Chapter 6 - Someone Had Been in Her Home
The first sign was June's drawing on the floor.
Imani had taped it above the kitchen sink two weeks earlier: a yellow dog, a woman with an enormous round belly, and a girl carrying a purple umbrella. Now the tape was torn. The drawing lay facedown beside the trash can.
On the drive over, Imani had rehearsed finding the apartment empty. She worried about June's birthday cards, the secondhand bassinet she'd put on layaway, and the quilt her grandmother made from old church dresses. The fear embarrassed her until she realized how thoroughly a home could be threatened without anybody stealing a television. Every object carried a piece of someone who had loved her when money was scarce.
She did not enter the apartment alone. Detective Walker had arranged for officers to document the premises, and Celia accompanied Imani after it was safe to return. The door bore no damage. Quentin had helped install the lock; someone using a key would not have needed to force it.
The couch cushions were crooked. A drawer stood open. Nothing expensive was missing, although expensive was a relative word in a home where a working refrigerator counted as a blessing.
“My daughter's school project was in that drawer,” Imani said.
“What project?” Nia asked.
“Pictures of the things she notices on the walk to school. She took one of the blue marks on the pipe under our sink.”
“Did she have the photographs somewhere else?”
“She printed them at the library. The library might have the files, but I don't know.”
Imani examined the kitchen without touching the surfaces investigators had asked her to leave alone. A new blue streak marked the wall behind the sink. The small square access panel had been removed and screwed back in crookedly.
“Someone worked on that,” she said.
Nia wrote it down.
A contractor's form on the counter claimed Imani had consented to a safety inspection at 2:11 p.m. The signature was a clumsy imitation of her name, with the last letter looping backward.
“That's not how I sign,” Imani said.
Celia photographed it. “We can compare it with the lease documents. Don't let anyone rush you to decide the full meaning right now.”
Imani opened her bedroom closet. Her hospital bag, packed early because she liked to be prepared, had been dumped out. The tiny green sleeper Alicia bought for the baby lay crumpled beneath a work boot she didn't recognize.
She picked up the sleeper. Her fingers shook.
“Why go through this?”
Nia had no immediate answer. “Tell me what's missing. We'll check what we can establish.”
Imani counted diapers, two spare shirts, and her prenatal appointment cards. All remained. One thing was gone: the old blue notebook where she had recorded tenants' complaints whenever someone stopped her at the leasing office. She had meant it for management. Now she couldn't find it anywhere.
She remembered a sentence she had written on the second page: Bernice says they painted pipes blue before the photographer came.
“That's what they wanted,” she said.
“Maybe,” Nia replied. “It's an important possibility.”
At Alicia's apartment, June watched her mother fold the damaged drawing into a folder.
“They broke my dog,” June said.
“No, baby. The paper's torn.” Imani smoothed the page. “Your dog is still right here.”
June traced the yellow ears with her finger. “Atlas isn't yellow.”
“I know. That's why it's your drawing.”
Alicia laughed from the stove. June laughed too, then grew quiet.
“I took pictures because Daddy said I should notice things people step over.”
Her father, Andre Cole, worked long-haul trucking routes and had been driving in Arizona when June disappeared. He had divorced Imani three years earlier after too many promises about being home that turned into another week on the road. He loved June. He also had a history of letting work make every hard conversation someone else's responsibility.
He arrived that evening, straight from the airport, looking exhausted and ashamed.
June ran to him but stopped short.
“You didn't answer when I called,” she said.
Andre crouched. “I was on the highway and didn't see it until later.”
“You always say that.”
He swallowed. “You're right.”
Imani didn't rescue him from the moment. She let June decide whether she wanted a hug. After a while, the girl climbed into his arms.
Andre looked at Imani over June's shoulder. “What do you need me to do?”
“Stop asking for one day at a time,” she said. “She needs to know what she can count on.”
He nodded. “I'll call my dispatcher.”
“You can call after dinner. Right now, listen to her.”
Later, Malik stopped by with an update. A neighbor's doorbell camera captured a Caldwell maintenance van outside Imani's unit at 2:09 p.m. Dennis Rourke entered with another man and left twenty minutes later carrying a flat blue notebook.
Rourke had already claimed to detectives that he spent the afternoon supervising work at Building A.
“Where's the notebook now?” Imani asked.
“They haven't recovered it.”
The doorbell footage offered a clearer image of his companion. He wore a white hard hat and a company badge, but his face was unfamiliar.
Andre leaned closer to the screen.
“I know that man.”
Imani turned. “From where?”
“He handled the fleet account for the trucking company I used to work for. Name's Everett Moss. He wasn't a plumber.”
“What did he do?”
Andre's expression tightened.
“He bought and sold damaged buildings.”
The photograph froze on Everett carrying the notebook toward the van.
May you like
If a property investor had been searching a cleaner's kitchen while her daughter was missing, the problem extended beyond an unpaid maintenance bill.
And when Imani remembered the redevelopment brochure Rochelle had shown her, she understood there was a second prize waiting for Caldwell after the old pipes disappeared: apartments without the tenants who knew where the damage had been.
