Kevin O'Brien - Disturbed

She didn’t see any other customers on this floor, but she could hear some footsteps above her.

Farther back from the stairs, at the sales counter was a ruggedly handsome, balding man of about fifty. He wore a tight-fitting yellow polo shirt that showed off his buffed physique. He smiled at her. “Let me know if I can help you find anything.”

“Actually,” she said, approaching the counter, “I’m hoping you might answer a few questions about something my husband bought here last month.” She took out the MasterCard bill and Jeff’s photo. “It was a charge for $247.90 on October seventh. This is his picture. I don’t know if you’d remember—”

“Oh, yeah, I remember him,” the man said, with a chuckle. “My coworker, Sheila, she was instantly smitten. She was all over him as soon as he walked in the store. Me, I helped the woman. . ” He hesitated. “Um, I mean, the — the next customer who came in after him, it was a woman.”

Molly showed him the sketch of Natalie. “Did the woman look anything like this?”

Nervously drumming his fingers on the countertop, he looked at the picture and gave an uneasy shrug. “I — um, you know, I’m not sure.”

“It’s okay,” Molly said. “I know he was here in La Conner with another woman.”

“Listen, your husband seemed like a nice enough guy. I don’t want to get anybody in trouble.”

“You can’t possibly get him into any more trouble than he’s already in,” Molly said. “He died last week.”

“Oh, God, I’m so sorry,” the man murmured.

“Thanks,” Molly said. She showed him the charcoal drawing again. “I’d really like to know about this woman he was with — to give me some closure. This is just a rough sketch. But does it look anything like the woman you waited on? She’s got blond hair. . ”

He frowned. “It could be her. But she had her hair up and she was wearing sunglasses. If I remember right, her hair was closer to brown. I’m sorry, I can’t say for sure.”

“Her hair is almost brown. It’s a darker shade of blond. Was she very thin?”

He shrugged. “I couldn’t tell, really. She had a coat on the whole time.”

“Do you remember if he called her by name — or anything they said to each other? Anything at all?”

“Not really.” He scratched his bald head. “He came in first, by himself. Sheila started helping him, and about a minute later, the woman came in. She asked for my help while Sheila and your husband went into another room. She told him, ‘I’m getting you a surprise for later down the line,’ and she made sure he didn’t see what she picked up. I thought that was kind of weird.”

“Why was it weird?” Molly asked.

“Well, she said it was for him,” he replied. “But all she bought was dollhouse furniture.”

The woman in Molly’s sketch went through Rachel’s bedroom dresser and pocketed several pieces of jewelry — including a diamond ring and pearl necklace that together were probably worth at least two thousand bucks.

If someone had told her last year that she’d be breaking into people’s homes and ripping them off, she never would have believed it. But then a lot had changed in the last year, and she had no idea how desperate she’d become.

She checked the closet for shoes, and wasn’t impressed. There was nothing in the bathroom medicine cabinet worth taking, no prescriptions.

She headed downstairs, where she found sixty dollars in cash, a Macy’s card, and a checkbook in a kitchen drawer. She took the card, the cash, and three checks from the middle of the book. She noticed a door off the kitchen and opened it. The basement — it was worth a peek, at least. The wood staircase had a nonslip, gridded rubber runner and led down to a big room with a beige carpet. There was a treadmill plugged into the wall with a boom box and several CDs scattered beside it. About a dozen boxes were stacked against one wall. She opened one up: just books. Another box was full of old LPs.

She gave up and tried a door to the next room. It led to a small corridor with an empty clothes closet on one side and a bathroom on the other. The bathroom had gaudy black and silver striped wallpaper and a shower stall with a fogged glass door. Straight ahead was the laundry room, which had an alcove with a workbench. Some tools — a hammer, crowbar, pliers, screwdriver, boxes of nails and screws — had been unpacked, but a box sat on the table with WORK STUFF — TOOLS & HARDWARE scribbled on it. There was a room off the work area with a latch and a padlock on the door.

All she could think was that Rachel must have something pretty valuable locked up in there.

She reached toward the workbench for the crowbar.

Her trip to the mini-mart seven blocks away took longer than she’d expected. She’d gotten there to find a BE BACK IN 5 MINUTES sign on the door. She’d waited close to fifteen minutes before finally giving up. She’d climbed out of the car, walked up to the store’s door, and spat on the handle.

Irked and feeling a bit stupid for spitting on the door handle, she’d driven to Safeway for the emergency toilet paper — as well as a six-pack of ginger ale to combat her morning sickness.

Actually, she was feeling a lot better since she’d talked with Molly this morning. At the wheel of her Honda Accord, she watched the road ahead and chuckled at the notion of breaking and entering into the Nguyens’ house with Molly tonight.

She’d promised Molly she’d keep a lookout for Natalie and wouldn’t linger at the mini-mart. But now it had been nearly an hour since she’d left for the store. She put on her turn signal and slowed down as she approached Willow Tree Court. She turned into the cul-de-sac and tapped the brake so she could get a long look at the Nguyens’ house down the block. No car was in the driveway — and from what she could tell there were no lights on in the house.

She’d promised Molly that she would make certain that if Natalie came back, she wouldn’t let her leave again. And it looked like Natalie hadn’t come back — not yet, at least.

“Good,” she whispered to herself. Then she pulled into her driveway.

“The woman bought practically two hundred and fifty dollars worth of dollhouse furniture?” Molly asked. “And then she had my husband pay for it?”

The man behind the counter at the antique store shrugged. “Well, your husband paid for her purchases, but he bought something, too. I didn’t see what it was. Sheila boxed it up for shipping. I was helping the woman with her dollhouse stuff. But I took it into UPS the next day.”

“He had it sent someplace?” Molly said.

“Yeah, I can look it up by the date. We save all our receipts here for up to a year. You said it was October. .”

“October seventh,” Molly said. She watched him duck into an office under the top of the stairs. He poked around in there for about two minutes, and then emerged with two handwritten receipts and a copy of a UPS waybill.

“Here we are,” he said, setting the paperwork down on the counter in front of Molly.

She was hoping to see the name and address of his mistress. But the shipment went to his office in the Bank of America Tower. Molly glanced at one of the receipts, and all it said was Jade Antique + 25.57 shipping & tax = $148.60. She felt a brief surge of anger that Jeff had spent that much on the bitch who probably ended up killing him. One of the first things she’d look for when she searched the Nguyens’ house tonight would be a jade vase or brooch.

“You mentioned you don’t know what he bought exactly,” Molly said. “Do you think Sheila might remember? Is she around?”

“She’s traveling through Europe right now,” the man said, shaking his head. “And I really don’t know how to get in touch with her. She’s one of the few people in the world who doesn’t own a cell phone. I can tell you what the woman purchased — if you’re interested.”