Harlan Coben: Fool Me Once

“Thanks for the ride,” Maya whispered.

Eileen turned off the car. “Do you mind if I come in for a second?”

“We’ll be fine.”

“No doubt.” Eileen unbuckled her seat belt. “But I’ve been meaning to give you something. It’ll just take two minutes.”

Maya held it in her hand. “A digital picture frame?”

Eileen was a strawberry blonde with freckles and a wide smile. She had the kind of face that lit up a room when she entered, which made it a great mask for the torment beneath.

“No, it’s a nanny cam disguised as a digital picture frame.”

“Say again?”

“Now that you’re working full-time, you’ve got to keep a better eye on things, right?”

“I guess so.”

“Where does Isabella play with Lily most of the time?”

Maya gestured to her right. “In the den.”

“Come on, I’ll show you.”

“Eileen...”

She took the frame from Maya’s hand. “Just follow me.”

The den was right off the kitchen. It had a cathedral ceiling and plenty of blond wood. A big-screen television hung on the wall. There were two baskets filled to the brim with educational toys for Lily. A Pack ’n Play stood in front of the couch where there used to be a beautiful mahogany coffee table. The coffee table, alas, hadn’t been child friendly, so it had to go.

Eileen moved toward the bookshelf. She found a spot for the frame and plugged the cord into a nearby outlet. “I already preloaded some pictures of your family. The digital frame will just shuffle through and display them. Do Isabella and Lily normally play by that couch?”

“Yes.”

“Good.” Eileen shifted the frame in that direction. “The camera built inside this thing is wide-angle, so you can see the whole room.”

“Eileen—”

“I saw her at the funeral.”

“Who?”

“Your nanny.”

“Isabella’s family goes way back with Joe’s. Her mother was Joe’s nanny. Her brother is the family gardener.”

“For real?”

Maya shrugged. “The rich.”

“They’re different.”

“They are.”

“So do you trust her?”

“Who, Isabella?”

“Yes.”

Maya shrugged. “You know me.”

“I do.” Eileen had originally been Claire’s friend — the two had been assigned as freshman roommates at Vassar — but all three women quickly grew close. “You trust no one, Maya.”

“I wouldn’t put it that way.”

“Fine. When it comes to your child?”

“When it comes to my child,” Maya said, “yeah, okay, no one.”

Eileen smiled. “That’s why I’m giving you this. Look, I don’t think you’ll find anything. Isabella seems great.”

“But better safe than sorry?”

“Exactly. I can’t tell you how much comfort it gave me when I left Kyle and Missy with the nanny.”

Maya wondered about that — whether Eileen had just used it with the nanny or whether she had built a case against someone else — but she kept the thought to herself for now.

“Do you have an SD card port on your computer?” Eileen asked.

“I’m not sure.”

“Doesn’t matter. I got you an SD reader that connects into any USB port. Just plug it into your laptop or computer. Really, it doesn’t get easier than this. You take the SD card out of the frame at the end of the day — it’s back here, see?”

Maya nodded.

“Then you stick the card into the reader. The video pops up on your screen. The SD is thirty-two gigs, so it should last days easily. There’s also a motion detector, so it’s not recording when the room is empty or anything like that.”

Maya couldn’t help but smile. “Look at you.”

“What? The role reversal bothering you?”

“A little. I should have thought of doing this myself.”

“I’m surprised you didn’t.”

Maya looked down and met her friend’s eye. Eileen was maybe five two, Maya nearly six feet tall, but with the ramrod posture, she looked even taller. “Did you ever see anything on your nanny cam?”

“You mean, something I shouldn’t have?”

“Yeah.”

“No,” Eileen said. “And I know what you’re thinking. He hasn’t been back. And I haven’t seen him.”

“I’m not judging.”

“Not even a little?”

“What kind of friend would I be if I didn’t judge a little?”

Eileen came over and wrapped her arms around Maya. Maya hugged her back. Eileen wasn’t a quasi-stranger paying her respects. Maya ended up going to Vassar a year after Claire. The three women had lived together in those halcyon days before Maya had started Army Aviation School at Fort Rucker in Alabama. Eileen was still, along with Shane, her closest friend.

“I love you, you know.”

Maya nodded. “Yeah, I know.”

“You sure you don’t want me to stay?”

“You have your own family to take care of.”

“It’s okay,” Eileen said, pointing at the digital frame with her thumb. “I’m still watching.”

“Funny.”

“Not really. But I know you need downtime. Call if you need anything. Oh, and don’t worry about dinner. I already ordered you Chinese from Look See. It’ll be here in twenty minutes.”

“I love you, you know.”

“Yeah,” Eileen said, heading to the door. “I know.” She stopped. “Whoa.”

“What is it?”

“You have company.”

The company was in the short, hirsute form of NYPD homicide detective Roger Kierce. Kierce entered the house with his best attempt at swagger, glancing all around the way cops do and saying, “Nice place.”

Maya frowned, not bothering to hide her annoyance.

Kierce had something of a caveman thing going on. He was stocky and broad, and his arms seemed too short for his body. He had the kind of face that looked unshaven even immediately after a shave. His bushy eyebrows resembled a late stage of caterpillar metamorphosis, and the hair on the back of his hands could have been the work of a curling iron.

“Hope it’s okay I stopped by.”

“Why wouldn’t it be okay?” Maya said. “Oh, right, that whole just-buried-my-husband thing.”

Kierce feigned contrite. “I realize my timing could be better.”

“You think?”

“But tomorrow you go back to work and, really, when is a good time?”

“Great point. What can I do for you, Detective?”

“Do you mind if I sit?”

Maya gestured toward the couch in the den. A spooky thought came to her: This encounter — in fact, every encounter in this room — would now be recorded by the hidden nanny cam. What an odd thing to think about. She could, of course, manually turn it on and off, but who would remember or want to go through that hassle every day? She wondered whether the camera recorded sound too. She would have to ask Eileen, or she could wait and see when she checked its content.

“Nice place,” Kierce said.

“Yeah, you said that on the way in.”

“What year was it built?”

“Sometime in the nineteen twenties.”

“Your late husband’s family. They own the house, right?”

“Yes.”

Kierce sat. She stayed standing.

“So what can I do for you, Detective?”

“Just some follow-up, that kind of thing.”

“Follow-up?”

“Bear with me, okay?” Kierce gave her what he must imagine was a disarming smile. Maya wasn’t buying it. “Where is it...?” He dug into his inside jacket pocket and pulled out a frayed notepad. “Do you mind if we go through it one more time?”

Maya wasn’t sure what to make of him, which was probably what Kierce wanted. “What would you like to know?”

“Let’s start at the beginning, okay?”

She sat and spread her hands as if to say, Go ahead.