough to interrogate all of us when they found Ret in the garbage chute.”
Rory couldn’t help laughing at the outrage in Lydia’s voice. It was the first thing she’d found to laugh about since the confrontation with Scott Tinsdale three days earlier. She hadn’t heard from Gideon, but Ethan and Brian had been in the bar the night before. She knew Javier had followed her, presumably to keep her safe. She was fairly certain the same two undercover cops had been in the bar two nights in a row.
The women sat in the lounge they preferred. This time, it was Sally who had provided Rory with her coffee, since she was always the last one to join them. She slept later than the other women. Lydia had Ellen with her, but Cindy’s boys were with her parents.
Rory didn’t even have junk mail to sort through. Not one single piece. That made her feel sad and a little apart from everyone else. The others didn’t ever comment on her lack of mail, but she knew they noticed.
“Could you tell if anything was taken?” Rory asked. “Because nothing was taken from me that I could tell, not that I had much in the first place, other than my guitar and my notebooks with my music. Most of those were torn, but I can salvage them.”
“That’s what was crazy,” Janice said. “I don’t really have anything of value I keep there, other than my artwork. Anything else is kept at the bank. My drawers were pulled out, emptied onto the floor and smashed. The bed was stripped, the mattress torn apart. Every chair had its stuffing pulled out. Whoever was there was looking for something and thought it was inside my furniture.”
“That’s crazy,” Sally confirmed. “Did you buy all your furnitureat the same place? Could someone have hidden something inside the furniture, and then they came looking for it?”
“No, I bought different pieces from various shops,” Janice said. “I have no idea what anyone could have been looking for.”
“You do own a janitorial service. You find things in offices,” Lydia ventured. “Maybe someone lost something important.”
“If I find anything in an office, it’s left there in the lost and found, and I leave a note for the office manager,” Janice said. “That note is copied to me and others so that my butt and my employees’ are covered.”
“That’s not it, then,” Sally said.
“It was the same at my place,” Pam said. “We both went through Janice’s apartment, trying not to touch anything, but we didn’t find anything missing. Then we went through mine. We couldn’t tell why anyone destroyed everything. We just took pictures and called the cops.”
“Maybe that yummy detective will show up, Lydia,” Sally said. “The nice one.”
Lydia looked steadily into her coffee cup. “I’m sure I have no idea who you’re talking about.”
“He was the only nice one,” Sally said. “You know the one; you blushed every single time you looked at him.”
“I most certainly didnot,” Lydia denied.
The women laughed.
Rory had to join them. She nodded with the others. “You did, babe. You blushed. Turned as red as a tomato. But it was cute, and he was into you.”
Lydia put both hands over her face. “Did he notice?”
“He was blushing too,” Sally said. “We all noticed that. He kept trying to look like he wasn’t staring at you. If he asks you out, I’m babysitting, so don’t use Ellen as an excuse.”
“I’ll babysit too,” Rory offered.
“Me too,” Pam said. “Janice will give me the night off.”
“I will?” Janice asked.
“Yes,” Pam said firmly, glaring at her boss. “You absolutely will.”
Even Lydia laughed.
“There you have it, Lydia,” Janice said. “When good employees rebel, you can’t do anything but go out with the devil in order to make certain she gets her chance to babysit.”
“Throw me under the bus to get your time with Ellen,” Lydia said. “I’m not too worried that he’s going to ask me.”
“He’s going to ask you,” Pam assured.
“He could be married,” Lydia objected.
