Stolen (6 page)

“S
O THE INTRUDERS WERE IN
the house seven minutes?”

Taking a deep breath to ease his frustration, Michael nodded at the inspector. “We've got some nice footage of a couple blokes in ski masks trashing the house, but not much else.”

“I'll need a copy of that.”

“Of course.” Michael looked past DCI Paddington into Molly's office on the first floor. She occupied a large suite just off the grand ballroom. Normally that office was kept neat as a pin. Iris Dunstead never stepped foot into the place to clean, although she was a frequent guest there. The room was entirely Molly's domain.

Bulletin boards, dry erase boards and computer equipment covered the walls as if placed there according to an architect's design. Color-coded folders, always kept in filing cabinets, now lay strewn across the floor like scattered plumage from an enormous and multihued bird.

Molly's large Victorian desk sat on the other side of the room, its drawers overturned on the Persian rug.

Unbelievably, Molly kept herself under control as Paddington's crime scene team—such as it was—tramped through the office. She stood to one side with her arms crossed and fury in her eyes. Michael was relieved that he wasn't one of the people who had caused the room's destruction.

Paddington carefully stepped through the debris. “Seven minutes, you say.”

“They were here at least seven minutes. They tripped one of the interior alarms. I'm not sure when the outer alarm was breached.” Michael kept himself detached from the fear that quivered inside him. He couldn't help thinking what might have happened if Molly had been home at the time of the break-in. He wanted to believe the thieves simply would have waited for the house to be empty.

“What?” Paddington paused with his pen above his notebook.

“Whoever broke in set off a security alarm.” Michael spoke slowly, working through the possible scenario in his mind. “But they might have been here awhile before they set the alarm off.” He focused on Paddington. “In fact, they could have been prowling around my house while you had us cooling our heels at the police station.”

Paddington ignored the jibe. “If they got around the security in this house, they weren't just sods off the farm, were they?”

“I suppose not.”

“Was anything taken?”

Michael shook his head. “All the computer equipment, the tellys seem to be here. We're going to go through the computers before we use them, of course.”

“For?”

“Malware. Little nasty bits of programming that might compromise our security.”

“Do you do your banking over the Internet?”

“Of course. But we also do a lot of work online.”

“You think that might have been what the thieves were after? Your work?”

Michael let out a slow breath and tried not to show his frustration. “No.”

“Why?”

“People good enough to hack the encryption on my computers wouldn't need to be here physically to do it, and I'm too small a target for them.”

The inspector looked around the house. “You and the missus seem to have done all right for yourselves.”

“We don't keep anything in the house that would tempt the smash-and-grab set.”

“You're a computer designer. Video games. Bestselling video games, the way I hear it. And Mrs. Graham is successful, as well.”

Michael nodded.

“Maybe someone just assumed you had something to steal.”

“That sounds random, but as you said yourself, this was clearly done by people who knew what they were about.”

Paddington gazed at him in deliberate speculation. “Then why was your house broken into?”

“I couldn't tell you, Inspector.”

“Maybe I can.” He nodded toward Molly's office. “Someone was looking for something.”

“Inspector—”

“They didn't bother with your office. Or anywhere else in the house that I can see.”

Michael didn't argue the point. His office was in the same messy shape it had been when he'd left it. Nothing had been touched, and there was plenty to handle. A lot of expensive computer hardware filled the shelves. Kids would have definitely nicked the video game components.

“Just your wife's office.” Paddington made another note. “I find that quite interesting.”

“It wasn't just the office, Inspector.”

Michael glanced at the uniformed officer who walked up to join them. The woman was tall and thin and looked
too young to be a police officer. Her hair was pulled back in a severe ponytail.

“What have you got, Saylor?”

It took Michael a moment to figure out the woman's name was Saylor.

She pointed an index finger over her shoulder. “The maid's—”

“Housekeeper.” Iris joined the woman. “Domestic engineer if you want to be snooty. I'm not a maid.”

The female officer glanced at Michael.

Michael nodded quickly. “Iris isn't a maid.”

Saylor rolled her gaze over to Paddington in a show of polite exasperation. “As it turns out, this woman's living quarters were ransacked, as well.”

 

“Y
OU DIDN'T REALIZE YOUR HOME
had been broken into?”

Still holding the cat, Iris Dunstead leveled a reproachful look at DCI Paddington. During her association with Iris, Molly had seen grown men melt under that gaze. Paddington didn't, but he did wait for Iris to reply.

“This is the first time I've been back since I left with Rachel Donner earlier in the evening. She offered to drive and I went with her. She didn't want to go alone.” Iris turned to face the door to her second-floor quarters.

The smaller house had been generously appointed when Molly and Michael bought the mansion, and most of the furniture within these rooms belonged to Iris. Molly had offered all of the wiring and electronic upgrades she and Michael had made to the main house, and Iris had accepted. Still, the lamps remained from an earlier era and an otherworldly quality emanated from the colored glass.

During the time she'd been at the mansion, Molly had been a guest here as frequently as Iris had been at the main
house. They had a lot in common, although both kept their personal lives private and were comfortable with that.

Molly had grown curious about Iris, but never enough to pry. Whenever someone Iris had known from years ago talked about her, though, Molly always listened for tidbits of the woman's past. There were still large gaps in her personal history that she didn't know.

“When we got back, we investigated the main house.” Iris calmly stroked the cat and it purred audibly in pleasure.

“None of you thought to come back here?” Paddington scanned the mess that started just inside Iris's door and continued throughout the rooms.

“Why would we? The only disturbance we knew about was in Molly's office, and that was bad enough.” Iris shook her head. “This…this is reprehensible.”

Several of her photo albums had been flung across the floor. Photographs lay abandoned but Molly thought it looked like someone had been through them.

“So why did they only search your and Mrs. Graham's rooms?”

“I'm hardly an expert when it comes to the criminal mind, Inspector.”

One of the uniformed crime scene investigators moved slowly through Iris's quarters, taking snapshots with a digital camera. Molly's heart went out to Iris. Having her office torn up was one thing, but Iris
lived
in these rooms. That invasion of privacy cut much deeper.

“Can you tell if anything's missing?”

Iris shook her head. “I'll have to do a proper inventory.” Then she focused on the couch and frowned slightly. “There is something missing. I had a box beside the couch. I don't see it anywhere at the moment.”

“A box?” Intrigue stamped on his face, Paddington stepped inside the room. “What kind of box?”

“Cardboard. It once held envelopes for the post.” Iris followed the inspector and Molly trailed after her.

“What does it hold now?”

“Photographs that Molly and I gathered from different residents of Blackpool. Dozens of them.”

Noticing Iris and Molly on his heels for the first time, Paddington sighed, then directed them out of the room again. “Please, ladies.”

“It's not like we're going to do any more damage than has already been done.” Iris's tone was sharp and Molly put her hand on the older woman's shoulder.

“No, Mrs. Dunstead, you're not,” the inspector said. “And I apologize for my behavior. I don't mean to act so callous, but we have to maintain the integrity of the scene.”

“And I'm quite sure the Blackpool police force has better things to do than investigate a simple case of breaking and entering,” Iris said.

“We do.” Paddington's eyes glowed with an inner heat. “But it's fairly clear that this was not a simple forced entry.”

Molly was convinced it wasn't, but she didn't want to voice her opinion. That would give it too much strength and resonance, place it too deeply in her and Michael's lives. As well as Iris's and Irwin's. The very thought stripped away precious feelings of safety and security.

“What was so special about those photographs?” Paddington waited patiently. “What had you and Mrs. Graham collected?”

“They were all from around the time of the train robbery.”

“Ah.” The inspector nodded ponderously. “I thought as much. You'll have to admit that, in light of the murder only a short time ago, this crime takes on a whole other aspect.”

 

W
HEN
M
ICHAEL WOKE THE NEXT
morning, he rolled over to an empty bed. He glanced at the clock on the nightstand and saw the time was 10:14 a.m. Sleeping till the late hour didn't bother him. Paddington and his police officers hadn't left till shortly after four o'clock.

Groggy, he shoved the blankets back and flinched at the morning's chill. He pulled on a pair of pajama pants, a T-shirt featuring a sword-carrying elf from one of his video games, and stepped into slippers. Then he slapped his arms to invigorate his circulation the way he'd seen his father do. The effort didn't do anything except make his arms sting, and he was slowly coming to realize that even at thirty he was turning into his father. The thought didn't make him comfortable even though he had a good relationship with his dad and respected him.

The bedroom reflected more of Molly's nature than his. She'd filled it with hundred-year-old furniture heavy enough to use as ship's anchors, then frilled the windows and floor with curtains and carpets. The sole concession to Michael and the twenty-first century was the large-screen television mounted on the wall.

He pulled the remote from his side of the bed where it always was, clicked away from the movie he'd been watching, and went to live broadcast. Muting the audio, he flicked through the channels provided by the satellite connection till he found a BBC news station.

He lifted his phone from the nightstand and called Molly. She didn't answer till the fourth ring and he'd just started wondering if she'd left the house when she picked up.

“Good morning.” Despite everything that had happened last night, her voice sounded chipper.

Michael smiled. “I've got an empty bed. Very disappointing.”

“You looked like you needed your beauty rest.”

“I'd rather chance looking like an ogre to spend a quiet morning with you.”

“There's no chance of that today, I'm afraid.”

“Disheartening.”

“I would have wanted nothing more. But there's a lot to do this morning if I'm going to help Simon save the documentary.”

A headline on the television caught Michael's eye. He flicked the hearing-impaired function on and scanned the story.

BRUTAL MURDER ROCKS SEASIDE TOWN. BLACKPOOL EVENT INVITES KILLER.

“It appears the news chaps are going to get every bit of mileage out of this that they can. Turn on the telly.” There was a screen in practically every room of their house, so Michael wasn't worried about her not being near one. Michael grimaced as he watched film footage of last night's crowd in the alley behind the theater.

“They're interviewing Liam McKenna,” Molly said.

Michael shook his head. “Getting the Big Nick Berryhill story out there, is he?”

“Apparently McKenna's repertoire has now extended to ghosts from the '39 train wreck haunting Blackpool.”

“I've never heard of those before.”

“He's a self-aggrandizing ass.”

“Some people would say that's the very description of an entrepreneur, love. I myself have upon occasion been accused of such behavior.”

Molly chuckled and the gentle sound made Michael
smile again and miss her even more. “There's a big difference. I love and forgive you.”

“Well, then. That makes it all better.” Michael walked to the window overlooking the front of the house.

Everything seemed less scary in the daylight and the uneasiness that had followed him up from the gates last night had nearly gone away. The feeling was as thin as the fog drifting through the trees in the direction of the bay. But like the fog, it hadn't entirely disappeared.

“I don't see your car.” Michael let the curtain drop and his stomach tightened a little in apprehension.

“I'm still here at the house.” Molly sighed. “Trying to sort this office into something I can live with.”

Some of the tension went away and Michael wished it all had. He didn't like the idea of worrying about Molly because that made him overprotective. That wouldn't be good for either of them and he was wise enough to know that. Still, the murder and the break-in at their home kept cycling through his thoughts.

“Need help?”

“Your help?” Molly laughed derisively. “I've seen the pit you work in.”