The woman next door, who had lived in her house even longer than I’d lived in mine, called out “Hi” and waved at us as she hurried to her car. We waved back.

“I’ve seen her somewhere before,” John said.

“Julie Coombs. You met her and her husband at Mack’s funeral. She works at a talent agency and he’s in computers.”

“Oh, yeah.” I could tell from his inflection that he did remember her. John had a remarkable facility for recalling names and faces.

A few minutes later a familiar ivory-colored Range Rover came up the street and parked behind John’s Lincoln.

“That’s Liddy,” I said, getting up. John stood, too, but remained in place as I hurried down to the street to greet her with a hug.

“I’m so glad to see you,” I said. “But why are you here?”

“Nicholas called to tell me police were doing their cop thing in your house. He said you needed me.”

“I do.”

Liddy waved at John. “Where is your Sicilian stallion? Did Big John chase him off?”

“We had a fight,” I said.

“A bad one?”

“Very bad.”

“So, he stalked off in a snit, but he didn’t want you to be alone. I like him.”

John greeted Liddy with a quick squeeze of her hand. “Glad to see you. Do you know what’s going on?”

“Nicholas phoned her.” Something occurred to me. “John, if he contacted Liddy he might have phoned Eileen, too. You’d better get hold of her and tell her not to come here. Tell her I need her to go to our shop and handle the business until I call her later.”

“Good idea.” John pulled his cell phone out of his jacket, pressed a number on his speed dial, and walked down to the street for privacy.

“The forensics techs found my fingerprint at the back of Ingram’s house, where I broke in.”

Liddy’s eyes widened. “How? You were wearing gloves.”

“Latex. I cut myself on a piece of broken glass that sliced through one of the fingertips. I didn’t think I’d left a print, but I must have. It was enough for a match to the prints they had of me from before.”

Liddy nodded, remembering that I’d been suspected of murder a few months ago. At that time I’d volunteered to give the police my prints to prove that I’d never touched anything belonging to the victim. Eventually, I’d been cleared, but they had my prints in their system.

I saw John close his phone. He came back to join us at the front door.

“Your friend didn’t call Eileen,” he said. “So I didn’t tell her what’s going on here. I just said you were giving Hugh Weaver and me some additional information about people who’d been at the gala, and that you’d asked me to give her the message about going to your shop.”

Liddy opened her tote bag. “I brought us a deck of cards and a pad to keep score. How ’bout some three-handed gin while we’re stuck out here on the doorstep?”

For the first time in several days, I saw John smile. I guessed what he was thinking: that it reminded him of the “old days” when Liddy and Bill, and John and Shannon, and Mack and I played gin on Saturday nights.

Three hours and twelve hands of gin later-I owed Liddy six dollars and John owed her eight-Detective Hatch and his Merry Pillagers finally emerged from my house.

With a cardboard box full of DVDs and VHS tapes.

“Those are my favorite old movies,” I told Hatch. “After you’ve had your film festival, I want them back.”

“If they’re really what you say, they’ll be returned.”

In a low voice, Liddy said, “At least they’re not carting off huge garbage bags full of stuff, like I see on the cop shows.”

“That’s because Della’s house wasn’t the scene of the crime,” John said.

“We’re going to search your vehicle,” Hatch announced.

“I’ll get the keys,” I said.

“No need.” Hatch held up the keys to my Jeep. “They were on your dresser.” He tossed the ring to one of the uniformed officers. “We’re taking this to the LAPD garage to look it over there. You’ll get it back in a day or two.”

That further indignity infuriated me, but I couldn’t prevent it. “I know the mileage and how much gas is in the tank,” I said, “so no joyriding. And keep my radio on the setting where I have it.”

They ignored me and headed toward the driveway, where I’d parked. I hadn’t put the Jeep into the garage last night because Nicholas was there, and we’d started kissing.

The thought of Nicholas made me remember that I hadn’t made my bed this morning, after he and I… And Nicholas had left a wet towel on the bathroom floor after he showered. Hatch must think I’m a slob.

It suddenly struck me as funny that I’d worry about such a ridiculous thing, under the circumstances. I started to laugh.

John picked up Emma’s carrier. “You’re taking this well.”

“I was a cop’s wife,” I said. “We’re tough.”

Then I opened my front door, stepped into my house, and began to cry.

26

“Oh, no…” Liddy’s voice was a wail of despair. She put her arm around my shoulders in sympathy. “This is awful.”

Awful didn’t begin to describe the condition of my living room.

“Bastards,” John said. “I’m sorry, Del.”

Every book had been taken from the shelves and left on the floor. Chairs were turned upside down; the drawer was removed from my Grandma Nell’s little antique writing desk and the contents scattered on the floor; sofa cushions lay in a heap in a corner. The heavy glass top on my carved wooden coffee table was leaning up against one wall, with the table upended. The two area rugs were rolled up and pushed aside. The pictures on the walls had been taken down and leaned against the baseboards. The family photos on surfaces had been taken out of their frames and left lying facedown where they used to stand upright.

Liddy handed me a packet of tissues. I wiped away the tears, blew my nose, and took a long, deep breath.

“I’m okay now.” It was a lie, but I figured if I kept saying that to myself, I could make it true.

I picked up the little wastebasket that had been under the writing desk, placed it back where it belonged, and dropped the tissues into it. “Let’s keep going.”

John lifted the cat carrier a little higher and asked, “Where do you want Emma?”

The fact that John remembered the name of my cat cheered me. In the middle of chaos, little things mattered.

“For now, in my bathroom,” I said.

At the door to my bedroom, I felt tears filling my eyes again. The linens had been torn from the bed and lay in piles on the floor. The mattress had been turned over but not put back on the box springs. All the clothes in my closets had been taken out and dropped onto the bed. The lingerie in my dresser had been dumped out and the drawers turned upside down. Even all of my handbags had been opened, shaken out, and thrown aside. Old tissues, crumpled receipts, loose coins, and partial rolls of breath mints that had been in the bottoms of the purses were left on the linen pile.

Reaching for the only positive thing I could think of, I said, “At least they didn’t slice up my cushions and mattress and pull out the stuffing.”

Relatively speaking, my bathroom was in the best shape. Towels and washcloths had been swept from the shelves and left on the floor. The top of the toilet tank had been taken off but not put back on, just leaned up against the corner of the shower stall. The contents of my medicine cabinet had been hauled out and left in the bathroom sink. Even Emma’s box has been emptied out onto one of the used towels.

Adding insult to injury-I hate a cliché, but in this case it expressed exactly how I felt-the toilet seat had been left up. Nicholas never left it up, so it meant that one of those rampaging “Protect and Servers” had relieved himself here. That made me mad enough to stop the tears.