“I have no idea,” Daniel said, replacing the coffeepot carefully on the stove. “I hope, though, that if you do remember anything and you’re unsure whether to take it to the police, you won’t feel you have to deal with it alone; you’ll come and talk to me, or to Abby. Would you do that?”
He sipped his coffee, one ankle crossed neatly over the opposite knee, watching me calmly. I was starting to see what Frank meant about these four giving away very little. This guy’s expression would have worked equally well whether he had just come from choir practice or from ax-murdering a dozen orphans. “Well, yeah, sure,” I said. “But all I remember is coming home from college on the Tuesday evening and then getting really, really sick in a bedpan, and I already told the police all that.”
“Hmm,” said Daniel. He pushed the ashtray over to my side of the table. “Memory is an odd thing. Let me ask you this: if you were to-” But just then Abby came clattering back down the stairs, still singing, and he shook his head and stood up and started patting at his pockets.
I waved from the top of the steps while Daniel pulled out of the driveway in a fast expert arc, and the car disappeared among the cherry trees. When I was sure they were gone, I shut the door and stood still in the hallway, listening to the empty house. I could feel it settling, a long whisper like shifting sand, to see what I would do now.
I sat down at the bottom of the stairs. The stair carpet had been taken off, but they hadn’t got around to doing anything instead; there was a wide unvarnished band across each step, dusty and worn down in the middle by generations of feet. I leaned against the newel post, wriggled till I got my back comfortable, and thought about that diary.
If it had been in Lexie’s room, the Bureau gang would have found it. That left the rest of the house, the whole garden, and the question of what was in there that she had wanted to hide even from her best friends. For a second I heard Frank’s voice, in the squad room: her friends close and her secrets closer.
The other possibility was that Lexie had kept it on her, that she had had it in a pocket when she died and the killer had nicked it. That would explain why he had taken the time and the risk to go after her (pulling her into cover, black darkness and his hands moving fast over her limp body, patting down pockets, glazed with rain and blood): if he needed that diary.
That fit with what I knew about Lexie-keep secrets close-but, on a more practical level, it would have had to be pretty small to go into a pocket, and she would have had to swap it over every time she changed clothes. Finding a hiding place would have been simpler and safer. Somewhere it would be safe from rain and from accidental discovery; somewhere she could be sure of privacy, even living with four people; somewhere she could go whenever she wanted, without catching anyone’s attention; not her room.
There was a toilet on the ground floor and a full bathroom on the first. I checked the jacks first, but the room was the size of a coat closet, and once I’d looked in the cistern I had basically exhausted the possibilities. The main bathroom was big: 1930s tiles with a black-and-white checked border, chipped bath, unfrosted windows with tattered net curtains. The door bolted.
Nothing in the cistern, or behind it. I sat down on the floor and pulled out the wooden panel from the side of the bath. It came easily; a scraping sound, but nothing that running water or a flush wouldn’t cover. Underneath there were cobwebs, mouse droppings, sweeps of finger marks in the dust; and, tucked in a corner, a tiny red notebook.
My breath felt like I’d been running. I didn’t like this; didn’t like how, with acres to choose from, I had come homing straight to Lexie’s hiding place as if I had no choice. Around me the house seemed to have tightened and drawn closer, leaning in over my shoulder; watching; focused.
I went up to my room-Lexie’s room-and found my gloves and a nail file. Then I sat back down on the bathroom floor and carefully, holding it by the edges, pulled out the notebook. I used the file to turn the pages. Sooner or later, the Bureau would need to fingerprint this.
I had been hoping for a pour-your-heart-out diary, but I should have known better. This was just a date book, red fake-leather cover, a page for each day. The first few months were covered with appointments and reminders in that quick, rounded writing: Lettuce, Brie, garlic salt; 11 tut Rm 3017; elec bill; ask D Ovid book?? Homey, innocuous stuff, and reading it made me edgier than anything yet. When you’re a detective you get used to invading people’s privacy in every way you can think of, I had slept in Lexie’s bed and I was wearing her clothes, but this; this was the small day-to-day debris of her life, it had been only for herself, and I had no right to it.
