it one step at a time. See if there’s anything missing.” In a gesture of support, Burke placed his hand on her shoulder.
The warmth of his touch melted the coldness that enveloped her. Yet even as it comforted, it stirred other unsettling emotions.
She moved away and picked up a brightly decorated clay pot that had somehow survived undamaged. The miniature rose that had been inside it lay next to it. Laura placed the plant back into the pot along with all the soil she could scoop up.
The small act of restoration made her feel better.
“Look, but don’t touch anything else yet,” Burke said, gazing around the room. “The police will want to work the scene and check for evidence. They’ll search for fingerprints.”
As she saw the debris in the hall, Laura felt a new wave of panic slam into her. Her office. She had to check her computer. The book was finished, but she had other important files on her hard drive—the beginning of a future book, for one.
She rushed down the hall, but although the room was in shambles, her computer appeared untouched. She counted that as a major blessing, and tried to ignore the way her chest tightened as she looked at the chaos surrounding her. Files lay all over the floor, papers everywhere. Reference books had been tossed around, and some of the older ones had lost pages and had their spines broken. Taking a deep, unsteady breath, she stepped back out into the hall.
As she went into the bedrooms, she saw they had not fared well, either. Everything had been rifled through. In her room, the contents of every drawer had been dumped onto the floor. Her small jewelry box had been upended, but as she sorted through the jumble of pieces, she saw that nothing was missing, not even her most expensive watch, earrings or matching pendant.
Laura went through the rest of the house numbly. She checked for the obvious things burglars usually took, like the TV set and VCR, but both were there, intact, and none of the simple tools in the garage had even been touched.
“I just don’t understand this,” she muttered. “What on earth were they after?”
Hearing a loud knock, she returned to the living room. A police officer in a blue uniform had come in the open door and was looking around. She introduced herself and took him from room to room.
“Any idea who did this?” he asked her. Seeing her shake her head, he added, “Smells like you had a gas leak, too.”
She gave him a quick rundown of what had happened, including what the gas company serviceman had said.
“I’m going to check for the point of entry and dust that area for fingerprints, but I’ve got to tell you, we generally don’t have a lot of luck finding the perps in these cases. Our best chance is if we catch them in the act somewhere else, or fencing the stolen property. Of course, we’ll ask your neighbors if they saw or heard anyone or noticed an unfamiliar vehicle. We’ll cover all the usual bases, but after that…”
Laura felt her stomach plummet. In her books the cops always had sufficient resources and the determination to solve every crime. But this was real life, and too often victims were just that—victims. The label made her angry. Someone had broken into her home and turned her life into chaos, and she was supposed to just shrug it off?
Burke came to stand beside her. It was a small gesture, but one she appreciated. He had a commanding presence about him that she found oddly reassuring.
“What you can do is figure out how to get your life back to normal—fast,” Burke advised. “For starters, you’ll need to have dead bolts installed and a good, solid back door. I think the burglar was able to kick it in because it wasn’t constructed to stand up to punishment. Learn from this and you can keep it from ever happening again.”
“And who knows?” the officer agreed. “We may get lucky and catch the perp and recover whatever he stole from you.”
“For now, let’s finish going through the house and see what that could be,” Burke said. “You’ll need to make a list.”
It was like walking through a nightmare. Laura went down the hall with the men and, as they passed the closet containing the gas furnace, Burke stopped and crouched down beside it. The metal panel had been ripped off the heater.
“From the marks I see, it looks like they were trying to search the space between the furnace and wall,” Burke said. “Of course, in doing that, the intruder moved the furnace enough to extinguish the pilot light and break the gas connection. It looks like he damaged the furnace as well.”
As they entered Elena’s room, Laura saw a tiny silver pendant Elena cherished on the floor, along with other items from the top of her dresser. She picked the pendant up, grateful that it hadn’t been stepped on. It had been the last gift Elena had received from her husband before he died. Laura placed it inside her jacket pocket in an attempt to protect this one special thing.
As her thoughts turned to her godmother, Laura began to worry. Elena was in her late sixties and had a weak heart. The last thing she needed was to come home to a disaster like this, and then be forced to spend the night in an unheated house. Lately, the nighttime temperatures had been in the low forties here in the desert. They’d have to find a motel.
“I’ve got to start cleaning up and making arrangements for a place to spend the night,” Laura said.
“I’m going to need a list and description of what’s missing first,” the officer said.
“I haven’t found anything missing yet,” she answered.
With obvious reluctance, Laura headed back to her office. It was here, where she created her stories, that the chaos the intruder had left behind bit into her heart the most. In this room, alone with the ghosts who peopled a writer’s imagination, she’d found peace. But now all there was in here was confusion. The sense that the dearest part of herself had been violated almost brought her to tears.
It would take days to get everything back in order. Thank goodness she’d just ended a project rather than being in the middle of one.
“Was this someone’s idea of a sick joke? They must have looked through every page in here,” Laura murmured, her spirits sagging.
“It appears that they were searching for something in particular, perhaps a letter or document,” Burke said. “Can you think of what that might have been?”
Hearing a familiar but frightened voice calling out from the front of the house, Laura spun around. “Oh, no! Elena’s back early.”
Laura rushed to intercept her godmother. She’d hoped to find a way to soften the blow before Elena returned. As Laura reached the front door, she saw her frozen there, terror and shock on her face.
“It’s all right,” Laura said gently. “No one’s been hurt. We can always replace things.”
Elena was a petite, well-rounded woman with an affable manner and an easy smile that made friends almost anywhere. Now she looked as if she’d just witnessed the death of a loved one.
“Someone broke into the house. In the process, they created this mess and even managed to break off the valve on the furnace,” Laura said calmly. “But the gas is turned off now, so it’s just a matter of cleaning up and repairing or replacing the furnace. And believe it or not, I haven’t discovered anything missing.”
