D.D. couldn’t listen to the voice messages without the password, but didn’t sweat it. Miller would follow up with the cell phone company and have them freeze the messages as well as pull their own log. A provider retained copies of even deleted messages in its own database, handy information for inquiring minds that wanted to know. Miller would also have the provider trace Sandra’s final few phone calls, tracking the cell towers the calls pinged off, to help establish her final movements.

The rest of the purse yielded three different tubes of lipstick-muted shades of pink—two pens, a nail file, a granola bar, a black hair-scrunchy, a pair of reading glasses, and a wallet with forty-two dollars cash, a valid MA driver’s license, two credit cards, and three grocery store and one bookstore member cards. Finally, D.D. pulled out a small spiral notebook filled with various lists: groceries to buy, errands to run, times for appointments. D.D. left the notebook out as a priority item, and Miller nodded.

Sitting next to the purse was a large set of car keys. D.D. held them up questioningly.

“Automatic starter belongs to gray Volvo station wagon parked in the driveway. Two keys are house keys. Four keys we don’t know, but we’re guessing at least one is her classroom. I’ll get an officer on it.”

“You checked the back of the station wagon?” she asked sharply.

Miller gave her a look, clearly wanting a little credit. “Yes, ma’am. No surprises there.”

D.D. didn’t bother with an apology. She just set down the keys and picked up a stack of school papers, marked neatly in red ink. Sandra Jones had given her class a one-paragraph writing assignment, each student needing to answer “If I were starting my own village, the first rule for all the colonists would be … and why.”

Some kids managed only a sentence or two. A couple nearly filled the page. Each paper had at least one or two comments, then a letter grade circled at the top. The writing was feminine, with some of the kids earning smiley faces. D.D. decided that was the kind of detail a forger wouldn’t think to include. So for now, she was satisfied that Sandra Jones had sat at this counter, grading these papers, an activity that according to her husband wouldn’t happen until little Ree was tucked into bed.

So at approximately nine o’clock at night, Sandra Jones had been alive and well in her own kitchen. And then …

D.D.’s gaze went to the computer, a relatively new-looking Dell desktop sitting on top of the little red parlor table. She sighed.

“Turned on?” she asked with barely disguised longing.

“Haven’t wanted to tempt myself,” Miller answered.