Part 66: Much Too Early, Late That Same Morning.
“No.” I pace about the debris. “The room is carefully staged to look ransacked, but it doesn’t hold up to scrutiny.” I hold out a broken snow-globe, water still pooled around the feet of the missing Frosty the Snowman I gave her years ago. “First off, there is no sign of a defense. No bullet-holes in the walls, no blood either. Eva wouldn’t have gone without a fight. They would have to kill her, and we’d see evidence of that.”
“All right,” he allows, as if he had been considering this as well.
“We can stage a crime scene better than this. They made a point to break everything. Why break the bed?”
“I hadn’t thought of that,” he admits, eyebrows raising proudly.
“Nothing has been taken that I take note of. They broke a flat-screen television, the DVD player, and the compact disc player, and left a hundred dollars in twenties over there on the floor,” I say, pointing to the other side of the bed.
“That’s begging for InternetConspiracyEchoChamber.com to jump on it," Nepotism says. "I was going to take the cash because they were dumb enough to leave it.”
“The destruction is too complete,” I tell him. “ The clothes pulled out of her dresser, drawers torn out and broken, and the dresser and the mirror smashed on top of them. What purpose does that serve?” I glance around the room and take a deep breath. “We’re splitting that money.”
“You’re good.”
“I’m just getting started.”
“Let me get a witness!”
“Look at this. They did everything to this room save for pulling the blinds off the window. Maybe two hours ago she left my house. I woke up at ten and she was still sleeping. They couldn’t do this in two hours.”
He snickers.
“Dude, shut up. Think about it. They were planning to make her disappear before she got my notebook. From the looks of how carefully this mess was assembled, I doubt they wanted her to even show up here at all. It would take one little struggle to destroy this work of art.”
“Uh huh, uh huh.”
“Dude, they were going to pick her up on her way here.”
“You know, if they were going to put something here it implicate you, and they had to get it from her. It probably means they haven’t been back here yet,” he says, looking down at his cell phone for the time.
The front door opens.
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