Chương 7
“What happened?”
“The package Tyler picked up was addressed to Liam.”
“So?”
“I don’t know.”
Brandon’s office door was closed.
It was not locked.
I opened it without touching anything else.
The room smelled faintly of his cedar aftershave.
His desk was orderly, his monitor dark, his gym bag tucked against the wall.
There was no cardboard box beside the desk.
I checked under it, behind the chair, beside the filing cabinet.
Nothing.
Then Liam appeared behind us.
“I moved it.”
Claire and I turned.
He was holding a stuffed shark under one arm.
“Moved what, sweetheart?”
“The box.”
My heart began beating harder.
“Where?”
He pointed toward the kitchen.
“I put it by the refrigerator.”
I had already been through the kitchen.
“There isn’t a box there.”
“I know.”
His face tightened.
“Brandon told me to hide it.”
“When?”
“The day after Tyler came.”
I stared at him.
“Brandon called you?”
Liam shook his head.
“He left a note.”
Claire went still.
“What note?”
Liam looked confused by our reaction.
“The one on the refrigerator.”
I turned toward the kitchen.
There were grocery receipts, school magnets, an old dentist reminder, and a yellow sticky note half-covered by a pizza coupon.
I had looked directly at it twice.
The handwriting was Brandon’s.
Liam, put the package from Tyler in the basement storage closet.
Do not open it.
Do not tell Mom because it is for later.
I read the words again.
Then I looked at the date printed in tiny gray numbers at the bottom of the pizza coupon overlapping the note.
The coupon had come in Wednesday’s mail.
Brandon had already been in California for two days.
“He couldn’t have left this before he went,” I said.
Claire stared at me.
“No.”
Liam hugged the stuffed shark tighter.
“He didn’t.”
My mouth went dry.
“Then how did the note get here?”
Liam pointed toward the printer in the small desk nook off the kitchen.
“It came out of there.”
I looked at the printer as if it had become a person in the room.
It was an ordinary black inkjet we had bought on sale two years earlier, usually clogged when anybody actually needed it.
Liam shifted his weight.
“It made the noise by itself.”
“When?”
“The morning after Tyler came.”
“You saw the paper come out?”
He nodded.
“I thought you printed something from Grandma’s.”
Claire put the laundry basket down very carefully.
“Did Brandon ever print to it from his phone?”
“All the time.”
I answered before I meant to.
He printed shipping labels from work, school permission forms, recipes he never cooked, hotel confirmations, anything he wanted on paper without opening the laptop.
Claire looked at me.
“So he could send something to the printer from California?”
“I don’t know.”
I did know it was possible in some form.
I just did not know whether our printer was set up that way, whether the app worked remotely, or whether I was now inventing technology because the alternative was worse.
I took a picture of the note without moving it.
Then another of the entire refrigerator.
Then I called Detective Harris.
He answered on the fourth ring.
“I’m at home,” I said.
“I found something.”
“Tell me without touching it.”
I described the note and the printer.
He became quieter.
“Do you still have the package?”
“No.”
“Your son moved it to the basement storage closet.”
“Is it there now?”
“I haven’t checked.”
“Don’t.”
That single word stopped me halfway toward the basement door.
“Why?”
“Because I’d rather document where it is before it moves again.”
“I own the house.”
“I know.”
“And it’s addressed to my son.”
“I understand.”
His patience irritated me because mine was gone.
“It could be something dangerous.”
“Is there any reason you believe that?”
“No.”
“Any odor, leaking, wires, powder, damage?”
“I haven’t seen it.”
“Then keep everyone away from it and give me twenty minutes.”
He arrived with Officer Keller and another officer I had not met.
The sight of Keller brought the supermarket call back so vividly that for a second I heard carts rattling over tile.
She greeted Liam by name.
He gave her a shy wave from behind Claire.
Harris asked me to show him the refrigerator without touching the note.
He photographed it, then crouched near the printer.
“Does this machine keep a job history?”
“I have no idea.”
He looked at the model number and wrote it down.
“Do you know the account associated with it?”
“Probably Brandon’s.”
“Probably isn’t the same as definitely.”
“I know.”
He glanced at me.
“I’m not criticizing you.”
“Everyone keeps saying that right before asking me something I should know.”
He straightened.
“You’d be amazed how little most people know about the devices in their own homes.”
“That is not comforting.”
“No.”
He looked toward the hallway.
“Where’s the basement?”
Liam immediately spoke.
“I can show you.”
Harris knelt so they were closer to eye level.
“You can tell your mom, and she can show me.”
Liam frowned.
“Why?”
“Because I don’t want you involved in anything you don’t have to be involved in.”
The answer seemed to satisfy him.
He told me the box was behind the old Christmas tree stand in the storage closet.
I led Harris downstairs.
Claire stayed upstairs with Liam.
The basement was cooler than the rest of the house and smelled faintly of concrete and laundry detergent.
I opened the storage room door.
The cardboard box was exactly where Liam had described it.
It was roughly the size of a microwave and sealed with clear packing tape.
A shipping label with Liam Cole’s name was stuck across the top.
There was no carrier barcode.
Harris noticed it too.
“Interesting.”
“What?”
“This may not have been shipped.”
He pointed without touching.
“No tracking label.”
I stared at the box.
“Then why did Tyler think it had been delivered?”
“Because Brandon told him it had.”
May you like
The detective photographed all four sides.
Then he asked me for permission to open it.
