Emma gripped my sleeve.
“Then what does it open?”
“I don’t know,” I said.
Mercer placed the card into an evidence sleeve.
“Whoever left this wanted you to know the key was gone.”
“Or wanted us to believe it was gone,” Diaz said.
I looked at him.
“What do you mean?”
He pointed toward the carpet beside the entry table. A small brass-colored fleck caught the light.
“Looks like paint.”
Mercer’s expression sharpened.
“The key may have been a copy. Or a prop.”
Emma stared at the evidence sleeve.
“So Mom didn’t leave it?”
“We don’t know yet,” I told her.
She gave me a frustrated look.
Adults often used those words to protect children from frightening possibilities. Emma had heard them enough to recognize their shape.
“I’m tired of not knowing,” she said.
“So am I.”
The honesty surprised her.
I sat beside her on the couch.
“But not knowing does not mean we are helpless. It means we move carefully.”
Mercer finished taking our statements and arranged for a patrol car to pass the house throughout the day. She also recommended that we stay elsewhere until the locks and security system could be inspected.
“I have a guest room,” she added, almost reluctantly. “My husband is away visiting his father, and my daughter is at college. You would have privacy.”
The offer touched me, but I shook my head.
