He hadn’t told me I couldn’t come inside, so I waited until he’d slithered along the wall to the dining room and turned the corner, still leading with the gun, before I crouched under the crime scene tape and shuffled into Mrs.Grimshaw’s house.
I could hear Mendoza moving stealthily down the hallway to the left.Other than his quiet footsteps, everything was silent.If anyone was here, they were being very quiet about it.
The blood was still on the floor in front of the door, and I avoided looking at it as I glanced around.There was nothing I hadn’t expected, that I hadn’t already seen.The only new addition since yesterday was a lot of fingerprint powder on the doorjambs and flat surfaces.
Mendoza came back, holstering his gun.“Nobody here.”
I nodded.I hadn’t expected there to be, although part of me had been worried that he’d find Steven dead in one of the bedrooms.It was probably a positive sign that he hadn’t.If nothing else, we knew that Steven had been alive, and seemingly unhurt, last night.
“Any clue as to what they were doing here?”
Mendoza shook his head.“I can’t see anything that wasn’t here yesterday.Or anything missing.Maybe they just came in to use the phone.”
Maybe.Although you wouldn’t find me breaking into the home of a murdered woman, with crime scene tape all over the door, to use the telephone.If I didn’t want to use my own phone, I’d find a telephone booth—they still do exist here and there—or go to a library or something.
“Hard to do at one in the morning,” Mendoza remarked.
The library, at least.Although I might not want to drive around looking for a phone booth at one in the morning, either.Not that I’d be likely to want to call anyone at that time, anyway.“I wonder what Steven wanted.”
“Something he didn’t want the blonde to overhear,” Mendoza said, “since it seems like he waited until she fell asleep before he hoofed it next door to use the phone.”
Maybe that’s what he’d done.Waited for Anastasia Sokolov to fall asleep, before he braved the elements and the murder house to make a phone call to me, to… what?
“Why didn’t he call Diana?”
“You’ll have to ask him,” Mendoza said, shooing me toward the door, “when we find him.”
I ducked under the crime scene tape and back out on the stoop.“Now what?”
Mendoza followed me.I stepped back while he locked the door behind us.“Now we go next door.”
I glanced over at Araminta Tucker’s house.“You don’t think they’re still there, do you?”
“Not likely,” Mendoza said.“At least not since one o’clock.But I want to see if they left anything.”
If they hadn’t left anything the first time—not even the trash in the cans—it wasn’t likely that they’d have left anything this time, either.But I wouldn’t mind another quick look at Araminta Tucker’s house, so I followed him across the grass and up the driveway to the back of the house.
Where he shoved me behind him with one hand while he pulled his gun with the other.
I peered around his shoulder.
Ah.Yes.Unlike yesterday morning, when we’d been here, now the door stood open, the jamb splintered where the lock had been kicked or pushed in.
“Stay here,” Mendoza told me, his voice tight.“I mean it.”
I nodded.And stayed there while he slid sideways into the kitchen, gun at the ready, and disappeared.
I spent the time while he was gone alternately biting my fingernails and checking the trash and recycling cans, which were still empty.Then Mendoza came back, holstering his gun.
“What?”I demanded.
“Nothing.Aside from the broken lock, it looks exactly the same as yesterday.”
So no furniture, no dishes in the cabinets, no empty pizza boxes or Chinese food containers.“No sign they were here?”
He shook his head.
“But we know they were next door.”
