Charlaine Harris - Day Shift

“Preposterous. She would have told me. I took care of her.” He turned his challenging glare to Olivia, trying and failing to look her directly in the eyes. He turned on his sister. “Have you gotten Mother’s suite cleaned out yet?”

“You’re not moving into the house,” Annelle said, exasperation in every word. “We’ve gone over this and over this. We’re going to sell it. God knows, Rosie and I don’t want to live in it, and you can’t afford to buy us out. You can stay in the pool house until we sell this place.”

The gardener was as rapt as though he were watching his favorite reality show.

“You may go,” Lewis told Olivia, in a patronizing way. “None of this is your concern.”

The gardener was shaking his head silently, trying not to laugh.

It wasn’t Olivia’s concern, true, but it was interesting. Olivia smiled, making sure she looked completely benevolent. “Yes, I have to get to my next appointment.” She glanced at her wrist to check the time. “I’ll be late if I don’t get moving.” She maintained the smile as she got into the car and buckled up, relieved to feel the blast of the air-conditioning after she turned on the ignition. She managed a cheerful little finger wave at the three people staring after her as she circled the round rosebed and left the property.

When she’d reached a more mundane street, she drove through a Wendy’s to get some iced tea with lemon. It tasted absolutely wonderful. She sipped it on her way to her motel, which was a far cry from Vespers. She parked around the corner from the stairs to her room and looked the lot over carefully before going to the second floor. No one had been in her room; the maid had come before she’d left that morning.

Olivia was used to being disguised, but it was a special relief to pull off the wig that had turned her into Rebecca Mansfield. She washed her face in the sink, scrubbing it with the skimpy washcloth. Divesting herself of Rebecca’s clothes, she threw herself on the bed to think. Instead of plotting her next move, she thought of the almost hysterical hostility Lewis Goldthorpe had thrown at her, though he hadn’t known who she was or why she was at the house. Olivia grimaced, imagining living with someone that angry and unrealistic, day after day, especially if you were elderly and sick and worried. It would be exhausting.

Olivia felt a rare moment of empathy for Rachel Goldthorpe.

She wished she had killed Lewis. What a useless waste of oxygen.

She decided to search the house that night. She had looked very carefully at the alarm system. She’d worked at an alarm company for a while, and she knew what to look for.

Olivia was certain that the maid, Bertha, didn’t sleep in. A woman as unpretentious as Rachel (going by Manfred’s description) would not have sleep-in staff. But Olivia hadn’t survived until now without double checking, so she drove back to Rachel’s neighborhood at four thirty that afternoon in her own car. At one minute after five o’clock, she watched Bertha drive away in an old Subaru. Interestingly, the gardener was with her, and they were having an animated discussion. Mother and child?

As a bonus, a moment later Olivia saw Annelle depart in a Lexus. Presumably, that left only the odious Lewis in residence in the pool house. She wished she’d managed to see the garage in back, find out what he drove. She returned to her humble motel to finalize her plan, but it remained very basic. She would break into the Goldthorpe house and search for the jewelry. And if Lewis interrupted her? Well, people got killed when they confronted burglars just about every day. No one could blame her for that, right?

Hours later, Olivia parked blocks away from Old Pioneer Street. She’d leave her car, the rental, on a more modest street, one where there were occasional pedestrians and a few other cars parked at the curb. She was still in Bonnet Park, though, so she’d taken care to be appropriately camouflaged in black jeans, a flowered T-shirt, and high-end sneakers. Her hair was braided. She strode away confidently, the messenger bag slung over her shoulder. In it were some innocent items: a thin dark sweater, a wallet (with the identification of Rebecca Mansfield, which she’d used when she’d rented the car), some keys, a broad knit hair band, things anyone might need. She had had to include a few things no innocent person would carry, though, so this was definitely the vulnerable part of her evening.

Nobody seemed to be curious tonight. A casually dressed, attractive woman out for a walk was not anything unusual in the neighborhood a few streets from Old Pioneer. Perhaps the bag was a little odd; most women wouldn’t choose to take their evening walk carrying a bag. Apparently, if any of the inhabitants noticed her, they didn’t find anything suspicious in her progress toward the fancier area where the Goldthorpe house stood.

Olivia didn’t see a single patrol car as she walked.

In fact, she didn’t see that many moving vehicles, period. Though it was Friday, Olivia estimated at least ninety percent of the people of this Dallas suburb were home. At least two or three percent of the rest were gone on their summer vacations. And a percentage of the remainder were at the movies or out having drinks. By the time Olivia reached the Goldthorpes’ street, she was completely unobserved. When she reached the right driveway, she simply turned in to walk up it.

After her confident entrance, her path became more circumspect. She stepped off the crunchy gravel right away and moved silently across the grass to hide in the shadows created by a clump of bushes. She crouched and listened, closing her eyes to aid the process. Nothing moved in her immediate vicinity. After a moment, a car passed on the street, but it didn’t slow or turn in. Olivia’s lips turned up in a smile. Manfred had warned her there were surveillance cameras, but she had noticed this afternoon that the two in front were stationary, mounted on the front corners of the house. They were both aimed toward the front door. That left Olivia plenty of room to approach the house unseen. In her pool of shadow, she pulled on the dark cardigan and buttoned it to conceal her T-shirt. She slid the broad hair band across her forehead and neck to keep her braid from swinging. She tugged it down low over her brows. She tucked dark thin plastic gloves into her waistband. She’d need them soon, along with her lockpicks. She exhaled deeply and almost silently before she began her creepy-crawl up to the main house.

This was what Olivia lived for. Her heart beat faster, and though she didn’t realize it, she was smiling. Since she knew the cameras were pointed at the front door area, she kept to the hedge as she worked her way toward the left side of the house. One of those windows would be her first attempt at entry. She hoped the front room, the formal living room, would provide her access, because that room had no furniture drawn up to the windows, a glance had told her.

If everything was tight as a drum on both sides, she’d resort to the lockpicks on one of the doors. But Olivia felt optimistic; the evening had had a good beginning. She drew parallel to the living room windows and had to leave her cover to cross the driveway and reach the shelter of the foundation plantings. The camellia bushes (she thought that was what they were) had ample space between them for her to hug the wall below the window. With some excitement she reached up to feel out the situation.

Then everything went to hell.

Manfred was hungry, and he was tired of feeling trapped in his house. Toward evening, the reporters began to drift away, and he felt pleased with himself. After eleven o’clock, he got into his car and drove to Davy, picking a barbecue joint called Moo and Oink, which was about the only place open this late. He had the chopped beef and the beans and the onion rings, and he enjoyed every bite. Most of all, he enjoyed being in a place that wasn’t his house.