Pretty Girls

Claire felt so overwhelmed that she almost laughed. The woman might as well have asked her to catalogue the Smithsonian. “I’ve got ­people coming. I need to make sur

e the tables are set up. The caterer—­”

“Ma’am,” the cop interrupted, “we can’t let anyone into the house until the scene is cleared.”

Claire put her fist to her mouth so she wouldn’t tell the cop to stop calling her fucking “ma’am.”

“Ma’am?” the cop said.

Claire dropped her fist. There was a car stopped at the bottom of the driveway. Gray Mercedes. Headlights on. Yellow FUNERAL flag hanging out of the window. Another Mercedes slowed to a stop behind it. The funeral procession had finally caught up. What was she going to do? Falling to the ground again seemed like the simplest solution. And then what? The ambulance. The hospital. The sedatives. Eventually, she would be sent home. Eventually, she would find herself standing in this same place again with the detectives and the inventory and insurance and the bullshit. This was all Paul’s fault. He should be here. He should be taking care of all of this. That was his job.

Claire Scott was furious at her dead husband for not being there to solve her problems.

“Honey?” Helen asked.

“I’m okay.” Claire had realized a long time ago that if you lie with enough conviction, you can usually fool yourself. All that she had to do now was generate a to-­do list. That’s what Paul would have done. He had always said there was nothing that a list couldn’t solve. Conquer the details and you conquer the problem. “I’ll go walk the detectives through the house. We’ll need to cancel the wake.” She turned to the limo driver, who’d been discreetly standing to the side. “Can you take my grandmother back to the home, please?” She told the cop, “Please cancel the ambulance. I’m fine. There are over a hundred ­people on their way here. Unless you want them coming into the house, you need to post someone at the bottom of the driveway to stop them.”

“Will do.” The cop seemed happy to get away from them. She practically ran down the driveway.

Claire felt some of her bluster dissipate. She looked at her mother. “I’m not sure I can do this.”

“You’re already doing it.” Helen looped her hand through Claire’s arm and walked with her toward the men in trench coats. “Did you hurt your head when you fainted?”

“No.” Claire felt the back of her head. The bruises from the alley were still tender. Another lump wouldn’t make much of a difference. “Have I ever fainted before?”

“Not that I know of. You should try to do it in the grass next time. I thought you’d cracked open your noggin’.”

She squeezed her mother’s arm. “You don’t have to stay here.”

“I’m not leaving until I know you’re all right.”

Claire pressed together her lips. There had been a time when her mother had been incapable of being present for anything. “Listen, I know how you feel about the police, but you need to cool it.”

“Huckleberries,” Helen muttered, her word for incompetent policemen. “You know, it’s occurred to me that I’m just about the only person in our family who hasn’t gone to prison.”

“Jail, Mother. Prison is for after you’re convicted.”

“Thank God I didn’t use the wrong word with my book club.”

“Mrs. Scott?” One of the trench-­coated men walked over with his badge in his hand. He reeked of cigar smoke because it wasn’t enough of a cliché to wear a trench coat. “I’m Captain Mayhew, Dunwoody Police Department.”

“Captain?” Claire asked. The man she’d talked to after Paul’s murder was only a detective. Was a burglary more important than a murder, or were murders so common in the city of Atlanta that they relegated them to detectives?

“I’m real sorry for your loss.” Mayhew dropped the badge into his coat pocket. His mustache was bushy and untrimmed. Hairs climbed down from his nostrils. “The congressman asked me to handle this personally.”

Claire knew who the congressman was. Johnny Jackson had been Paul’s benefactor almost from the start, awarding him government contracts that should’ve gone to more experienced architects. The man’s early investment had been rewarded over the years. Every time Quinn + Scott was given a new government job, Paul’s personal Amex bill was riddled with charges for chartered planes he never flew in and five-­star hotels where he never stayed.

She took a deep breath and asked, “I’m sorry, Captain. I’m feeling a bit discombobulated. Can you please start from the beginning and tell me what happened?”

“Yeah, I can imagine with the funeral and all, this is the last thing you want to be dealing with right now. Like I said, my condolences.” Mayhew took his own deep breath, his far more raspy. “We’ve got a nutshell, but we’re still filling in some blanks. You’re not the first person in the county to have this kind of thing happen. We suspect it’s a gang of young males who read the obituaries, find out when the funerals are, then Google Earth the house and figure out whether it’s worth robbing.”

“Good Lord,” Helen said, “that really is beyond the pale.”

Mayhew seemed just as outraged. “We think the burglars only had a minute or so before the catering van pulled up. They saw the broken glass from the side door.” He pointed to the glass, which was still scattered on the bluestone steps. “The bartender went inside—­probably not the best idea. He took a beating, but he managed to stop the gang from cleaning you out.”

Claire looked up at the house again. Paul had been drawing variations of the plans since architecture school. The only thing that changed was the amount of money they could spend. Neither one of them had grown up rich. Claire’s father had been a college professor. Paul’s parents had owned a farm. He loved having money because it made him feel secure. Claire loved having it because once you paid for something, no one could ever take it away from you.

Had she not paid enough for Paul? Had she not worked enough, loved enough, been enough? Is that why she had lost him?

“Mrs. Scott?”

“I’m sorry.” Claire didn’t know why she kept apologizing. Paul would’ve cared more about this. He would’ve been outraged by the violation. Their window broken! Burglars rifling their belongings! One of their employees attacked! Claire would’ve been right beside him, just as outraged, but without Paul, she could barely force herself to go through the motions.

Helen asked, “Can you tell us if the bartender is okay? Tim, was it?”

“Yeah, Tim.” Mayhew nodded and shrugged at the same time. “Most of the wounds are superficial. They took him to the hospital to stitch him up.”

Claire felt some of the horror penetrate. Tim had been bartending for them for years. He had a son with autism and an ex-­wife he was trying to win back and now he was being stitched up at the hospital because of something horrible that had happened inside her home.

Helen asked, “But you still need Claire to go through the house to see if the burglars took anything?”

“Yes, eventually. I know this is really bad timing, but what we need from Mrs. Scott right now is to know where the setup is for the security cameras.” He pointed to the black globe on the corner of the house. “We’re pretty sure that one got them coming and going.”

“I’ll take you to it.” Claire didn’t move. They were all staring at her, waiting. There was something else she needed to do. Lots of something elses.

The list. She felt her brain flip back on like a light switch.

Claire turned to her mother. “Can you ask the caterers to donate the food to the shelter? And let Tim know we’ll take care of the hospital bill. I’m sure it’s covered under our homeowner’s policy.” Where was the paperwork? Claire didn’t even know who their agent was.

“Mrs. Scott?” There was another man standing beside Captain Mayhew. He was a few inches taller and dressed slightly better than the rest of the group. His trench coat was nicer, his suit was better tailored, and his face was clean-­shaven. His easy manner should’ve put Claire at ease, but there was something about him that felt deeply

unsettling, not least of all because he was sporting a nasty-­looking black eye.

The man indicated his bruised eye with a chuckle. “The wife doesn’t like it when I talk back.”

Helen said, “Domestic violence is so funny.” She noted Claire’s wary expression. “I’ll be in the kitchen if you need me.”

The black-­eyed man tried again. “Sorry, Mrs. Scott. My name is Fred Nolan. Maybe we can talk while you take us to the guts of the security system?”

He was standing close enough that Claire felt the need to step back. “This way.” She started walking toward the garage.

“Hold up.” Nolan put his hand on her arm. His thumb pressed against the soft underside of her wrist. “The control board for the security system is in the garage?”

Claire had never taken such an instant, visceral dislike to another human being. She looked down at his hand, willing the skin to freeze to the bone.

Nolan got the message. He released her arm.

“As I said, it’s this way.”

Claire suppressed a shudder as she continued walking. Mayhew walked beside her. Nolan followed closely at her heels. Too close. The man wasn’t just unsettling, he was creepy. He looked more like a mobster than a cop, but he was obviously good at his job. Claire hadn’t done anything criminal—­at least not lately—­but he’d managed to make her feel guilty anyway.

Nolan said, “Usually all the security stuff is in the main part of the house.”

“Fascinating,” Claire mumbled. She could feel a headache working into her temples. Maybe the burglary was a godsend. Instead of spending the next four hours entertaining Paul’s mourners, she would spend half an hour with this asshole before she kicked them all out of the house and took a handful of Valium to bed.

For complicated reasons Paul had tried to explain, all the security mainframes were in the garage, which was a two-­story detached structure built in the same style as the house. Paul’s office on the top floor had a kitchenette, two walk-­in closets, and a full bathroom. They had laughed about the space being nicer than a hotel if she ever kicked him out of the house.