“I do not know, I cannot tell. I was never in his private rooms, of course, but you can see there’s an expensive television still sitting, and his stereo.” She put her hands over her eyes, not wanting to look. “And the geodes, they knocked them to the floor but did not take them.”

There are housebreakers who read the obituaries and stake out houses of the recently dead, but I didn’t imagine we were dealing with that kind of robber: the fact they’d left salable items behind wasn’t a surprise.

I put a hand on her shoulder. “We can’t do any good here. I’m going to call the cops from my car. You take off. You don’t need to tell them you were here—your fingerprints would be here in any event, since you were the person who tended to things when he traveled.”

I made one last survey of the room and realized I’d overlooked his phone—so usual an object, even these days with people going exclusively to cell phones, that I hadn’t registered it. Covering my fingers with a tissue, I fiddled with the menu button until I got the registry of the last calls he’d made or received. Three were from the same number in Lawrence.

Aanya was peering over my shoulder. “That’s from the university.” She opened her own phone. “Yes, that is Dr. Hitchcock. He called me two days ago, when he heard about Dr. Roque.”

Peppy startled us both with a sudden, sharp bark. Aanya clutched my arm, sucked in a harsh breath. A second later a black-and-white ball of fur streaked across the room and jumped onto the toppled étagère.

Aanya laughed weakly. “Dinah! How could I be forgetting her? If you take your dog out of the room, I will coax her to me and bring her home.”

39
Surprise, Surprise!

I’d driven over to the Plaza shopping center to call the Kansas City police—late on Saturday night, the bars and streets were crowded, so they wouldn’t bother too much with tracking me down. The burner phone was becoming a liability, though—Aanya and Cady had both called it, and I’d used it with too many of my Chicago clients. I put it under my front tire and ran over it on my way out of town. I had two more, but I’d pick up another couple on Monday.

It was past midnight when I got back to the B and B, but any hopes I had of falling into bed were destroyed when I reached the walk at the back of the house where my suite was. Peppy gave a sharp, excited bark and raced forward; a small figure emerged from the shadows to embrace her.

“Vic! Where have you been? I have been calling and calling and calling, and getting only your voice mail.”