Chapter Two
TWO
Tim
New York State Police Investigator Tim Wellington tapped the tip of his pen against the notebook with his eyebrows yanked toward his nose. The page before him was mostly blank, the white space herding out three lines of neat print. “Two pairs of jeans. Is that right?”
“Yes,” the woman answered, her expression grim. “Two—plus the bikini, don’t forget the bikini. And the tops. Three tees, one jean jacket. White denim with indigo cuffs.”
Tim glanced back down at what he’d just written, which looked more like a birthday wish list than an itemized inventory of stolen items. “And there’s nothing else missing? Artwork? Valuables? Electronics?” His voice verged on hopeful.
“Nothing at all. As far as I can tell, everything else is just how we left it.”
The woman cut her gaze to the shouting in the back room, which gave Tim a chance to trade a dubious look with Jeremy Solomon. Sol scratched the stubble that caked his jaw, and gave a helpless shrug.
They’d been called to the house for a suspected break-in, met at the door by the homeowner, twin toddler boys in matching nautical sweaters, and a barking black Lab.
The woman, whose name was Annalise Greene, had come up from the suburbs of Boston to open the house for the summer, her husband set to make the trip in time for the upcoming long weekend.
The North Country was as far north as you could get without landing in Canada, but like so many others, the Greenes would be staying all season.
Here to enjoy the fresh river breeze, the yacht they’d paid someone to take out of dry dock, and an extravagant second home.
Theirs was one of the bigger properties in Cape Vincent, three cedar-clad stories looming over a wrap-around porch, but by September the Greenes would be gone again, this majestic mansion scrubbed clean and locked up tight for fall and winter.
Until Mrs. Greene arrived last night, no one had set foot in the place for months.
And yet, her summer wardrobe was short two pairs of jeans, three tops, a bikini, and a jacket she swore up and down had been in her closet last summer.
In all the years that he’d worked as a detective with the state’s Bureau of Criminal Investigation, this had to be the strangest theft Tim had ever seen.
“It’s cases like these that make me grateful we live in the sticks,” Sol told him after they’d parted ways with Mrs. Greene and promised to be in touch.
“If this was New York or Chicago, the missing stuff would be meth and there’d be a shooter hiding in the bathroom ready to take our heads off.
What do we get instead? The freaking J. Crew Bandit.
Or more likely, a lady with so many clothes she can’t keep track. ”
“Don’t jinx us,” Tim told his fellow BCI investigator as he steered the SUV off the residential road and onto Route 12, “or we’ll be on a drug raid before noon.
But yeah, this is defin-itely one of our fluffier cases—and don’t forget, my last one involved the alleged trafficking of cocaine that turned out to be laundry soap. ”
It wasn’t that Tim craved a more substantial crime, far from it.
Now more than ever, a peaceful community was exactly what he needed.
The last five years had brought one wild case after another, splashing Jefferson County across national news tickers.
While there was nothing good about those transgressions, which had left the community scabbed and tender to the touch, they had produced two positive outcomes.
The first: Tim’s investigative instincts were nearly pitch-perfect, the violence resonating like a tuning fork to refine his every gut feeling, premonition, and hunch.
He was a different detective now, a specialist whose skills far surpassed what he’d absorbed in prior years of working for the BCI.
The second outcome, which couldn’t be topped, was his daughter.
“It is bizarre, though,” he added, as the car whooshed down the highway toward Alexandria Bay, where the bureau’s Troop D station was based.
The sun blazing through the glass was warm and Tim felt drawn to it like a housecat, but when he cracked the window to keep from overheating, the air delivered a frosty slap.
“She was so specific about what was missing, which makes me think she’d notice if something of real value had disappeared too. ”
“Agreed, she’s a total type A mom. Did you see those kids in their designer sweaters? And the dog’s matching bandana? Sheesh.”
Tim pondered that as he cast a glance at Solomon, whose head nearly brushed the car’s roof.
His long-time colleague had recently gotten a trim, the result not unlike a freshly mowed yard.
Jeremy Solomon’s hair was a high-pile carpet of pewter gray, impervious to rain, snow, even hats.
A feat of nature that never failed to impress.
“She said she hadn’t seen the stuff since the end of last summer,” added Tim, “when they packed up for home. But she’s also sure they didn’t bring it back to Massachusetts with them.”
It wasn’t unusual for summer residents to have a second wardrobe, especially when they stayed for the whole season, and people who spent that much money on clothes tended to rotate pieces in and out.
Tim supposed it was possible the woman had inadvertently donated the missing items, but Solomon was right.
She seemed too hyper-organized for that.
“Remember when I asked about the husband? If he knew where the stuff had gone? She said she hadn’t brought it up and didn’t want to bother him at work.
No qualms about bothering the state police, though. ”
“Maybe the husband has a lady friend,” offered Sol. “Think he’d let her do some shopping in his wife’s closet while she was out?”
It was a theory, but they didn’t have a lick of proof.
The lack of evidence—any evidence at all—was precisely the problem.
Annalise Greene was missing some clothes, she’d called the state police to report a burglary, and Tim and Sol hadn’t found a single sign of a break-in: no open window, cracked doorframe, or scratched lock.
And when they’d pressed the subject of access, asking whether a relative, neighbor, handyman, or cleaner could easily gain entry to the house, Annelise had sworn she and Mr. Greene possessed the only keys.
“I honestly don’t know what else it could be,” Solomon said. “The whole thing is weird as hell.”
Tim had to agree. In spite of the twins and the big black dog, the house had been decked out like the Met, every room decorated with expensive-looking paintings and vintage prints.
There was no alarm system—few homes in the remote region had them—but Annelise Greene had been positive that she’d locked all the windows and doors.
If someone had broken in during the off-season, when the house had been sitting empty, surely they would have cleaned the place out.
A burglar wouldn’t bypass quick-grab valuables in favor of a stranger’s used clothing.
Would they?