Blood Orchid (Holly Barker 3)

She finished her dinner, switched off the TV, and walked out the back door, across the patio, and onto the beach. She saw Daisy dart in and out of the dunes, amusing herself. The sun was going down, casting shadows across the sand down to the

water.

She walked across the beach and let the little waves wash over her feet. It was a beautiful evening, and she wished she had someone to share it with. She and Jackson had liked this time of day on the beach, had taken long walks, returning to the cottage only after dark. Daisy bounded across the beach and joined her, frolicking in the shallow water. Down the beach, toward Orchid, lights were coming on, families were sitting down to dinner, lovers were making love.

Holly was alone, and that hurt, but she still felt she’d rather be alone than with someone other than Jackson. There wouldn’t be another Jackson in her life, she knew that, but she hoped there’d be somebody down the line. When he turned up, she hoped she’d want him.

She turned and, with Daisy at her heels, trudged back to the house. It waited for her, warm, inviting, and empty.

8

The following morning Holly phoned the station and asked for Hurd Wallace.

“Deputy Chief Wallace,” he said.

“Hurd, Holly. Do you know a really good locksmith?”

“Yeah, sure; Phil Sweat; he does locks, alarms, electronics, the works. I’ll give you the number.”

Holly wrote it down, then hung up and called the man.

Two hours later, Phil Sweat arrived in a van emblazoned with the name NO SWEAT LOCKSMITHS, Your Security Is Our Only Business. Sweat was short, skinny, and shrewd-looking. He reminded Holly of a ferret.

“Morning, Chief,” Sweat said. “What can I do you for?”

“I want new locks on all the exterior doors; excellent locks.”

“You had some kind of problem?”

“Somebody came into my house yesterday while I was at work. Nothing was stolen, but I could tell somebody had been here.”

“Rearranged things, did he?”

“In tiny ways that only I would notice.”

“There are people like that,” Sweat said, raising his baseball cap and scratching his head. “They break into people’s houses just to experience their lives. Sometimes they steal, sometimes they don’t. Sometimes they shit on the floor.”

“Nothing like that, but I don’t want it to happen again.”

“You got an alarm system?”

“Yes, but I haven’t been using it.”

“Why don’t I take a look at it?”

“The box is in the hall coat closet.”

Sweat walked into the house, checking the front door lock on the way in. “I could pick that in thirty seconds,” he said, “and if I could, so could somebody else.” He opened the closet door, pushed the clothing aside, and opened the alarm central box. The key was in the lock. “You made it easy for somebody to get in here and yank some wires.”

“That didn’t happen; anyway, the alarm wasn’t on.”

Sweat peered into the box. “It did happen. The front door is no longer wired into the system.” He pulled a screwdriver from a vest loaded with tools and worked for a moment. “There, that’ll do it, but if I were you, with a problem like this, I’d beef up the system. You’re only covering what looks like the exterior doors and the downstairs windows. You got any motion detectors?”

“No.”

“Let’s take a walk around the house,” Sweat said.

Holly followed the man as he checked every door, every window in the house, looked in closets, inspected her safes. Sweat led Holly outside to his van. “You don’t have a bad system here, it’s just inadequate. What I propose is to replace all the exterior locks with Swedish units that work magnetically.” He opened the rear door, rummaged in some boxes on shelves inside, and came up with a hefty lock. “They’re very high quality, and hell to get past. Then I’d extend the alarm system to all the windows, and I’d put two motion detectors in—one at the top of the stairs by the kitchen, covering the living room.”