Tips for Living(50)

This game had just changed. My jaw muscles clenched and my insides swirled. I had the impulse to turn the car around, but I knew I had to pull it together and go in there. I reached for the phone in my purse to call Gubbins as I steered into the driveway, searching with one hand while maneuvering around the county police squad cars and vans. A stocky female officer tapped my hood and signaled to stop and roll the window down.

“Leave the keys in the ignition and step out of the vehicle, please.”

“What’s going on?” I asked, feigning indignation.

“Just put your hands where I can see them and follow my instructions.”

“But—”

“Now.”

I dropped the phone back into my bag, turned off the engine and opened the car door. “Can I bring my purse?”

She eyed it and nodded.

“Who’s in charge here?” I asked, stepping out.

Before she could answer, I saw a cop in my living room through the open front door. He was dropping my MacBook into a heavy-gauge plastic bag.

“Hey! They can’t take my computer! My whole life is on there.”

Instinctively, I tried to duck the female officer’s outstretched arm and run toward the house. But she put a firm hand on my chest.

“Let’s go in together calmly, shall we?”

I took a big swallow of air, nodded and straightened up as another officer aimed a spotlight at my car. I stood in its glare, momentarily paralyzed, until my chaperone ushered me along. When we reached the doorway, I hesitated again, disoriented by what I saw. The officer nudged me forward.

“Step inside, please.”

I wobbled and held on to the doorframe as I stared.

My living room looked like it was being organized for a moving-day tag sale. The kilim lay rolled up against a wall. The furniture had been pushed to the room’s center and the cushions removed from the couch and chairs. Their blue-and-white mattress ticking covers sat in a pile on the rocker. Bookshelves stood empty, hardcovers and paperbacks stacked on the floor. The holiday cards sent by charities I intended to make small donations to had been removed from my desk drawer and laid out on the coffee table along with my bank statements, notepads, old postcards and an assemblage of miscellaneous writing instruments and keys. My father remained upright in his frame on my desktop, surveying the goods.

The cop who’d bagged the computer knelt at the woodstove, sifting through the dead ashes with a poker. What the hell was he looking for in there? I glanced down and spied Moby Dick on top of a book pile just as my own personal Ahab came out of the kitchen. He was wearing another one of his tweedy jackets along with blue plastic gloves.

“I’ll take the purse over here,” Roche said.

The female officer began to lift the shoulder bag off my arm. I started to grab it.

“Hey!”

“You’re not going to be trouble now,” she warned.

I released the bag, took a breath and gathered my wits. It was best to stay cool and address Roche as a professional doing his job.

“I assume you have a warrant,” I said.

“Right here.”

Roche pulled some folded papers out of his jacket pocket as the officer delivered the purse. “Permission to search your premises and personal property, including your electronic equipment and car.”

“You’re wasting time and taxpayer money. You won’t find anything, because I didn’t kill anyone,” I said, trying to sound confident.

“Then you have nothing to worry about,” he said, and walked back into the kitchen with the leather bag slung over his arm.

Making my way around the displaced furniture, I followed. I saw him set my purse down on the kitchen table. Then he reached inside, pulled out my cell and began to bag it. My cool demeanor collapsed.

“No, please,” I pleaded. “You can’t take that. I don’t have a landline. I won’t have a phone.”

“I’m sorry. That’s unfortunate.”

“I’m entitled to call my lawyer.”

“You’ll be able to do that very soon.”

He lifted out the composition notebook next. Had I written anything incriminating? I couldn’t think fast enough.

“You shouldn’t look in there.”

He paused and studied my face. “Really? And why not?”

“Those are story notes for an article I’m writing. They’re confidential. If you read them, you’ll be violating the journalist shield laws.”

“Sounds juicy.”

He thumbed through the comp book while I glanced anxiously around the kitchen. The cabinet doors were ajar. Cereal and pasta boxes lined up on the counter next to the mail, which was laid out for inspection. Envelopes had been ripped open, their contents obviously read.

“Enjoy messing with cops?” Roche asked as he closed the comp book.

“What?”

“Vive la Resistance. The speed traps.”

I swallowed nervously. “It was a joke.”

“Huh.”

Seemingly satisfied that there was nothing of interest to him in the notes, Roche set the book down on the kitchen table. He reached into the purse again and found the Princess Leia sketchbook. My pulse rate spiked. How would carrying around Hugh’s naked sketches of me look to the police? I had to think of something . . .