Authors: Midnight Hour
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KAREN kOBARDS
was on a level with her eyebrows. As a wornan who prided herself on being in control, Grace found the unaccustomed sensation of being fermininely “smaller than” disconcerting.
“There’s no sign of forced entry, Detective,” Stein volunteered. “We already checked.”
“Judge Hart told us the lock on the kitchen door doesn’t always work right, though. Somebody could have come in that way, maybe,” Peters added.
“It looks like some kind of oil,” Dominick said, leaning close to the mirror and touching the drawing with a questing finger. He rubbed his fingers together, testing the substance. “It’s oil. I’m sure of it.”
“Take pictures. Take a sample of the oil for testing. Then dust for fingerprints. Everywhere in the bathroom, the bedroom doorknob, the kitchen door, and the front door,” Tony directed the two uniformed officers. To Grace, who stood close against his back, he added with a glance over his shoulder: “This could be a prank, you know. Let’s get out of this bathroom and talk about it.”
“I don’t think it’s a prank.” Grace led the way downstairs. Jessica still clung to her hand. Tony and Dominick Marino followed. At the base of the stairs, the two uniformed officers headed out the front door in search of a camera. Grace steered the remainder of the party into the kitchen. “I think it’s a continuation of what’s been happening to Jessica at school.”
“Maybe,” Tony said. Prudently left unspoken, but obvious to Grace nonetheless, was the corollary: maybe not.
“Sit down, baby,” Grace said to Jessica, pushing her
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gently in the direction of a bar stool. “I’ll make you some hot chocolate.” To the Marinos, who had stopped rather awkwardly in the middle of the kitchen, she added, “I’m making hot chocolate forJessica, and I’m going to have a cup of coffee. Would either one of you like something?”
“I’ll have coffee,” Tony said, while Dominick shook his head.
11 Nothing, thanks.” “Sit down. Please.”
Dominick did, settling onto the bar stool beside Jessica, while Tony leaned against the counter. They were both wearing dark sweat suits and Jogging shoes. Grace wondered, vaguely, where they had been. Running, like Jessica and her? Somehow it didn’t seem likely. Dismissing the issue from her mind as unimportant, she poured chocolate milk into a mug and put it in the microwave to heat. Then she poured out two cups of coffee.
“Cream? Sugar?” she asked Tony just as the microwave pinged.
“One spoonful of sugar,” he said. Grace retrieved the hot chocolate from the microwave and passed it to Jessica, then added a spoonful of sugar to one of the coffees and handed it to Tony.
“Okay,” Tony said, taking a sip of coffee. His gaze was on Grace. “You think somebody broke in here while you were gone and wrote that message to Jessica, r igh t? “
“Right,” Grace said. She was already on her third sip and was feeling marginally more able to cope. “How long were you gone?”
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Grace looked at Jessica. “About
. twenty minutes?”
Jessica nodded.
“So whoever it was had twenty minutes to break into your house, go up to Jessica’s room, and write that message in oil or whatever on her nurror, worrying all the time that you might return at any second,” Tony said. “Let’s think about that. Twenty minutes is not a very long time.”
“Long enough, apparently,” Grace said darkly, si ipping her coffee.
“In that twenty minutes, the perpetrator would have had to enter your house, either with a key or through your possibly improperly latched kitchen door or by some other means not yet discovered, go up to Jessica’s room, write the message with a substance lie either found in the house or brought with him, and get out of the house again without either of you seeing him-or her. Possible, I suppose, but the timing’s tricky.”
“We stayed out on the porch for a few minutes after we got back,” Grace recalled. “Maybe five minutes. Maybe even ten.”
“I think it was more like five,” Jessica put in. Her voice sounded a little stronger, too. “Then I went in to take a shower.”
“Obviously you saw no one in the house, right, or nothing that would make you suspect someone was in the house?”
“If I had, I would have screamed the place down.” Jessica gave Tony a lopsided little smile. Grace was glad to see that smile. It meant that Jessica was starting to recover.
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-led back at Jes”That’s what I thought.” Tony sun
sica. “So the message already had to be on the nurror and the perp out when you came into the house. That means that whoever wrote it had to be watching you and your niom pretty closely to know that the house was empty. Do you go running every night at the same time?”
Grace and Jessica both shook their heads.
“About three nights a week, usually, but we don’t ific days, or at specific times. just whenever go on speci
we feel like it,” Grace said.
“So whoever it was couldn’t have known you would be gone at that time.”
“I don’t see how,” Grace took another reviving sip of coffee.
“So for this scenario to work, you had to be under direct observation.”
Grace shivered at the thought. Jessica said, “That’s scary.”
Tony looked from one to the other of theiii. “Do either of you ladies possess any oil that could have been used to write the message?”
“I have bath oil beads,” Jessica volunteered. “I keep them right in the medicine cabinet. I’ve never used them, though. I usually take a shower.”
Grace thought. “I have some bath oil. And some baby oil. And some makeup remover that’s kind of oily. “
“Let’s go check it out.”
The four of them went upstairs again. The Marmos and Jessica went on into Jessica’s room, while Grace collected the required items from her bathroom.
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“We’ve got pictures of the mirror.” Standing in the bathroom doorway, Peters was talking to the Marmos, who were injessica’s bedroom. He looked past them as Grace entered. The Marinos glanced around, too. Stein was inside the bathroom clicking away with a black, 35-millimeter camera. He lowered the camera and also glanced toward her as she joined them.
“All done,” he said, waving the camera as he turned toward the others.
“Go ahead and fingerprint the front and back doors,” Tony said. “Leave fingerprinting the bathroom for last. “
” 0 kay.
Peters and Stein left the room, heading downstairs. Tony and Dominick entered the bathroom. Jessica was reluctant to go back inside her bathroom, so she sat down in her chair to wait. Grace stood in the doorway between the bedroom and bathroom so she could watch both Jessica and the men.
Using a towel and very gingerly gripping the edge of the mirror, Dominick opened the medicine cabinet and extracted the clear plastic container of brightly colored bath oil beads that Jessica had found in her stocking at Christmas.
Tony, meanwhile, touched the message, then sniffed the oil on his fingers and rubbed his fingers together to test the texture. Dominick crushed a bath oil bead between his fingers, and both men grimaced at the strong floral scent that resulted.
“That’s not it,” Tony said positively. “We would have smefled that a mfle away.” Then, to Grace, “Let’s see what you have.”
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Grace handed over the cumbersome collection of objects she had retrieved from her bathroom.
Carefully pulling the stopper from the smoky-rose glass bottle of bath oil that Grace rarely used, Tony poured a little on his fingers. The resulting smell of lavender was less overpowering than Jessica’s floral, but unmistakable nonetheless.
“Nope,” Dominick said.
Tony then dribbled a little baby oil on the back of his hand, sniffed it, then tested its texture with a finger. “This is it,” he said. “Or something real similar.
We’ll need to run tests to be positive. Check this out, Dom, and see what you think.”
Dominick touched the oil on the mirror, smelled it, then touched and smelled the oil on Tony’s hand. “Yeah, I agree,” he said. “We need to have this bottle fingerprinted.”
“It could have come from another bottle. One the perp brought. Or it might be something else altogether. “
“You’re right.”
As they spoke, both Marinos wiped their hands on the towel Dominick had used to open the medicine cabinet and headed for the bathroom door. Grace stepped out of their way.
“You realize,” Tony said, stopping just inside the bedroom and looking at Grace, “that there is another possibdity.”
“Such as?” She crossed her arms over her chest, her brows lifting.
“That this wasn’t done while you two were out jogging. That it was done eartier.”
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“We would have noticed it, surely,” Grace said. “Would you? Jessica, when was the last time you
took a shower in your bathroom?” “This morning. Before school.”
“You obviously didn’t notice anything on the mirror then. “
“No.” “Did you look in the mirror after you got out of the shower this morning so you would have noticed?”
“I … I don’t remember, but I’m sure I did.” “Believe me, she did. She always looks in the mirror,” Grace supplied dryly.
“Shut up, Mom,” Jessica muttered in an aside. “Then this could have been done any time today. Who has had access to your house today?”
Grace frowned. “Well, let’s see. Linda. Jackie and her children. You. That’s it, I think, except forjessica and me.” She looked inquiringly atJessica.
“That’s everybody I can think of,” her daughter corroborated.
“Is it possible that one of your cousins wrote that as a joke?” Tony asked, looking at Jessica. “I’ve met them, remember. They look like they might think that kind of thing is funny.”
Struck by the possibility, Grace and Jessica exchanged glances. Then Grace looked back at Tony. “I don’t think so,” she said, shaking her head.
“They’re too young. Paul is only six, and Courtney’s four. I don’t think they can write that well, either one of them, even if they wanted to.”
“You sure? My little girl’s in first grade and she can write real good,” Dominick put in.
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“I’ll call Jackie and have her ask them.” Grace moved toward the door. She knew it wasn’t possible, knew Paul couldn’t write that well, but it was such a neat, unfrightening solution… .
I I Morn! ” Jessica broke into her thoughts. ” Godzilla’s gone!”
“What?” Grace looked toward the bookshelf where his cage was kept. Jessica was already out of her chair and heading around the foot of her bed toward it.
“The door’s open.” Jessica lifted the door in the top of the hamster’s cage easily, without have to unlatch the spring hook that usually held it shut, making it obvious that the cage was unlocked. “He’s gone.”
Grace moved to stand beside her daughter, looking down at the double-decker wire cage that was Godzilla’s home. The exercise wheel was there. The red-tinted but still transparent plastic house that he loved to sleep in was there. His wooden chews were there, his food dish was there, his water bottle was there.
Grace reached down and poked the nest of paper towels that he sometimes hid beneath.
Everything in the cage was where it should be, except the hamster.
Godzilla was definitely gone.
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H, DEAR, YOU MUST HAVE FORGOTTEN and Clle t his cage unlocked,” Grace said.
f “I didn’t! I know I didn’t! I never leave Godzifla’s cage unlocked.” Jessica’s lips trembled and her eyes filled. This, coming on the heels of the fright she had experienced, was too much for her composure.
“Godzifla?” In the background, Dominick’s lowvoiced question sounded mystified.
11 Her hamster.” Equally lowvoiced, Tony filled him in.
“Oh.” “Don’t worry, we’ll find him.” Ignoring the sotto voce conversation behind them, Grace put a soothing arm around her daughter’s thin shoulders. Jessica was already visually scanning the floor, paying particular attention to the shadowy angles where floor and walls joined, blinking back tears. “He has to be here somewhere.”
“He could be anywhere in the house!” Jessica
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looked at Grace despairingly. “My bedroom door has been open this whole time!”
“We’ll find him,” Grace repeated, then glanced up as a hand curled insistently around her arm just above the elbow.
It belonged to Tony Marino. With a jerk of his head he indicated that he would like to speak to her privately, in the hall.
Message delivered, he let his hand fall away from her arm, and she followed him out of the room. As Grace left, Jessica was dropping to her knees beside the bed, getting ready to look beneath it. Clearly not particularly concerned about the case of the missing hamster, Dominick had disappeared into the bathroom again.
Once in the hall, Tony stopped walking and turned to face her. Grace stopped, too, frowning up at hnim. They stood several feet away from Jessica’s doorway, with Grace’s back to the door so that her daughter could not read anything untoward in her face. If he had bad news to impart, she wanted to keep it away from Jessica for as long as possible.
“I don’t want to make your daughter mad at her cousin again, but it seems fairly likely to me that your nephew is our culprit.” As he spoke, his gaze slid past her toward the bedroom, as if, like Grace, he was concerned that Jessica might overhear.
“Paul?” Grace’s frown deepened. She crossed her arms over her chest. She still wore the same gray fleece sweat suit with the OSU logo on the front that she had worn to run in. It was a warm outfit, too warm for the house really, but she felt chilled. “What makes you think so?”
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“Leaving a message like that on your daughter’s mirror is something a kid would do.” The small, manyfaceted chandelier that illuminated the upstairs hallway I
picked up silver threads in his black hair, Grace noticed. It also emphasized with shadows the tiny lines that radiated out from the corners of his eyes and the deeper ones that bracketed his mouth. “Arid now with the hamster missing-I’d say that makes a pretty strong case against your nephew.”