‘I try my best not to think about it.’
‘It could help solve the burglaries and the murder at Manatee Park.’
Peggy bites her lip. She glances back into the house and uses sign language to say something to her husband, then steps out on to the porch and pulls the door closed behind her. ‘What do you need to know?’
‘Everything you can tell me. Why don’t you start from the beginning?’
Peggy nods. ‘It woke me up, the noise of them breaking in, but it didn’t wake Arnold, my husband.’ She leans closer, her voice hushed. ‘He’s deaf; they said eighty-eight per cent of his hearing had gone when they last tested him. He sleeps like a log, unlike me.’
‘Do you know what time it was?’
‘I do, because when I opened my eyes the alarm clock display was right in front of me. It was 1.03 a.m. on the nineteenth. I remember thinking I’d had even less sleep than usual before waking. Then I heard the breaking of glass and knew there was someone who shouldn’t be inside our home.’
Moira feels the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end – the Leggerhornes were burgled the night of the nineteenth, and Hank said he’d seen the murder victim walking along Stingray Drive around 1 a.m. on the nineteenth. ‘What happened next?’
Peggy shakes her head. ‘Nothing on my part, I’m ashamed to say. You always think that if someone breaks into your property you’ll act to protect what’s yours, you know, fight back.’ She exhales loudly. ‘I didn’t do that. I wasn’t brave like you were yesterday with that intruder you found. I stayed in bed. Hugged my husband, who was still sleeping. And prayed that the intruder wouldn’t come upstairs and hurt us.’
‘And did they?’
‘No. I could hear them moving about downstairs, and I think they thought about coming up but when they stepped on the first couple of stairs they creaked really loudly. The intruder left soon afterwards.’ She shakes her head. ‘I guess they’d got enough and didn’t want to risk us finding them in the house.’
‘Did they take much?’
Peggy closes her eyes for a moment. When she opens them her eyes are watery. ‘They took the silver my mother left me when she passed, a gold mantle clock that had been in my family for five generations, and Arnold’s service medals. We kept our emergency fund in the kitchen drawer – around five hundred dollars in twenties and tens – they took that too.’
‘Did you report the items stolen to the police?’ asks Moira.
‘For sure,’ says Peggy. ‘And they made a note of them but didn’t sound hopeful about us getting them back.’
Moira remembers Rick telling them the list of items that had been in the victim’s backpack – they’d included antique silverware and a gold mantle clock. They could have belonged to Peggy and her husband, but Moira doesn’t say that. Instead she says, ‘I’m so sorry.’ The words don’t feel enough.
‘Just find who did it.’
‘I intend to.’
‘Good,’ says Peggy. ‘You said before that you’re investigating the murder at Manatee Park, but you’re asking me about us getting burglarised. Why?’
Moira doesn’t answer right away. She thinks about what she’s learned that morning. Kristen Altman would have been in the immediate vicinity of the Leggerhornes’ house at the exact time the burglary was taking place. It’s unlikely to be a coincidence; Moira doesn’t believe in them – especially that late at night. Either Kristen Altman was involved in the burglaries or she was a witness. If they solve the murder, they’ll solve the burglary cases too.
Moira looks Peggy straight in the eye and tells her, ‘Because I think your burglary and the murder victim are connected.’