Crash & Burn (Tessa Leoni, #3)(40)

“Mr. Frank,” he said, “mind if we take a look at your shoes and coat?”

“What?”

“Your shoes and coat. You know, whatever you were wearing on Wednesday.”

“I already told you, I was here—”

“Which will make our inspection very quick. But we gotta verify your story, you know. It’s part of our job. As long as you’re telling the truth, I’m sure you won’t mind.”

Thomas, no dummy, thinned his lips. But with his wife standing there, still regarding him stonily . . . He stalked back to the foyer, yanked open the closet door. “By all means. Have at it.”

Kevin and Wyatt helped themselves. They identified a light Windbreaker, a heavy wool jacket, a well-used ski coat, plus a designer leather jacket, the usual suspects for a middle-aged man. Shoes lined up the same. Tennis shoes, old and new, hiking boots, well-worn. Then: a brown pair of slip-on Merrells with their thick soles heavily encrusted with sand.

Kevin pulled them out with a pencil. He gave Wyatt a serious look. “We should have these tested.”

Thomas immediately held up a hand. “Wait. Tested? What do you mean?”

“This sand. Of course, I’m just a detective, not one of the lab geeks, but looks to me to be the same color, consistency, of the roadside sand near your wife’s crash.”

“What? It’s just sand. Traditional New England sand, dumped everywhere this time of year to help manage patches of ice. Of course I have it on my shoes. After all those days of rain, damn stuff is washed up into piles everywhere. Hell, step out on my driveway.”

Wyatt stared at him. “Sure? We test these shoes, the sand won’t come back as matching that stretch of road?”

“Oh, give me a break.”

Kevin gave Wyatt a slight shrug. They were selling their story; Thomas just wasn’t buying it.

“These all your husband’s shoes?” Wyatt asked Nicole, who’d followed them back to the entryway.

“I think so.”

“And the jackets?”

She hesitated. “Raincoat,” she murmured. “A black-and-silver raincoat. I don’t see it.”

Was it Wyatt’s imagination, or did Thomas flinch again?

“Mr. Frank?”

“It was wet. I wore it back and forth to the work shed during the storm on Wednesday. Of course it became soaked.”

“Where is it now?”

No doubt about it, the man’s voice was sullen. “I hung it up in the basement. In the laundry room, for it to dry.”

Wyatt glanced at Nicole. “Mind showing us to the laundry room? Then we could be all done here.”

Nicole paled. For a moment, Wyatt thought she might refuse. But then she squared her shoulders, shot her husband a look that was hard to interpret and headed once more down the hall.

Turned out, door to the basement was behind the entryway staircase, off the family room. Nicole yanked open the door with more force than was strictly necessary, snapping on a light. Wyatt made out a downward flight of rough wooden stairs, leading to a bare cement floor below.

In front of him, Nicky took a deep breath in, blew it out, then grabbed the railing and began her descent.

The stairs scared her. Wyatt noted her white-knuckle grip on the railing, the way she took each step one by one. Post-traumatic stress? he wondered. An instinctive response to the site of her first accident? He didn’t ask. Just watched her slow but determined progress.

The risers felt sturdy enough, he thought, making his own descent behind her. A little narrow and steep. Coming down them with a laundry basket wouldn’t be the easiest task. Day after day . . . Perhaps some kind of fall had been inevitable.

“These days, I slide the basket down,” Nicky murmured, as if reading his mind. “It’s probably what I should’ve done from the beginning. Just toss the clothes down, then make my way after them.”

“What about coming back up when the clothes are clean and neatly folded?”

“That’s Thomas’s job now. I wash the clothes; he moves them.”

“Why not have him just take over the laundry duty?”

“He ruins my delicates,” she said, and it took Wyatt a second to realize she wasn’t joking.

Arriving in the middle of the basement, Wyatt discovered a surprisingly large and open space. Probably meant to be turned into a rec room, man cave, in-law suite, whatever might suit a couple best. One corner had been framed off and finished into a combination laundry room, lower-level bath.

“You guys do this?” he asked Nicky. Kevin and Thomas were still descending behind them.

“One of Thomas’s first projects,” she volunteered. “I told him I didn’t want to do laundry all covered in spiders. So he made me a real room. Said it was his contribution to clean clothes everywhere.”

“Nice setup,” Wyatt observed, taking in the state-of-the-art front-loading washer and dryer, topped with a long laminate countertop to serve as a folding table. Then, of course, upper cabinets to hold laundry detergents, fabric sheets, cleaning basics.

As a carpenter himself, Wyatt appreciated Thomas’s attention to detail. The room was professional grade, no doubt about it. Which made Wyatt wonder, after going through this much work to create a separate laundry facility, why the hell hadn’t Thomas taken the time and effort to build a better, safer flight of stairs?