“An amateur doesn’t fit. Like we said before: this wasn’t random.”

“True enough. Can you give me a theory that does cover what we’ve got?”

Richie unrolled pairs of socks and dumped them on the pile, getting his ideas straight. “The intruder Jenny talked about,” he said, after a moment. “Let’s say he finds a way to get back in, more than once maybe. Fiona said herself, Jenny wouldn’t have told her.”

No clandestine condoms at the bottom of the jewelry box, no wraps of Mummy’s Little Helper tucked in with the makeup brushes. I said, “But Jenny did tell Fiona she was going to start using the alarm. How does he get around that?”

“He got around the locks, the first time. Looks like Patrick thought he was coming in through the attic. He might’ve been right. Up through the house next door, maybe.”

“If Larry and his team had found an access point in the attic, they’d have told us. And you heard them: they looked.”

Richie started folding socks and boxers back into the drawer, taking care over it. We don’t generally bother to leave things perfect; I couldn’t tell whether he was thinking of Jenny having to come home to this place—which, given the odds of anyone buying it, was actually a possibility—or of Fiona having to clean it out. Either way, the empathy was something he was going to have to watch. He said, “OK, so maybe your man’s got a way around the alarm system. That could be what he does for a living. Could even be how he picked the Spains: he installed their system, got hung up on them …”

“The system came with the house, according to that brochure. It was here before they were. Dial back the Cable Guy there, old son.” Jenny’s underwear drawer was divided neatly into special-occasion sexies, white exercise gear and what I assumed were everyday pink-and-white frillies; nothing kinky, no toys, apparently the Spains had been good old vanilla. “But let’s assume, just for a moment, that our man’s found a way to gain access. Then what?”

“He starts getting more in-your-face, smashes those holes in the walls. No way to stop Patrick from finding out then. Maybe Patrick thinks like Jenny: he wants to know what the story is here, he’d rather catch the guy than shut him out or scare him off. So he sets up surveillance on the spots where he knows, or thinks, your man’s been.”

“So that’s a man trap, up in the attic. To catch the guy in the act and keep him there till we arrive.”

Richie said, “Or till Patrick was done with him. Depending.”

I raised my eyebrows. “You’ve got a twisted mind, my son. That’s a good thing. Don’t let it run away with you, though.”

“If someone scared your wife, threatened your kids …” Richie shook out a pair of khakis; next to his scrawny arse they looked huge, like they had belonged to a superhero. He said, “You might be on for doing some damage.”