Chapter 10 - The Key in the Kitchen Drawer
Dean didn't pretend he hadn't heard.
"My mother," he said.
I'd given Evelyn a key the previous winter so she could let a plumber into our house while Dean and I were out. It had stayed on her ring. I had never asked for it back.
"I need you to tell me everything," I said. "Even the part you think I'll hate."
Dean called Evelyn on speaker. She answered with irritation.
"Mother, did you give Maren our house key?"
"Your sister needed a document from your father's old files."
"That isn't what I asked."
A pause. Then: "I lent it to her. You're acting as if she's a burglar."
"She may have broken into Laurel's accounts."
Evelyn lowered her voice. "Dean, your wife is stirring up trouble she doesn't understand."
He ended the call.
In the afternoon Dalia brought Ivy and my mother, Ruth, to visit. Ivy ran toward the bed, stopped when she saw the hospital bracelets on my wrist, and climbed carefully onto the chair beside me.
"Did I make the baby come early?" she asked.
The question hurt worse than the incision. "No, sweetheart. You did nothing wrong."
"I said no to Aunt Maren. I told her I wouldn't tell a lie. Then she got mad."
I took her hand. "What lie?"
Ivy looked at Dean before answering. "She asked me to say you tripped. She said Daddy would be sad if I didn't."
Dean knelt. "You never have to lie to make me happy. Ever."
Ivy nodded, but she was still holding something tight inside her fist. It was a torn corner of a plastic hotel badge, with the name PIKE visible across the bottom.
"It fell when that man took your phone," she said. "I picked it up so he'd have to come back and tell the truth."
Dalia bent toward the badge. "The hotel uses electronic access cards inside those cases. If it broke off his badge, the system might still have a record of where he went."
May you like
My daughter's fingers loosened against mine.
Then Dalia said, "There's one door Pike opened that night he had absolutely no business opening. The room where we keep the backup security recordings."
