The house was cold and empty. The McCaigs were going to get a huge electric bill, Eve thought, but they were probably used to that. Shards of broken glass crunched under her feet as she walked inside. Nobody had been here to clean up the mess she’d left. And that would probably irritate Anna, too, since the house was impeccably clean.
Good. Screw her.
Eve wandered over to the dining room table and picked up the grocery store receipt. She scanned the list of all that junk food, then she looked at the purchases stacked against the wall, seeing the potato chips, cookies, pastries, and candy from a different perspective this time.
It was evidence of Anna’s fraudulent pregnancy.
Eve set the receipt down and noticed again the smooth finish on the table. Not a speck of dust.
She looked up and into the kitchen, the remodeling nearly finished, and she got a chill. But it wasn’t from the cold air in the room. Fatigue, probably. She knew that thirty-some hours without sleep had to be taking a toll on her mind and body.
Eve went into the kitchen and admired the stone countertops. The quartzite shined, even underneath the layer of dust.
There was dust on everything, just like in her place. She looked at the cabinets, the big island, and finally at the drywall. The McCaigs’ contractor was a professional and knew what he was doing. Unlike her place, here she only saw a couple of screws in the drywall that would need to be removed or patched.
You get what you pay for.
Eve turned back and looked out the doorway into the dining room, then walked to the end of the kitchen and looked out that door into the family room. And she shivered again, but this time she knew why.
Maybe going without sleep once in a while wasn’t so bad, she thought. Maybe it purged the mind the way fasting can purge the body of toxins. Because now she saw it all, every move that Anna McCaig had made. That was the chill, her unconscious mind seeing it all before she knew it. She took out her phone and called Duncan as she headed for the front door.
“Get the crime scene unit down to the McCaig house right away.”
“Why?” Duncan asked.
“I found Priscilla’s body.” She disconnected the call and walked outside, where Eddie still leaned against the patrol car. “Pop the trunk for me, will you?”
He opened the driver’s side door again, leaned inside, and pulled the trunk-release latch. The trunk snapped open. Inside there was a first-aid kit, Kevlar vests, road flares, a small battering ram, and a crowbar, among other things. Eve took the crowbar and closed the trunk just as one of the CSU vehicles and Duncan’s car came speeding down the hill. She waited for them at the front door, crowbar at her side.
Nan came first, carrying her kit. “Detective Pavone says you found the body.”
“That’s true,” Eve said.
“I don’t see how that’s possible. We thoroughly searched the house.”
“Yes, we did.” Eve waited for Duncan to join them, then led them inside. “Have you ever remodeled your kitchen?”
“No, I haven’t,” Nan said.
“I’m doing mine now. It takes four times as long as they say it will and the demolition and construction creates a lot of dust. So, to prevent the dust from getting all over the house, they put big sheets of plastic up over the doorways of the room they are working on.” Eve gestured to the open doorways to the kitchen in the dining room and family room. “But not here.”
Eve ran her finger along the coffee table, a bookshelf, and finally the dining room table.
“And yet there’s no dust.” She held up her clean finger. “I have the plastic up and I still have dust everywhere.”
The rest of Nan’s team came inside and stood, waiting for instructions.
“I agree. Anna McCaig keeps a clean house,” Duncan said. “What’s your point?”
“She also keeps it very cold,” Eve said. “Like a meat locker.”
Duncan saw what Eve was implying. “My house is cold, too, but that doesn’t mean I’m storing any corpses. It means my wife has hit menopause and now I’ve got to sleep in a parka. Everybody has a different metabolism.”
Eve picked up the grocery store receipt off the dining room table. “She also bought four boxes of baking soda. What does she need that for? She has no appliances for baking. What else is baking soda good for? Absorbing nasty odors.”
Nan sighed impatiently, looked at her team waiting, then turned to Eve. “It’s been a long day for us. You said you found a body. Did you or didn’t you?”