Chapter 57
COOPER
Debbie went to Ken Bryant’s house.
I don’t know why, but Debbie was at Ken’s house yesterday. Findly doesn’t say the exact time she was there, but I recognize the address. I’m trying to think of a benign reason why she could’ve been at the home of my soon-to-be former boss who is supposedly on a fishing trip right now.
I can’t think of any.
My daughters are looking at me with concern as I head back out the front door and climb into my car. I want to reassure them that everything is going to be okay, but with each passing moment, I feel less and less sure that this is the case.
But it could be fine. Maybe Debbie just went there to talk to Ken about the job and asked him to consider letting me stay. I’m sure that’s all it was.
Actually, no, I’m not sure of that at all.
Ken lives in a nice house in Hingham, about a ten-minute drive from our place.
He has kids, although they’re both now in college.
He’s also married, although he rarely talks about his wife, and I get the feeling they may have separated at some point.
So it’s entirely possible that Ken now lives alone in that big house.
When I get there, the house looks quiet. The lights all appear to be out, and there’s no car in his driveway, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t have one parked in the garage. At the very least, it doesn’t appear that there are any signs of life.
I park on the street and get out of my car, holding my breath the whole time. The most likely explanation for the dark house is that Ken is on a fishing trip. Debbie probably came here to plead my case, discovered he wasn’t home, and then left.
But Lexi told me that the app only records addresses that she stopped at for more than ten minutes. So if Ken wasn’t home, what was she doing for ten whole minutes?
I stop at the front door and ring the doorbell. The chimes echo within the house, but when the sound dies down, it’s completely quiet. It’s clear that nobody is going to come to answer the door.
I know from when I watered Ken’s plants for him that he hides a key outside the house.
A lot of people do that in our neighborhood, but Debbie won’t let us.
She insists that they’re too easy to find and somebody could sneak into our home without difficulty.
As I’m checking under the potted plants near his front porch and discover a little bronze key, I have to agree with her.
I return to the front door, this time armed with a key.
As I’m fitting it into the lock, I question what I’m doing.
I am basically breaking into my boss’s house.
He didn’t tell me to water his plants, and he most certainly did not give me permission to enter his home.
Even though I have a key, this is breaking and entering.
But after seeing this location in Debbie’s history, I can’t leave here without checking the house. I have probable cause to enter, although I realize that, legally, that excuse only applies to the police.
Like the outside of his house, the inside of Ken’s house is eerily quiet.
The lights are out, and it’s so silent, you could hear a pin drop.
There’s still enough daylight left for me to be able to look around at his living room, which is a lot nicer than mine.
He can afford all the best furniture and a television that looks about twice the size of mine.
“Ken!” I call out.
Unsurprisingly, there’s no answer.
I don’t know what I expected to find here. My boss’s dead body lying bludgeoned in the middle of the living room? He’s clearly not here. He’s probably fishing, just like he said he was.
As for Debbie, I don’t know what she was doing here, but she clearly didn’t come here to trash the place. The living room is immaculate.
For the first time since I saw this address on the screen of my phone, I feel myself relaxing. Okay, Debbie has been acting strangely lately, and we seem to be temporarily unable to locate her. But she didn’t hurt anyone. She hasn’t completely gone off the deep end.
Everything is going to be fine.
And I would have kept on believing that. I would have turned around and gone home, secure in the knowledge that all was hunky-dory at Ken Bryant’s house, except at that very moment, I hear a phone ringing.
And it’s not a landline. It’s a very distinctive cell phone ring. It’s coming from the direction of the sofa.
I approach the leather sofa in the corner of the room, which seems to be the source of the ringing sound. It’s only when I get closer that I see there is a phone nearly concealed by one of the couch cushions. I pick it up and find Mrs. McCauley’s name flashing on the screen.
After another second, the call goes to voicemail. The lock screen alerts me to multiple missed messages and voicemails, mostly from Mrs. McCauley, that have arrived over the last two days.
Would Ken have gone on a fishing trip without his cell phone?
I suppose it’s possible. Maybe he wanted to unplug for a few days.
But to be honest, that doesn’t sound like Ken.
He is never without his phone. And even if he did decide to leave his phone behind, wouldn’t he have plugged it in to charge?
There’s something wrong here.
My gaze falls on the stairwell to the second floor. I had planned to leave without investigating further, but now my curiosity is piqued. I’m already in the house. I need to check out the second floor.
I place Ken’s phone on the coffee table and head in the direction of the stairwell.