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, barbecue pits?”

“Nope, nope, nope, nope, and nope.”

“Of course, there is that big, blue harbor.”

“Yep.”

D.D. sighed heavily. Tried one last theory: “Husband’s vehicle?”

“Pickup truck. He walked out with us to peer in the back. He refused, however, to open the doors of the front cab.”

“Cautious son of a bitch.”

“Cold,” Miller corrected. “Wife’s been missing for hours now, and he hasn’t even picked up the phone to call any family or friends.”

That decided the matter for her. “All right,” D.D. said. “Let’s go meet Mr. Jones.”

CHAPTER FOUR