“Not a burglary. Did you see anything? Or anybody around here?”
“No, but I came by twenty minutes or so ago to return a wrench. I saw her car and another one but no one seemed to be around.... I need to get home. My wife’s alone there.”
“You came out to the patio?”
“Yes, right.”
“Do you know how we can reach her son, Ben?” I asked.
“Oh, that poor guy. I think my wife has a number for—”
The officer who’d interviewed me caught sight of the neighbor, hustled back into the house, and after determining that the man was not next of kin, asked him to return home, where the police would stop by and speak with him soon. Once he’d departed, she told me that they were reaching out to Killian, but she couldn’t guarantee he would come.
I parked myself back in the armchair to wait. My emotions were in a jumble but I detached myself as best as I could and tried to create a timeline for Alice’s movements during the second half of the day.
She and I had spoken right before noon. She’d found the clue by then but was seeking confirmation, which meant she’d continued to work for a while.
At some point she’d baked a pie and set the table on the porch. She washed the potatoes, but it didn’t appear she’d had a chance to start the main meal yet.
I was still in my seat thirty minutes later when, thank God, Killian arrived. I spotted him in plain clothes, dark pants and a brown windbreaker, along the side of the house. He spoke briefly to the female officer and then descended the steps to the lake. Ten minutes later, he returned to the patio and entered the house.
My face must have betrayed my distress because he approached with what seemed like sympathy on his face.
“How are you doing, Ms. Weggins?”
“Holding up. I appreciate you coming. I asked the police to contact you because I don’t think Alice’s death was an accident. I’m worried someone pushed her. Or killed her and threw her down the stairs.”
“Because?”
“She told me on the phone earlier that she’d come across what she believed was a clue to the murders. Something she found, quote, ‘scary as hell.’ She said she wanted to confirm it first and that she would tell me tonight over dinner, but obviously that never happened.”
My voice caught as I spoke the last words. Killian kept his expression as neutral as possible, but I saw his eyes widen slightly.
“When you spoke on the phone, did she give any hint to what she’d come across?”
“No, only that she’d found it buried online. It’s possible that she shared it with her boss or a coworker, though. What Idoknow is that she’d been looking for any references to missing or murdered women outside this immediate area. She also mentioned she was doing her research at the table, but there’s no laptop there now. So if it isn’t upstairs someplace, someone took it.”
He lifted a small pad and pen from a pocket in his windbreaker and scribbled down a few notes.
“What time did you arrive?” he asked.
“Right at seven.”
“One of the police officers mentioned that you heard noises on the patio when you were down below. You think someone was up there?”
I explained quickly that it had been the neighbor.
“Did you notice anything else that seemed out of the ordinary at the time?”
“Yes, actually, I was going to mention it. The kitchen door was open. At first I thought Alice had left it ajar for me because she was upstairs, but it was chilly inside, as if it had been opened for a while. And there was a bat in the house.”
“Abat?”
“Yeah, flying around. It probably snuck in through the door. So now I’m thinking someone might have run out ofthe house with the laptop and didn’t worry about closing it. Maybe Alice had a real lead on the killer, and he got wise to her digging. And came after her.”
Killian lowered his gaze and flicked through a page or two of his notebook. When he glanced back at me, his mouth was half scrunched, the right side tugged up. I was expecting him to say something blunt and gruff, like “Letusdo the police work, Ms. Weggins,” which I’d heard more times than I liked in my lifetime.
“That’s good to know about the door,” he said instead, nodding slowly.
