Pretty Girls (8 page)

Claire Scott was furious at her dead husband for not being there to solve her problems
.

“Honey?” Helen asked.

“I’m okay.” Claire had realized a long time ago that if you lie with enough conviction, you can usually fool yourself. All that she had to do now was generate a to-do list. That’s what Paul would have done. He had always said there was nothing that a list couldn’t solve. Conquer the details and you conquer the problem. “I’ll go walk the detectives through the house. We’ll need to cancel the wake.” She turned to the limo driver, who’d been discreetly standing to the side. “Can you take my grandmother back to the home, please?” She told the cop, “Please cancel the ambulance. I’m fine. There are over a hundred people on their way here. Unless you want them coming into the house, you need to post someone at the bottom of the driveway to stop them.”

“Will do.” The cop seemed happy to get away from them. She practically ran down the driveway.

Claire felt some of her bluster dissipate. She looked at her mother. “I’m not sure I can do this.”

“You’re already doing it.” Helen looped her hand through Claire’s arm and walked with her toward the men in trench coats. “Did you hurt your head when you fainted?”

“No.” Claire felt the back of her head. The bruises from the alley were still tender. Another lump wouldn’t make much of a difference. “Have I ever fainted before?”

“Not that I know of. You should try to do it in the grass next time. I thought you’d cracked open your noggin’.”

She squeezed her mother’s arm. “You don’t have to stay here.”

“I’m not leaving until I know you’re all right.”

Claire pressed together her lips. There had been a time when her mother had been incapable of being present for anything. “Listen, I know how you feel about the police, but you need to cool it.”

“Huckleberries,” Helen muttered, her word for incompetent policemen. “You know, it’s occurred to me that I’m just about the only person in our family who hasn’t gone to prison.”

“Jail, Mother. Prison is for after you’re convicted.”

“Thank God I didn’t use the wrong word with my book club.”

“Mrs. Scott?” One of the trench-coated men walked over with his badge in his hand. He reeked of cigar smoke because it wasn’t enough of a cliché to wear a trench coat. “I’m Captain Mayhew, Dunwoody Police Department.”

“Captain?” Claire asked. The man she’d talked to after Paul’s murder was only a detective. Was a burglary more important than a murder, or were murders so common in the city of Atlanta that they relegated them to detectives?

“I’m real sorry for your loss.” Mayhew dropped the badge into his coat pocket. His mustache was bushy and untrimmed. Hairs climbed down from his nostrils. “The Congressman asked me to handle this personally.”

Claire knew who the Congressman was. Johnny Jackson had been Paul’s benefactor almost from the start, awarding him government contracts that should’ve gone to more experienced architects. The man’s early investment had been rewarded over the years. Every time Quinn + Scott was given a new government job, Paul’s personal Amex bill was riddled with charges for chartered planes he never flew in and five-star hotels where he never stayed.

She took a deep breath and asked, “I’m sorry, Captain. I’m feeling a bit discombobulated. Can you please start from the beginning and tell me what happened?”

“Yeah, I can imagine with the funeral and all, this is the last thing you want to be dealing with right now. Like I said, my condolences.” Mayhew took his own deep breath, his far more raspy. “We’ve got a nutshell, but we’re still filling in some blanks. You’re not the first person in the county to have this kind of thing happen. We suspect it’s a gang of young males who read the obituaries, find out when the funerals are, then Google Earth the house and figure out whether it’s worth robbing.”

“Good Lord,” Helen said, “that really is beyond the pale.”

Mayhew seemed just as outraged. “We think the burglars only had a minute or so before the catering van pulled up. They saw the broken glass from the side door.” He pointed to the glass, which was still scattered on the bluestone steps. “The bartender went inside—probably not the best idea. He took a beating, but he managed to stop the gang from cleaning you out.”

Claire looked up at the house again. Paul had been drawing variations of the plans since architectural school. The only thing that changed was the amount of money they could spend. Neither one of them had grown up rich. Claire’s father had been a college professor. Paul’s parents had owned a farm. He loved having money because it made him feel secure. Claire loved having it because once you paid for something, no one could ever take it away from you.

Had she not paid enough for Paul? Had she not worked enough, loved enough, been enough? Is that why she had lost him?

“Mrs. Scott?”

“I’m sorry.” Claire didn’t know why she kept apologizing. Paul would’ve cared more about this. He would’ve been outraged by the violation. Their window broken! Burglars rifling their belongings! One of their employees attacked! Claire would’ve been right beside him, just as outraged, but without Paul, she could barely force herself to go through the motions.

Helen asked, “Can you tell us if the bartender is okay? Tim, was it?”

“Yeah, Tim.” Mayhew nodded and shrugged at the same time. “Most of the wounds are superficial. They took him to the hospital to stitch him up.”

Claire felt some of the horror penetrate. Tim had been bartending for them for years. He had a son with autism and an ex-wife he was trying to win back and now he was being stitched up at the hospital because of something horrible that had happened inside her home.

Helen asked, “But you still need Claire to go through the house to see if the burglars took anything?”

“Yes, eventually. I know this is really bad timing, but what we need from Mrs. Scott right now is to know where the set-up is for the security cameras.” He pointed to the black globe on the corner of the house. “We’re pretty sure that one got them coming and going.”

“I’ll take you to it.” Claire didn’t move. They were all staring at her, waiting. There was something else she needed to do. Lots of something elses.

The list. She felt her brain flip back on like a light switch.

Claire turned to her mother. “Can you ask the caterers to donate the food to the shelter? And let Tim know we’ll take care of the hospital bill. I’m sure it’s covered under our homeowner’s policy.” Where was the paperwork? Claire didn’t even know who their agent was.

“Mrs. Scott?” There was another man standing beside Captain Mayhew. He was a few inches taller and dressed slightly better than the rest of the group. His trench coat was nicer, his suit was better tailored, and his face was clean-shaven. His easy manner should’ve put Claire at ease, but there was something about him that felt deeply unsettling, not least of all because he was sporting a nasty-looking black eye.

The man indicated his bruised eye with a chuckle. “The wife doesn’t like it when I talk back.”

Helen said, “Domestic violence is so funny.” She noted Claire’s wary expression. “I’ll be in the kitchen if you need me.”

The black-eyed man tried again. “Sorry, Mrs. Scott. My name is Fred Nolan. Maybe we can talk while you take us to the guts of the security system?”

He was standing close enough that Claire felt the need to step back. “This way.” She started walking toward the garage.

“Hold up.” Nolan put his hand on her arm. His thumb pressed against the soft underside of her wrist. “The control board for the security system is in the garage?”

Claire had never taken such an instant, visceral dislike to another human being. She looked down at his hand, willing the skin to freeze to the bone.

Nolan got the message. He released her arm.

“As I said, it’s this way.”

Claire suppressed a shudder as she continued walking. Mayhew walked beside her. Nolan followed closely at her heels. Too close. The man wasn’t just unsettling, he was creepy. He looked more like a mobster than a cop, but he was obviously good at his job. Claire hadn’t done anything criminal—at least not lately—but he’d managed to make her feel guilty anyway.

Nolan said, “Usually all the security stuff is in the main part of the house.”

“Fascinating,” Claire mumbled. She could feel a headache working into her temples. Maybe the burglary was a godsend. Instead of spending the next four hours entertaining Paul’s mourners, she would spend half an hour with this asshole before she kicked them all out of the house and took a handful of Valium to bed.

For complicated reasons Paul had tried to explain, all the security mainframes were in the garage, which was a two-story detached structure built in the same style as the house. Paul’s office on the top floor had a kitchenette, two walk-in closets, and a full bathroom. They had laughed about the space being nicer than a hotel if she ever kicked him out of the house.

“Mrs. Scott, do you mind my asking why the alarm wasn’t on?” This was from Mayhew. He had taken out a notebook and pen. His shoulders were hunched as if someone had asked him to mimic a character from a Raymond Chandler novel.

Claire said, “I always leave the alarm off for the caterers. The gate was closed.”

His mustache twitched. “The caterers have the front gate code?”

“And a key to the main house.”

“Anyone else have a key?”

The question struck her as odd, or maybe she was annoyed by the way Fred Nolan was still breathing down her neck. “Why would the burglars break the glass in the door if they had a key?”

Mayhew looked up from his notebook. “It’s just a routine question. We’ll need to talk to anybody who had access to the house.”

Claire felt a tickling sensation at the base of her throat. She was starting to feel overwhelmed again. This was the sort of thing Paul would know. She tried, “The housecleaners, our handyman, Paul’s assistant, his partner, my mother. I can look for names and numbers.”

“Your mom,” Nolan said. “She’s quite the pistol.”

Claire pressed the code into the keypad beside the four-bay garage. The heavy wooden door slid silently up its tracks. She watched the men’s eyes take in the diamond-plate wainscoting and matching storage cabinets. The floor was a racetrack-white and black rubber tile. There was a bracket for everything—hand tools, extension cords, tennis rackets, golf clubs, basketballs, sunglasses, shoes. Paul’s custom workbench took up one side of the room. He had a charging station, a mini fridge, a flat-panel TV, and an air conditioner for hot summer days.

Then, of course, there was Claire’s BMW and Paul’s Porsche Carrera and Tesla Model S.

“Holy shit.” Nolan’s tone was reverential. Claire had seen men get harder over Paul’s garage than they ever got over a woman.

“It’s through here.” Claire entered the four-digit code into another keypad and led them downstairs to the basement. She had loved that Paul loved his garage. He spent hours in here working on his models. Claire had teased him that the only reason he constructed them at home instead of at work was because here, he got to clean up after himself.

“Kind of a neat freak,” Nolan said, as if reading her mind.

“I got lucky,” Claire told him. Paul’s mild obsessive–compulsive disorder had never stopped their lives or made him do odd things like touch a doorknob twelve times. Actually, his compulsions manifested themselves in acts that any wife could appreciate: putting down the toilet seat, folding all the clothes, cleaning up the kitchen every night.

At the bottom of the stairs, Claire entered another four-digit code into the keypad on the door. The lock clicked open.

Mayhew said, “Never seen a basement under a garage like this.”

Nolan said, “Kind of
Silence of the Lambs
-y.”

Claire flipped on the lights and the small, concrete room came into stark relief. Paul had designed the space to double as a tornado shelter. Metal shelves held food and supplies. There was a small TV, a weather radio, a couple of camping cots, and plenty of junk food, because Claire had told Paul that in the event of the apocalypse, she was going to need lots of chocolate and Cheetos.

She was glad she still had on her coat. The temperature was kept low because of all the computers. Everything was controlled from inside this room, not just the security cameras but all the audio-visual systems, the automation for the blinds and fixtures, and whatever else made the house run like magic. There were banks of components with flashing lights and a small desk with four flat-screen monitors mounted on articulating stands.

Nolan asked, “Does your husband secretly work for the NSA?”

“Yes.” Claire was tired of his questions, which were made even more grating by his flat, Midwestern accent. The most expedient thing would be to just give them what they wanted so they would go away.

She opened a desk drawer and found the laminated checklist that explained how to work the security cameras. Paul had tried to walk her through the steps but Claire’s eyes had glazed over and she’d worried she was going to have a seizure.

She tapped the computer keyboard and entered the access code to the system.

“Lots of passwords to remember.” Nolan was standing too close again.

Claire slid away from Nolan. She handed Mayhew the directions. “You’ll have to take it from here.”

Nolan asked, “Are all of your houses like this?”

“We only have one house.”

“‘Only.’” Nolan laughed.

Claire had reached her limit. “My husband is dead and now my house has been broken into. Is there something you find funny about this situation?”

“Whoa.” Nolan held up his hands like she’d tried to scratch out his eyes. “No offense, lady.”

Mayhew’s mustache twitched again. “Hard to offend someone if you keep your fucking mouth shut.”

Claire gave Nolan a look before turning away from him. She knew how to shut down a man. He didn’t leave, but he took a few steps back to let her know the message had been received.

She watched the monitors as Mayhew followed Paul’s checklist. The views were split so that each screen showed four different aspects from sixteen different cameras. Every entrance, every bank of windows, the pool area, and several sections of the driveway were monitored. Claire could see that the caterers were in the motorcourt turning around their truck. Helen’s silver Ford was parked on the other side of the garage. She was talking to one of the detectives outside the mudroom door. Her hands were on her hips. Claire was glad there was no sound.