CHAPTER SIX
The neighboring house between Carol Paige and Deb Leander was the Coffey residence.
Ruthanne Coffey answered the door. She was seventy-one years old and answered the door wearing a cardigan and orthopedic shoes.
She invited them in warmly before Kate had finished introducing herself.
Her living room was warm and smelled like cinnamon, and she gestured toward the couch with the automatic hospitality of someone who had been raised to offer a seat before anything else.
“Can I get you anything?” Ruthanne asked. “I have coffee on.”
"We're fine, thank you," Kate said. "We just have a few questions about your neighbor, Carol Paige."
Ruthanne's face shifted, but she also nodded knowingly. "I heard the police were over there this morning. I've been sitting here not knowing what to think." She lowered herself into the armchair across from them. "Is she all right?"
"I'm sorry to tell you that Carol passed away last night," Sloane said. "We're investigating the circumstances."
Ruthanne went very still. She looked back and forth between the agents as if expecting more information. When it was clear she wasn't going to get any more, she said: "Passed away," in the careful tone of someone making sure they had understood correctly.
"Yes. I'm sorry."
She was quiet for a moment, her hands folded tightly in her lap. "That poor woman. She was such a lovely person." She shook her head slowly. "What happened?"
"We're not able to share those details yet," Sloane said. "But anything you can tell us about last night would be very helpful."
"Last night?" Ruthanne straightened slightly, visibly pulling herself toward usefulness.
"I went to bed at 9:00. I do every night, it's just my habit now.
I didn't hear a thing." She paused and seemed to find that answer insufficient.
"I'm a sound sleeper. Always have been. My husband says a brass band could march through the bedroom and I wouldn't stir. "
“And where is your husband?”
"At work. I know… It's a damn shame he has to work at seventy years of age, but that's the state of things. He's an instructor at the community college—British Lit."
“And was he here last night?” Sloane asked.
"He was. He was reading right beside me when I went to sleep. Then he woke me up for a moment when he turned his lamp off a while later.
"Before you went to bed," Kate said, "did you notice anything outside? A car you didn't recognize, anyone on foot? Anything at that seemed off?"
Ruthanne thought about it carefully. "Nothing that stands out, no." She pressed her lips together. "I'm sorry. I wish I could tell you something useful."
“Were you aware that Carol left her backdoor unlocked for one of her friends?” Kate asked.
“Yes, that would be Deb. They were thick as thieves.”
"How well did you know Carol?" Sloane asked.
"Since she and her ex-husband moved in. So…
what… eleven or twelve years, I suppose.
We weren't close the way she and Deb were, but we'd wave in the mornings and chat over the fence in the summer.
She was a good neighbor. Quiet, kept her yard nice.
" She looked toward the window and frowned.
"She'd been through a difficult time with the divorce and I always thought she handled it with a lot of grace. "
"Did she have many visitors?" Sloane asked.
"Not many. Her daughter came around every now and then.
And Deb, of course. Deb was in and out all the time.
" Ruthanne folded her hands in her lap and looked to them; it almost seemed like she was hoping to generate helpful information from thin air.
"I saw a car I didn't recognize in her driveway once or twice over the past few months. Nothing that struck me as unusual."
"Did you notice anything at all last night? A car parked on the street, anyone on foot, any lights?"
Ruthanne thought about it with genuine effort, pressing her lips together and looking toward the window. "Nothing," she said finally. "I'm sorry. I really do wish I could be more helpful."
They thanked her for her time and were back on the sidewalk three minutes later.
They worked the rest of the block through the morning and into early afternoon, knocking on doors, and introducing themselves.
They asked the same questions in slightly different configurations and continued to disappoint by explaining that they could not share any information.
A man named Gerald Spence, who lived directly across the street and two houses down, had been up late the previous night watching a baseball game and had sat near his front window for most of it.
He claimed to have seen Carol's porch light on and what he thought might have been her car in the driveway, but he could not confirm the time and had noticed nothing else. He said he’d seen no unfamiliar vehicles, no foot traffic, nobody moving through the yards.
He was retired, and he delivered all of this with a manner of excitement that suggested not much interested or excited him much more these days.
Kate believed him completely, which made the absence of useful information that much more frustrating.
Two doors further down on the opposite side of the street, a young woman named Tara Gillis answered in workout clothes with a toddler on her hip.
She had been home all evening but had not looked out at the street after dark.
Her husband had been traveling since Thursday.
She hadn’t heard anything—which she said was typical because this really was a very boring street.
She looked genuinely distressed by the news about Carol and asked twice whether she should be concerned about her own safety.
Kate told her honestly that they had no reason to believe there was a broader threat to the neighborhood, which was true, and Tara accepted it with the careful relief of someone who needed the answer to be true and was willing to let it be.
By two in the afternoon, they had covered the immediate block and a portion of the adjacent street. All they had learned was that Carol Paige had been well-liked and that nobody had seen or heard anything out of the ordinary last night.
They were sitting in the bureau sedan outside the last house they'd visited, discussing their next steps, when Sloane's phone rang.
She looked at the screen, answered it, and said very little for the next ninety seconds.
Kate watched her face and could read enough from it to know the call was not producing anything useful.
Sloane ended the call and set the phone on her knee. "That was Detective Middleton at Metro. He tracked down Charles Paige. He’s living in Oklahoma. And there’s hard evidence that he was home last night."
"Any idea how long he’s been living there?”
“Roughly seven months. Middleton talked to him directly and ran it down."
“What sort of hard evidence are we talking about?”
She looked at the notes she'd typed during the call.
"Charles Paige was at a company dinner last night—at least forty people at a hotel banquet room.
It started at seven and ran past eleven.
He's in four separate photos posted to a company social media account, timestamped across the evening.
He didn't know Carol was dead until Middleton called him this morning.”
"How did he take it?"
"Middleton said he was quiet for a long time and then asked about their daughter." Sloane looked up from her phone. "He's not our guy."
"No," Kate agreed. "He's not."
She looked out through the windshield at the quiet street. The afternoon had turned fully overcast and the light was the flat, diffuse gray of a day that had never really committed to being bright. A leaf skittered across the pavement in front of the car and she watched it go.
Kate was about to recommend a next step but wanted to give Sloane the opportunity to plan. “What do you think the next steps should be?”
"I want to pull the full financial picture on Carol before tomorrow. Bank records, any disputes, anything in the civil court filings. And I want to hear back on the restaurant cameras from Clementine's."
"Agreed." Kate picked up her own phone and checked the time. It was nearly three. She knew her own limits and the boundaries she had set for herself. Nothing Sloane had just mentioned required her to be around. It would mean Sloane would be calling people, looking through financials and the like. If they were severely understaffed, sure… maybe Kate would put in the extra time. But for now, she knew she had to respect her own boundaries as well as her family’s time.
She had gotten much better about it over time, but it was still a struggle every now and then.
Sloane seemed to pick up on this without any discussion. “I’ll drop you off in the parking garage,” she said.
“Thanks. And of course, you know you can call up until nine or so if you need an assist with anything.”
“I know. But I think I’ll be okay.”
They headed back to headquarters, where Sloane dropped her off in the garage.
Kate felt a slight sting of guilt, just coming and going at ease while the harder work remained on Sloane.
But she knew that was the way it had to be if she wanted this part-time consultation gig to work out.
She knew it was the last stretch of her bureau career and that it wouldn’t last long so she wanted to make sure she stayed within the line.
Kate got into her car and they parted without ceremony in the parking structure, both of them carrying the quiet, deflated energy of a day that had generated more questions than answers.
The drive home took twenty-five minutes and Kate did her best to make the switch from agent to mother and wife.
That, too, had become easier over the past few months.
She thought instead about dinner, about whether Allen and Michael had made it to the grocery store and, if they had, what sort of sweets Michael had conned Allen into getting.