The Neighbor - Lisa Gardner [13]
The cellar was dusty, but not messy. Items were neatly stacked against the wall, the center floor clear for laundry duties, perhaps some indoor bike riding, to judge by the purple tricycle parked next to the bulkhead stairs.
D.D. crossed to the bulkhead, investigating the collection of cobwebs in the right-hand corner, the thick coating of dust on the dark handle. Doors obviously hadn’t been opened for a bit, and now that she was down here, she was already changing her mind. If you killed someone in the basement, would you really traipse all the way back upstairs? Why not stick the body beneath the pile of boxes, or grab an old sheet to bundle it out of the bulkhead in the dead of night?
She poked through the collection of discarded crib parts, baby strollers, and bouncy seats. Moved on to the collection of boxes next to the wall, the decaying lawn furniture.
Behind her Nick and Marge were surveying the floor with spotlights while Miller remained off to the side, hands in his pockets. Having already walked through the basement once, he was merely waiting for the group to arrive at the same conclusion he’d formed hours before.
After a matter of minutes, D.D. was already getting there. The cellar reminded her of the kitchen, not too dirty, not too clean. Just about right for a family of three.
Just for kicks she checked the washer and the dryer. Then, her heart stopped in her throat.
“Oh crap,” she said, washer lid still open, one blue-and-green quilt staring her in the face.
Miller came hustling over, evidence techs on his heels. “Is that …? You’ve got to be kidding me. When I get my hands on the two yokels who first searched this space—”
“Hey, isn’t that the quilt?” Nick said, rather stupidly.
Marge was already hunched over, pulling out the comforter from the top-loading machine while being careful not to drag it on the floor.
“He washed it?” D.D. was thinking out loud. “The husband washed the quilt, but didn’t have time to dry it before calling the police? Or the wife had it in the wash all along and we’ve been chasing our tails for the past few hours?”
Marge was carefully spreading the quilt out, handing Nick one end, while holding the other. The comforter bore the deep wrinkles of a wet item that had been left in a washing machine for a bit. It smelled vaguely of detergent—fresh, clean. They fluffed it once, and a wet purple ball fell splat on the floor.
D.D. still had on latex gloves, so she did the honors. “Sandra Jones’s nightshirt, I presume,” she said, unrolling the sodden purple T-shirt, which did have a crowned chick on the front.
They studied both items for a bit, looking for faded pink stains, like the kind left behind by blood, or maybe jagged tears that might indicate a struggle. Signs of something.
D.D. had that uncomfortable feeling again. As if she was seeing something obvious but not quite getting it.
Who took the time to wash a quilt and nightshirt, but left a broken lamp in plain sight? What kind of woman disappeared, but left behind her child, her wallet, her car?
And what kind of husband came home to discover his wife missing, but waited three hours before calling the police?
“Attic, crawl space?” D.D. asked Miller out loud. Nick and Margie were folding up the quilt to take back to the lab. If the subject hadn’t used bleach, the comforter might still yield some evidence. They took the purple nightshirt from D.D., put it in a second bag for processing.
“No crawl space. Attic is small and mostly filled with Christmas decorations,” Miller reported.
“Closets, refrigerators, freezers, outbuildings,