I ducked under the hanging shirts and found Vero searching an old workbench. A wooden stool had been tucked under it, and loose cords dangled from the keyboard and monitor sitting on top. She slid open a tool drawer. A few loose pens, some paper clips, and a pair of scissors rattled toward the front of it. I ran a finger over the work surface. It came away clean.
“You think Theo took his laptop with him?” I asked.
Vero inspected the cables dangling over the desk. “These aren’t laptop connectors. They’re for a PC.”
“Then where is it?”
“Beats me,” Vero said, hands on her hips as she paced the room.“Theo probably hid it. I’m sure his friends all told him I was looking for him. I bet there’s information about the money on that hard drive he didn’t want anyone to see.” She kicked the stool, sending it clattering into a stack of empty five-gallon buckets.
“Careful! If you break something, he’ll know someone was here.”
She knelt to pick them up. “Theo probably took his damn computer and skipped town.”
“I don’t think so. His toothbrush and razor are still in the bathroom.”
Vero grabbed the small bills off the washing machine and stuffed them into her pocket. “At least the night wasn’t a total loss. I’d bet anything the money was here.”
“Unless there are a few thousand of those hiding in the dryer, it’s not helping. Wait a minute,” I said, stepping back to get a look at the entire room. “What if we weren’t the only ones who came here looking for the money?” I thought about the dust-free surface of Theo’s desk. His spotless kitchen counters and his sparkling sink and toilet. It had all suggested Theo was neat for a twenty-two-year-old bachelor. But something about his house didn’t add up. The kitchen floor was sticky, the bathroom mirror was covered in spots, the shower was full of mildew, and the coffee table was piled high with clutter, like it hadn’t been wiped down in weeks. Why?
Why had only some of the surfaces been meticulously cleaned?
Vero followed me up the stairs as I hurried back to the bathroom and turned on the light. My mouth went dry. “There’s no shower curtain.”
“So?”
I watched her bemusement turn to horror as she finally caught on.
“No,” she said, shaking her head. “No, no, no, no, no. You can’t possibly think…”
“What else am I supposed to think?” I whispered. “Theo didn’t show up for work tonight, his computer is gone, there’s a missing shower curtain in his bathroom, and there are four empty bottles of bleach in his basement!”
“Theo can’t be dead! He’s driving his car!”
“Or whoever took the shower curtain stole his BMW!” There had to be a logical explanation for all this. “Where is the AirTag now? We’ll drive to campus, find his car, and settle this once and for all.” I gave Vero my phone.
She thumbed through my apps and opened the map. “His car’s not on campus. It looks like it’s parked in some kind of industrial complex a few miles away. I’m seeing an auto repair shop, glass replacement, a commercial printer, some kind of trucking supply warehouse… Wait,” she said, touching the screen to follow the dot. “The car’s moving again.”
I leaned over her shoulder to look. “Where’s it going?”
“It’s getting back on the road. Looks like it’s heading south on Forty-Sixth Avenue… Now it’s making a right onto Decatur… turning south onto Baltimore Avenue… Wait, it’s slowing down. It’s turning onto some kind of access road by the Anacostia River… Finn, are you seeing this?”
“They’re off the road.” My heart climbed into my throat as I watched the blue dot veer off the faint brown line it had been following. The car continued through the grass, toward the snaking blue line demarking the river’s edge. The AirTag crossed the line. Then the dot disappeared.
We blinked at the screen.
Vero swallowed hard. “Does that mean what I think it means?”
“I think someone just got rid of Theo’s car,” I croaked. “And Theo was probably in it.”
CHAPTER 19
The four of us left Theo’s house and got back to Norma and Gloria’s just after ten. We had all stayed longer than we’d planned. Vero and I had used baby wipes to clean every surface the four of us had touched, leaving everything exactly where we’d found it. Vero and I hadn’t said a word about the AirTag’s disappearance into the river or the missing shower curtain. The less Javi and Ramón knew about what had happened to Theo, the less they could be accused of covering up if Vero and I got dragged into a murder investigation. We’d locked the house and left in our respective vehicles.
Ramón had insisted on following us home. The headlights of his van were right behind mine when I rounded the bend to Norma’s and her house came into view.
Vero squinted at her mother’s stoop. “Is that… fire! Holy shit, Finn! My mother’s porch is on fire!”
I slammed on the brakes. Ramón’s van squealed to a stop behind me. Vero shot out of the passenger seat and sprinted across the lawn. Ramón, Javi, and I charged after her through the grass. She raced up the front steps and slammed down her foot. A ribbon of black smoke engulfed her as she stomped out the flames.
