in hell...? “I know where she lives. I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.”
Incredulity and worry spinning in his head, he finished shaving, got dressed and went out the door without his usual second cup of coffee. In front of her building, he parked directly behind a squad car.
After he rapped lightly on the door that had a closed sign and no one came, he went in. An astonishing array of colors filled the space. Rows and rows of fabric on bolts flowed naturally from one shade to another, while quilts hung on every wall. At the rear was a door leading into another space that had been a storeroom in the past, but he knew Ms. Markovic was offering classes now, so maybe she’d converted it. The store was a whole lot more appealing than it had been the last time he’d been here, after Mrs. Jefferson’s death.
To his right, a wide doorway opened to a hall that gave access to a restroom for customers, ending at a back door. He was all too familiar with the layout, including the oddly shaped closet beneath the staircase. Ben stopped long enough now to examine the lock on the apartment door.
Voices came from above as he mounted the stairs. One step still creaked, resulting in abrupt silence above. Sure enough, Officer Grumbach appeared at the head of the staircase.
“Chief.” He looked relieved.
Ben nodded a greeting and entered the apartment.
Nadia sat in an easy chair, arms crossed and held tight to her body. Her mass of dark hair was loose and unbrushed. She wore a stretchy camisole with no bra beneath—he had to make a conscious effort not to let his gaze drop to those generous breasts—and what looked like thin sweatpants. Her face was pinched, even paler than last night. And her eyes fixed on him, unblinking.
He sat on the coffee table right in front of her. “Okay,” he said in a deliberately gentle voice, “tell me what happened.”
“I don’t know what happened!” she cried. “Like I’ve told him over and over.”
Hovering by the doorway, the young redheaded officer flushed.
“Let’s put it another way,” Ben said. “I saw you drive out of the parking lot last night.”
Her eyes widened. “You were still there?”
“I was. That was an awful lot of money you had.”
Her teeth chattered. “It never occurred to any of us that something like this could happen.”
“Now I wish I’d escorted you home, too,” he said.
Nadia shook her head. “I got home fine. I had the box. I thought of hiding it downstairs, but I decided to keep it close by instead. So I put it on the dresser in my bedroom.”
He went very still, not liking the implication.
Officer Grumbach cleared his throat. “When I checked, the back door was unlocked. And Ms. Markovic says the door at the foot of the stairs was unlocked this morning, too.”
“But I checked both last night!” Nadia’s voice rose. “I locked my apartment door and verified that I had. I did!”
Unable to help himself, Ben reached out and laid a hand over hers, now writhing in her lap. She froze, took a couple of deep breaths and continued in a quieter voice, “I worried a little, because I always do, but how could anyone get in?”
He frowned. “Are you a heavy sleeper?”
“Not usually, but I don’t think I’ve ever in my life been as tired as I was when I got home last night.”
“That’s understandable.” He took his hand back. “So you were locked up tight last night. The money box was sitting on your dresser when you fell asleep.”
“I had to have slept more deeply than usual. I never even got up to use the bathroom. I turned my air conditioner off because it’s so noisy, but for once it might not have bothered me. If not for my alarm, I wouldn’t have woken up when I did. I was still tired.”
He nodded his understanding. He gave passing thought to whether she could have been drugged, but her eyes were clear, she was unlikely to have been drinking anything during cleanup at the end of the evening, and he’d heard from more than one person that she’d been at the mansion from the beginning of setup early in the morning to the very end, at close to eleven. She had to have been dead on her feet.
Her teeth closed on her lower lip, the eyes that met his desperate. “Without the air conditioner, it was hot up here.”
An upstairs apartment like this would be, even though it was still early summer.
“All I had on was this—” she plucked at her camisole “—and panties. I didn’t even have a sheet over me.”
Horror to match hers filled him. No, she hadn’t been raped, but she’d been violated anyway.
“He—” her voice shook, and she swallowed “—he could have stood there and looked at me. And I never knew it.” She went back to trying to hug herself.
“Officer Grumbach, please go find Ms. Markovic a sweater or sweatshirt.”
He nodded and disappeared into her bedroom. She didn’t even seem to notice until Grumbach handed her a zip-front, hooded sweatshirt. After a moment, she put it on and hunched inside it.
“This morning?” he nudged.
She accepted the cue. “This morning, I got up, grabbed clothes and started into the bathroom. That’s when I realized the box was gone. I knew where I’d left it, but I ran around searching anyway. I don’t know what I was thinking. That I sleepwalked? Hallucinated last night? Anyway, I searched this whole damn place, then I ran down to my car to make sure I didn’t leave it on the seat. I parked in front last night,” she added.
“That was smart.” He nodded his approval. “Do you lock the car?” Not everyone in Henness County did. Law enforcement kept busy enough, but the crime rate per capita was substantially lower in what was usually a peaceful town and rural surroundings than it had been in urban Camden, New Jersey.
“I always do. And it was still locked, so I knew—” She gulped to a stop.
Ben straightened, careful not to let her see what he was thinking. Because there were two possibilities here, and the most obvious was that she was lying through her teeth. If so, she was one hell of a liar, but he didn’t know her well. Nobody in these parts did. The first thing he’d do when he got to the station was run a thorough search on Nadia Markovic’s background.
Possibility two was that somebody had somehow unlocked two doors without leaving a scratch or making a lot of noise—because however sound her sleep, Ben was betting she’d have woken if she heard a strange sound right there in her apartment—and walked out with the money. And if that was the case...odds were good the thief had been a participant or volunteer at the auction. Who else would know who had the money?
What would have happened if she had awakened to see someone looming in her bedroom? Had the thief been prepared to kill if necessary?
A question he didn’t need to ask himself until he eliminated the possibility that she had either planned the
